Today our society is in a crisis that will eventually put each of us on the spot. There are an increasing number of armed gangs causing trouble in towns as well as the countryside all across America today. Many are federal agents and some are criminals posing as agents. If you see one of their unmarked vans roll up and masked armed men pour out and grab a man or a woman or a teenager off the street in front of you, what do you do? Do you pull out your phone and call 911 to report an abduction and start filming the incident? Or do you quickly get yourself as far from the scene as possible?

It mostly depends on whether you feel that your actions could help make a difference, but what creates a sense of hope and possibility? I think that social engagement is certainly an important factor. And the protests here that some discount as mere “virtue signaling” can help create that sense of possibility.

Today there is a large and well organized social and political movement in America mainly led by bright, capable women. I grew up in a time when women were treated as subordinate to their husbands. They weren’t even trusted with their own credit cards. Now we have entered an era in which women are highly respected leaders in all spheres of public life. So it is no wonder that women have assumed substantial leadership roles in the recent wave of social protest in America.

These women are guiding groups such as Indivisible Whidbey here on our island. They were certainly inspired by an earlier women-led protest that drew millions of mostly women into the streets in 2017. Some 1,300 people participated in that march through the city of Langley.

What is particularly significant about these marches, back in 2017 and again in 2025, is how remarkably peaceful they have been. Millions of people have taken to city streets all across America with little or no vandalism, disruption of public order or injury to demonstrators, bystanders or police. I hesitate to proclaim that we have entered a new era in public life, but I have seen nothing quite like this in my lifetime of nearly 79 years.

The evolving principles of nonviolent protest espoused by Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, King and others seem to have taken deep root in today’s leadership of this protest movement. Only time will tell whether their efforts prove effective and enduring. Although to wish it is so is not the same as being at all convinced.

The challenge today is daunting. There was a pretense that violent criminals were the target of ICE raids. It soon became apparent, however, that a wide net was being spread to capture all undocumented brown people and, in too many cases, many people in some less than fully protected immigration status. Now some of those who try to stop these increasingly arbitrary raids are being arrested, including our elected leaders who try to oversee arrests and detentions.

Those arrested often end up in harsh, overcrowded, dehumanizing detention centers. The message the federal authorities are trying to send is clear. If you are among the several million recent brown immigrants in our society today, whether you are working or contributing to our society or not, you must self deport or else.

The ICE detention center in Tacoma can seem far away and the arrests of migrant workers and labor organizers in the Skagit Valley can seem equally distant for those of us on Whidbey. So one can live daily life here relatively untroubled if one avoids much of the daily news and the occasional word of a local migrant family picked up by ICE agents or bounty hunters. And gatherings of concerned citizens from local groups like Indivisible Whidbey or Solidarity Over Supremacy or the occasional film or update at a church or hall concerning the plight of Palestinians or the undocumented make it increasingly difficult to avoid the true state of our world.

While our own governor has been mainly talking about the construction of new ferries recently, the governor of California is increasingly focused on ICE actions and a military occupation of cities by Marines and Guardsmen in his state.

Most of us have witnessed how even a clumsy fool of a bully can get their way on a school ground. That is the kind of enemy our society faces today. We must be smart, ethical and calculating to defeat them. Maybe, a nationwide, nonviolent general strike might be effective, where millions of Americans cease all cooperation with federal authorities that are violating the law. We have the power, if enough of us agree to coordinate our actions, to put lawless, corrupt government agencies out of business. Our noncooperation could be mightier than any of their threats or use of force against us.

Dr. Michael Seraphinoff is a Whidbey Island resident, a former professor at Skagit Valley College and academic consultant to the International Baccalaureate Organization.