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INDIVISIBLE: THE MASS MOVEMENT LEADING THE FIGHT AGAINST TRUMP  
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Rachel Leingang
May 25, 2025
The Guardian
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_ It grew out of a Google Doc, and now has millions of US members –
what’s the secret of Indivisible’s success? _

Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, speaks in
Washington in February., Jemal Countess/Getty Images for MoveOn

 

After the biggest day of protest of the second Trump presidency, when
millions of people rallied in more than 1,300 cities and towns across
the country, Ezra Levin addressed thousands of faithful progressive
activists.

For the previous few months, as Trump reclaimed the White House and
Democrats [[link removed]] struggled to
oppose him, the drumbeat of opposition had steadily grown. Protest was
back in the air. Democrats were finding their way. And it was because
of activists like them, Levin told the crew gathered on a weekly
organizing call for Indivisible, the progressive movement that started
during Trump’s first term.

The day of the Hands Off protests, 5 April, was an “inflection
point” in the movement against Trump, the Indivisible co-founder and
co-executive director said.
 

The pressure had mounted. Trump’s approval rating had tanked
[[link removed]].
Elon Musk, a frequent villain in protests and pushback, was in
retreat, returning to his car company after its stock fell following
sustained demonstrations and boycotts. A growing number of
universities, law firms and private organizations had started pushing
back on Trump’s agenda of retribution.

“Who are they going to be when democracy reasserts itself? They now
have to think about that. All of these institutions, all of these
leaders, are sticking their finger into the wind, and they’re trying
to see which way the wind is blowing. And on Saturday, we changed the
weather. That’s what we did together,” he said.

Indivisible, a progressive grassroots organization with a national
office and thousands of offshoots in cities and towns around the
country, grew out of a Google Doc created by Levin and his wife, Leah
Greenberg, when Trump won in 2016. At the time, the document suggested
progressives use the Tea Party tactic of constituents pressuring their
members of Congress to derail Trump’s agenda.

[a woman speaks into a microphone in front of a crowd of people]
Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of Indivisible, speaks in
Washington on Friday. Photograph: Jemal Countess/Getty Images for
Public Citizen

 
Now, more than eight years later, the organization has matured and
formed a critical flank of the opposition, using its millions of
members across the country to quickly spin up town halls, rallies,
educational events and protests. Since Trump won in November,
progressive activists have launched or restarted more than 1,200
chapters, reigniting a level of activity the organization hasn’t
seen since the early days of Trump’s first term.

“If your theory of winning against the authoritarians is mass
peaceful protest, what’s the first word? Mass. It’s got to be
big,” Greenberg said during a recent Indivisible call. “It’s got
to be overwhelming. And you don’t just snap your fingers and get
there. You build. You build over time.”

The tactics meet new obstacles

Trump’s first term began with the massive Women’s March protest.
His second term started with a question mark for the resistance: how
would the adrift Democrats oppose a man they revile who shocked them
by winning the popular vote? And how could the opposition be effective
without elected power?

Those questions cleaved the party. Some suggested sitting back while
the Republicans fought within their own ranks and Trump took it too
far, like Democratic strategist James Carville, who wrote in the New
York Times
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that Democrats should simply “roll over and play dead” for now.

Indivisible capitalized on the leadership vacuum. When Democrats were
voting for Trump nominees or priorities, it was time to call or show
up at their offices. When Democratic leaders showed some spine by
holding protests or breaking filibuster records, they deserved praise.

This time, the organization had models for success – it helped block
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the repeal of the Affordable Care Act in 2017, one of the first big
wins for the left in the first Trump administration, by pressuring
moderate Republicans at town halls to keep it.

David Karpf, a professor at George Washington University who studies
political advocacy and strategy, said Indivisible created a “vessel
for localized outrage”.

[people hold signs in support of healthcare]
Protesters join together in support of the Affordable Care Act in
front of the office of Republican representative Carlos Curbelo in
Miami, Florida, in 2017. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

 
Trump was not an anomaly, the organization acknowledges, but an
increasingly authoritarian threat, and his rise transformed the
Republican party into a group of loyalists. It also acknowledged that
“a lot of people are burned out on the idea of protesting and
marching” after the first Trump term and the mass protests against
police brutality in 2020.

“Too often in Trump 1.0, we embraced the aesthetics of protests
instead of using them as part of a strategy. Let’s be clear: protest
is a strategic tool to achieve your goal. It is not a form of
self-expression or therapy,” the 2024 guide says.

They also had to reckon with Democrats’ serious losses in 2024. Some
in Democratic circles were quick to blame groups like Indivisible for
pushing Democrats too hard on issues like trans rights and the war in
Gaza. This sense of indignation from the establishment toward the
grassroots created a chasm in the party.

Indivisible members first started whipping up Democrats in February to
form the party into a more uniform anti-Trump bloc, though that
wasn’t taken kindly by some. Some Democratic lawmakers told Axios
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that they were upset at Indivisible and other groups, who should be
calling Republicans instead.

“It’s been a constant theme of us saying: ‘Please call the
Republicans,’” the representative Don Beyer said in February. In
some places, local Indivisible groups are still turning up to pressure
Democratic lawmakers, including
[[link removed]] the representative Marie
Gluesenkamp Perez.

Building a movement again required first aligning Democrats with a
basic truth, at least in Indivisible’s eyes: the country is in a
constitutional crisis that needs the opposition party to use every
tool to block the Trump agenda.

One of the first big tests came when Senate minority leader Chuck
Schumer helped pave the way for a Republican bill to keep the
government open. Indivisible chapters across the country resoundingly
called for him to be replaced as leader.

[a person holds a sign that reads ‘stand aside Schumer we need a
wartime consigliere’]
Hundreds rally outside of Chuck Schumer’s home in New York, on 23
March. Photograph: Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty
Images

 
During weekly organizing calls since November led by Levin and
Greenberg attended by thousands, questions hit on common themes:
whether Trump would crack down on protests (he already has, but
don’t give him more power by staying home), how to protest against
the courts (many judges are lifetime appointments, so they’re not
necessarily swayed by protests), impeachment (not a practical move
right now) and the benefit of a proactive policy agenda right now (now
is the time for defense, offense comes later).

Levin and Greenberg often allude to the experts who study
authoritarians. Timothy Snyder, a professor and author of On Tyranny,
is frequently cited, as are historian Heather Cox Richardson and Erica
Chenoweth, who studies mass movements.

“These are the experts in how authoritarianism takes over. And what
they tell us is, do not wait for somebody else to come and save you.
If you wait for that, it will be too late,” Levin said. “When
institutions fall, it is up to people to organize. That’s the tool
we’ve got.”

The married couple who grew a movement

Co-directors Levin and Greenberg work from their Washington home,
where they are also raising two young children, so their days include
a constant stream of messages about work and household tasks.

In weekly calls with thousands of people across the group’s
nationwide chapters, they sit shoulder to shoulder in front of the
camera, a guitar beside them on the wall.

Both attended Carleton College in Minnesota, a private liberal arts
school, but didn’t meet until they were working in Washington, in
the early Obama years.

Greenberg is from Maryland, where politics is in the water, she told a
group of new Indivisible chapter leaders on a recent call. She started
organizing before she knew the word for it, running anti-sweatshop
campaigns in middle school. Much of her professional work was in
anti-human trafficking policy and advocacy. She also worked as a
staffer and then on the campaign for the former representative Tom
Perriello.

Levin was born and raised in rural Texas, where he described his
family as low-income. He told the new leaders that he, like many
people, was radicalized by the country’s healthcare system. He
worked on anti-poverty policy and served as staff for the Texas
representative Lloyd Doggett.

When Trump won in 2016, they, along with other former congressional
staffers, wrote a guide that detailed how progressives could fight
back using the Tea Party model (minus the racism and on very different
policy lines) to get members of Congress to listen. Written in about
two weeks, the guide flew around political and activist circles,
crashing the Google doc with its virality.

 
They thought the most likely outcome of publishing the guide was
losing their jobs; they didn’t intend to start an organization, much
less one that’s grown this much. A footnote in the guide says:
“PS: we’re doing this in our free time without coordination or
support from our employers. We’re not starting an organization and
we’re not selling anything.”

[people watch a screen outside]
People watch Trump’s acceptance speech in New York, on 9 November
2016. Photograph: Michael Reaves/Getty Images

People started forming local groups, gathering in living rooms and
basements and calling themselves Indivisible, before a national
organization officially existed. In early January 2017, Levin and
Greenberg wrote an op-ed in the New York Times and Levin went on
Rachel Maddow’s show to talk about it. At that time, whenever a new
Indivisible group would join, he would get an email. While he did the
show, his pocket in his pocket was buzzing nonstop. “I could
literally feel it growing in real time,” he said.

Levin is bombastic, prone to a full-throated characterization of what
they’re up against. Trump and his allies are “malicious
muppets”. When a Democratic elected official who voted against
progressive principles comes up, he doesn’t hesitate to launch into
a critique. Greenberg is more wonkish, laying out the steps it takes
to achieve a broad opposition movement and peel off independents or
moderate Republicans and responding to questions about immigration and
deportation policies.

“We successfully get to the right combination of risk and caution
between the two of us,” Greenberg said. “It’s been eight years.
When we first started, we had to learn each other’s work
personalities.”

They now also have to protect themselves and their family from the ire
of the right, who have accused Levin and Greenberg of orchestrating
criminal activity, paying protesters and astroturfing Trump
opposition, in posts often laced with antisemitism.

Levin and Greenberg didn’t want to comment to the Guardian about
safety threats, but told an organizing call that they expected this
kind of response when they wrote the 2024 version of the Indivisible
guide. “We knew what we were getting into. We knew this was an
authoritarian regime,” Levin said. The fact the right is fighting
them shows Indivisible is effective and that the right is scared of
these widespread protests, he said.

“They think we’re the leaders of this. Look, we could be gone
tomorrow. It doesn’t matter. There are thousands and thousands of
people across the country who are leading this movement. They are up
against much more than just little old me and Leah,” Levin said.

But on the weekly calls, which are public, Levin also often jokes that
he looks forward to seeing clips of him and Greenberg circulating in
rightwing media.

“Shoutout to the special people on the call who are Maga
infiltrators,” he said on a call on 27 March. “Look, I know a lot
of Trump supporters were looking for a lower price of eggs and bread,
and they got this fascist nut in the White House. You’re probably
looking for ways to organize, too. Welcome.”

The local chapters

Indivisible has nearly 2,000 active groups registered across the
country. In the past six months, the number of new or reinstated
chapters has kept growing considerably: 101 in January, 319 in
February, 395 in March, down a bit to 261 in April.

“This is by far the biggest surge in new Indivisible groups forming
since that initial wave in 2017 when the movement began,” Levin
said.

In November, after Trump’s win, about 135,000 people joined a call
hosted by a coalition of progressive groups, which Greenberg helped
lead. After Indivisible released its revamped guide, 31,000 people
joined a zoom to discuss it. In the months since then, Levin and
Greenberg have drawn about 7,000 people weekly to their organizing
calls.

 
The structure of local groups feeding into a national movement is
common among social movements, including the movements for civil
rights and migrant farmworkers, said Hahrie Han, a political science
professor who studies organizing and collective action at Johns
Hopkins University.

“The key is to develop national purpose, but local action,” Han
said. “You need all the ships sailing in the same direction,
obviously, otherwise it doesn’t add up to anything bigger. But you
need people to feel like they’re independently strategizing and
developing their own locus of control over the work that they do.”

Cyndi Greening, a Wisconsin retiree who fought for women’s rights
and abortion access during her career and intended to spend her
retirement gardening and flinting, spent the first couple months after
Trump’s second victory in despair. But she started joining the
weekly calls and learning what she could do with her chapter. Her
first group meeting for Chippewa Valley Indivisible had 28 people; she
now has more than 900 members.

 
Many local Indivisible leaders, including Greening, have been called
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“fake protesters” or “paid actors” by the right. They’ve
also been falsely accused of approving violence to achieve their
goals.

Levin described nonviolence as critical to the movement, saying:
“There’s nothing that the administration would like to see more
than some sort of violence in the streets that they can then use as an
excuse to crack down on normal, everyday Americans organizing and
protesting. So we embrace nonviolence as a hard-headed strategic
matter.”

[people hold signs protesting Elise Stefanik]
Members of the groups Indivisible ADK/Saratoga, Show Up and Sons of
Liberty protest the fact that Elise Stefanik has not held a town hall
to listen to constituent concerns in Halfmoon, New York, on 1 May.
Photograph: Lori Van Buren/Albany Times Union via Getty Images

Lots of Indivisible chapters are run by older white women, partly
because they were the people who hadn’t already been organizing
before Trump’s first term, Greenberg said, which often raises
questions. “We think older women organizing is amazing, because
they’re bringing their skills, they’re bringing their resources,
they’re bringing their experiences from their previous lives,” she
said.

Mary Jane Meadows runs one of the longest-running Indivisible
chapters, started after Trump’s 2016 win. The group, based in
north-east Mississippi, provided a life raft in a deep-red part of the
country, where people were initially scared to talk about their
distaste for the president. She was not previously politically active.

The chapter was initially mostly white women, but the group has worked
to diversify by reaching out to other organizations and holding events
together, building trust along the way.

 
“We began on this journey never knowing where it would take us,”
Meadows said. “And we found community and we found purpose and a
voice. And now, our machine is ready to go into battle.”

Each week on the Indivisible calls, someone will ask what comes next.
How can they get more people involved? When can they start
round-the-clock sit-ins and general strikes and mass boycotts?

“Those require enormous amounts of planning, preparation, building
of muscles, building of potential,” Greenberg told a recent group.
“We should just be real about the fact that those are not things
that people are capable of doing right now.”

Some also ask whether progressives should be crafting a policy agenda
for when Democrats have more political power. Thinking about a policy
platform can happen alongside pushing back on Trump, but it can’t be
the sole focus.

For now, Levin and Greenberg say, the goal is to build a broad-based
coalition that aligns behind a simple message of no to Trump. That
group will not agree on everything – and that’s OK for now.

You have to make it to the next round of free and fair elections
first, Levin said.

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Rachel Leingang is a democracy reporter focused on misinformation for
Guardian US. She is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Signal
rachelleingang.241

 
 

 

* Indivisible; Resistance to Trump; Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg;
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