Fears for how Trump’s America will unfold have spurred activists to start organising aggressively and creatively for his presidency, from starting self-defence classes for women to calling on people to move to swing states.
Trump’s campaign was always rather light on policy detail, but that hasn’t stopped progressives from preparing for the worst.
Here’s a list of the solutions citizens are coming up with: Safe houses for undocumented immigrants: John from San Francisco, has started compiling lists of people with spare bedrooms and undocumented immigrants in need of safe houses in case mass deportations begin.
He got the idea after a friend, who is undocumented, spoke of his fears for himself, his wife, child and friends under Trump.
Trump campaigned on tougher border control and deportations of undocumented immigrants.
John offered to host his friend at his own apartment, but the man replied: “What about all my friends too?”
So he called out on social media to friends and acquaintances who would be willing to host an undocumented individual or family and has collected more than 100 safe houses in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Georgia, Alabama, Florida and Portland.
He has also got about 60 undocumented migrants who he will match with a safe house person, offering them housing but also just contact and help from outside the Latino community, in case they need a person to call for help.
“By the time we need to use this list, it’ll be too late to make one and so better start it now and hopefully it doesn’t come to this,” he told the Guardian.
Contraception is covered for free under Obamacare, but with Trump promising the repeal it, women are being encouraged to get IUDs, which can last up to five years, as long-form birth control.
A community-written document called The ‘What Should I Do Before January?’ guide, started by artist Ariel Federow, offers a plethora of health tips including encouraging people to stockpile the morning after pill and calling on medical students to get abortion training, since Trump wants to overturn Roe v Wade, the US Supreme Court decision that protects abortion access.
“If you have been putting off dealing with something medically or administratively, especially something that relates to intersection with the federal government, this is the moment,” reads the guide.
Currently it’s on Google docs, but Federow is looking at building a Wiki site so that it can be more easily accessible.
Often official identification with correct gender markers can be a bureaucratic nightmare for trans people — and it could get worse.
“If you’re trans and you haven’t been getting around to changing your gender marker on your passport, get to it,” said Federow, 33, a Brooklyn resident. “That’s been easy to do so far because of an Obama executive order.”
Because it’s an executive order, Trump could immediately repeal it.
After his comments on women, plus at least a dozen women alleging sexual misconduct by Trump, many women are fearful of the kind of behaviour that has been legitimised by Trump’s election.
Timothy Faust, a 28-year-old Austin resident, is the general manager of Party World Rasslin, a theatrical wrestling event. A woman in the PWR Facebook group mentioned that following the election of Trump, she wished she “knew a bit of self-defence”.
“My job is to be quiet and to listen to folks who say what they need and do whatever they can do get them what they need,” said Faust.
And so Faust used his networks to put a callout for a self-defence instructor and within two hours a class was organised for today with Katie Jackson, an owner and instructor at Lions Krav Maga, an Austin self-defence studio.
“2017 looms and DARKWAR seems realer than ever — we cannot promise you everything will be OK, but we promise you that your friends at PWR have your back,” reads the Facebook invite.
The class costs $10, with proceeds going to the The Lilith Fund, a charity.