Marty Levine
November 2, 2025
Marty Levine
November 2, 2025
This past Saturday, during services at my Synagogue, it was clear that everyone in the room was worried about the state of our nation and feared that our democracy was fading away. In its place, we were becoming an autocracy whose values and actions threatened our way of life.
The question hanging in the air was, how can it be stopped?
Were we going to be able to reject the MAGA revolution that is taking place by using the tools of non-violent protest and political organizing? At this moment, would such actions stem the MAGA-tide before we reached a point of no return?
Chicago has been a focal point of Donald Trump’s effort to deport immigrants from our country. He has flooded our streets with DHS personnel. Agents have been swooping down on bus stops, home improvement centers, and workplaces to challenge brown skinned, Spanish-speaking men and women about their status. People have been snatched, put in cars, and driven off, separated from their families and communities. They have entered a system that grants them few rights and tries to cut them off from any support system which may help them.
What is taking place on the streets of my city is a microcosm of how the Trump Administration (or is it better called Regime)is governing. They assert what they can do even if it flaunts law, process and tradition. This process is an exemplar of a government that believes it is above the law and has no human decency. It is based on Donald Trump and his MAGA support system’s desire to do what they wish with the full force of the Federal Government using all aspects of our government as their weapons. Checks and balances be damned, the President can do whatever he wants to do, how he wants to do it, when he wants to do it.
We are being governed now as if Richard Nixon was president when he explained the power of the President to interviewer David Frost:
Frost: So, what in a sense you’re saying is that there are certain situations …where the president can decide that it’s in the best interest of the nation or something and do something illegal.
Nixon: Well, when the president does it … that means that it is not illegal.
Frost: By definition
Nixon: Exactly … exactly… if the president … if, for example, the president approves something … approves an action, ah … because of the national security or in this case because of a threat to internal peace and order of, ah … ah … significant magnitude … then … the president’s decision in that instance is one, ah … that enables those who carry it out to carry it out without violating a law.
At the time Nixon uttered these words his assertion of immunity was scoffed at, seen as a way to shield himself from the shame of his Presidency. But in 2024, the US Supreme Court ruled that the President was, indeed, above the law, that Richard Nixon was actually correct!
But under our system of separated powers, the President may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts. That immunity applies equally to all occupants of the Oval Office
And Donald Trump has taken this ruling to heart and governed with little concern for the law.
To date, the popular response to the rise of Trump’s autocracy has been loud and nonviolent. An estimated 7 million people took to the streets over 10 days ago for “No Kings” rallies in over 2,000 locations across the nation. This eclipsed turnout for the first set of “No Kings” events earlier in the year. Across the nation, people are protesting and challenging ICE’s efforts in rallies and sit-ins as well as in ICE watch actions that alert neighbors when agents are in the area and document abuses. Our courts have been full of lawsuits challenging the power of the Federal Government to act outside the law. Efforts are building to turn the tide at the polls when a new Congress is elected in 2026. We are beginning to hear calls for a General Strike to break the Trump regime’s power grab.
All of these are well within the non-violent playbook. They stem from the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi that powered India’s liberation and fueled our country’s civil rights revolution in the 1960s.
I have been practicing with scientific precision non-violence and its possibilities for an unbroken period of over fifty years. I have applied it in every walk of life, domestic, institutional, economic and political. I know of no single case in which it has failed. Where it has seemed sometimes to have failed, I have ascribed it to my imperfections. I claim no perfection for myself. But I do claim to be a passionate seeker after truth, which is but another name for God. In the course of that search, the discovery of non-violence came to me. Its spread is my life mission. I have no interest in living except for the prosecution of that mission.
There is no hope for the aching world except through the narrow and straight path of non-violence. Millions like me may fail to prove the truth in their own lives, that would be their failure, never of the eternal law.
They are acting with the non-violent framework that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr used to challenge our nation’s racism and policies.
- Nonviolence holds that unearned, voluntary suffering for a just cause can educate and transform people and societies.
- Nonviolence is a willingness to accept suffering without retaliation; to accept blows without striking back.
- Nonviolence is a willingness to accept violence if necessary but never inflict it.
- Nonviolence holds that unearned suffering for a cause is redemptive and has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities.
- Nonviolence Believes That the Universe Is on the Side of Justice.
- The nonviolent resister has deep faith that justice will eventually win.
- Nonviolence believes that God is a God of justice.
These are principles that have guided me over years of social activism. After lobbying elected officials to change directions fails, we escalate by non-violently protesting and acts of non-violent civil disobedience.
I hope in the coming weeks and months we are able to increase the tempo and force of the non-violent action that we mount. I hope that this brings our country to its senses and that the slide toward autocracy can be stopped and reversed. I hope we can stop if before the harm being done to our nation’s imperfect democracy is irreparable.
But what if that doesn’t happen? What if MAGA doesn’t care and continues to plow under all of the past understandings of how our democracy works? What if the forces they are bringing to bear are able to corrupt our courts and drive protestors into hiding?
What if Trump’s assault on the electoral process is unchecked so that the 2026 election looks more like Hungary than the US? What if the gerrymandering that is now underway is ignored by our courts and a MAGA majority is enshrined in the Halls of Congress? What if the destruction to our legal process becomes so weaponized that non-violent protest becomes a crime with severe legal consequences? What if the federal government is so distorted that it can no longer fulfill its role and contain the excesses of the uber-wealthy and large corporations?
The NY Times just published in an article it entitled “Are We Losing Our Democracy” its approach to measuring where we are sitting a scale ranging from Democracy to Autocracy.
What if the damage done is so great that repair seems impossible?
Then what?
In 1776, the leaders of the 13 colonies, which were then part of Great Britain, reached such a breaking point. After listing a long bill of particulars about the King’s oppression, they reached a point where protest was not enough. They declared:
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people….
Thomas Paine wrote at that moment that “it is the violence which is done and threatened to our persons … which conscientiously qualifies the use of arms”. And our Founders said they were now independent, and the violence of the Revolutionary War replaced the political process of suing for a change in how their government acted.
The hard question is, when will we have reached the moment when our non-violent protests have proved so ineffective that we must conclude, like Paine did, that armed resistance is justified? How aggressive must the Trump administration become for us to have to cross the line?
Just today, seven peaceful protestors, including a candidate for a US Congressional seat, were arrested for their acts of non-violent protest. We have seen opposition politicians indicted for alleged illegal real estate transactions. We have seen our country bombing boats in the Caribbean Sea with little, if any, evidence or claim that a specific crime has been committed beyond the President’s words. We have heard the President say that he is preparing to place troops on the streets of our cities.
The difficulty for me is that I abhor violence. But as the MAGA momentum continues with little indication that it is slowing, I worry that we may reach the point when we have gone too far as a nation. Is it only then that we will be justified in giving up on the power of non-violence?
This is a question that I am afraid to ask. I do not know how to answer it. I fear violent resistance because violence scares me. When is the moment we need to give up on our Democracy in order to save our Democracy?
And will we recognize that moment before it is too late?
As scary as this is, we cannot ignore the question. It needs to become part of our conversation.
