Daily Engagement is a new, brief, daily feature on Flavorwire. It’s aimed at helping people feel somewhat less helpless and hopeless (or at least in control of their helplessness and hopelessness) in the midst of a political news cycle that’s been doling out daily affronts to human decency.
Every day, we’ll post one easy thing that people can do to continue to resist the current state of politics under the Trump administration, focusing on the creative ways (we are a culture website after all) that citizens are finding to resist.
Recently, we noted a New York-specific calendar of protests and political events, courtesy of TakeAction. That calendar has been a consistently helpful tool, providing the clearest overview of public displays of resistance in the city, and making for a far easier way to know what to show up for — and how to plan to show up — than expecting these events to appear on Facebook feeds. Now, Michael Moore has taken this idea a step further — he’s launching a similar, but nationwide, calendar at resistancecalendar.org.
Moore shared the calendar this weekend, announcing it on social media, and saying via Facebook:
So much is happening so fast it’s hard to keep track of all the actions popping up — but our intention is to do just that. Every day. A 24/7 clearinghouse of the already MASSIVE resistance to Trump, to the Republican Congress, and, yes, to many of the spineless Democratic politicians out there. We welcome all resisters across the movement to use this tool. It’s completely free. There’s no big “funder” or group behind it. There will be no ads, no commercialization, no fundraising lists — all the stuff we hate. Just you, me, the volunteers donating their time to keep it going and the World Wide Web. BOOM!
As the filmmaker/activist goes on to explain, the calendar is exceedingly simple, and can be sorted by a simple search of keywords or locations. If you’re the organizer of an event, submitting something to add to the calendar is equally easy. Other functions on the website are still being designed, and Moore is promising a “killer” U.S. map version of the calendar.
Today, there are events listed on the calendar stretching from Kalamazoo, IN, through San Diego, CA, to Phoenix, AZ, ranging in focus from opposing ICE actions to opposing gerrymandering to opposing DAPL to supporting science; beyond protests, rallies, town hall meetings abound, and even postcard parties abound. The posts usually link back to the events’ Facebook pages, where more detailed ideological descriptions are of course offered.
The Washington Post draws connections between the terminology of this “resistance” movement — consisting of disparate movements across the country, unified by their opposition to Trump — and that in Nazi-occupied France. They also note that historical interest in La Résistance has spiked, with the term surging in Google searches on inauguration day.