“We the People” (WtP) had its origin as an offshoot of a meeting of Kendal’s main advocacy organization, “Way Forward”. Way Forward itself had gotten its start in the wake of the Women’s March, early in the first Trump administration, and evolved into a series of working groups centered on topics such as women’s issues, gun violence prevention, immigration, and participation in the national programs of the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

On February 6, 2025, Way Forward held a general meeting for “everyone in the Kendal communities” to talk about “action and advocacy”. The auditorium was filled with residents, many from Way Forward and many others. Many of us were eager to find an opportunity to respond quickly to the extraordinary, growing chaos that Trump and Musk had begun creating in the Federal government. But it turned out that that was not a theme of the meeting.

Among the 100 or so attending were Donna Malzan, Bill van Wie, Ellen Gay, and my wife Jan and me. In the hall after the meeting, the five of us began talking about the opportunities we hoped would have been created, but had not been. We decided a separate effort would be required to accommodate the desire of the many highly motivated residents for immediate action, and we made plans to begin meeting. We talked about our experiences with Indivisible during the first Trump administration. We were looking for a similar effort—possibly even an on-campus Indivisible group.

On Saturday, February 15th, the five of us gathered in our cottage to discuss how to respond to this new challenge. We began talking about forming an “Indivisible-ish” group. There did not seem to be a local Indivisible group that we could join, and we saw that starting a “public” Indivisible group at Kendal could potentially lead to problems, so we ruled out Indivisible as the vehicle for our efforts.  We saw that we needed to plan our own organization.

We picked the following Friday, February 21, as the date for our first public meeting. Ellen reserved the All-Purpose room for 3:30 on that day. Donna had an idea for how the meeting could be organized into teams. The teams would form in different corners of the meeting room, each with a big sheet of flip-chart paper with questions for them to consider.

We set about determining what teams would be needed. It was immediately clear that we would need “Protest/Office Visits” and “Writing/Phoning” teams. We added a “Stories” team, which would have the job of discovering, writing, and publicizing stories of the local impact of the Trump administration’s actions. Finally, we added a “Research” team, which we initially conceived of as an information resource for the other teams.

Donna set about creating big flip-chart sheets to be posted on the wall in the corners with questions for each team to consider. Bill had flip-chart paper to offer. Jan agreed to make posters publicizing the initial meeting and to submit a website announcement. I volunteered to handle the email lists and to put an announcement on my blog. I ended up with the role of spokesperson and meeting moderator by default: Donna and Jan both said that they didn’t want to do it, while Ellen and Bill both felt that their roles as officers of the local Democratic party would make the new organization seem partisan if they took the lead.

The name “We the People” was selected more or less accidentally, inspired by a Robert Reich cartoon (which we used for posters and the website) that showed a crowd of protesters with signs reading “We”, “The”, and “People”.

On Wednesday, February 19, the five of us (who now considered ourselves a “steering committee”) met to plan our initial February 21 public meeting in detail. We had no idea how many people would show up. The planned agenda was simple: I would make a brief introduction, Donna would explain how to choose a team and what the sheets of questions were for, and we would get people to join a team and sign up for a mailing list.

We the People goes public. On Friday, February 21, we held the first WtP meeting in the All Purpose room. Donna had taped the team sheets up on the walls. By the 3:30 start time, it was clear that the room might be too small.  The official capacity was 50, and there were only about 30 chairs, so we sent out a call for more. But soon we had over 70 people, with many sitting on the floor along the walls. I began by describing our ideas for WtP, but within a few minutes, we were told we had to move, and we headed for the auditorium. (We had checked ahead to make sure nothing was happening there, just in case.)

Donna taped up her team sheets on the auditorium walls, and we finished describing what we thought the teams might do. Then, everyone headed for the corner of their chosen team. Donna had made a convincing case for letting each group decide its own organization, so the five steering committee members stayed mostly on the periphery, and there was a period of confusion, with each team figuring out what it wanted to do. After 45 minutes, the groups reported back.

Some had more success than others in getting organized, but they were all well underway. Each had a member or members who were willing to take on a leadership role, and each had someone who would handle communications within the team.

Following that meeting, each team was provided with its own email list and established its own weekly meeting time, separate from the main WtP meeting at 3:30 on Fridays. I took on the job of creating a  weekly email (the “Weekly We”) that went out to everyone on Wednesday evenings.

After that initial meeting, Donna decided not to continue her role on the steering committee, which continued to meet weekly as a four-person group. Donna did continue as a member of WtP.

We developed a rhythm for the weekly Friday afternoon meetings, each of which began with reports from each of the four teams. The attendance at the Friday main meetings gradually tapered off, stabilizing at 40-50 people.

After a couple of weeks, Howie Moffat from Crosslands (who had been attending the Kendal meetings) started a parallel “We the People” organization at Crosslands. It continues to meet, and is of a similar size.

Protests, emails, and calls. During the initial weeks, the Protest and Writing/Phoning teams were the most obviously active. The Writing/Phoning team focused on the Five Calls application. The Protest team organized protests for residents out on Route 1 for every other Thursday afternoon, and began publicizing other protests.

During March, preparations for the April 5 “Hands Off!” demonstration in Washington, DC, (and many other locations, including West Chester) became an important focus. Howie Moffat arranged the charter of a bus to Washington, with a capacity of 54, for people from both campuses. Once it became clear that only around 35 Kendal and Crosslands residents would be able and willing to make the trip, the remaining seats were opened to people from nearby Quaker meetings, from Westtown School, and from Kennett Area Democrats. That filled most of the remaining seats. The trip was a great success. You can read two of our accounts here and here.

Timely topics for research. The Research team members decided to split up their work according to topics that particularly interested them individually. Several members of the team focused on collecting information about specific politicians. Other members focused on explaining the meaning of key legal cases, and another sought to collect items of “good news”. They shared the results with their team, but they also sought ways to share them with the broader group. (The new SubStack account, described below, is helping with that.)

Spreading the word. The Stories team had begun to collect and write stories about the effect of the Trump administration on resident’s friends and families and on the local immigrant population. But how could they be publicized? Representative Chrissy Houlihan’s office was interested in receiving them, so the stories were sent there as a starting point. The plan was to share the stories with other elected officials and with the local press, as well as with Kendal residents (who would pass them on to their contacts).

To do this, a repository for the stories was needed. We could then provide links to the stories to anyone who might be interested. To get this process started, a fifth team was launched: Social Media.

After considering various social media options, the Social Media team decided that SubStack would be a suitable platform for publishing documents and providing links. At the April 11 general meeting, Charlie Hill stepped forward to set up a SubStack site. Charlie immediately got to work, and shared the basics of a SubStack site at the Social Media meeting on April 15. Then, at the April 18 general meeting, instructions for accessing the embryonic site were distributed. Plans were made for posting half a dozen stories that the Stories team had in hand, and for posting documents developed by the Research team. The SubStack is here and continues to be added to.

Merging with Way Forward. During all of this, Way Forward continued its programs in parallel with WtP, and the two organizations worked together on actions such as protests. But it became clear that there was too much overlap between WtP and Way Forward for both organizations to continue as separate entities. Betsy Wenny, who headed Way Forward, began meeting with the WtP steering committee to talk about joining forces. There was general agreement that combining the groups made sense and would probably be doable without too much difficulty.

One important unresolved issue was what the combined group would be called. Suggestions for a name were solicited at the April 4 general meeting and in the Weekly We email. About a dozen names were proposed, and at the April 11 meeting a poll was taken by having those in attendance drop up to three kidney beans into bowls labelled with each of the proposed names. Out of this process, three top choices emerged: Forward Together, Wayfinders, and We Move Forward.

The three names were circulated by email to the mailing lists of both WtP and Way Forward, and “Forward Together” was the top choice, with more than 70% of the respondents preferring it.

The final meeting of WtP as a separate organization at Kendal occurred on April 18, 2025. From then on, it continued its work as part of Forward Together. Over the course of the next several weeks, an organizational structure was worked out for Forward Together, melding the main parts of both predecessor organizations. Forward Together continues to meet each Friday, with the various teams and subcommittees getting together as necessary in between.  

At Crosslands, “We the People” continues as a separate organization, coordinating with Forward Together on protests and other projects.