For over forty years, I have worked inside what critics call the “NGO-industrial complex.” In 1982, as a Vietnam combat veteran, I quit teaching organizational psychology at MIT’s Sloan School of Management to work full-time for peace and justice. Since then, I have helped lead and build social change efforts across the country.

That experience has made me a critic of the NGO model—not because NGOs are useless, but because of how they are structured.

After World War II, social movements increasingly adopted the corporate form: hierarchical organizations led by executive directors, dependent on professional staff, governed by boards often populated by wealthy donors and their allies. These organizations require large budgets and rely heavily on foundation funding. That dependence shapes behavior.

Anyone who has served in leadership in such organizations knows the reality: the first question each morning is often not “How do we advance the mission?” but “How do we make payroll?”

The result is predictable: caution, conservatism, and risk aversion. Protect the 501(c)(3) status. Avoid legal exposure. Maintain relationships with elected officials and the media. Above all, keep funders comfortable.

This dynamic has been widely recognized. Activists, initially women of color in “Incite,”coined the term “NGO-industrial complex.” Scholars like Harvard’s Theda Skocpol have analyzed how large climate change organizations drifted toward caution. Over a century ago, Robert Michels described the same tendency as the “iron law of oligarchy”: organizations, even those committed to radical change, tend to become dominated by professional leadership with a stake in stability.

So what does this have to do with Trump?

Research and historical experience are clear: the only reliable way to stop an authoritarian like Trump from consolidating power is large-scale, sustained, nonviolent noncooperation—mass disruption that imposes real economic and political costs on those in power and their backers.

To their credit, a broad coalition of NGOs and unions is now calling for escalating actions, potentially culminating in national shutdowns. On paper, this is exactly what is needed.

But here is the problem: I have watched, repeatedly, as these same organizations retreat at the decisive moment.

In the 1980s, the nuclear disarmament movement mobilized millions. When grassroots activists escalated to civil disobedience at the Nevada Test Site, the national organizations withdrew support, citing legal and political concerns. We continued anyway. Thirteen thousand people were arrested, and that campaign helped force an end to U.S. underground nuclear testing—the only clear policy victory of that movement.

In 2020, a coalition of organizers prepared for mass disruption if Trump attempted to overturn the election. When he did, the NGOs chose not to mobilize. They trusted the legal process. That time, we were fortunate. It worked.

We cannot assume that outcome again. Remember 2000 when the movement relied on the legal process while the Republicans stole the election with the “Brooks Brothers riot.”

The pattern is not accidental. It is structural. When confronted with real risk, large organizations tend to hesitate, compromise, and delay. They are embedded in systems—legal, financial, political—that reward caution.

If Trump moves to cancel or subvert the upcoming elections, we should expect more of the same.

The question, then, is not whether people will resist. It is whether that resistance will be organized enough—and independent enough—to matter.

The answer, as always, lies in the grassroots.

Across the country, local networks are already forming: organizers training for nonviolent action, communities confronting ICE, groups moving into the streets, from protest to disruption. These are the people who do not hesitate.

What is missing is national coordination.

To meet tha t need, some of us are organizing a National Noncooperation Spokescouncil—a horizontal, grassroots network capable of planning and coordinating mass action independent of large NGOs.

This model has a long history. From the Spanish Civil War to the Clamshell Alliance, from the Pledge of Resistance in the 1980s to the “Battle of Seattle” in 1999, movements have used decentralized, democratic structures to coordinate large-scale disruption.

The key principle is simple: decisions are made from the bottom up. Local groups send representatives (“spokes”) to a council. Those representatives do not act on personal authority. They return to their groups, consult, and carry back decisions. Power remains rooted in the base.

This structure avoids the central weakness of large NGOs: decisions are not filtered through institutional risk calculations or funder concerns. They reflect the will of people prepared to act.

If and when a national crisis comes, we will not rely solely on executive directors weighing legal risk and donor reactions. We will rely on thousands of organized people deciding, together, whether to act—and how.

I am writing this while traveling, trying to raise the initial resources needed to build this network before the next election cycle reaches its peak in the fall.

If we succeed, by the time you read this, you may hear from a National Noncooperation Spokescouncil asking a simple question:

If Trump tries to steal the election, should we shut it down?

Unlike the NGOs, I think we know your answer.Email