Rep. Jayapal Promotes ‘Resistance Labs’ to Take Down ‘Dictator’ Donald Trump

MADDOW: “This weekend, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal decided she would hold a follow-up, a second so-called resistance lab. The congresswoman says more than 1500 people took up took part in the follow up event this weekend. Not just people who are constituents, not just people from Washington State. She says it was 1500 people in 31 different states. Joining us now is Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, Democrat from the great state of Washington. Congresswoman, it’s really nice to see you. Thanks very much for being here.”
Jayapal: “Thank you for having me, Rachel.”
MADDOW: “Help me understand this idea of the resistance lab and what you’re talking about in practical terms at these events.
Jayapal: “Yeah. I mean, what we decided is that we really need to help Americans understand what happens when democracies fall, when dictators take over. We’ve been pretty complacent in America. We haven’t had to really deal with this in any real way. And now I think people need to understand what are the lessons from other countries. And working with experts who have studied democratic backsliding in countries around the world and the resistance movements that emerged to take on that democratic backsliding, we’ve developed a curriculum where we help people understand how do you go after the pillars of support, not necessarily the person at the top, but the pillars of support that allow that person to continue to have power, and how do you shift allies from being sort of passive opponents to being active supporters of taking down a dictatorship. And so, it’s been very practical, it’s been very hands-on. We’ve taken the principles of Dr. King’s six principles of nonviolent resistance. That is threaded throughout. And we’re going to have a second training that goes deeper into what happens if you are trying to do nonviolent protests, but others are coming and instituting violence on you. Think of church basements across Selma, Rachel, all the training that went into preparing people. And at the end of the day, we are plugging people in both to actions that are happening right now in their locale that they can get engaged in, but also preparing them for the moments that will come of coordinated resistance, whether it’s distributed action or mass action, that people need to be ready for. And we’re increasing the understanding, which also increases the ability for people to think about taking more risk, perhaps, than they might have otherwise, because that level of risk tolerance goes up based on how severe people think things are. So we’re really readying us for those big moments that we hope don’t come, but certainly look like that is the direction that we’re headed.”
MADDOW: “I feel like this is a really important categorical shift that you’re talking about. I feel like over these last 71 days and into the transition, a lot of what we’ve seen, a lot of the organizing that we’ve seen has essentially been consciousness-raising about how bad it is, about what is at stake, about how people are being hurt, about what is dangerous, hurtful, potentially irreversible about what’s happening. It’s all been sounding the alarm. What you are talking about here and what these trainings are about, sort of assume that people get that, but now need to talk about, in practical terms, what’s the most effective way to respond to that. It’s not necessarily that people need to know the latest bad thing that Trump is doing. People have now heard enough and they understand enough about what the risk is here, that it’s time to get practical about what to do in response. I want to ask, given that sort of curriculum that you’re describing, how replicable is it? Is this something that has to happen in person? Is this something that can happen in large format settings? Is this something that should only happen in small groups? What’s the — what’s the means of transmitting this curriculum and its lessons?”
Jayapal: “Yeah. That’s the other thing. We have created modules so it can be replicated. I’m offering it, of course, to my colleagues here in Congress. But we’re also really testing this model. The first one was in person, as you said. The second one, on Sunday, was delivered virtually. But we encouraged people to actually host house parties and Zoom into it from the house party, because the breakout sessions, there’s actually a breakout session, believe it or not, with hundreds and, you know, over thousands of people, we can do these breakout sessions and they’re important because people have to test their analysis, they have to test their ideas. And there have been some fabulous ideas coming forward, given the frameworks that we’re offering. So we offer frameworks of how to think about what actions are most effective. We offer examples of those. We offer specific tactics, but we encourage people to be creative about the principle of what they’re trying to achieve and then how to best achieve it. So, the breakouts are important. We can deliver the whole training en masse without those breakouts. But I’m also finding, Rachel, that people really do want to be in community with other people, and they want to be talking to others, and being able to play off of others is very, very useful. So we are perfecting the technology on what can allow us to have thousands of people on beyond, you know, the current technology that we have access to, and we’re doing it in person. We’re also trying to figure out, since we have 31 states — and by the way, two countries, Austria and Canada, were also on the Zoom, the training that we did on Sunday. But we’re trying to figure out now how to take the people in different states, right? We had people in Idaho calling in, how do we take all the Idaho people and group them together? And we’re encouraging people to sign up for the next resistance lab training, because we’re going to keep doing these, and to get people in their community involved, because that sense of community also helps to create a, you know, kind of a bigger, coordinated resistance and the sense of safety for people to be able to do things in big numbers. So we’re really excited. This has just been literally two weeks in the making, but we have an amazing curriculum. It is replicable and we’re — we’re super excited to spread it as far as we can go. And people can go to PramilaforCongress.com to sign up.”
MADDOW: “When’s the next one? When’s the date? Oh, you still got me? I’ve lost her.”
Jayapal: “Yeah. Can you hear me?”
MADDOW: “I can. I said, when’s the next one?”
Jayapal: “I’m right here.”
MADDOW: “When’s — when’s the date of the next one?”
Jayapal: “I think it’s going to be in two weeks. We haven’t quite said it yet, but if you sign up right now, you will get an email. And I should mention we have a resistance rapid response email list that sends out weekly to-do’s for people, as well as a reading list to continue to deepen people’s understanding.”
MADDOW: “Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, thank you for your time. We’ll be on this. We’ll cover the next one when it happens. Appreciate it. Thank you.”