Seattleites Form Neighborhood Groups to Resist Trump
As soon as the results were in on election night, Seattle-based activist Kaya Axelsson and several fellow organizers knew they had to do something — fast. While the idea of community-based activism driven by Neighborhood Action Councils (NACs) was a concept Axelsson and her colleagues were familiar with, November 8, 2016 “is the first time we said it out loud to each other,” she says. To prepare for a Trump administration, the feeling was extremely clear: “We need to do this.”
Within days, Axelsson and some 50 Seattleites had formed what’s now been dubbed the Neighborhood Action Coalition, an all-volunteer umbrella for the hyperlocal groups being created across the city to help guard against the President-elect’s agenda—which, so far, could include everything from creating a Muslim registry to denying climate change to defunding all sanctuary cities like Seattle, which effectively shield undocumented immigrants from federal officials.
Five days after election night, Axelsson helped organize a forum where hundreds gathered to discuss their fears (so many, in fact, that the bar where it was held overflowed onto a nearby park). On Sunday, December 4, the second event Axelsson helped with — the Neighborhood Action Coalition’s official kickoff — drew almost as many people, and within minutes, attendees had stopped wanting to talk about their post-Trump feelings and begun pulling up lists of concrete, local actions. “In the first 15 minutes of the event, they were ready to go,” Axelsson says.
Examples include anti-racist education, particularly with regards to Muslim and immigrant communities. One idea, for instance, is a series of workshops that debunk persistent stereotypes about Islam. “The first step for us is going to be fighting that xenophobic rhetoric, especially if we are a sanctuary city and funding does get cut for us,” Axelsson says. “People are going to feel the sting of that” and it could, potentially, create bad feeling, as “it’s easy to be in solidarity when it’s no cost to you.”
http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/seattleites-form-neighborhood-groups-to-resist-trump/
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