“Indivisible” Is a Challenge, Not a Claim
Our local progressive movements might be failing the democracy principles we fight for.
I joined Indivisible for what I thought they stood for: stopping the rise of authoritarianism in the US and demanding a real democracy. I think the national and even state level Indivisible groups are still doing that, while the local chapters may have missed the memo. It often seems that what people are trying to build locally is conformity. They want a progressive echo chamber. They want to be free to talk disparagingly about MAGA supporters and be met with laughter, cheers, and pats on the back for doing so.
The need to vent and be assured that you’re not alone and you’re not wrong is certainly something that I can understand. What I don’t understand is the desire for conformity. I’ve heard people in our group look at people in another Indivisible group and say, “They’re not being very ‘indivisible,’ are they?” The reason they said that? Because those other people had the gall to have a different opinion or support a tactic that our member didn’t approve of. They seem to believe that being ‘indivisible’ means that everyone else needs to conform to their specific views and opinions.
That’s not what Indivisible is about.
My Understanding of Being “Indivisible”
Indivisible is not a description, nor is it a demand for conformity or even uniformity. Indivisible is a challenge, both individually and collectively. It asks us to bring our various ideas, opinions, and perspectives together in a shared fight for democracy and freedom. The challenge, though, is not to conform to the views of some authority figure and ensure all our members are in lockstep. The challenge is to stand together and fight for this overarching common cause in spite of our differences.
Indivisible is a challenge for us, as individuals, to be willing to discuss, debate, and disagree, and then go along with what the group decides, whether it was exactly what we wanted or not. If the group does something that angers some people and they choose to walk away, the group hasn’t failed those individuals, those individuals have failed the challenge of being indivisible.
When an Indivisible local chapter tries to avoid disagreements or makes decisions to simply appease a member who is angry about something, the group is failing to create a space where people can disagree vehemently and still not get “their way,” if their preference is not what the majority of the group wants to do. The chapter lives up to the challenge of being Indivisible by not simply appeasing the loudest voices and not being afraid to anger a minority of members. The satisfaction of all members is not the responsibility of the chapter. The chapter should be representing the democratically determined will of the membership.
Learning to hold a minority view and still stand with the majority decision is the challenge for each individual. Remember, we’re talking about disagreements between people who are generally aligned in their values and politics. So, a member who gets angry at a decision made by the group and chooses to leave, claiming that “this group is far from indivisible” is mistaken. Those who remain in the group, whether they fully agree with everything the group decides or not, have risen to the challenge of being indivisible. Those who choose to leave, even on the pretext of standing on their principles, have failed to meet the challenge. The group has not failed them; they have failed the group.
This precise tension between personal preference and collective action is playing out right now in my own backyard.
Who to Endorse: A Contentious Issue
I’m thinking about all of this because the national Indivisible organization has decided to consider endorsing primary candidates for certain statewide elections. If a statewide Indivisible group chooses to endorse a candidate for the US Senate, then the Indivisible national group will issue its endorsement of that candidate.
This is a new process. They’ve never done this before, so they’re figuring it out on the fly. Since it’s often the “establishment” candidates who are better known and better funded, I was not completely opposed to this idea. However, in absence of a very robust selection process that focused on truly informing our membership before asking them to select a primary candidate to endorse, I personally thought the group should’ve simply focused more on non-biased comparisons of the various candidates.
Regardless, the Michigan statewide Indivisible group (SWIM), asked all the Michigan chapters what they would like to do and who they would like to endorse. They stated that they would endorse the candidate who receives a supermajority of 60%. Unfortunately, no candidate received that supermajority, so SWIM said that they “would not endorse a candidate at this time.”
Now, here’s where things got difficult, depending upon your approach. Unlike most MAGA folks that I know, I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, especially people who are basically aligned with my political beliefs. I start from a place of assuming positive intent.
Unfortunately, not all Indivisible members do the same.
What’s 90% of a Supermajority?
Anyway, my assumption was that the original thought behind wanting a supermajority was to protect against a situation where one candidate had 51% of the vote and another had 49%. At that point, it would basically be a draw, which could really be troublesome. (What they could’ve done was say that if no candidate won by at least 10%, then the top two would go to a runoff. But I digress.)
Unfortunately, the supermajority mark was not missed because more than one candidate had extremely strong support. It was missed because 40% of Indivisible chapters, including the group I belong to, didn’t want to endorse anyone during the primaries. In other words, a minority of Indivisible chapters were allowed to pull a de facto filibuster and stymie the entire process. If 40% abstained, that meant one candidate would’ve needed 100% of the remaining votes in order to achieve an overall supermajority. I really don’t think that was the intent of SWIM’s desire for a supermajority.
To their credit, SWIM didn’t simply scrap the entire process. (Keep in mind, this is a new process, so they’re trying to work out the kinks as they go.)
Basically, a 40% minority utilized abstention as a de facto filibuster, blocking a 60% supermajority from achieving an endorsement threshold. Despite this, 60% of chapters wanted a candidate endorsement, and of those voting for a candidate, over 90% selected Abdul El-Sayed. SWIM subsequently recognized this overwhelming consensus and moved to verify the endorsement.
Again, to their credit, they didn’t simply submit the endorsement to Indivisible national, they asked the membership one more time: should we endorse Abdul El-Sayed. (Remember, over 90% of the supermajority who wanted to endorse a candidate had already selected El-Sayed.)
Assuming Negative Intent Isn’t “Indivisible”
Well, various people were extremely upset. They claimed this was a page out of Trump’s playbook. They accused SWIM of ignoring their own rules. They called it “push polling” because a Political Science professor who’s a member of one group claimed that’s what it was. Some of my group’s leadership acted like it was a five-alarm fire that would destroy Indivisible if it wasn’t addressed immediately.
The knee-jerk reactionism and false labeling of “push polling” reminded me of a cautionary lesson from Animal Farm: how easy it is for well-meaning movements to slowly take on the worst traits of the system they’re trying to change. When allegedly liberal, open-minded people don’t get their way, the reflex to pivot toward conspiracy theories and melodrama looks a heck of a lot like right-wing reactionism. And it all seems to start with assuming negative intent. Instead of seeing a state group trying to fairly navigate an imperfect, new process, they chose to see an enemy intent on enforcing its own will.
So, let’s not do that. Let’s take a step back, take a deep breath, and try to think logically about this situation.
My View of the “Facts”
First of all, what was done wasn’t “push polling,” which any Poli-Sci professor worthy of the title should know. Push polling is a deceptive negative campaigning technique disguised as a legitimate opinion poll, designed to manipulate voters rather than gather their actual perspectives. El-Sayed already received over 90% of the votes from the supermajority who wanted to endorse a candidate during the primaries. This was simply an attempt to verify that fact one last time before submitting SWIM’s endorsement to the national Indivisible team.
Second, after the initial chapters voted and no candidate received a supermajority, SWIM said it would not be endorsing a candidate at this time. Those who assumed negative intent saw this as SWIM breaking their own rules AND going back on their word. However, I think the intent of a rule is what matters, especially when a group like this is defining a new process. I really don’t believe the intent of requiring a supermajority was to create a filibuster option, where 40% of groups could abstain and scuttle the entire process. My assumption is that SWIM looked at the initial goal of setting a supermajority threshold—to ensure they endorsed a candidate who was a clear winner among the membership—and they said, “We DO have a clear winner… Abdul El-Sayed.”
The third thing that bothered me was that many on the leadership teams of these local Indivisible chapters didn’t seem to consider anything other than the “negative intent” version of this entire situation. Even the group I belong to didn’t offer to talk internally about it. They didn’t ask what other members of the leadership team thought. They initially simply joined with others who had assumed negative intent. Because SWIM is gearing up to do something that some people on these leadership teams disagree with, they were willing to jump on board with the conspiracy theories, false labelling, and the-sky-is-falling rhetoric.
In their defense, the leadership of my local chapter shared an unbiased message with our general membership that fairly reflected the request and the goal from SWIM. I commend them for that.
However, that doesn’t change the fact that the initial over-the-top reaction from so many people in local leadership positions shocked me. They seemed to be angered by the fact that they didn’t get their way. They weren’t able to stop the endorsement process. They didn’t “win.” And it didn’t seem to matter to them that they were in the minority (by a lot). They still seemed to feel completely justified in acting self-righteous and indignant, implying that the people who disagree with them are the ones who aren’t being ‘indivisible.’
The Challenge Ahead
If Indivisible is a personal challenge to learn how to disagree, hold that tension in a positive light, and still stand beside each other, then we can’t just walk away when we lose a vote. True progress isn’t built on total agreement. It’s built on democratic resilience.
When we fight our allies over process because we didn’t win the outcome, we choose division over democracy. That’s not effective leadership, it’s not sustainable, and it’s definitely not what our movement needs in order to defeat authoritarianism.
We need to stop demanding conformity from our neighbors and start demanding solidarity from ourselves. If you’re angry about a recent group decision, don’t walk away. Bring your perspective, your dissent, and your passion back to the table. Our membership meetings are where we need to prove what we’re made of. Let’s show up, debate fiercely, accept the democratic will of the majority, and then march forward together.
That’s how we meet the challenge. That’s how we become truly indivisible.