SpaceX Exec Quits Job to Form Trump Opposition Organization

For Dex Torricke-Barton, who immigrated to America from the U.K. and is the son of a Burmese refugee, Donald Trump’s election is a “nightmare”.

Rather than fall silent, give in to despair, or call far Californian secession, Torricke-Barton left his dream job as head of communications at SpaceX and founded Onwards, a grassroots organization with the aim of bridging the gap “between coastal elites and communities left behind by globalization.”

Its first order of business will be to embark on a “listening tour” of flyover states and other communities in America that largely voted for Trump in order to better on understand their concerns and fears. Torricke-Barton hopes to take the lessons drawn from these conversations and distill them into a concrete plan of action for a social movement against Trump.

“The only reason to leave my dream job was to go and fight a nightmare ? a future where the world is less open, less compassionate, more closed,” Torricke-Barton told CNN Money. “Going to focus on grassroots change is how I feel I can make the biggest difference right now.”

While Silicon Valley was overwhelmingly opposed to Trump, and some within the tech industry have called for California to secede from the Union, Torricke-Barton believes that such an approach is not constructive. Instead, he views the outcome of the election as an indication of the need for even more communication and empathy.

As Torricke-Barton puts it in his Facebook post: “To build a world of greater freedom, justice and prosperity, we need to hear the voices of more people from more communities.”