Leah Greenberg
Appearances
Morning Wire
Education Department Dismantled & Tesla Terrorism Continues | 3.21.25
I think we certainly want to look at what specific levers do we have to pull in relation to Elon Musk, whether that is protesting outside of your local Tesla dealership or whether that is potential congressional action. But the biggest thing I think is just getting people into the mindset of this is a crisis.
Morning Wire
Education Department Dismantled & Tesla Terrorism Continues | 3.21.25
This is a hostile takeover of the federal government by a cabal of neo-reactionary billionaires.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Es ist ein Zeitpunkt, in dem ein Regime versucht, seine Kräfte sehr schnell zu maximalisieren, um die alternativen Ressourcen von Macht und Opposition zu konsolidieren. Und alle anderen alternativen Ressourcen von Macht, Unternehmen, höhere Bildung, Medieninstitutionen, etc.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Sie machen Zahlen, basierend darauf, ob sie denken, dass dies der neue Norm ist, oder ob sie denken, dass dies eine kurzfristige Erkrankung ist und Demokratie sich wieder erneuern wird. Und es ist unsere Aufgabe, in ihre Gedanken zu bringen, die sehr klare Möglichkeit, dass Demokratie sich wieder erneuern wird, dass es eine massive populäre Reaktion zu diesem Regime gibt,
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Das ermöglicht, dass es die Macht nicht konsolidieren kann, dass es nicht die neue Norm werden kann und dass sie Entscheidungen machen müssen, wie sie damit zusammengehen oder wie sie zurückziehen werden, die sie in jeder Situation leben müssen, nicht nur in der Situation, in der Trump sich übernimmt, sich konsolidiert und der ultimative Diktator wird.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Absolut. Wir haben eine Koalition, die wir für die Generalwahlen tun müssen. Und es ist auch extrem gut optimiert, um die Gewinne im offenen Jahr, in den Spezialwahlen, in den Mittagswahlen, etc. zu maximieren, wenn man an einer motivierten Votingbasis depennt. So I think the big opportunity that's coming up is Virginia and New Jersey, right? We're going to have these elections in the fall.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
So, our background is that we both got our start as congressional staffers in the early Obama years on the Hill. Ezra worked for a member from Texas, I worked for a member from a deep red district in Virginia. Perriella, I saw that.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
They're going to be the first pretty decisive opportunities to further repudiate Trumpism, to demonstrate that this doesn't play across the board. That's especially important because, you know, New Jersey got closer than people would have liked to see in 2024, right? And so these are two states that are
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
You know, where the margins are going to matter for demonstrating for people exactly how much of a political penalty they're going to pay for continuing to be on board here. So we're working with our folks, we're organizing already. We tested in 2024 and are continuing to hone and roll out a technology that allows us to send folks to talk to their immediate neighbors online.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Low information or low turnout voters who we think will vote with us if turned out literally within their neighborhood. We saw that work. We've done that over a couple of cycles with some really exciting results.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
And so we're continuing to work on, you know, how do we make sure that we take the energy that we have from regular people and translate it into ways to reach people that break through the ads, that break through kind of the social media chaos and actually reach them as regular human beings through relationships.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
We could go into that at a different time, yeah. Anyways, it was an education in a lot of ways, but the big one was that we interacted a lot with the Tea Party in our jobs. We saw them organize, we disagreed enormously with their bigotry, their violence, but we also saw some very effective organizing tactics. And each of us moved on. We went on to do other things in our lives.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
The fear is real, the risk is real, but it's not evenly distributed. Like all of us are in fact under threat. I want to be clear that we are indeed all under threat. We're not all under threat in the same ways at the same times. And so one of the things that I think I am seeing a lot of is people who are recognizing
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Maybe that foreign student who's on a visa, maybe they can't be the one leading the protest right now. That's why I'm an older, white, college-educated person. I gotta show up. I gotta put myself on the line here. We've heard from a lot of people who understand that because they don't have quite as many risk factors right now for themselves personally, it is more incumbent on them to step forward.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
And I think that's really important and powerful.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
I worked on human trafficking, Ezra worked on poverty policy. But after Donald Trump was elected in 2016, we kind of like went back to that period in our lives and thought, Hey, there's some lessons that we can learn from this, right? We're in this moment where everything that we care about is under attack.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Ich würde auch nur sagen, ich denke, wir haben diesen sehr schwierigen Messungs-Balancen, um alle von uns in der Medien- oder Advokation zu landen. Denn wir brauchen Menschen, die in zwei Welten leben, gleichzeitig.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Wir brauchen sie, um in einer Welt zu leben, in der normale Advokation, normale Wahlsituationen real sind und passieren und zählen und in dieser Welt investieren und auf diese Welt insistieren. A really, really bad outcome is one where everybody just kind of assumes that elections are off the table and won't happen anymore, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
If they do try to steal elections, we need people to be outraged as if it had never occurred to them that this was an option at all. So we need people to live in that normal world and we also need them to live in... in einer Welt, in der es ein Regime gibt, das schnell die Macht konsolidieren will.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Und wir müssen schauen, was die Taktiken sind, was die Wege sind, in denen man sich organisiert, wie ein non-violenter sozialer Bewegung, der versucht, diese Machtkonsolidierung zu vermeiden. Und einige davon überlappen und einige von ihnen sind anders.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
And we've actually just seen a model of what it looks like to organize locally in a way that puts pressure on your local elected officials and significantly impedes the agenda of the other party. And so We basically took all the lessons that we had learned watching the Tea Party operate. We turned it into a how-to guide to organizing locally to stop the Trump agenda.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
We're normally nudging each other, like, I want this question.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
The answer is kind of yes and. Yes, both. Our initial assumption we had heading into this period was that protests would be more touched off by specific events, catalyzing events during this time.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
And what we've seen is that the speed at which they are moving, right, they're doing this kind of warp speed, running through a bunch of very, very awful and unpopular things very swiftly, makes it hard for individual things that should be Ja, genau. was jeder fühlte, egal, was sie zu diesem Moment gebracht hat.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Ob es die Angriff auf die Sozialversicherung und die Medicare war, ob es die Angriff auf unsere Zivilrechte war, ob es die Angriff auf die Immigranten in unseren Gemeinschaften war. Artikuliere diese Art von kollektiver Verlustverschuldung und lege es zu einer Geschichte, die uns alle halten könnte.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Sie sind außer Kontrolle, sie verletzen die Dinge, die wir uns interessieren, und sie tun es, um sich zu benötigen, und dann drücken sie zusammen. Und es kann sein, dass es in der Zukunft Momente gibt, die den Breakthrough als Katalysierungsmoment darstellen. Und dann mobilisieren wir uns in einer Rapport-Response um das herum.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Aber für jetzt, was wir sehen, funktioniert, ist, den Leuten den Container zu geben, der hält, den kollektiven Sinn von Chaos und Schmerz und Zerstörung und gibt Menschen einen Raum für Enttäuschung und Rückführung. Und wir haben das gemacht. Das war das Denken hinter dem Hands-off-Framing. Das ist das Denken hinter dem No-Kings-Framing auch.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Wir schaffen einen Container, der groß genug ist, um jemanden zu halten, der sagt, dieser Typ ist zu weit gegangen. Wir versuchen nicht zu sagen, hier ist unsere ganze Issues-Plattform, aber wir sagen, wir sind alle unter Druck und wir zeigen uns alle auf, auf diese autokratische, imperiöse, korrupte Regelung zurückzuführen.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
And we put it out on the Internet in December 2016. We thought our friends would read it. We thought they would maybe share it with their families when they went home over Christmas. We were not prepared at all for what happened next, which was that thousands of people started reading it and sharing it and using it as the basis of forming local groups, the
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
title of the guide that we had put out was called Indivisible. Suddenly there were indivisible groups all over the country who were picking it up and gathering communities and starting to organize and hold their elected officials accountable.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Das ist eine tolle Frage. Und wir haben die gleichen Bilder gesehen und es ist eine live Gespräche in unserem eigenen Netzwerk auch, richtig? Weil wir haben Leute, die Millennials sind, die Baby-Boomer sind, die Gen-X sind, als unsere Core-Organisation. Und wie Gen-Z in Aktion geht, ist definitiv eine live Frage.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Und ich denke, dass es hier eine Menge komplizierter und intersektierter Dinge gibt, richtig? This is a generation whose formative years were derailed by COVID in a way that wasn't true for someone who was, you know, 30 or older when COVID hit.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
This is a generation that's been shaped by watching the catastrophic events unfold in the Middle East over the last couple of years and by the Biden administration's response and Ich denke, wir müssen bemerken, dass die jüngste massiven Demonstration der letzten paar Jahre das Pro-Palästina-Movement gewesen ist, das Anti-Genocide-Movement. Es gibt in der Tat junge Leute, die da draußen sind.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Und hier reden wir noch einmal darüber, was das große Zeug ist.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
So I think there's a piece of this that's about, you know, how do you engage young people who have generally experienced the system as one that has not served them and so are not moved by appeals around institutions, are not moved by appeals around, you know, reclaiming and protecting a democracy that they perceive as not having worked for them. That's not unique to young people, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Like that's the million dollar question for a lot of voters who we lost in 2024, but I think it's particularly notable with them.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
And we found ourselves catapulted into this incredible grassroots movement of regular people who were not waiting for Washington to resist, to actually start fighting back and who were kicking both Democrats and Republicans into gear to push back against Trump.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
That's how it started, yeah. We did not think we were starting an organization. We mostly thought we were going to get fired.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Wir glauben, dass das ein wichtiger Teil der Geschichte ist, denn man kann diese Art von Eskalation der Deportationsagenda nicht unterscheiden von dem breiteren Angriff auf Demokratie und Zivilrecht. Die gleichen Mittel, die gleichen Fahrzeuge, die gleichen Menschen werden für beide genutzt. Die gleichen Bedrohungen werden zu beidem angepasst, richtig?
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Wenn sie innere Menschen nehmen und sie in ein Zerstörungskamp in El Salvador einschränken, versuchen sie die Bedingungen zu erschaffen, die viele Immigranten in diesem Land verursachen, um zu verlassen, weil diese Bedrohung, diese Angst so groß ist. Das ist eine geistige Strategie, um Angst vor unseren Immigranten-Neighboren zu erschaffen.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
It's also an intentional strategy to create fear amongst the rest of us, right? Like the idea, the threat behind we might put American citizens in El Salvador is aimed at everyone who might oppose the regime in any possible way. And so I think that we have to fold these stories together.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
We have to recognize that the ways in which they are going after immigrant communities in this country are actually the preview and the same kind of coercive machinery that they intend to apply to the rest of us and that fighting back against these kinds of attacks is actually core to what we are collectively doing.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
I don't think it's a matter of framing it as an immigration issue or a non-immigration issue. It's a matter of what are our values, what are our rights, what are our expectations for everybody who lives in this country and are we going to stand behind that and what kind of country are we going to be?
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
That's great. You're doing a great job. All right, guys.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Er schreibt viel und ich bin die Editorin. Und dann gehen wir in die längere Zeit hinein.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Well, and I also think, like, I am not advocating that the future of, you know, non-profit leadership is people who are married to each other running organizations. But there are actually real advantages. Being the head of an organization is, it's hard and there's not enough hours in the day and it's lonely. And I don't really understand how anyone does it as an individual.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
And I also don't understand how co-executive directors can do it if they're not married to each other. Because you kind of need that foundation of unconditional love if you're going to make it through the moments that are tough.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Ja. Ja, genau. Und das ist wirklich das Kern, richtig? Und dann nimmst du einfach die Taktiken, richtig? Du zeigst dich an Townhalls, du machst ihnen Fragen über die Dinge, über die sie nicht unbedingt sprechen wollen. Du versuchst, die Probleme, über die du weißt, dass deine Mitgliedstaaten sich darum kümmern und antworten werden.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Es geht nur darum, wie du die Teile systematisch bewegen kannst, sodass deine ausgewählten Offiziere die Anforderungen haben, was sie wollen und weniger, was sie nicht wollen.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Was ich an diesem Moment wirklich interessant finde, ist, dass aus unserer Erfahrung, wir sind die Leute, mit denen du dorthin gehst, wenn du etwas machen möchtest. Und wir sind seit November in Hyperdrive, weil die Leute flotten und sich organisierten. Wir haben den Rekord für neue Gruppen im November 2024 verbreitet und dann wieder im Dezember verbreitet.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Und seitdem haben wir ihn wieder verbreitet. Es gab einen steigenden Aufbau von Organisationen auf dem Boden. Das hat sich nicht in großen Protesten ausgelöst, wie wir es in der Tradition mit dem Jahr 2017 bezeichnen. Aber aus unserer Sicht sind die ersten Zeichen davon, dass jemand ein Facebook-Anruf für ein Meeting stellt und 20 Leute erwarten und 300 bekommen. Das war im Januar passiert.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Was wir gesehen haben, war, dass es definitiv eine populäre Reaktion gab, die sich bildete und die mit einem gewissen Skepsis zu Beginn der Proteste als Mechanismus bildete, aber auch viel Interesse in der Organisation. Was in dieser Zeit wirklich anders war, war der Grad von elitistischem Institutionellen-Aktor-Kollaps, der sofort nach der Wahl stattfand.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Denn normale Menschen waren traurig, aber sie waren ziemlich klar, dass sie zurückpushen werden. What changed, what was different was, you know, corporations did not put out the statement saying we stand in solidarity with democracy. Oh, you know, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos rushed to kind of reach an accommodation with the regime.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Richtig, genau. Und Medieninstitutionen, viele der Corporate-Media-Institutionen, haben sich sehr schnell auf die Frage gelegt, wie wir uns anpassen, wie wir uns anpassen, wie wir uns anpassen, was persönlich kommt. Was wir im Generell gesehen haben, war, dass die normalen Menschen ziemlich klar waren, dass sie sich zurückziehen werden.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Und es war tatsächlich die Art von Institutionen, die wir denken, wie... Das hat eine sehr, sehr schnelle Bedeutung für die Gesellschaft geformt. Und vieles, was wir in den letzten Monaten versucht haben zu tun, ist es wirklich zu diskutieren, die Bedingungen, die dazu führten, das zu passieren, und so viel wie möglich den Rest der Gesellschaft zurück in diese Postur der Opposition zu bringen.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Leah, you got anything to add to that? Well, I think there's a direct relationship or there's a complex but very interactive relationship between kind of the mass opposition and these institutions, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
So one thing that I've heard from multiple people who are a part of the Harvard organizing efforts, efforts to try to make sure that Harvard was standing up and pushing back against the Trump administration's efforts to functionally take it over is was the environment changed dramatically after hands off, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1038: Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin: The Power of 'No'
Big public shows of opposition helped to reinforce so many people who are organizing in places that we don't necessarily have eyes into. We can't run the campaign, but they are either helped or hurt by the overall environment that we create. Und grundsätzlich sind wir in diesem Moment, den wir als autoritären Ausbruch beschreiben.