Indivisible

Indivisible is a "nationwide grass-roots leftist alliance, formed in opposition to President Donald Trump and the Republican Party agenda."

Partner Organization of ProsperUS

Indivisible is listed as a "Partner Organization" of ProsperUS, a coalition of leftist groups formed during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic to demand massive government spending, including Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" spending bill.,,

Support from Onward Together

Hillary Clinton's PAC Onward Together lists Indivisible as a partner and has provided them with financial support.

Origins

The Tea Party protests of 2009, culminating in the feverish health care town halls of that August, were not a pleasant time for Democratic members of Congress.

“Anybody who was working for progressive members in 2009, 2010 has a personal story to tell about how the Tea Party impacted them,” said Ezra Levin, who at the time was a staffer for Texas Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett.

Levin doesn’t think Democrats should replicate those Tea Party scenes and their nastier elements. But he and a couple dozen other former Hill staffers do think the Tea Party was onto something with the way it applied pressure at a local level, against individual members, to stifle the Democratic administration and eventually put it wholly out of power.

In December 2016, these two dozen or so former Democratic congressional staffers released their vision for a similar Democratic resistance to Donald Trump in a 23-page document titled “Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda.” The document offers “a step-by-step guide for individuals, groups, and organizations looking to replicate the Tea Party’s success in getting Congress to listen to a small, vocal, dedicated group of constituents.”

“Indivisible” was a hit from the moment it dropped online Wednesday night, earning raves from journalists, artists, former government officials, a candidate for the Democratic National Committee chairmanship, and George Takei. “We have been just absolutely overwhelmed. You don’t know when you put together a 23-page guide on saving democracy that anyone will read it,” Levin said in a Friday interview. “But we posted it the night before last and have been just really touched by the response we’ve had.” By Monday morning, after a long weekend of work done out of Levin’s house with new volunteers who wanted to pitch in, “Indivisible” had a fresh new website, Twitter handle, and flashier design.

Levin is careful not to take credit for this; he notes that he’s just one of many authors. He’s only handling press because he has the flexibility to do so. (Levin works at a D.C. think tank now. His work on “Indivisible” is done in his spare time.) But the idea came up a couple of days after Thanksgiving, when he and his wife, Leah Greenberg—another former Hill staffer—were at a bar in Austin with a college friend, Sara Clough. Clough was the volunteer administrator for an online group that "popped up after the election".

Group members wanted to counteract Trump in some way, but they were unsure of how to do so. Levin and Greenberg decided it would be useful to leverage their know-how from their time on the Hill to disseminate best practices for how to get members’ attention. They took a “first whack” at outlining some of their thoughts and spread the document around to their network of old colleagues to fill in.

The guide first offers lessons about how the Tea Party was able to get Republicans to resist Obama. They acted locally, organizing in small, dogged groups to get in members’ faces. Critically, they were also purely defensive. They didn’t feel obligated to present alternatives to what was happening in Washington; they just said no. “While the Tea Party activists were united by a core set of shared beliefs, they actively avoided developing their own policy agenda,” the guide says. “Instead, they had an extraordinary clarity of purpose, united in opposition to President Obama. They didn’t accept concessions and treated weak Republicans as traitors.” Stopping Trump isn’t about coming up with alternatives, since Democratic alternatives will have nowhere to go under a unified Republican government, the guide adds. “The hard truth of the next four years is that we’re not going to set the agenda; Trump and congressional Republican will, and we’ll have to respond.”

The most effective ways for people to resist aren’t through indignant tweets. It’s by taking on their own members of Congress, on their turf. One of the guide’s more useful charts shows what members of Congress care about versus what they don’t. They care about “local press and editorials, maybe national press.”;

These and other protest actions in the guide are designed to achieve three goals the authors lay forth:

• Stalling the Trump agenda, because members are too busy dealing with their own constituent unrest;
• “Sapping Representatives’ will to support or drive reactionary change”;
• Reaffirming “the illegitimacy of the Trump agenda.”

On the last goal, the authors admit that Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan will have the votes to push through what they want to put through. Activists’ goal, even if they can’t prevent something from going into action, is to make their members own the consequences and lay the groundwork for their repeal. This playbook might sound familiar.

Communist Party infiltration

In a Janary 24 2018 article on the Communist Party USA website "Survey says, CPUSA members want to be heard" John Bachtell wrote;

Most members are involved in their communities and in a range of labor, social justice, environmental and peace organizations.

Among the labor activists are trade union leaders and members of central labor councils, retiree organizations, Jobs with Justice and the Fight for 15.

Others are involved in feminist organizations including Planned Parenthood, defense of abortion clinics and the new #MeToo movement.

Many are involved in racial justice groups including Black Lives Matter and the NAACP, immigrant rights, LGTBQ organizations and disability rights groups.

Members were involved with Bernie Sanders campaign and are continuing their activism in Our Revolution, Swing Left, Indivisible, Working Families Party, statewide groups like the New Virginia Majority and local Democratic Party groups and 2018 electoral campaigns.

Several members are elected officials.

Indivisible Civics Board members

Indivisible Civics Board members, 2018:

• David Slifka
• Meighan Stone - board president
• Tom Perriello
• Heather McGhee
• Marielena Hincapie
• Christie George
• Indivar Dutta-Gupta
• Bill Dempsey

DCCC Blacklist

Indivisible was on the DCCC Blacklist.