This is my first attempt at at a recap of the past week's events, and I just thought of it yesterday, so it might be a bit awkward or self-serving, and it probably won't contain that much to interest you. But hopefully over time I can build this concept into a useful or at least entertaining resource for the resistance.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly this week
Which one is the president again? |
Donald Trump has now been in his second presidential term for more than 30 days. In just one month, this man has done more damage to the United States of America than all of our enemies, combined, have been able to do over the course of the last 250 years. What a nightmare! |
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Musk and Trump are Causing the Dumbest Imperial Collapse in History. Author Ryan Cooper compares the current collapse of the United States to the collapse of empires in the past. While all empires eventually fall, even the most incompetent leaders in history have never managed to bungle their countries so badly. Image by Geoff Livingston from Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. |
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Hostile Government Takeover
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Hostile Government Takeover by artist A Gift from Todd blew up on TikTok this week and has become the unofficial new anthem for the resistance. On the HBO show, Lask Week Tonight (February 16, 2025), host John Oliver calls the song the "best encapsulation I've seen of this particular moment so far." The song has been remixed countless times, like the one below: |
Steve Bannon delivers a Nazi salute after making disturbing remarks at CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference). Instead of being outraged, the crowd cheered him on. 
Image source unknown This comes just a few weeks after Elon Musk was similarly cheered on for his Nazi salute twice on January 20. 
Image by Daniel Goldhorn from Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. |
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Indivisible.org representatives Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg received a well-deserved shout-out from Rachel Maddow about an article they wrote for The Nation. "We have planted ourselves in stubborn opposition to monomaniacal fascists of one form or another for a quarter of a millennium."
If you haven't already, check out the wealth of resources Indivisible has to offer. Read their Practical Guide to Democracy on the Brink, join one of their frequent Zoom calls helping people get organized in their resistance, or browse their many helpful articles. This group has a treasure trove of tools and resources that can help you find a way to stand up and reclaim democracy. |
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I don't think this was just released this week, but I first heard about it this week... MapQuest launched a new interactive Name your own gulf tool to allow anyone to re-name the Gulf of Mexico. On Tuesday, February 18, Donald Trump announced that the Associated Press would no longer be allowed to attend his news conferences because they refuse to call the Gulf of Mexico by the stupid name he came up with for it. Yeah, right, Donny. I'm sure that's why you don't want the Associated Press around. The harder Trump fights against people who don't kneel to his misguided sense of self-worth, the more people can see through his stupidity to the scared little boy that he is. |
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49-year-old Omaha, Nebraska, resident: "Now I'm like, dang, why didn't I just pick Kamala?" Trump supporters are starting to catch on to the fact that Trump and Musk's viscous attacks on our civil servants are hurting everyone, not just those who refuse to hail (sieg heil?) king Trump. Republican leaders around the nation are begging Trump to leave their programs and people alone, hoping that they will survive the downfall of the country and only the "others" will have to feel the pain. Rachel Maddow reads pleas for mercy on MSNBC and notes: "Republicans [are] just eating it in their home districts and their home states as their party's leader does things that are devestating to those states and to those constituents." |
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What did "we" do this week?
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Today was the first time I tried flying the Disgraced Flag of the United States of America. This flag is Free the People's symbol of protest against the current oligarchy, and one we're sharing with others who may be interested. I bought the prototype flag from our new Printify merch store. The flag came out very well, and is of high quality. In fact, the material is so thick and heavy, I was afraid it wouldn't fly, but it did a nice job with the breeze that was blowing. I think I'll look around for another provider who might be able to print a flag on even lighter material to ensure it will fly in even the lightest breeze, but this works well enough for now. The total cost (including tax and shipping) was $31.54. If you use this link and select the 36" x 60" option, you should be able to get it at a similar price (Though your taxes and shipping will be slightly different from mine). I do not receive any money for flags ordered from that link...you just pay the cost to print it and ship it directly to yourself. It took 11 days from the time I ordered the flag until I received it, and for most of that time the tracking number showed that the label was printed, but the package had not been received by the post office. That tells me that it was made in China and shipped overseas before hitting the post office, even though the provider was listed as being in the United States. I have no objection to ordering products from China, but thought I'd mention it on case you do. |
 
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This week, I also opened Free the People's merch store on Printify. We wanted a store primarily to sell the Disgraced Flag of the United States of America to anyone who might want a copy. But while I was setting it up, I did make a couple other products for us to sell just for fun. We will probably add additional merchandise over time as we think of ideas. Everything in the store comes in two variants: One is sold at-cost (I/we receive absolutely no money from your order), and the other has a markup (25-35%) that is paid to me, Doug Lockwood, directly. This gives people the option to provide a small donation if they like what we have to offer, but is by no means obligatory. If I do receive any donations, I will either spend them on resources to improve this website, the tools we will offer to fellow resistance fighters, or re-donate them to the organizations that are fighting against the current oligarchy. The pin is just the Free the People logo. I'm not sure why you'd want to wear our logo around, but hey, whatever floats your boat! I do particularly like the notebook. On the cover, it has the disgraced flag and says... This is my plan to... That spells out "DEFEND," so I call this my "D.E.F.E.N.D. Democracy" notebook. On the back it displays the proper American flag and says... And that's how I helped restore freedom and justice to the United States of America. The hat has the disgraced flag on it with our vision statement overlaid in fancy script: "Free the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union." |
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This wasn't really released this week, but I wanted to point out that we do make some of our digital resources, such as the disgraced flag images, available to anyone who might want to use them. The selection is sparse right now, but we do hope to add more assets over time as they become available. You can find our assets in this GitHub repository. These assets were previously licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International license, but this week, we removed the license restrictions. Our intention all along was to make these images available to the public to use how they like, so the license was not necessary. |
What can "you" do over the next week?
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February 28, 2025: For one full day, avoid spending any money whatsoever at any major retailers. This isn't going to end the totalitarian regime we are under by any means. But if corporations start to feel their profits may decrease because the people are angry, they will turn against those in power. Since big corporations have more voice in the current government than the people do, it may be that the only way we can make our voices heard is by making them speak for us. Image by Igor Ovsyannykov from Pixabay. |
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Join Choose Democracy and your fellow resistance fighters every Wednesday at 12:53 pm for one minute of silence. "We refuse to tune out and instead bear witness in reflection, meditation, and prayer on the harms being done — so we can stay in motion together." Why 12:53 pm? That's the time when the January 6 protestors crossed the police baricades in 2021. It's also the time that the three richest men in the world were sitting at Donald Trump's inauguration in 2025. |
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What's the plan? With Indivisible's co-founders Leah and Ezra Each week, Indivisible.org hosts a massive Zoom call to try to make some sense of the chaos we are all in and bring people together to process it all. This as a massive, nationwide call, so it's not targeted to specific events or activities in your area, but the hosts do try to answer questions submitted in advance or during the call. They can't get to all of them, but they do a good job of cutting through the noise and encouraging real actions you can take. |
