By CHRISTINE MARIE
In a startlingly short amount of time, the Trump-Musk presidency has made good on its promise to begin to dismantle the elements of the state that they consider superfluous to private profit and imperialist expansion. That has turned out to be almost any government service that working people have wrested from the elites to try to stabilize their standard of living and sense of wellbeing.
In short order, the new administration has used cabinet and agency head appointments, illegal executive orders, racist and sexist demotions and firings—as well as the deceitful DOGE operation, which is unleashing hackers on government servers—to gut spending and activity in support of health, education, climate mitigation, childcare, elder care, reproductive justice, basic scientific research, and the implementation of more than a century and a half of hard-won civil rights measures.
Along the way, they are attempting to tear up labor contracts, disperse workforces funded by federal dollars, and terrorize the already vulnerable immigrant workforce with sensationalized deportations.
As might have been anticipated, there is reason to believe that neither Congress nor the courts can be counted on to erect significant obstacles to Trump’s growing assertion of executive power. And just in case they do, Defense Secretary Hegseth has helpfully culled the Pentagon of generals who might be expected to oppose the deployment of U.S. troops on American soil or in an invasion of Greenland or Panama.
Given this frightening situation, the movement to obstruct the drive toward authoritarianism is growing. Tens of thousands of people have come together in protests from one end of the country to another, at town halls and in town centers, outside federal agencies, at the offices of Congress members, and at Tesla dealerships—making it clear that they are ready to fight. Their signs oppose Trump’s attacks on democratic rights, LGBTQI rights, and the unions. They oppose billionaire rule.
The majority of these actions have been organized by liberal formations, such as Indivisible, long operating inside a larger Democratic Party milieu. They have gained a broad reach into one section of the population that appears eager to demonstrate and express dissent.
At the same time, those who are most victimized have been organizing themselves. Immigrant working people have displayed their courage in street marches and through rapid response networks that have successfully impeded ICE raids. Recently, a number of protests have taken place defending the rights of Palestine solidarity activist Mahmoud Khalil and other foreign-born political dissidents against deportation. There has also been an upswing in the number of actions in defense of trans people’s right to health care and full participation in public life. Federal workers of all types have protested outside their workplaces in Washington, DC, waving union signs and placards defending their work.
As more and more working people absorb the reality of the Trump-sanctioned federal budget plan, a plan sure to include some $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid, theft from Social Security funds, an increase in war spending, and massive tax cuts for the rich, there is the potential to build demonstrations in more areas and with a greater size.
These protests have the ability to significantly expand the breadth of the population who become involved, while at the same time, augmenting the number of working people drawn into action. Accomplishing this usually requires organizers to meet in person and to plan deliberate outreach. Today, that could include labor militants eager to try to win the participation of their union locals, youth schooled in Palestine solidarity work, faith groups rooted in social justice activism, climate and Indigenous activists, and neighborhood organizations rooted in the Black community.
Efforts to broaden the protests could be firmed up with open, inclusive, democratically-run meetings. Each new meeting could bring in previously unorganized people and provide the space for those newly radicalizing to assume leadership roles.
This pattern, creating new open and democratic spaces rather than utilizing already existing formations associated with electoral politics, is important for another reason: Millions and millions of those who will want to protest have been deeply disappointed with both the Democratic and Republican parties and they have been disappointed for a very long time. They are going to be wary of organizations that they fear view them mainly as a vote in the mid-term elections. They will want to shape the politics of the movement.
It is reasonable to expect that working people who are inspired to act in response to the federal budget fiasco will want future demonstrations to clearly speak to their most immediate needs for an adequate income and for affordable housing—needs often summed up in the perennial slogan “money for human needs, not war.”
This kind of organizing can exponentially increase our capacity to fight back, building toward a moment when the opposition to the Trump-Musk drive toward authoritarianism can convincingly be seen by our worried neighbors and coworkers as the place for them. Nothing less is needed to rout the billionaires and preserve political space in which radicalizing working people can organize for even more fundamental social change.
History shows that in order to rout the far right, much more must be accomplished than simply increasing the size of the protest movement. It is also necessary for the movement to build deep roots among the working class. When big business politicians see protests whose marchers and leaders work every day to keep the lights on, the store shelves full, the trucks and trains moving, and the army marching, they worry about their ability to retain their class rule. To the degree that working people and their unions and community organizations take a major role in the movement, expressing solidarity with all oppressed people while raising their own demands, the movement will gain leverage to force concessions from the ruling class.
A mass movement can be built to force a retreat by the far-right politicians, the billionaire corporate heads, and others in the capitalist class whose policies are leading us to catastrophe. If you are interested in studying the history of our past victories and defeats in the battle against authoritarianism and capitalism and working to apply those lessons, consider joining Workers’ Voice.
