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Building a Path Forward: Challenging Trumpism in the South Sound

The presidential election of Trump has many of us feeling disheartened about what the next four years will bring. Perhaps many of us are still reeling in denial or apathy–all components of an emotional response to experiencing grief. This is normal.

The most important thing to remember though is that there is a path forward.

Step one is building community.

On December 7th, over 60 local leftist community organizers and activists answered the call to join a Social Movement Organizers Round Table at the Olympia Center in downtown Olympia.

These round tables are meant to help create a broad coalition of community groups that can support one another’s efforts in challenging this new era of Trumpism. This can look like several different things–e.g. strengthening relationships within neighbors/ participating with your neighborhood association, building up labor unions, advocating for legal protections for Migrant communities and other marginalized groups, etc.

Over 30 community organizations participated in the round table including labor unions, neighborhood associations, local mutual aid groups, legal aid services, parent groups, and worker-cooperatives just to name a few. The vast majority of people in attendance were from the Olympia area, though organizers from Portland, Seattle, and as far north as Mount Vernon joined in on the discussion. The room hummed with energy.

We discussed a shared framework for what got us in this predicament, what might be coming, and what this means for us in a blue state. Halfway through the event, smaller break-out focus groups were formed to give people a chance to connect and strategize together on fronts such as food systems and the environment, neighborhoods/tenant/mutual aid, LGBTQ+/ Immigrant/Underhoused direct response and intervention planning.

By the end of the round table, a few groups decided on supporting the People’s March on January 18, starting at 12pm at Heritage Park. Other groups decided on organizing a second round table discussion to be held in the late spring.

If you are interested in gathering at the next Round Table, you must be involved in community organizing. Select local groups–leftist, progressive, mutual aid, organized labor, etc. are invited. These are people who are already doing the work of community care. Each group sends a few representatives to the round table.

You can contact the Round Table at southsoundroundtable@protonmail.com

This first round table marks the start of many continuous and necessary conversations as a community committed to social justice. If there is a lesson to be learned from Trump’s first presidency, it would be to prepare for the unexpected.

The path forward will be the one that we build

Step one is building community

Start wherever you are!

Cecilia Pérez is an Olympia resident, activist, Registered Nurse, and graduate student in the University of Washington Doctorate of Nursing Practice program.

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