A new generation of activists has found a purpose, but searches for strategy.

After he attended a volunteer training for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012, Tyller Williamson, who was living in Marina at the time, came home to build a campaign team in Monterey County. He was so effective at galvanizing volunteers that the campaign offered him a job in San Francisco.

It was the second presidential election now-29-year-old Williamson could vote in, but he says he was moved watching history unfold: “Not to be too cliché, but Obama is my hero.”

After that, Williamson exited politics as he got busy with other things. He went to CSU Monterey Bay, got a job working as a financial analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, enrolled in an MBA program there and started a new relationship. He watched from a distance as the 2016 election season unfolded, expecting Hillary Clinton to win.

While millions of Americans – including 34,895 in Monterey County, 26 percent of the vote – celebrated President Donald Trump’s victory, Williamson felt called back to activism. He has joined countless others in a broad movement calling itself “the resistance,” determined to fight back against everything from Trump’s cabinet appointments to repealing Obamacare.

Locally, the resistance has the taken the shape of regular protests, concerts with postcard-writing to lawmakers, a women’s march that drew thousands, and the appearance of activists at the office of newly-elected U.S. Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Carmel Valley, even before his staff had unpacked the boxes.

Williamson sees the flurry of actions as a silver lining: “If Hillary was elected, there wouldn’t have been this much activism. People would’ve been more complacent. I see it as the cosmos handing it to us on a silver platter: How can we make it any more obvious for you that you need to be part of this democracy, part of this political process?”

What organizers do now with what Williamson sees on a silver platter is the challenge. The hard part, he says, isn’t boosting turnout. It’s coordinating a bunch of upstart groups, and making people feel like they’re accomplishing something.

Williamson was one of about 130 people who attended a workshop the Saturday after the election at the Seaside headquarters of the Monterey County Democratic Party titled “Moving from Grief to Strategy.” From that assembly, small working groups formed around big goals like campaign finance reform and eliminating the Electoral College.

Of that initial group of 130, most peeled off into other groups. About a half-dozen core members remain, and they’ve adapted their mission: launching a shared calendar so local resistance groups can try to avoid scheduling conflicts.

Williamson, along with Democratic Party members Elena Loomis and Gary Karnes, launched Indivisible Monterey Bay, a local chapter of a national organization started by former Democratic congressional staffers. The idea, put forth in their Indivisible Guide, is for liberals to adopt strategies used by the Tea Party – lobbying lawmakers with a left-leaning agenda.

Indivisible Monterey Bay is one of at least six registered Monterey County chapters, and one of 10 in Panetta’s congressional district. The first to register with Indivisible’s national database, the Salinas Still Never Trump Club, was run by Salinas High School students under the guidance of English teacher John Zeller. That club no longer exists.

Florence Pennington, a political science student at Monterey Peninsula College who lives in Marina, co-founded Indivisible Marina, which the 23-year-old says is serving a unique membership: “Besides just resisting the Trump agenda, one of my goals is to help young women run for office,” she says, and adds that she’s considering a run for Marina City Council herself.

“You’re seeing a lot of women are not willing to shut up anymore,” she says.

Indivisible Monterey County met for the first time Feb. 13, drawing about 100 people. They took turns at the microphone, many venting their frustrations about the election result. Organizers didn’t articulate precise next steps, other than the goal of creating a group website.

“I’m one of those people who needs to walk away with a big goal,” Monterey resident Fatima Dias said. “I’m seeing a lot of little goals. I’m not feeling gelled yet.”

Harimah Wuamett, a nurse at Natividad Medical Center and Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, is determined to keep the Affordable Care Act intact. In the days following the presidential election, she says she saw patients who were too depressed to get out of bed, and some who were suicidal. She saw it in her friends too: “People were upset, not just complaining but freaking out,” Wuamett says. “I was like, ‘We need to stick together. He’s our president, he works for us. Let’s get out of our pity party.’”

She got politically involved for the first time in January, launching a Facebook group called Monterey County Rise Up. She thought it would become a space for her friends to share ideas. She scheduled a postcard-signing event at her home in Carmel Valley, drawing about 15 women to write to Congress. A month later, about 100 turned out for a postcard-writing event at Folktale Winery. The Facebook group now counts 725 members.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party itself, both nationally and locally, reveals fissures. On Feb. 25, Democrats elected former labor secretary Tom Perez, the establishment favorite, to lead the party, over the leftwing favorite, Rep. Keith Ellison. (In a message to Trump via Twitter, Perez wrote: “@keithellison and I, and Democrats united across the country, will be your worst nightmare.”)

At the city level, Monterey City Councilman Timothy Barrett resigned from a Democratic Party position Feb. 12, arguing the party had failed to put pressure on local electeds on things like joining Monterey Bay Community Power, which would become a public renewable energy developer and competitor to PG&E.

“With the election of Donald Trump, even more energy seems directed at funneling rage at national politics,” Barrett wrote in his resignation letter. “As a result, it seems even less likely in the current environment that the Monterey County Democratic [Party] will bring the weight of its principles to bear on local decision makers than it did previously.”

Barrett’s colleague, Monterey City Councilman Alan Haffa, is the new chair of the county dems. While he envisions focusing local efforts on making campaign calls in swing districts – unlike heavily blue Monterey County – he also sees potential to focus on local issues. “President Trump probably doesn’t care a whole lot if we’re out here protesting,” Haffa says, “but if we can keep that energy going, hopefully we’ll have people doing the electoral work it takes to make real change.”

Quick tips to getting involved – locally.

Whatever your politics, you can send a million postcards with messages to the president, vice president, senators and cabinet members. You’re unlikely to get a response.

One place where you can watch political activism actually make a difference: on the local level. City councils can choose to become sanctuary cities, in defiance of federal immigration policy; they also make policy decisions that can change your community, from how to prioritize sidewalk repair projects to addressing homelessness to authoring development protocols for downtown. Let them know what you think; they’re far more likely to listen or even invite you to their office than pols in Washington. (For a list of local activist success stories, visit www.mcweekly.com.)

• Figure out who represents you. Some city councils are elected at-large, representing the entire city; others are elected by district. Visit your city website to find a map of the districts. Same goes for the Monterey County Board of Supervisors, which is divided into five districts.

• Tell your elected officials how you feel. Email them, write letters, call their offices, request meetings. They’re real people, they live in this community, and they work for you.

• Show up at public meetings. You can find calendars of when city councils, the county supervisors, water boards and boards of education meet on their websites. Each meeting agenda is posted online 72 hours in advance. The Weekly’s Public Citizen column (p. 14) is another handy resource.

• Speak up. There’s time reserved at public meetings for you to comment on any topic of your choosing, generally at the beginning, to address subjects that aren’t on the day’s agenda. If you want to weigh in on a specific item on the agenda, you’ll have to wait until they get there. Plan on no more than 2-3 minutes; most boards and councils limit public comment.

• Tell them how they’re doing. It’s OK to give compliments, too.