As best I can discern both the No Kings demonstrations with 5 to 7 million participants, but also the pathetic Military March and its minuscule turnout that showed Trump’s declining public support were a huge June 14th resistance success. If Trump didn’t have the federal government, he would not have much. The trouble is, he does have the federal government and the federal government is not nothing. A week after June 14, it still represses LA at home. It still devastates Gaza abroad. And now it sends hard rain to Iran. The struggle to stop Trump and fascism, while it progresses positively, is certainly not over. What next?

Suppose I was in your vicinity. I see you and I say, Hi. How you doing? You might consider the question subjective. You might hear it like someone sincerely asking how you feel. You might say fine, or crappy, but in either case you would likely look inward to answer. The question seems seriously subjective but is it always about our feelings? Should we always look inward to answer? Consider two factors. How are we doing relative to what. And how are we doing regarding what.

For example, you may ask a sibling, a friend, a classmate, a neighbor, a teammate, or a fellow activist, how are you doing? Each person may smile and answer, I am doing okay, or perhaps frown and answer I am not doing so great.

Does the sibling mean he feels light afoot, light of mind, light of heart? Does the friend or classmate mean her social life or grades are good? Is the question about a diet, a job, one’s health, or one’s mood? What is the measure the asker asks about?

If I answer I am doing okay what does it mean? Sometimes, the asker, the answerer, and then the asker who hears the answer actually know what the various words refer to. There may be extreme concision but nonetheless the context clarifies what the questioner’s quick ask and the answerer’s equally quick reply mean. But how often we have clarity in these type exchanges even when they are purely personal? Sometimes, who knows what pain and trauma or joy and desire lurk behind our quick words.

Okay, that’s a general observation about anyone anytime answering how are you, but let’s get back to us and to now. Suppose you want to change the world. Mom or dad ask, how are you doing? How’s it going? Or maybe you ask them. Or a friend asks you. A reporter asks. A teacher asks. Whoever. You say, I am doing okay. The questioner hears you, but what does your answer mean? What information has flowed? For that matter, why do you go to a demo and then feel what you feel about it, say what you say about it, write what you write about it, or do what you do after it?

We want to change the world. Someone asks us how we are doing. We answer we are doing great or maybe we are barely hanging on. But what is our metric of measurement? Do we have one, two, or many possible criteria of judgment? To lack of clarity about what to measure is our movement measurement problem.

How are you doing? Compared to what? To last weeks efforts. To efforts decades back. To efforts elsewhere. To some absolute scale. Or regarding our intentions. Did we fully block something or barely block it at all? Shut down something or spectate it? Get arrested or escape arrest? Get gassed or avoid gas? Sing loud or sing low? March far or sit near? How much media coverage did we get? How many participants did we have? What should we measure? What metric matters?

We should measure relative to our short-term aims and regarding that which affects our attainments vis a vis our long-term aims. So how would people on June 14th answer if asked, why are you demonstrating? What would be success? The why should be clear but the success part can get complicated. What factors actually bear on us nearing or diverging from our sought goal? An answer depends on what we think, what our team thinks, or what our movement thinks furthers our goal. To change the world, we organize, rally, march, block, protest, defend, disobey, strike, and maybe even burn. For that matter, we also converse, write, and criticize or advocate.

Shouldn’t how we describe how we are doing depend on what was our immediate and what is our long term goal and on what would further or impede reaching our goals? That isn’t our subjective feeling about what we did. That is are we collectively moving toward where we want to arrive.

Unless we have some semblance of shared agreement on where we want to arrive and on what results can aid our getting there, our answer to how we are doing won’t convey much and sometimes it may convey nearly nothing. Doing fine. Okay, wonderful, but what is fine?

Eyes on the prize. Absolutely. But will growing our numbers, growing our commitment, growing our consciousness lead where we desire to arrive? How about to be on camera or not, to fill the streets or not, to get arrested or not, to block or burn cars or not, to disobey or not, to strike or not, to build self managing organization or not? We converse or we write before and after. What the hell matters? What should we discuss, propose or assess?

Suppose we want to end genocide, prevent global ecological suicide, and stop fascism from entrenching and suppose we know in our hearts and minds that it is all one big fight. Even further, suppose we ultimately want to win a better world. We act. Someone then asks, how’d it go? What do we measure to decide our answer? We have a measurement problem if we don’t have a lot of shared collective clarity about how to judge our acts.

We don’t need one mind. We are not bees in a hive. Different strokes for different folks is wise. But it is wise because given our different circumstances, resources and commitments, different folks will do better or worse at different things, where better or worse means they will help move society further or less far toward ultimate success.

June 14th was demo time and it will soon be demo time again. A couple of thousand demonstrations at once or even more. Rallies, marches and perhaps blocking some roads. Many constituencies. Many places. Organizers can plan what to do but only guess at everything that will actually happen. Perhaps there will be provocations and then rocks thrown, clashes and clinches. Maybe some cars will be burned plus some arrests. Will what we do help defeat Trump? Evaluating June 14th, do we have ideas about how we can plan and do even better next time, which is apparently to be July 17th.

Before returning to that question, consider this article. Hell, I have been writing sometimes one or two articles a week about our current crises for many months. And I do a weekly podcast, RevolutionZ, too. If someone asks me, how I am doing, the truth is…well, relative to what? Regarding what?

I may answer I am doing fine. Meaning, I can still get out of bed in the morning. I can still click clack words into a file and they then appear a few places. I am happy I can do that, but I have no idea how the click-clacked words are doing, which is what actually matters. I don’t know the number of eyes that see or ears that hear the words. I don’t know the number of new thoughts that arise. I don’t know if consciousness climbs, if views vacillate, if choices change.

But beneath my almost complete ignorance of outcomes I do know what I want to occur. I want my words to impact consciousness, commitment, and even choices. But article after article or episode after episode I just don’t have any idea whether my words have a desired effect. I suffer frustrating after-the-fact evaluative blindness.

If I was a whole publishing venture, and I conveyed not one or two articles a week, but ten or fifteen articles each day, and I was asked how are you doing, then what? Do I report how many clicks my site got? Do I know what a click even means? Do I focus instead on my revenues minus costs or perhaps on how the staff feels each day? Do I have any way to measure anything less superficial than clicks? And beyond that, of course any media project is only one among many. How are we all together doing? Do we ever even ask that question? Is it about our respective feelings? Our budgets? Our audience size? Or is it about our collective and even our coordinated collective impact on consciousness, commitment, and choices.

Where the hell am I going with all this? Back to the streets. Back to calling for, organizing, and participating in actions. Back to inspiring other people to participate. Back to having participation lead to more participation. Back to answering how we are doing in LA recently, or more widely, on June 14th.

Let me draw a bit from the past. It’s hard not to do so when you are an old guy and you remember a half century ago better than you remember last week. For a demo way back we wanted to end the war in Vietnam. We, meaning a particularly militant and generally more radical part of the whole movement, decided to go to Washington. We didn’t go to rally, or to march, but to literally stop the war machine. Our slogan was, If the government doesn’t stop the war we’ll stop the government. So we went to stop the U.S. government. We arrived by car, bus, and train. We spread out. We blocked intersections here, there, and everywhere. The troops rounded us up. They arrested about 12,000 of us—the most arrested at one event in American history. They routed the rest of us. Big stats indeed, but the war machine didn’t t even sneeze. It carried on unstopped.

How did we who rebelled feel? Some felt elated. Others, like me, not so much. Did we stop the government? Nope. Did people leave thinking they failed to do that, with the war undeniably still raging, and the government undeniably still perpetrating it? Yes, some did. Did demonstrators later feel more likely to mourn failure or to organize to do better? Again, yes, some did. Were those who were blocked by our roving disruptions or who watched TV coverage inspired or repulsed?

More recently remember the courageous encampments against genocide in Gaza. Did some activists who participated and some who saw them demonstrate get inspired due to understanding their motives and effects? Yes, no doubt. Did others who encamped feel I tried to end it but it continues. I failed. No point in my trying again. I think that sentiment has arisen for some, too.

All the above commentary bears on how to gauge what we ought to do and how well we might do it. Our measurement problem requires some solution, even if our solution needs continual refinement. We need some flexible agreement if our assessments are to communicate other than how we each personally feel about how we ourselves each personally did. Is our having fun the right or even the sole criterion to use? What about our trajectory of development toward winning?

We need to all have some shared grasp of what matters. What does a day like June 14th try to achieve? Why participate? How well did we do? How could a similar day in July, July 17th, do better? I suggest that the same calculus should apply to writing or speaking, to a personal choice or act, and to a group choice or group act.

And that calculus is, first, did our choice or act inspire those directly involved to come back still stronger next time and to help others newly join? Second, did our choice or act raise and broaden the consciousness and the likelihood of future involvement of those who perceived what we did either first hand by directly encountering it, or second hand by word of mouth and/or media reports? Third, did our choice or act communicate to elites who we are making demands of that we will keep on keeping on with new activity that will be well conceived to cost them greatly and finally even force their hand?

Settling on movement measurement metrics should be no problem. Once we ask what they ought to be, it becomes rather obvious. Did we shut down the government and end the war with our 1970 Mayday civil disobedience is a stupid question that the organizing wrongly put forefront in many people’s minds. Of course we didn’t. Did we grow and strengthen the movement or weaken and even shrink it would have been a smart and productive question to have answered.

I went to a small city’s event on June 14th. A couple of thousand people in a city of about 30,000 filled about five deep on both sides of a road with cars passing down the center. We attendees were animated and angry which was no surprise since otherwise why would we have attended. More telling, I would say that 90 percent or more of the cars that passed were highly supportive.

In the aftermath, I read supposedly sophisticated critics say big deal, that type gathering won’t stop Trump, and on such grounds I heard them disparage the whole thing. They seemed to think that their dismissiveness displayed their greater commitment and understanding and not their incredible strategic ignorance.

The right metric was did the participants have an experience that added to the likelihood of their demonstrating again? Did the car riders who passed by get inspired toward perhaps themselves demonstrating later? Did those hearing about the events identify with its participants? Were useful lessons learned? In total, across the whole country, was a threat to the powers that be displayed and did it grow?

I think the far more militant and ideologically aware Washington mass-arrest Mayday demonstration from way back demoralized many participants due to not meeting false expectations. I think it didn’t inspire many new participants and even repulsed many who were directly impeded or who saw reports. Given the times, I think there needed to be twenty or fifty times as many participants and we needed to be far better organized to convey far more insightful understanding for it to have been a really successful effort. Don’t get the wrong idea. I think organized civil disobedience can be incredibly effective on all counts, but only when those doing it know all the counts that matter and orient effectively to address them.

Applying even simple metrics is hard. To do so requires that we look beyond our personal feelings and immediate experiences and to do that can be seriously scary. We have to think about consequences on us but also on others and on the targets of our demands. That includes immediate, but also longer run consequences. When we don’t think about such things, well, why don’t we?

So, suppose Indivisible, Move On, No Kings, 50501, the General Strike Project, and dozens, and even hundreds of other national and very local organizations set a date for another mass turn out. And suppose leading to that, or following it, local groups call for local events. And suppose activists talk and write about it all. And we all come to agree that the measurement metrics to have firmly in mind are 1) effects on those involved, 2) effects on those who witness or hear of the actions, and 3) effects on elites and Trump. Consequences therefore include but go way beyond our feelings as we act on the chosen day in our chosen ways. Can we perhaps make some changes in our plans for our next demo day to further improve its outcomes?

One exemplary thing is we could train new organizers. But smaller scale, and about the demo day itself, I wonder if all of us deciding to wear the same color shirt or pants or whatever might help generate a sense of community? Perhaps something green or blue. Could that shared choice convey that we aren’t each engaged individually, but we all act together? What about, dare I suggest it, all of us even wearing the same hat? Such things might seem trivial, but could they help us more clearly feel and communicate our collective resolve?

Similarly, on June 14th even just where I was there were over a thousand signs, and there were perhaps millions of signs nationally. What if instead there were five or perhaps ten unique signs, perhaps chosen via some kind of vote, with five or ten really very effective messages that highlight a range of shared focuses, so at the demonstrations at various moments we would set aside our personally unique signs and all hold up the same first sign, and then after a bit, in unison, we move on to the second, and so on. Might choices like these help create and display unity. Similarly for chants. Could we all be ready with a few that we all share so we can get really loud, really spirited, really militant, and really in tune with one another over and over?

Could some such organized synchronicity yield great unity not just during our events, but before and especially after? A shared color, a few shared signs, a few shared chants, none of it dictated from above, all of it freely chosen by all involved, across the whole country, to enjoy one big movement with many issues and many tactics. And regarding those issues and tactics could larger locales include to march and rally, but then for those who wish to to also undertake some form of relevant civil disobedience where participants choose which aspects to be part of? Different strokes for different folks. Could the day’s events convey that not far off there will follow more participants, more coordination, more militance, and in time perhaps a sustained general strike and on-going boycotts? Should different strokes for different folks mean, for the big gatherings, that there are options to march and rally, but also, for those who wish to do so, options to undertake well planned, well organized, civil disobedience? Maybe blocking ICE cars, but perhaps also collectively establishing sanctuaries at some schools or community centers or churches that activists surround and protect.

Would any of these or other possible proposals help? Well, what is the point again? What is our measurement metric? To grow the movement. To strengthen the movement. To enhance movement solidarity. To inspire continued movement participation. To attract new movement recruits and to let Trump and Company know that we are not cowed. We are not going away. We are diversifying our understanding, broadening our issues, and coming after them. We are raising social costs they won’t like and we are going to raise those social costs higher and higher until they give in to our demands which extend beyond no kings to immigration, housing, healthcare, justice, equity, ecology, and peace.

Okay, this measurement idea may have some broader implications. For example we might consider to engage in useless and pointless debate and divisions that arise over arcane distant past personalities versus to undertake serious assessments of the well being and felt needs of people today. Or we might consider to engage in academic posturing about unreadable texts conducted in convoluted language that may or may not even be understood by those who use the arcane words versus to pursue real, accessible, evidence-based logical clearly expressed assessments of the moral and political consequences of proposed actions. When you encounter such polarities, it may help to ask what the hell metric is occupying the minds of those who behave in the various ways. Do the behaviors have positive movement building and strengthening effects? We always need to sympathetically judge and improve our efforts. To measure with care is constructive.

Similarly, I am sick to the bone of reading about Trump being in office because half the country is stupid. Sure, to say such things can let off steam. It can practice sarcasm. It might even win some laughs. But if we measure sensibly, it becomes clear that to say such things is both wrong and cheap and ignorant amusement at the expense of others. The associated irony is that a whole lot of folks who support Trump want fundamental changes. They like that Trump is into change too. To recognize that the change Trump is into is disgustingly immoral and also contrary to their interests has gotten lost in the fog of lies that now confuses nearly everyone. But Trumpers’ grievances and desires for change are real and our need to reach them and even to learn from them is also real. To denigrate Trumpers fails on every sensible movement metric.

How about violence? Metric in hand, conversations about tactics can become more constructive. And violence is a tactic, not more or less. The police use it. The military uses it. Football has it. When we use it, does its use enlarge and strengthen the movement? Nope. Not in the current world. And at most, only very rarely. Does its use raise threats that elites wish to avoid? Nope. To the contrary it provides elites excuses to do the one thing they have means to do quite well. Be way more violent.

Or how about electoral work? We want to get rid of Trump and his company of repressive, oppressive but quite serious fools. Well, that task undeniably involves elections. We also want our efforts to prepare means to reach and gain support for seeking broader and deeper changes to life after Trump. That task involves communicating very widely. Quite a few radicals see some electorally involved Democrats arouse more opposition to Trump than we radicals arouse. They disparage such Dems. They say the Dems don’t have every issue on point. True. The Dems don’t want to go as far as we want to go. True again. But even so many Dems rally, march, demonstrate, and even organize as productively or even more productively than most radical actors. To dismiss all that is idiotic. To feel that we can’t welcome and even praise all that and yet simultaneously seek way more than all that is also idiotic. I am sorry but with measurement in mind such dismissiveness does not reflect much less does it enhance radical aims. It undermines them. The same holds for disparaging those who choose to focus much or even all of their attention on elections rather than on street heat of various sorts. Routing Trump and winning more beyond Trump is going to include electoral work. Not everyone is built for it. True. Not everyone thinks their time is best spent doing it. True. But the same holds for street demonstrations, occupations, encampments and the like. What matters is that the totality of our efforts cumulatively broadens and deepens our growing resistance.

One last topic which I touched on earlier: Why do writers who want a better world write about current events? Likewise, why do publishers publish about current events? If it is to grow and strengthen movements that seek a better world, that is good. Metric may be met. But if so, then we would not write to show off vocabulary or book learning. We would try to write, at least when we hope to address large audiences, in ways that don’t require extensive scholarly background and don’t take massive time to read. More, when we write for a more activist and involved audience, we would address what is not well known that we sincerely think people need to know to grow and deepen resistance even though writing about what’s not well known involves a risk of making errors compared to just repeating what is already well established and familiar. Movement metrics in mind, we would not write to repeat what is already well known that we can confidently get correct, though to no one’s gain. We would write about what is controversial and questionable, but important for movement development.

There is plenty of room for all progressive writers and activists to do our suitable, chosen parts better. And that’s a very lucky observation that we should all happily celebrate because we are not yet numerous enough nor wise enough in our views and commitments to stop Trump and to achieve another world that is possible. If all of us do steadily better by the movement metrics we share we will win the victories we seek. If we repeat our efforts endlessly but without refining and improving them, we won’t win the victories we seek. A trajectory of improvement is essential. So here’s to a multi-issue, multi-tactic, outreach-emphasizing, inwardly-respectful and continually improving movement. Here’s to strategy in command. And here’s to July 17th. Good Trouble Lives On.

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