The Independent View: Building Trump Opposition Through Indivisible

Before the raucous Town Halls, before the crowds at Airports protesting the Travel Ban, before the pink knit caps, before even the Inauguration, the organized opposition to Trump's Presidency began in earnest at a pub in Austin, Texas. There, on November 23rd, 2016, husband Ezra Levin and wife Lean Greenberg chatted with a friend whose Politics had been jolted by Trump's Victory and wanted to known how to do something about it.

They had a good idea of how to channel that do something impulse: Both in their early 30s, they had spent much of their adult lives working in Politics including as Democratic Congressional Aides. Levin for Texas Representative Lloyd Doggett and Greenberg for former Virginia Representative Tom Perriello. The couple had watched with some envy as the Tea Party had managed to transform Voter's feelings into actual results, and they concluded that those successes stemmed from Two Strategic choices. The Tea Party comprised Small, Locally Focused Groups, and it was almost entirely Defensive, focusing on pressuring Politicians to say No to Democratic Policies.

From those insights, Greenberg and Levin built the first and still most Influential Playbook for Stonewalling the Trump Presidency. They drafted a How-to-Guide for Citizens looking for something concrete to do, not some much by Rallying or Protesting but in ways that might actually affect Policy. Greenberg came up with the name for the effort, Indivisible, and late on November 27th, Levin sent a rough draft, in the form of a lengthy Google Doc, to a group of likeminded current and former Hill Staffers, asking for their feedback and edits. No detail was too small: There were side-by-side Charts telling Readers what really influences their Members of Congress and what does not: Specific Requests, Yes; Laundry Lists of Concerns about the World, Not So Much. There was Scripts for Phone Calls to Congressperson's Office, Guidelines for Phrasing Questions to Elected Officials at Town Halls, and Advise on where to Sit: grab Seats at the Front Half of the Room and Spread Out to help Reinforce the Impression of Broad Consensus.

By mid-December, the Indivisible Guide was being tweeted out by Celebrities and Politicos, growing so popular that the Google Doc crashed. Indivisible soon moved to its own website, and as Trump took Office, Local Chapters expanded to more than 6,000 Nationwide. The Guidebook has been downloaded more than 2 Million times.

If Democrats are able to retake the House in 2018, it will be a Victory built from Greenberg and Levin's Blueprint, which helped Shake many White-Collar Progressives out of their abstract, coffeehouse-and-protest idealism and reacquaint them with a belief in Shoe-Leather, Show-Up-with-Bodies Democratic Politics.

Bottom line, constituent power works, Levin says. Our task now is to ensure people keep building their local groups, so that they can continue changing what's politically possible at the national level.

Some Current Facts:

- Average of 14 Local Indivisible Chapters per U.S. Congressional District.

- 101,000 calls made to Constituents in the 48 hours preceding the Senate's Health Care Vote.

- 173 Events held on Indivisible's National Day of Action to Stop Trumpcare, in 40 States.

CLICK HERE for more information about Indivisible.