What Trump is Learning from Other Repressive Regimes

Live streaming event on July 21st

In 2020, I traveled to the Philippines — decolonized name, the archipelago — to organize on the ground with a network of land defenders, mutual aid activists, human rights organizers, and deep ecologists. I was deeply moved by their commitment, work, and — not least — their bravery.

The archipelago is the most dangerous place in the world for dissenters. In a bad year, dozens of activists may be killed, tortured, or simply disappear.

On July 21st, I’ll be co-hosting an event featuring activists from the archipelago, as well as two other friends of mine — Denzel Caldwell of the Highlander Research and Education Center, a movement school located in Tenessee, and Terry Lodge of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.

The event will link what’s happening in the archipelago to the racism, vigilante violence, corruption, and state repression we’re seeing ascend inside the United States today. This is, of course, a long tradition inside the U.S., and firmly bipartisan. But Trump is taking it to the next level. And, we’ll ask the participants in the event to share their strategies for persisting and resisting in the face of this violence.

Below is a press release for the upcoming event. I hope to see you there — and please help us spread the word.

How can our movements survive the rise of authoritarian regimes? How shall we respond when our people are jailed, our organizations banned, our speech penalized, and our activist spaces burned to the ground?

These are not idle questions in places like the Philippines and the Appalachian South. The former is one of the world’s most dangerous places for environmentalists and human rights defenders, while the latter is one of the most challenging places for anti-racist activists to organize.

On July 21^st, a special live streaming event will bring together grassroots activists from these places to share their experiences of repression and resistance.

The event, called “Solidarity Against Tyranny,” begins at 6pm Pacific Daylight Time (aka 9pm Eastern Daylight Time, or 9am on July 22^nd, Philippine Time) and is free to attend.

It is being organized by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) in partnership with Highlander Research and Education Center and Blue Earth Defense, and in cooperation with Alyansa Tigil Mina, Ethniko Bandido Infoshop, and the Initiatives for Dialogue and Empowerment through Alternative Legal Services (IDEALS).

“In our sites of struggles in the Philippines, repression against anti-mining activists and front-line communities mainly come in the form of red-tagging, and violent dispersals of organized peaceful protests and barricades, along with the filing of SLAPP suits against protesters by mining companies,” says Jaybee Garganera, National Coordinator for the Alyansa Tigil Mina (Alliance Against Mining) and one of the speakers for the event. “In particular, libel cases are filed against vocal community leaders in order to cow them into silence. In some cases, advocates against mining are killed or harassed with death threats.”

These repressive tactics have not gone unnoticed in the United States. President Donald Trump is an admirer of former Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte, and now the U.S. is experiencing an increasing internal breakdown of basic civil liberties, due process, and separation of powers.

"America is being crumbled into a thoroughly broken state to serve the interests of its oligarchs," asserted Terry Lodge, Legal Director at CELDF and another panelist at the event. "Silencing opponents of the Gazan holocaust tops the list, followed by eradication of the growing unity among Palestine supporters, opponents of mass deportations, foes of permanent American wars, and those in the way of rampant environmental destruction. Unifying against the hellbent corporate state is the only way to stop the exploitation."

Denzel Caldwell, Program Manager for Economics and Governance at the Highlander Research & Education Center in Tennessee, agrees.

“This empire and its non-state co-conspirators are seeking to complete the colonial project that began in 1776 when European settlers occupied Turtle Island and enslaved African peoples for profit,” Caldwell says. “Our movements represent the legacy of those who understood this order to be an existential threat to humanity and the global ecosystem. It is through our world-building efforts that we must convince and demonstrate to our communities that another world is possible; one where humanity and the larger ecosystem can co-exist in abundance, not exploitation.”

Another speaker will be Cris De Vera, founder of a mutual aid and community autonomy center known as Ethniko Bandido Infoshop in the northern Filipino city of Pasig. De Vera will present about his organization’s work conducting mutual aid, providing disaster relief, and offering free grassroots services as a way to avoid reliance on increasingly corrupt, unreliable, and hostile institutions and power structures.

“We believe in creating a culture of sharing as a way to minimize our dependency on the State, corporations, NGOs, and any other institutions,” he says. “Sharing is a form of resistance."

The final speaker will be Mario E. Maderazo, an environmental and human rights lawyer based in the Philippines who specializes in documenting extrajudicial killings and opposing human rights abuses .

Topics covered in the event will include:

• What Trump learned from former Filipino dictator Rodrigo Duterte and is now applying in the United States

• Which tactics Filipino resisters have faced as part of crackdowns on activists, press, students, and civil society

• Similarities and differences with the experience of anti-racist organizers at the Highlander Center in Tennessee, pro-Palestine movements, and environmentalists in the U.S.

• How to organize more effectively, protect ourselves and our movements with security protocols, and build solidarity against tyranny

“This is a hands-on lesson for organizers, activists, resistance movements, and revolutionaries,” says Kai Huschke, Executive Director of CELDF.

Many local people refer to the Philippines as “the archipelago” as a decolonized alternative to the Spanish name. The Philippines was colonized by the Spanish for 333 years, until they lost a war with the United States. The U.S. occupied the country for a further 43 years, until the Japanese invaded during World War II. During the U.S. occupation, Filipinos waged a national liberation struggle. During this time, between 250,000 and 1 million Filipino civilians died, thousands of them in concentration camps, while back in the United States, principled activists opposed the war.

Over recent decades, comprador governments in the Philippines have worked closely with the United States while waging war on the poor and on resistance movements under the auspices of “the War on Drugs” and NTF-ECAC (The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict).

To attend, register here:

If you’re new here, this is Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, overshoot, greenwashing, and resistance. It’s written by me, Max Wilbert, the co-author of Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It, co-founder of Protect Thacker Pass, and organizer with the Community Legal Environmental Defense Fund.

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