Trump-opposing group in Northwest Arkansas boasts rapid growth

Ozark Indivisible activists mobilized for public meeting with senator

SPRINGDALE -- Ozark Indivisible didn't exist six weeks ago. Now, it's a force that can mobilize hundreds -- even thousands -- to action.

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The Northwest Arkansas group has nearly 3,000 followers on its Facebook page. It successfully lobbied for Wednesday's town hall meeting with U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, an event that filled a 2,000-seat Springdale auditorium.

Caitlynn Moses, 23, the Ozark Indivisible member who helped arrange Wednesday's event, isn't a longtime political operative.

"I've just always been interested in politics, and when [Donald] Trump became president, I just felt like I had to do something to get involved. So now I'm involved," she said.

The small group of activists has been surprised by Ozark Indivisible's growth. "I think the election left everybody feeling pretty powerless, so this is just a way to feel like you do have a voice in what's going on in DC. ... Everybody wants to feel like they're heard," Moses said.

Moses found out about the national Indivisible movement just days before Trump's inauguration. She went to its website and read its 26-page manifesto: "Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda."

It encourages anti-Trump activists to organize locally, to attend lawmakers' town hall meetings, to stop by their district offices and to make coordinated phone calls to elected officials.

The guide says Indivisible hopes to "sap Representatives' will to support or drive reactionary change" and to "reaffirm the illegitimacy of the Trump agenda."

Since the movement's launch, thousands of Indivisible groups have been formed across the country, the group says.

Billy Fleming, a former University of Arkansas student government president and onetime White House intern, was one of the guide's creators.

"It's grown beyond anything we could have imagined," the former Fort Smith resident said. "It has less to do, I think, with us and more to do with how energetic and organized all the folks have become ... at the local level."

Anti-Trump activists launched the organization "because we think it's really important and we want to do what we can to best channel all of this energy that you're seeing in places like Fayetteville and Northwest Arkansas," he added.

Kimberly Benyr of Bella Vista, one of the early Ozark Indivisible members, said its members are motivated because they sense the nation has gone astray.

"It's not a party issue. It's not a Democrat or Republican issue. It's's a human-rights issue, and I think people have rallied around that," she said.

Metro on 02/23/2017

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