Desert Notes August 7, 2025
Last weekend I attended an all-day training with the ACLU called “Power and Purpose.” This training included some popular education that helped us define and understand how authoritarianism is developing in our country and what we can do about it. We talked about the history of non-violent mass resistance, reflected on our own values and how they can help keep us oriented to promote democracy, and steps we can take to defend democracy. We met 80 other people and the staff of the ACLU here in Arizona and some of the national staff. I understood the task as helping our communities stop democratic backsliding and increasing participation in civil resistance.
Some hopeful things from this training: the cumulative number of protests in 2025 compared to 2017 is much higher—both the number of protests and the number of people participating in them. The goal is to slow the shift to authoritarianism—which we are doing—and then to stop and reverse its impact. This work will require us to not just work with people we agree with 100 percent of the time but, more importantly, to develop allies who may not agree with you on every issue. We talked about something called the “spectrum of allies.” Active allies are the people who always show up and who are “all in!” And you’re probably aware of people who are active opponents—people who are actively working against things you care about. But it’s important to notice the spectrum in between these. Passive allies are the people who agree with you theoretically, but might be hard to engage in showing—might need more reminders, or might not have time or energy to do “all the things.” Neutral folks are the people you know who are just unengaged or uninformed. They’re not working for or against you. And passive opposition are the folks who say they disagree with you but really aren’t engaged to do anything about it.
We learned that it’s more important to focus on moving people one step in the direction towards being active allies–to move passive folks to being active, neutral people to being passive allies, and passive opposition to neutral. Active opposition folks probably aren’t worth even engaging for change—spend your time and energy on the other categories! We thought about the people in our lives and where they fell along this spectrum. Guess what we were encouraged to do??? Have authentic conversations! Listening to why other people believe what they do and asking them questions—learning their “story” and then sharing our own is a powerful way to help people move across the spectrum. When people feel valued, heard, and seen, they are more willing to engage in the work we invite them to do and to learn why it’s important or needed.
Think about a time when you said “yes” to something someone else asked you to do and why you said yes. Chances are that the quality of relationship you have is connected to your commitment and your “yes.” The same is true for all of us! We put all of this together by creating lists of our active allies, our passive allies, the folks who are neutral and inviting some of them to an action. There were two that I shared in our VUU Facebook. One was to send message to support the VISIBLE Act. The VISIBLE Act would require federal agents to wear visible ID showing the agency they work for and a name or badge number, and would ban ski masks and other non-medical face coverings. You can join me and thousands of others in this action.
The second was to invite folks to a Town Hall the ACLU is having. The ACLU is one of a few highly trusted organizations for me. They will be holding another training later, so keep a feeler out for that information! Let’s keep making good trouble together!
—Rev. Sarah