About that word we: as you read, you may notice that I sometimes say we about the United States and sometimes about Canada. One reason for that is pretty simple. I am a citizen of both countries, with deep ties and relationships on both sides of the border. My parents are American, and my extended family all lives in the United States. But I was raised in Canada, and I choose to live here. (On election night, I got a text from my father: “Aren’t you glad we already moved to Canada?”) Most of my journalism, however, and much of my political work, is in the States, where I’ve participated in countless meetings and debates about how we can collectively rise to the responsibility of this moment.
Another reason I sometimes say we about the US has nothing to do with passports. The fact is, the US presidency impacts everyone on earth. No one is fully protected from the actions of the world’s largest economy, the planet’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and the nation with the world’s largest military arsenal. Those on the receiving end of Trump’s missiles and monstrous bombs bear the greatest burdens and risks by far. But with powers so vast and policies so reckless, everyone on this planet is potentially in the blast zone, the fallout zone, and certainly in the warming zone.
There’s no one story that can explain everything about how we arrived at this juncture, no one blueprint for how to fix things—our world is far too braided and complicated for that. This is but one attempt to look at how we got to this surreal political moment; how, in concrete ways, it could get a lot worse; and how, if we keep our heads, we might just be able to flip the script and arrive at a radically better future.
To get started, we first need to understand what we’re saying no to—because that No on the cover is not just to an individual or even a group of individuals (though it is that too). We’re also saying no to the system that has elevated them to such heights. And then let’s move to a yes—a yes that will bring about change so fundamental that today’s corporate takeover will be relegated to a historical footnote, a warning to our kids. And Donald Trump and his fellow travelers will be seen for what they are: a symptom of a deep sickness, one that we decided, collectively, to come together and heal.
Note: A small portion of the writing here has appeared in previous essays, books, and speeches; the vast majority, however, is appearing for the first time. Please visit noisnotenough.org for a list of ways to plug into the movements described in these pages, and to connect with many more organizations and theorists.
PART I
HOW WE GOT HERE: RISE OF THE SUPERBRANDS
We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
—MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
“Beyond Vietnam,” 1967
CHAPTER ONE
HOW TRUMP WON BY BECOMING THE ULTIMATE BRAND
The night Donald Trump was declared the winner of the 2016 election and forty-fifth president of the United States was particularly disorienting for me because it wasn’t a night at all. I was in Sydney, Australia, on a lecture tour, and because of the time difference, it was late morning on Wednesday, November 9, where I was. For almost everyone in my life, it was Tuesday night, and friends were sending texts from drunken election-night viewing parties. But for Australians, it was the start of a normal workday, which for me just contributed to the overall feeling of vertigo when the results started coming in.
At the time, I was in a meeting with around fifteen heads of various Australian environmental, labor, and social justice organizations. We were having a discussion that circled around a key insight. Up to now, the fights against global warming, racism, inequality, violations of Indigenous, migrant and women’s rights, as well as many other progressive battles, have often been broken up into their own boxes or silos. But we had been asking, as so many movements are today: how do they intersect? What root causes connect them? How can these issues be tackled in tandem, at the same time? What values would govern such a movement? And how could it translate into political power? With a group of colleagues, I had been working on how to build that kind of cross-movement “people’s platform” in North America through a project called the Leap Manifesto—which I’ll come back to in the final chapter—and there were many Australian groups who were interested in exploring a similar approach.
For the first hour or so, it was a pretty upbeat meeting, with lots of excitement about what was possible. People were feeling totally relaxed about the US elections. Like many progressives and liberals, and even many traditional conservatives, we were sure Trump would lose.
Then everyone’s phones started to buzz. And the room grew quieter and quieter, and everyone around the light-filled boardroom began to look increasingly panicked. All of a sudden, the reason for gathering—the idea that we could help spark an integrated leap forward on climate action, racial justice, decent jobs, and more—felt utterly absurd. It was as if everyone instantly understood, without even having to speak, that we were about to be blasted backward by a gale-force wind and all we could do now was try to hold our ground. The idea of forward momentum on any one of the pressing crises on the table seemed to evaporate before our eyes.
Then, without anyone calling it to a close, the meeting dispersed, with colleagues barely saying goodbye to one another. CNN was calling out like some sort of irresistible homing device and we all silently went in search of bigger screens.
Most US voters did not cast a ballot for Donald Trump; Hillary Clinton received nearly 2.9 million more votes, a fact that continues to torment the sitting president. That he won at all is the result of an electoral college system originally designed to protect the power of slave owners. And on the rest of the planet, overwhelming majorities of people told pollsters that if they had been magically able to vote in this pivotal election, they would have cast a ballot for Clinton. (A notable exception to this global trend was Russia, where Trump enjoyed strong support.)