Fast growing Baltimore group organizing against Trump 2.0
People want a focused effort against the actions of the new administration in Washington, say organizers of Indivisible Baltimore: “They want to have Democrats really put their foot down and be an opposition party.”
Above: Miranda Robinson-Perez speaks to other volunteers at Sunday’s gathering of Indivisible Baltimore at Ovenbird Bakery in Highlandtown. (George Bacharach)
A group in Baltimore has joined the Indivisible movement to resist the Trump administration’s draconian and possibly illegal efforts to unilaterally defund federal programs, stop grants to humanitarian organizations, cut the federal workforce and much more.
Ellie Rosenstock, a career educator who lives in Canton, started recruiting like-minded citizens last month, two days before Trump’s second inauguration, when she couldn’t identify a grassroots city group to challenge the Republican president and his vow to be a dictator “on day one.”
Rosenstock called out for comrades in the fight through the website of the national Indivisible organization.
“The first meeting, five people showed up,” Rosenstock said. “We just pulled up chairs at Ovenbird [Bakery, in Highlandtown] and talked.”
But participation quickly grew: “28 came to the second meeting, 80 to the third.”
And for the fourth meeting, on Super Bowl Sunday afternoon, Rosenstock said, at least 150 people crowded into Ovenbird to volunteer for the effort.
“Nice to be around invigorated people,” said Mary Skeen, who attended the meeting at the Gough Street bakery.
“Some of the organizers I worked with from Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense were there – it was activists, committed people, young people, horrified people,” Skeen said. “They are going to need to find a bigger meeting space.”
Ellie Rosenstock speaks at Sunday’s gathering of Indivisible Baltimore at Ovenbird Bakery in Highlandtown. (Jessica Gabel)
National Movement
Indivisible Baltimore is part of the larger movement called Indivisible, a national organization established in 2016 by two former Capitol Hill staffers who wrote a 23-page Google Doc, “Indivisible,” that went viral.
The Google Doc was a guidebook that provided strategies for organizing locally to pressure elected officials to resist Trump. Thousands of local Indivisible chapters sprouted across the country, at least two of them in Baltimore County.
The organization’s first big effort was a successful defense of the Affordable Care Act against Trump’s effort to have Congress repeal it.
The mission, as stated at Indivisible.org, is to “elect progressive leaders, rebuild our democracy and defeat the Trump agenda . . . and an alliance of white nationalists and the ultra-rich actively working to further undermine democracy and cement their hold on power.”
At Sunday’s meeting, groups were formed to handle social media, produce a newsletter, work on legislation and lobby legislators and conduct outreach efforts.
“It’s very start-uppie,” Rosenstock told The Brew.
But the sentiment was clear, she says: People expressed a desire for a focused effort against Trump.
“They want,” says Rosenstock, “to have Democrats really put their foot down and be an opposition party.”
What’s Next
The group’s next activity is a virtual town hall Wednesday night with both Maryland’s Democratic senators, Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks.
There’s also a meeting scheduled for Friday morning in Washington with Alsobrooks.
For more information about the effort, Rosenstock says, Baltimoreans should go to Indivisible.org, write in their zip code to find the group’s next activities.
They can also write to indivisiblebaltimore7@gmail.com.