March 4, 2025 (not really a) State of the Union ‘Turn Your Back’ Initiative

What This Is

Technically speaking, the president’s March 4, 2025 address to Congress is not an official “State of the Union” address. I will continue to refer to it as such since that’s what it is, officially or not.

Please begin calling and writing your Senators and Representative, as well as Senator Minority Leader Schumer and House Minority Leader Jeffries today, and politely demand that they stand and turn their backs throughout the entirety of President’s State of the Union Address on March 4, 2025. You may remember that we invited these same folks, along with others, to turn their backs during the 2025 Inauguration. No one was willing to make this unified symbolic gesture.

Regarding unified symbolic gestures–they matter. For a crash course, pick up a copy of Gene Sharp’s From Dictatorship to Democracy. Supporters of autocracy and oligarchy and supporters of democracy around the world will watch this event, whether live or recorded. We owe it to our NATO allies, to the people of Ukraine, and to ourselves to demonstrate a unified resistance to the current regime.

Regarding concerns about what public, media, or MAGA Republican reactions might arise should all Democratic and Independent Senators and Representatives stand and turn their backs during the president’s diatribe, it does not matter. They may boo. They may say it’s disrespectful. Trump will call it nasty or fake or failing or a disgrace. Here’s a look at all of his insults from 2015-2021: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/19/upshot/trump-complete-insult-list.html#

Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and Everyone Else Are Welcome to Participate.

We encourage you to call, and write both hard copy letters and emails–best sent via official websites. Here are some places to get started:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/get-involved/write-or-call/

https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm

https://www.house.gov/representatives

Act Now

For this to have any chance of succeeding, we need as many folks in as many states as possible to share this information, including the link to this page.

Here’s a Template

Below is a template you are welcome to use. A PDF copy is available here. Make your own if you prefer. Be assertive, but not assholian.