For the last few weeks in Los Angeles, Refuse Fascism and the members of THE REVCOM CORPS For The Emancipation Of Humanity have been raising funds to send and support the volunteers who have gone to DC from LA.

As crazy as it might sound in the nation's second largest city—crowds of people can be hard to find. But the holiday season brings out people to mingle and shop, so for the past few weeks, we have gone to some of the farmers markets that serve parts of this sprawling city—some of them that stretch blocks in different directions. People have been experimenting and for a couple of these we have joined forces with a woman who has printed a series of signs that show the signs of fascism—which people may have seen manifested by people in suburbs and cities across the country.

We have walked through these markets in single file with the signs chanting, “Danger Danger there's a Fascist in the White House—It's up to Us To Drive Them OUT!” followed by each person reading the sign they are carrying and why this is Fascism that is Upon Us Now. The person at the front and/or the back has done agitation on why there is No living with Fascism and conveyed in their own words the message from the Refuse Fascism calls. 

It's been important to shake up the atmosphere of normalization by challenging  people that the future depends on what the people do now. Accommodate to this by going on with life that continues on as normal for many people, or join a movement with a strategy to defeat fascism before it is able to consolidate? Together with the signs that show what fascism IS—people have held up the Trump Must Go NOW signs. In our single file procession, we have enough division of labor for several people to hold stacks of them—encouraging people to take one, donate and get signed up to distribute them in the neighborhood. A person(s) with a bucket follows near the end of our single file procession and collects the donations asking people to donate 10 or 20 dollars or what they can. In addition to this, we have set up at the entrance to the markets organizing tables or distribution carts with leaflets, posters, stickers and bandannas manned by someone good at talking with people and recruiting them to become organizers themselves. At each of these, we have been able to raise a couple hundred dollars in one or two hours and distribute hundreds of posters, which people are encouraged to post at their homes or their neighborhood businesses. 

This has been a learning experience with each person trying out their own agitation with a mixture of views while the Refuse Fascism chapter has been honing its own ability to sharpen the messaging and actually organize people into the movement on the spot. 

While far too many people are going along as  atrocities mount by the hour—and people are not responding as a populace should to the flagrant escalations of raw fascist power—going out with this message also surfaces the reservoir of deep feeling and support that exists among people very broadly.

At a recent farmers market in a section of the city where many people work in the entertainment industry, people applauded and chanted with us as we went through  the market. People stepped forward  to get posters and donate. At every one of these markets, there has been polarization with Trumpers and Zionists—and at this market, one of them tried to provoke us into a fight by obstructing the procession. One of the people who had been applauding us immediately jumped in between the man trying to provoke an incident and the woman he was belligerently harassing, and with fantastic spirit, she demanded he leave those women alone—while five more people jumped in to join her surrounding him so that the procession could move on. (You can see some of the rapid response training people have internalized in this incident.) Later, the security for the market came, not to expel us but to accompany us so that we could continue without incident. 

The more concrete we made the “ask”—by calling on people to join this effort by following us on Instagram, taking a poster or stack of posters for their neighborhood and making a donation—the more we created a collective atmosphere where people could take part and make a difference. One woman who was a conservationist and very upset that people were not doing more, joined us and took up one of the “Fascism Is…” signs. More would have joined us if we'd been more oriented to inviting more people in. Another woman recovering from a serious injury festooned her walker with posters, put the orange bandanna on her service dog, and set off on the major boulevard with a stack of posters, leaflets and stickers—getting back to us within an hour to let us know she needed more because she had run out before she could even get to the coffee shop she was headed for. 

People who had seen our procession stopped by the table to sign up and engage in deeper discussion with people being invited to the next Refuse Fascism meeting and given ways to spread this themselves. There are now five or six businesses who have agreed to carry posters in different parts of the city where people can pick up the materials they need. This needs more focused and persistent work by the chapter for  a more organized campaign of distribution and participation by people who can themselves make the demand known as not just a sentiment or wish—but immediate objective. The new PEOPLE'S INDICTMENT OF DONALD TRUMP: A UNIFIED DECLARATION OF ILLEGITIMACY provides a whole new way to continue to advance these kinds of initiatives in the service of the one strategy that could truly change the course of history.