2016 Trump protesters plan to build ‘tea party of the left’ Progressives to go DINO hunting in bid to primary the party establishment.

The protests that have roiled American cities since Election Day aren’t going anywhere. But rather than Donald Trump, the first political casualties they claim may be establishment Democrats.

Leaders of the groups organizing some of the first outbursts of direct action in response to Trump’s surprise election are making plans to take to the streets through January’s inauguration and beyond. In frantic behind-the-scenes phone calls, text messages and Slack chats, they’re also planning to channel the energy unleashed last week into electoral politics, starting with Democratic primaries, to build what one organizer called a “tea party of the left.”


“Our big goal is to support primary challenges against those Democrats who negotiate with Donald Trump,” said the organizer, Waleed Shahid, a veteran of Bernie Sanders’ campaign who is working for a group called AllofUs, launched in September. The approach mimics that of the tea party, which has used insurgent primary bids to unsettle establishment Republicans and drive the Republican Party rightward.

“It gave people in the Republican Party who are upset with the establishment an identity,” Shaid said. “You could be a tea party Republican. We think there’s a lot of power in that.”

Progressive groups are planning to combine that tactic with direct actions like marches and sit-ins to more seamlessly merge an anti-Trump protest movement with electoral politicking.

Already, AllofUs — which draws organizers from the environmental group 350.org and the Occupy movement — has organized a candlelight vigil at the White House on Saturday and a Monday sit-in at Sen. Chuck Schumer’s office that resulted in 17 arrests. Another organizer for the group, Max Berger, said it was in the process of planning additional mobilizations over the next several months. And in recent days, the group’s leaders have participated in informal talks with unions and other standard-bearers of the progressive left about orienting their efforts toward Democratic primary challenges while maintaining protests.

Among the groups eyeing a stepped-up role in primaries are 350.org’s political action wing and National Nurses United, which backs Rep. Keith Ellison’s bid for chairman of the Democratic National Committee and is convening its board this week in Washington, where its members will participate in a Thursday afternoon rally with Sanders on the Capitol grounds. “Time for faux progressives to get out of the way,” said the union’s executive director, RoseAnn DeMoro. “Change is the only thing that will save that party.”

Those plans represent a dramatic shift in strategy for the anti-establishment left, which responded to the last major shock to the world system, the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, with Occupy, a protest movement disconnected from electoral politics. While Occupy brought the issue of growing inequality to the forefront of the national conversation, the movement faded when its physical encampments were disbanded.

That shortcoming has been at the top of progressive leaders’ minds this week.

“American activists are finally starting to understand that protest is broken,” wrote Micah White, an architect of Occupy Wall Street, in an email. “The people cannot attain sovereignty over their governments by collective protest in the streets. There are only two ways to achieve sovereignty in this world: Win elections or win wars. Now that street protest is not an option, we will see the Trump resistance split into these two fronts. Some will pursue the strategy of using social movements to elections while others go down the dark path of '70s guerrilla insurrection. I advocate winning elections.”

But the left is not abandoning protests, which have already gotten under Trump’s skin, prompting an irritated Thursday night tweet from the president-elect and a conciliatory Friday morning walk-back. Instead, mass displays of dissent — already a distinguishing feature of Trump’s campaign — are shaping up to become a permanent fixture of the Trump-era landscape.

On Saturday, White posted a memo from a newly formed group calling itself Roosevelt’s Army on the front page of OccupyWallSt.org calling for the occupation of the National Mall during Trump’s inauguration along with “Non-violent disruptions of inaugural events and gatherings, including banner reveals, flash mobs, and simply standing as one people in solidarity for the freedoms of all Americans.”

A representative of Roosevelt’s Army, whose leaders prefer to remain anonymous, said the group would combine such tactics with electoral politicking. “We differ from the Occupy folks in that we are slightly more politically involved,” he said. “There’s a lot that protest movements can learn from election campaigns and vice versa.”

In addition to new groups like AllofUs and Roosevelt’s Army, established groups on the insurgent left are scrambling to adjust their approach in response to Trump’s election.

One Black Lives Matter leader said he had spent the past week on “endless calls” with other progressive leaders pondering how to turn the movement into one that goes “beyond the protests.”

“Nobody has ever pulled off organizing at scale outside of an election,” he said.

One question that remains is whether such organizing will occur under a single anti-Trump banner or through the loose ad hoc coordination of progressive groups.

Representatives of both AllofUs and Roosevelt’s Army suggested their groups could be the banner around which the Trump resistance rallies.

But the prospect of unifying disparate opposition groups under a single command structure remains a daunting one. And Ben Wikler, a representative of the liberal group MoveOn, whose members organized protests on the Wednesday following Trump’s election, predicted the resistance will remain fragmented.

“There will be massive both organized and disorganized opposition to Trump’s extremist agenda,” he said. “And there won’t be an epicenter.”