Tell Your Friends About It

Some thoughts about the Hands Off! protests and the importance of political conversation with apolitical people.

The walk up to the Texas capitol was a bit of a long one. My girlfriend and I parked in the Brazos garage right outside the Blanton Art Museum and began the roughly 20-minute walk by ourselves. After we exited the garage, however, each passing step brought along new cohorts of people both in front of us and behind us. All of whom would eventually gather at the closest stoplight to cross MLK Jr. Blvd. and end up on the lawn of the Capitol Mall, where the crowd continued to grow, and the trek to the building continued. We were members of an eclectic group of people spanning multiple generations. Fitting, as the generalized nature of the Hands Off! protests this past weekend appeared to be their most advantageous quality.

While the primary focus of the Hands Off! initiative was opposing cuts to federal jobs and government programs, the rapid-fire, headline-inducing nature of the Trump administration’s first few months made it easy for a collective opposition to protest everything they’re doing all at once. The rally here in Austin had a variety of speakers ranging from national congresspersons like Greg Casar and Lloyd Doggett to state representatives, city council members, and local organizers. Each using the unilateral government overreach that has incited these spending cuts as the premise for outrage over mass deportation, the decimation of civil liberties, and incomprehensible economic instability.

Within all of this, there were the recurring questions of “What can be done?” or “What can we do to fight this?” These questions, of course, have several answers, one of which was happening right then and there. Collective action is a powerful response, but it doesn’t just have to come in the form of large-scale protests. One answer, suggested by almost every speaker at the rally, was continuing to talk to the people closest to you.

There are a handful of numbers I keep coming back to since November 5th. Kamala Harris garnered around 7 million fewer votes nationally than Joe Biden did in 2020. Trump only saw a net gain of about 3 million votes from 2020. An estimated 89 million eligible voters did not vote. They don’t paint the full picture regarding the actions and attitudes of the electorate, but there’s a numbers game here that plays a role in the larger outcome. Most importantly, it’s something I believe we have the individual power to change.

Odds are, if you’re reading this, then you’re already infinitely more tuned in to politics than the median voter. That’s not even a flex; I just mean to say most of us are on Substack in the first place because we’re jonesing for political content. But to seek that content out at all is to act on a desire to learn and grow our knowledge base in an effort to better understand the world around us. It’s within this process that we acquire the most consequential tool in reshaping voter attitudes towards our political process.

The speakers at the Hands Off! protest all put forth the idea of taking advantage of this moment—a moment in which Trump’s popularity is steadily declining and Elon and DOGE’s popularity has cratered—by arming yourselves with the knowledge necessary to educate the people closest to you about what exactly we’re up against here. What separates the execution of this strategy today from its execution 6 months ago, is that there is no upcoming election anchoring any and all appeals in the midst of a conversation. Where the root of a conversation today is based in a response to current events, that same conversation taking place in November may come with the baggage of a sales pitch to vote for a particular candidate, whether you intend it to be that way or not.

Since the election, I’ve changed my approach to political conversation with people who are either apathetic, vaguely centrist, or just generally disinterested. We can engage these people, some of whom may be new voters, in ways that are not tied to any sort of immediate political contest. I’ve begun leaning less into the binary difference of right and wrong and more into the stark realities of how people are affected by policy. By connecting the repercussions of both Republican and Democratic inadequacy to someone’s real-world material conditions, there is an opportunity to showcase how a progressive agenda separates itself from standard politics.

For example, I have multiple close friends and family members who are schoolteachers, most of whom are not typically reading Substack accounts with less than 100 subscribers (we can change that, though; please subscribe with the button below).

There is a fight happening in the Texas legislature right now over the implementation of a universal school voucher program. You can read more about how destructive vouchers are here, but in short, a voucher program would serve to deteriorate a public education system that is already desperate for more help. This directly affects teachers. Whether it's a lack of further compensation, budget cuts, increased workload and responsibility, or siphoning of resources, the list goes on as to how public school teachers will be tangibly affected by legislation like this.

Vouchers are a particularly great example because they have a mostly benign appearance on the surface. They require further inquiry as to their contents. By strictly focusing on policy, the conversation becomes less about left or right and more about what is actually happening. For the sake of transparency, of course the idea here is to advocate for good policy; i.e. the importance of our public education system. But by making the consequences of said policy personal, it creates urgency, which hopefully becomes agency. I have found this to be the strategy that breaks down contenious barriers.

At the end of the day you don’t know how far this information will go either. Ideally, it would end up in front of people you would otherwise never have the opportunity to speak with. There is a potential for exponential growth her that makes me feel like I’m selling a multilevel marketing scheme.

Let’s be clear, and the Hands Off! Speakers made this point as well: this kind of approach is for people who are honestly willing to see truth when it presents itself. This isn’t for anyone’s terminally brain-rotted MAGA uncle. It’s for your brother, or cousin, or close friend who doesn’t participate in the political process too often but gets the sense that the deportation of college students for posting anti-genocide op-eds is maybe a step too far. Or maybe they’re wondering why the cost of living is still so high with absolutely zero federal legislation in place to change that.

The turnout at the Hands Off! protests all across the country was incredibly encouraging. Along with the special election results in Florida and Wisconsin last week, I entered this new week with a feeling of optimism that I haven’t felt in a long time. We are only 3 months into the second Trump administration, and there were crowd sizes in the tens of thousands. The discontent is there. If we can continue to build a coalition and put power behind the movement, imagine what a rally might look like in 2028.