![\"Traditional](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.zocalopublicsquare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Trump-Putin-AP-PhotoDmitri-Lovetsky-lede-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1\")
I walked up on a mountain in the middle of the sky \u2014Woody Guthrie, \u201cTear the Fascists Down,\u201d 1942<\/p>\n\n\n\n Californians can\u2019t beat the Trump administration all by ourselves. We need allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A whole wide world of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s face facts. California, despite our size and power, isn\u2019t strong enough to win a protracted legal, political, financial, and perhaps violent war with a lawless U.S. government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While we have the most representatives in Congress, our state is politically weak after the Republicans took the U.S. Senate and defeated a Californian presidential candidate. While we have 171,000 practicing attorneys, MAGA controls the U.S. Supreme Court. And while we boast an unstoppable SoCal band called WAR, the U.S. government has a military with around 1.3 million active-duty personnel, more than 5,000 nuclear warheads<\/a>, and a $841 billion budget<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the face of Trump\u2019s explicit threats to immigrants, women, trans people, the health system, the environment, and California itself, it\u2019s reassuring to see Gov. Gavin Newsom respond quickly to the Trump threat. Within days of the election, he\u2019s called a special legislative session to \u201cTrump-proof<\/a>\u201d state government traveled to the nation\u2019s capital to try to lock California\u2019s environmental waivers in place, and reached out to other states for collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the California effort against Trump, if it\u2019s to succeed, can\u2019t be led just by Newsom, whose actions are viewed (often unfairly) through the prism of his political ambitions. And it can\u2019t be confined to the U.S., much of which doesn\u2019t seem to care that its next president has promised to be a dictator and \u201cterminate<\/a>\u201d the Constitution. Instead, we should adopt the wisdom of the great American soldier Dwight Eisenhower: When you face a problem you can\u2019t solve, make it bigger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To have a chance, California needs its local officials and locally engaged citizens to connect to their counterparts around the world\u2014to draw from a planet-wide coalition of local governments, provinces, and organizations who also face attacks from right-wing national governments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such a global defense coalition isn\u2019t a far-out idea. Prominent right-wing leaders around the world have longstanding collaborations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Donald Trump is a leader of this network. The once-and-soon-future president has hosted Hungarian strongman Viktor Orb\u00e1n at Mar-a-Lago<\/a>, talked regularly with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin<\/a>, endorsed Brazilian right-winger Jair Bolsonaro\u2019s re-election<\/a> coup, and maintained a warm friendship<\/a> with India\u2019s authoritarian prime minister Narendra Modi. Meanwhile, Trump\u2019s political allies, most notably Steve Bannon, network with far-right parties<\/a> in Europe and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The states, cities, and communities that suffer under such leaders could benefit from their own coalition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This goes beyond moral support. Local partners worldwide and California could provide each other mutual aid, offering assistance in the form of money, personnel, or expertise when crises arise. This will be especially important if Trump follows through on his to deny Golden State communities emergency funding after natural disasters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I can imagine foreign cities sending staff to replace local officials who might get swept up in the mass detentions of \u201cenemies\u201d Trump has promised. Friendly foreign municipalities could stand up web operations for our governments if Elon Musk uses his new Trump administration post to roll back California\u2019s digital infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Local governments and organizations also could leverage the courts\u2014 local tribunals and world bodies like the International Criminal Court\u2014to apply pressure and at least the threat of accountability to a U.S. administration that commits crimes against its own citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump and his family, who are certain to use his time in office to boost their wealth, have business interests in places\u2014from Bali, Indonesia, to Aberdeen, Scotland\u2014where localities could make the president pay a personal, legal, or financial price. This tactic has worked before; local protests in Vancouver provoked the bankruptcy of, and the removal of Trump\u2019s name from, a hotel there during his first presidential term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the greatest benefit from an alliance with local communities and sub-national governments will be ideas. As more nations are consumed by political fights, the actual governance of countries is increasingly left to localities. And many local governments have responded to their national government\u2019s failures with innovations that could be applied here, in areas from democratic process<\/a> to waste management<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump\u2019s ludicrous cabinet is built for politics, not real governance, so California will need all the ideas it can get as it picks up the federal slack. Cities from Rio to Istanbul have much to teach us about protecting ourselves and prospering under autocratic national leaders. Activists in Seoul could explain how to use mass protests to force out a lawless president, as they did with the Candlelight Revolution<\/a>. California, with an outdated constitution dating to 1879, could learn from sub-national entities\u2014from Mexico City<\/a> to South Africa\u2019s Western Cape<\/a>\u2014about how to write modern charters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, if California joins forces with governments around the world, the xenophobic Trump administration will accuse us of globalism or treason or worse. We shouldn\u2019t flinch\u2014and should answer that righteous Americans, facing threats from their own national governments, have always sought support overseas. Let\u2019s not forget that escaped slaves found refuge in communities in Canada and Mexico. Or that America\u2019s Founding Fathers won the backing of France and Spain in their revolution against the bullying government in Britain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The good news is that California local governments won\u2019t have to start a coalition from scratch. The world has more than 100 networks of localities devoted to different causes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The United Cities and Local Governments<\/a>, the world\u2019s largest organization of local governments and associations of municipalities, has coalitions dedicated to almost all the issues upon which Trump and California clash, from climate change to the rights of women and sexual minorities. Many of its cities have pledged to protect and include migrants and refugees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n UCLG also just launched \u201cA New Peace Agenda for Future Generations\u201d that focuses on local governments taking action to end conflicts and wars, both between nations and inside them. The kickoff was held last month in The Hague by the Dutch city\u2019s mayor, Jan van Zanen, who just assumed UCLG\u2019s rotating presidency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, very few U.S. cities, reflecting American exceptional provincialism, have joined UCLG or other international networks. That must change right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, before Trump takes office, Newsom, state legislative leaders, and mayors and city managers from across California should make a high-profile trip overseas. First, they can visit The Hague to sign onto the \u201cCharter on Municipal Peace<\/a>\u201d and strategize with Mayor Van Zanen about mutual support between California communities and UCLG members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the Netherlands, they should take the security risks of visiting the ruins of Khartoum, the Sudanese city destroyed by an ongoing war fueled by authoritarian foreign powers, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And finally, they should meet in person with local government leaders in Ukraine. The message: Californians are in the same fight as Ukrainians\u2014against violent autocrats who claim the power to rule us, take away our residents, and destroy our communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To tear these fascists down, the people of every town must come together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" California Can\u2019t Fight Trump Alone. Let\u2019s Work With Local Governments Around the World By Joe Mathews November 19, 2024 (ZocaloPublicSquare.org) I walked up on a mountain in the middle of the skyCould see every farm and every townI could see all the people in this whole wide worldThat\u2019s the union that\u2019ll tear… Continue reading
Could see every farm and every town
I could see all the people in this whole wide world
That\u2019s the union that\u2019ll tear the fascists down, down, down<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
We should adopt the wisdom of the great American soldier Dwight Eisenhower: When you face a problem you can\u2019t solve, make it bigger.<\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n