Groups Taking Lessons From Tea Party For Resisting Trump

SACRAMENTO-- It's a step-by-step online handbook for resisting President Donald Trump and his agenda.

It's called the Indivisible Guide-- and it was written by former congressional staffers who witnessed the rise of the tea party.

It started as just a Google Doc that was posted on Twitter about a month after the election, but it soon started making it's rounds online.

And since then, it's been downloaded over 1 million times and groups all over the country are adopting it.

"What we're finding is the Indivisible Guide is actually a road map because most people who are getting involved right now have never been activists, they've never protested," said Tracie Stafford, one of the organizers of the Sacramento Women's March.

The guide is based on the practices that the tea party used in getting Congress to listen during President Obama's administration.

"They've taken the lessons that they've learned from the tea party, and what they did as a party. The tea party disrupted the members of Congress, and they were visible, they were active, " said Barbara Dehart the co-founder of Indivisible Women Nevada County.

Dehart's group is one of hundreds putting the guide into action.

"It's about resistance and your local communities rising up," she said.

The key tea party strategies being used to resist the Trump Agenda are building small local groups in your community and focusing on defense.

According to the guide, this means demanding that your local members of Congress be the voice of opposition on Capitol Hill. It's also about constantly saying NO to the President's agenda.

Grass Valley's Mark Meckler, the co-founder of the tea party weighed in via Skype.

"The idea that they're imitating tea party methodology, well there's no fixed or regular tea party methodology. So they're claiming to imitate something that doesn't exist," said Meckler.

He adds "They're doing it from the top down, telling people this is how you do politics, this is how you do a grass roots movement, but the idea of trying to recreate something organic in an inorganic way by trying to recreate it from the top down, simply doesn't work."

The guide goes in depth about how to write letters, how to protest, how do make phone calls to local congress members.

And while many of the groups are adopting it, some also say they're making it their own.