By Deborah Asberry, Hoosiers For Democracy
“Give People Light and They Will Find a Way” ~Ella Baker
It’s a dark time for our world — nightmare dark. For the first few months of this fascist regime, many of us were like the unsuspecting prey of a trapdoor spider, paralyzed by the venom of this predator. Most of us have recovered from the initial paralysis, but it has taken time to mobilize a response to this threat to our democracy.
Hoosiers for Democracy has developed a framework for co-creating a people powered movement across Indiana. With an acknowledgement of how tiring and hard organizing can be, we developed a conceptual model to think through how to move forward, stronger than ever, and gather key allies to save democracy.
Grassroots Organizing Takes Time
Over the first few months of Trump 2.0, Indivisible and a plethora of other national groups joined forces. On April 5, 2025, not even three months after the inauguration, these partnerships hosted a Hands Off national protest in 1,400 locations with approximately one million participants. That day signaled a new moment in the resistance.
Growing a Movement Requires More Than Mass Protests
On June 14, Hands Off morphed into No Kings with 2,100 events occurring in towns and cities nationwide. On October 18, a second No Kings protest had increased to 2,700 events and seven million in attendance. On March 28, the No Kings protest with 3,100 events is estimated to have had eight to nine million people in attendance, breaking previous records for a single-day protest.
Activists were heartened by the enthusiasm of these events, all peaceful, nonviolent and joyful. It was also becoming clear that we needed more than one-day events to build and sustain a resistance movement.
Weaving a Pro-Democracy, People-Powered Network:
Those of us on the ground doing community organizing and grassroots activism were becoming exhausted and overwhelmed. Most of us were running from event to event, Zoom to Zoom. Some days it felt like we were running in place. Susan Wagner, in the Grassroots Connector, warned that even the indefatigable can become fatigued. Things were disconnected and duplicative and we were drowning in tidal waves of information and action alerts.
Many grassroots groups now suffer from too few people doing too many things. A robust distribution list is not the same as a volunteer core. At least two major state-wide organizers in the first year are now unraveling. Leaders are stepping down, there are fewer dependable volunteers, and insiders are publicly “telling tales out of school.” We know that the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Movement had their share of internal drama, so this is to be expected within social movements. But we are running out of time.
A cohort of colleagues and I began playing with the idea of connecting the diverse entities across Indiana into a more robust and relational web. We borrowed from the scholarship of network theory and the natural ‘wood wide web’ of mycelium networks to help us map out a network of connections and relationships. To help grow the emerging pro-democracy movement, we imagined an organic, self-organizing, fluid structure connecting the disparate and scattered entities already doing good work. The stages of network theory, as first developed by June Holley, suggested that the natural progression from disconnected and scattered entities (nodes) forms through a hub-and-spoke structure.
Social networks mimic the bio-diverse mycelium networks of forests and wooded areas. These naturally occurring networks provided us an exquisite model for a social network that nourishes a social movement.
Hoosiers for Democracy Solidarity Network: A Conceptual Model
We created this model to illustrate an evolving alliance designed to support an emerging pro-democracy movement. The core components of this hub-and-spoke network include:
The Communication and Resource Hub is the network’s nerve center, consisting of a core team providing an infrastructure that connects, nurtures and communicates across the pro-democracy eco-system. This team is not a decision-making body nor gate keeper and is fluid in membership. It continually weaves connections and helps to make meaning out of the chaos and complexity of the moment.
Liaisons or Allies across the network are already well connected and working in various capacities. The liaisons are extensions of the core team and provide the spoke or links to the various clusters. These allies often function within the clusters of like-minded groups and individuals who have similar missions and foci. Liaisons are communication transmitters, weavers and connectors across the cluster who are deeply connected and committed to movement building, not empire building.
The Clusters are like minded entities essential to weaving a diverse, sustained, multi-faceted people-powered resistance to this fascist regime. A comprehensive pro-democracy network must be diverse and must go beyond the usual suspects of advocacy and activist groups. Clusters critical to growing a movement must include groups that comprise the pillars of a healthy democracy, some of which have been coerced and are now supporting Trump’s fascist agenda. We need liaisons within these groups to build an internal resistance to Trump and/or to recruit support of the resistance movement (i.e., legal, academic, electoral, business, science, labor, the arts, tech, etc.)
Just Build It, Don’t Sell It!
To gain support for our idea, we presented it to key leaders across the pro-democracy ecosystem. This was a labor intensive strategy of 1:1 meetings but we found that many people are unfamiliar with self-organizing, organic social networks and just couldn’t see the benefit.
In December, we met with a leader from our local ACLU, a seasoned organizer who saw the potential of what we were doing. Her advice: “just build it, don’t sell it!” In her experience, too few people would understand what we were doing until we did it. She, of course, became a key ‘spoke’ for civic organizations and grassroots organizers.
Iterate, Iterate, Iterate
Her advice was liberating. So now, we are connecting with key leaders across the clusters who are concerned about the fragmentation, fatigue and unraveling they see occurring and skilled at weaving connections. Together, we have identified two primary foci for activists across the state:
Voter suppression, voter education and election protection. Both our Secretary of State and Attorney General are MAGA insiders, and our Lt. Governor is a pastor of a white Christian nationalist mega-church. Our voter rolls have been sent to the DOJ, and attempts are underway to make voting more difficult across the state.
A recent state sanctioned initiative to put Turning Point USA chapters into all our public schools and universities. Indiana’s voucher program is depleting public school funding in a subversive attempt to privatize public education. Public school boards have been put on notice that the governor will be watching for possible suppression of ‘free speech’ if there is opposition to these charters.
The storm clouds are brewing and it’s going to get darker. A people-powered resistance movement can turn the tide. But movements require sustained attention and adaptive, fluid structures that operate from abundance, generosity and reciprocity. That’s the light we need to find our way. Together, we can weave this movement.
For more information about how to connect with concerned citizens of Indiana to save democracy and learn about strategies for your community, read and subscribe to our Substack, Hoosiers for Democracy.
In Solidarity,
Debbie and the H4D Solidarity Network Team
The visuals in this piece are very helpful, also inspiring!
The radial hub and spoke / network diagram is what we should be doing 👏
Our small Indivisible chapter struggles with exactly the challenge you describe- trying to cover depth and breadth simultaneously, while collaborating every chance we get.
The grassroots hubs have the most important role of rebuilding trust and community among neighbors. It's not an online game. We need to meet with people face to face, get acquainted, understand each other, before we can work together. Covid and extremism have left us siloed and isolated.
Our goal should be a node in every township, doing OMR House Parties and reaching out rural/suburban/urban. Big commercial systems that spam people are alienating. People trust those they can meet in person and visit with locally. There is no other way- we have exhausted the utility of online environments.
Virginia, you are so right! We are starting a H4D initiative for our liaisons with the various clusters, but especially the clusters of activists and grassroots organizations to encourage their members to form neighborhood groups of solidarity. These groups help to (re)build community, create connections and a sense of belonging, and have hyper local actions relative to the need and circumstance. Can you imagine the power of having stateside pop up street side 25th Amendment protests? A robust network across the pro-democracy ecosystem could send out a CTA inviting the local groups to host a local streetside protest in response to the mad kings genocidal threats. It’s fluid, adaptive and self-organizing. Thanks for reading.