We All Have an Important Role to Play NOW.

This is a historic, unprecedented moment for America. We have never had a proposed dictatorship until now.

FACT: Project 2025 is not a fringe idea – it has become the GOP platform, and it’s a plan to remake the US government into an autocracy. We have never seen this before in American history. We must act to stop them. Luckily, conservatives have made a tactical mistake. By telling everyone what they plan, they have also given us the strategy to challenge them.

Americans do not want to lose our democracy, so if people understand what Project 2025 really is, they will reject it. That means we need to amplify the message. If we tell everyone what the GOP is planning, the truth could sink the right wing. Let’s use their own words as a weapon. The GOP plan is an equal opportunity threat. Pick your issue: they’re attacking it and you or your close people. That makes it a personal issue for a lot of Americans, not only progressives.

How Can I Get Involved?
Knowledge Equals Power

12 Steps to Defeat the GOP Plan to Turn America into a Dictatorship

1. Read the plan (or at least the summary): Then start telling everyone what it says. We have less than 3 months before the election, and we need to move a small army. This is everyone’s business. We are all targeted.

2. Ask yourself: Who has a pulpit in my community? Talk to those people. Build your team.

3. Target your outreach: The founders of this group are in NYC, which is a bubble. We need a national, intersectional response, so reach out to your allies everywhere.

4. Who holds the keys to our future? Swing states: The key voting blocks for 2024 are women of color aged 20 to 50 and youth in 8 swing states. Youth are disaffected with Biden, and many don’t vote; plus the GOP is using gerrymandering to limit the votes of people of color. So how can we reach out to these key demographics?
   
   • Tell women how Project 2025 will hurt them: Project 2025 will strip people of rights and services, housing help, and health care. There's a hard attack on reproductive health services, on school lunches, on SNAP and WIC and Medicaid and programs for families and children living in poverty. This is an attack on critical services to America’s vulnerable communities.
   
   • Let’s talk about racism and white supremacy: Project 2025 is a white supremacist vision, and a deeply racist blueprint for future autocracy. Project 2025 defends three pillars of power: Christianity, Whiteness, and patriarchy. Not surprisingly, it’s all about white men in power and their agenda.
   
   • Reach out to youth leaders, and listen: Project 2025 is an attack on youth. If it is implemented, youth and students will find it harder to get to college. GOP censorship is targeting Tik Tok, along with Big Tech. Project 2025 would totally reverse all climate change protections. These are issues of great importance to many young people who vote. We need the educators, the teachers, the community colleges, and HBCUs in swing states – they are targeted in Project 2025. Let’s talk to parents’ groups, churches, sports teams – wherever kids are, we need to hear them.
   
   • And finally, we need Labor: Project 2025 is very anti-union. Let’s talk to the unions.

5. Giving hope: Fear may motivate people to act in their self-interest, but hope also goes far. What’s a message of hope? Hope lies in our imperfect democracy, our origin story as America and Americans. We all care about it, deeply, even those who are disappointed in our political system and corrupted politics.
   
   We need to hear from young people and disaffected voters about what they care about, the world they want to live in, their dreams and visions. That’s a public campaign message they may want to share with others. Yes, our democracy is imperfect, deeply flawed, and built on a history of slavery and the eradication of indigenous peoples. But it’s our job to improve it – and the alternative is dictatorship.

6. Get people to vote: This isn’t about Biden vs. Trump – it’s bigger than that, but having a Democrat as president will help defeat Project 2025. This election is about our freedom – our imperfect American, constitutionally protected rights – versus a possible dictatorship. We can talk about what’s at stake, but also why we need to vote to build a better future. How do we protect our earth, our future as humanity? What about our desire to build a more perfect union and complete the unfinished project of American democracy? Young people care about our collective future, so let’s support their voices on this. They may not like Biden, but they need to vote against the GOP to assure America’s future.

7. Education and Rapid Mobilization: we need to study the details of Project 2025’s blueprint and examine what can be done to mitigate its threat on different agencies of government. How do we act now to prevent the elimination or reversal of policies and departments and the firing of 50,000 federal employees? We need to talk to people who have experience in these sectors and ask them: How do we try to fight this? What’s the priority? What’s the right strategy? Then we’ll share what we learn through our website.
   
   • Progressive war rooms/working groups: In our group, we are planning our own “war rooms” – we prefer “action tanks” (think tank + action) to bring together experts and stakeholders in key sectors to discuss priorities for fighting back. We need a counter-blueprint for each and every federal department. Who needs to be at the table? Let’s bring them into the discussion.
   
   • What sectors: Lawyers. Public Policy makers. Public marketing campaign gurus. Faith leaders. Economists. Military folks. Educators. Scholars. Cross-movement leaders. We need our intel hubs for every state, at all levels. Wherever you are, you can join in too.

8. We need a platform and counter-blueprints for action: What’s our plan? It’s not one single plan, but many – many actions, taken by many people across the US and the world. At Stop the Coup 2025, we invite folks who agree with us to join in allied actions.
   
   • Our basic platform is clear: Our essential American system is under attack, so we are defending our democracy, our Constitution, our US Bill of Rights, our American commons, our system of checks and balances, and our pluralism. If you agree, join us.
   
   • We’ll provide some branding and messages related to Stop the Coup 2025 and Stop Project 2025. We’ll join allies in action and encourage people to support intersectional movement organizing. But our position is: you are already an expert, you have power, you have tools, you have vision. Everyone can lead, everyone has something to contribute now.

9. Gather strategy, share tools: Our progressive movements have a lot of weapons, field-tested ideas, and tactics to bring to this fight, and we have many experienced leaders. Our goal is to identify useful tools, strategies, and approaches and to put them in a Resource Center on our website. Let’s also bring forth and amplify a critical progressive conversation, using all forms of media to share effective ideas for fighting back. As the Haitian proverb goes: many hands make the burden lighter.

10. Plan for the long term: We’ll do everything we can to prevent a GOP victory, but even if Biden wins, the right wing won’t go away. We know what they plan, and we know they expect huge legal push-back, so it’s going to be a long-term fight. We will develop Plan B blueprints for pushing back against a would-be American theocracy.
    
    • First, define the problem, then find your allies and resources, and make an action plan. Planning includes talking in and with targeted and vulnerable communities. How can we prepare for the worst and strategize on how to counter the attacks? What can we learn from the attack on Roe or the rollback of rights in countries like Hungary (one of the models for Project 2025’s war on gender)? We need to highlight that intel and strategy, and create mini-blueprints for every sector.

11. Knowledge Is Power – let’s remember our history: We can learn lessons from our own history and from other countries that are living under dictatorships right now. Look at the plan: who will be targeted? How do we proactively act to make them less vulnerable? Who has such information? What can we learn from early US history, the McCarthy era, the COINTELPRO chapters?
    
    We have knowledge – we know how to do this work. We've never faced a threat like this one, such a detailed, thought-out right-wing religious administrative coup, but we’ve fought major battles and wars in the ‘90s, ‘80s, ‘70s, ‘60s, ‘50s and more. The “we” here means all of progressive, pro-democratic, pro-diversity America.

12. The world is with us too: If Project 2025 is enacted, it will threaten global security. Read the plan: the Defense agenda threatens all the groups and causes that benefit from US assistance, including humanitarian aid. Let’s help broker international conversations. Let’s invite our global allies to speak out, fast and loud, and make their voices known. Project 2025 is taking aim at the world, not just the US. Millions of people everywhere will be harmed by this agenda.

FACT: Dictatorships aren’t built overnight, but slowly and steadily – we are already seeing this with the steady erosion of our rights, the 140 anti-gay bills in two years, the anti-trans wedge attacks. We are already living under the early implementation of this plan. So what is working? Where are we winning? Wherever we are, let’s make that strategy visible and replicate it.

FACT: We don’t need masses to act, though it would help. The people behind Project 2025 are 80+ conservative groups, plus $22 million of Koch family money, and a right-wing media machine. But they remain the minority, not the majority – a very organized, very vocal, very aggressive, very wealthy, very Bible-driven, heavily extremist Christian minority. They have seized control of the Republican Party, so now they are the GOP platform. Their threats of violence have silenced critics – though not Liz Cheney. Still, we need to remember that Project 2025 is a minority view.

FACT: It’s also true that in every political movement, small groups move larger groups. That’s how the extreme right is being effective, and we can do the same. AIDS showed us that, and so did the fight to vote and the civil rights movement. We are a small progressive group today, but we’re backed by a silent majority. We will shift our energy from fear to thought to voice to outreach to effective action.