How taking on extreme wealth can fight the entire Trump agenda.

Read the post that inspired this episode:  https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/playing-in-takedown-mode

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Do you have a question about a particular Next Comes What? Do you have more of a comment than a question you'd like to send in? Do you have a local or a national success story? Email your thoughts to nextcomeswhat at gmail dot com. You can write it. You might record it. You could even videotape yourself or your actions.

 

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For this episode, Andrea Pitzer checks out a local #TeslaTakedown protest last weekend just outside DC, where she considers who showed up and what effect protesting Elon Musk might have. Given the accelerating damage to Tesla's bottom line, Musk's public response, and mounting pressure on the administration to do something about him, these protests are a way for minimal public effort to have maximum impact.

A look at the ongoing boycott against Target and buycott to support Costo reveals that these efforts by consumers seem to be having the desired effect as well. Andrea reviews brand new research on what was accomplished by Black Lives Matter, and it might surprise you. Despite all the backlash and racism about the movement, the protests seem to have worked most effectively in the heart of Trump country.

The episode ends with a reminder about the HANDS OFF! protests nationwide planned for Saturday, April 5, aimed at protecting Medicaid, Social Security, libraries, and a lot more—while demanding civil rights for all.

A local community tackles Trump's destructive agenda and politicians who collaborate with it. 

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/anatomy-of-a-movement 

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Do you have a question about a particular Next Comes What? Do you have more of a comment than a question you'd like to send in? Do you have a local or a national success story? 

Email your thoughts to nextcomeswhat at gmail dot com. You can write it. You might record it. You could even videotape yourself or your actions.

 

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Andrea Pitzer returned to Roanoke, Virginia, where she spoke in the days after the 2024 election, to see how the community is organizing to protect itself against Trump. She visited the weekly Monday protest outside the downtown office of Congressman Ben Cline to find a collection of frustrated but energized people demanding answers. After the protest, over 100 locals attended an organizing meeting at the library, where Andrea spoke briefly about the many risks and opportunities facing all of us right now. This week's episode looks at parts of what she shared in that meeting, as well as the role of local action and learning to sit in the uncomfortable places where we might do the most good. Andrea explains how stability is contagious and finally answers the question of how to explain to others why they should care about other people.

 

The dismantling of our government has begun, which means fighting ignorance is critical. All of us are due for some education.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/unbreaking-things

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe 

Do you have a question about a particular Next Comes What? Do you have more of a comment than a question you'd like to send in? Do you have a local or a national success story? Email your thoughts to nextcomeswhat at gmail dot com.

You can write it. You might record it. You could even videotape yourself or your actions. 

This week's episode takes on what to do in the face of the ongoing lawlessness of the Trump administration. The courts are working to uphold their role; Congress is pretty inert for now. Yet even if both branches of government rise to meet the occasion by pushing back against the current administration, a lot will come down to us, to everyday people around the country. Andrea Pitzer talks about the weird dynamics created by online rage, and exactly how that nuclear-grade energy could be better used elsewhere. She considers the different kinds of ignorance we're facing and strategies for overcoming it. Building community groups and coalitions, understanding peoples' needs and what motivates them, and easing the suffering that's already been unleashed—addressing these harms will also help us get ready to take bigger actions as Americans.

Showing up in public can derail Trump's attempts to destroy the federal government. #TeslaTakedown is a great start.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/when-protest-packs-a-punch

 Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

You can find a #teslatakedown protest here: https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/teslatakedown 

In this week's episode, Andrea Pitzer tackles what protest can accomplish and covers the March 7 Stand Up for Science demonstration in DC. She notes that physical bodies gathered together to demand change remind the government who really runs the country, and explains how vital it is to exercise that right. Considering ways that even small or unfocused demonstrations play an important "basic training" role in developing skills and building a movement, Andrea analyzes how to add more strategic elements as numbers grow.

The episode further explores picketing Tesla dealerships as an excellent approach in the current environment. Looking at America's past role in encouraging the ideals (though often not the actual practice) of democracy, Andrea outlines the moral vacuum left when those in the nation's capital decide to actively denounce democracy. We're entering dangerous territory. Solving the current crisis will likely come down to mass protests in the long run, and there's a lot we can do to make sure democracy wins.

Russia and America have more in common than their betrayal of Kyiv, and we need to push back on this shift.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/blues-for-ukraine

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This week's episode of Next Comes What looks at the meeting between Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week in light of Andrea Pitzer's previous experiences in Russia. She looks at what Trump and JD Vance were up to in the Oval Office, as well as recounting the morning she woke up in Moscow on a 2022 trip for book research to discover that Russia had invaded Ukraine. Andrea addresses how disinformation works, why it's short-sighted to condemn a whole identity as evil, and the ways Fox News plays to the worst impulses in citizens of both countries. Putin fans are cheering on what Trump did because in the end, both leaders have a similar view of how to govern and prefer a mafia state to any real democracy. Andrea offers some simple approaches for how to support Ukraine and stresses the need to recognize the way that we, too, are succumbing to competitive authoritarianism here in the US. We have to find ways to stop the destruction of our democratic institutions before there's nothing left of them to save.

Effective resistance is happening around the country, but it still needs you to work.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/how-does-actual-resistance-work    Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe    Summing up just one day of recent court rulings, Andrea Pitzer explores whether judges are being assertive in upholding the law against onslaughts from Donald Trump and Elon Musk. She explains why attacking Musk can be so effective and shares a few of the ways he's being strategically ridiculed. From demonstrations at Tesla dealerships to town halls—even where elected representatives don't show up—people are making their voices heard in ways that will build momentum. Andrea considers additional powerful examples from Nazi Germany and Hawaiian sugar plantations where those in terrible circumstances managed to throw sand in the gears of authoritarian or exploitative rule. The episode looks at the role of violence in structural change across a century of examples, and draws some working conclusions about how to build the biggest and most effective movement. Andrea finishes by giving you concrete ways to find a community of people willing to work with you, or even to get out a message on your own, to stall or stop the disintegration of democracy.

How the people and the courts will make or break American democracy under Trump 2.0.

Read the post that inspired this episode:  https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/heroic-work-from-ordinary-people

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This week Next Comes What visits one of the dozens of "No Kings" protests around the country on Presidents Day and discovers just how unpopular Elon Musk has become. Talking with federal workers, concerned students, former Republicans horrified by Donald Trump's actions, and other everyday people, Andrea Pitzer finds out why demonstrators are showing up in greater and greater numbers. She dissects the roles that our courts and public protest can play in reestablishing U.S. democracy. Looking at why Congress is unlikely to resist Trump's attempts to steamroll its authority, Andrea considers the small steps all of us can take to begin smothering the extremism dismantling our country today.

How decades of abuse at Guantanamo undermined democracy and built a black hole of detention for Trump today.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/choking-on-the-mess

 Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

The latest Next Comes What episode takes on the "worst of the worst" mythology that Trump's cabinet used to justify sending immigrants to Guantanamo this month, and how this bucket of lies is no different than those that have been handed to the American public for years about the island. Andrea Pitzer talks about her own visits to Guantanamo a decade ago for pretrial hearings of detainees and to see the conditions of detention. She considers the ways in which falsehoods about people held there, torture undergone by detainees, and the very nature of whether the government can own memories have warped American justice under six presidents. Andrea traces how Gitmo's past has been seized on by Donald Trump to launch a new era of mass detention on the island. The issue concludes with the ways the administration's efforts to mislead have been undermined by journalists and everyday people, which court cases are already having an effect, and what you can do to help keep the steroidal twenty-first century expansion of this nightmare from becoming permanent.

Freedom--how does it work? By putting a stop-work order on Trump and Elon.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/seizing-the-narrative

 Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

This week, Next Comes What headed into DC to see what would happen in front of USAID headquarters the day Donald Trump and Elon Musk shut it down. Andrea Pitzer talked to workers protesting out front and to the politicians who held a media event to point out the harm Trump was inflicting on millions of the poorest and least powerful people in the world--and to the U.S. itself. She considers how much our democracy depends on Americans holding onto power by asserting their rights and speaking their minds in public. That means our elected officials, too. Andrea considers what we—and they—ought to be doing these days, and how a robocall she got from her congressman was a good first step to pushing back against the kind of authoritarian state Trump is trying to impose.

Trump isn't just pushing corruption to get a cut of the action--he wants to run the whole game.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/corruption-overload

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Today's episode of Next Comes What looks at the 31 flavors of Trump's corruption and ways to block him. Andrea Pitzer shares her experiences observing corruption in Russia and explains how the Trump administration seems to be trying to catch up. She looks at the relationship between racism and corruption, then outlines the perils of our polluted information sphere (and how it got that way). She explores the corruption of the Supreme Court, of Republican legislators, and the office of the presidency itself, as well as laying out the straight-up grift that undergirds nearly everything Trump does. Summarizing a Carnegie Endowment report on how people around the world have fought corruption in recent decades, she notes the difficulty of ridding a country of it once tipping points have been reached. Andrea then points to effective means of keeping corruption at bay or rolling it back on a local level, many of them available to you in your community.