Moving the Needle

Experimenting from the Margins to Interrupt Violence and Reduce Harm

“Give me a lever strong enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” - Archimedes (maybe. but probably not)

Joe Biden is yesterday’s news. One thing I won’t miss about his brief interregnum is his constant invitation to accept that we’re helpless to effect change in the world. In a presidency rife with incompetency and contradiction, one thing he and his party did consistently well was stamping out any popular belief that change is possible. Even before he took office, Biden reassured rich donors “nothing fundamental will change.” That theory of governance in fact begat no real change. Consequently, it ushered in the return to power of those he and his partisans opportunistically labeled “fascists” before handing them the reigns of government.

Donald Trump is not afraid of change. He knows something all good organizers know: If you can organize a cadre and take control of a situation where the status quo disfavors the people you care about, disrupt it, introduce chaos and uncertainty, and shape narrative so you’re better positioned to navigate the chaos than the defenders of the status quo, you can reshape reality to your liking. That was what January 6 will always be about to me.

In contrast to his immediate predecessors, Trump promises to usher in an age where a tiny handful of powerful men determined to move the world have the levers, and the resolve, to do it. Ending birthright citizenship. Finishing off the bipartisan end of asylum protections. Launching a new round of asymmetric warfare against newly defined enemies, this time much closer to the homes of those in whose name it will be fought. All seem on the table for the incoming President and his administration. As much as the orthodox press and mainstream liberal commentators like to pontificate about his ineffectiveness and bumbling affect, Trump and his loyalists know how to take, build, and use power far better than their opponents. They wouldn’t be in control now if they didn’t.

I think about this as I see the reboot of an immigration policy changes tracker by the same well-meaning crew of people who promised when they were back in charge they’d fix the things they’d been tracking. The same crew that couldn’t staff their transition team. The same crew that lost worlds of talent by failing to hire the people with the expertise to deliver on their political commitments. The same crew who betrayed nearly everyone who went to work for them believing that Joe Biden meant it when he said he’d be better for immigrants and refugees.

If having the will to deliver on the commitments that brings you to power is key, Steve Bannon’s white board list of immigration policy priorities checked behind him in every picture beats the Stanford-Yale-Obiden crowd’s fancy, airtable database assembled by unpaid students any day of the week and twice on Sunday. That is fantasy stuff. We live in reality.

This time, Trump will have the lever of unchecked plenary power at his disposal. That is to say, he now wields the power of the emperor. He will use it to accomplish his stated ends. With plenary power — which exists beyond any constitutional text, and thus, carries the power to negate any inconvenient portions of the Constitution — the present Administration has the lever to move the world.

But they need a fulcrum. To bend the world to their will, the fulcrum must remain fixed and predictable.

History embarrasses those of us who would seek to nullify plenary power. It is the power of the King, or of the Emperor. In a world no longer run by theocracies, plenary power is as close as a government official gets to holding the power of G-d. Where the law empowers men with guns get to kill those who’d defy their borders with impunity, it is not law that rules, but force. It’s the sort of concentrated power the constitution was supposedly created to prevent. Yet here it is.

If law is the lever, and plenary power is the force holding it together, where is the fulcrum?

Failed Experiments

In the world of plenary power, what works? What doesn’t? How will we know?

We spent years struggling to answer these questions as the impacts of state violence in the immigration control system came closer and closer to our doors. Together with people on the move and frontline organizers, we tried, failed, tried again, sometimes finding tiny victories, and even more rarely, finding big ones. We honed our power maps and our analyses of systems that produced harm and suffering. We failed. Over and over we failed. So much. Sometimes that felt like it was all we were doing, even as we “succeeded.”

Yet occasionally, people walked free. Planes turned around. We could interrupt how they used the lever of plenary power, and shift the ground beneath the fulcrum it needed to be effective. Ever so slightly, and mostly at the margins, legal interventions reduced harm and interrupted violent systems.

In the small patch of earth beneath my feet, my work towards these ends increasingly focused on the intersections of labor, death in custody, government secrecy, movement lawyering, and organized narrative interventions. Practically speaking, that meant suing government contractors for forced labor and wage theft, investigating and seeking accountability for preventable deaths in government custody, showing up for people on the move and those in cages who were organizing for self-liberation, and using the power of amplification and strategic communications to try and awaken something inside humans who previously saw themselves as passive bystanders.

Again, a lot of this failed. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to learn from it.

As we look ahead to the ways the men with the lever to move the world will seek to change the future, there are many unfinished and as-yet unattempted interventions that could deny the fulcrum. We don’t know which will work, and for how long. As soon as anything does produce the desired outcome, the lever of plenary power to inflict state violence will stamp it out. But that doesn’t mean folks will stop trying.

On Wednesday night, I’ll host a virtual thought-space presenting some of the unfinished business that our pivot from opposition to coopted allies in 2021 cut short. At their most impactful, these interventions may carry the power to interrupt massive parts of the deportation machine and protect those in its clutches. At a micro level, they promise to add tried and tested tools to the toolbox of communities seeking to resist what’s coming and interrupt harm.

If that’s something you’re interested in, feel free to RSVP.

At the very least, you’ll get a perspective of where FOIA, labor litigation, and movement lawyering fell short that may prevent you from replicating experiments we could not validate. Or maybe this time will spark something that unlocks collective potential we didn’t know exists. Maybe we’ll find a lever of our own, and together, imagine a place to put it. Our brief era of being told change isn’t possible has ended.