The Brennan Center May 2, 2025. 
The first hundred days of Donald Trump’s presidency have been marked by power grabs, aggressive if chaotic attempts to upend the Constitution’s checks and balances. Now another strategy has begun to more clearly come into view: an unprecedented drive to undermine elections, just in time for the 2026 midterms.
Also emerging: a fierce response, a defense of voting rights that won an important early victory. How this fight unfolds will shape whether we have free and fair elections in 2026 and beyond.
On March 25, Trump signed an executive order purporting to take personal control over federal elections. Henceforth, he declared, American citizens would have to produce a passport or other citizenship document to register using the federal voter registration form. But roughly half of Americans don’t have passports. The “order” was stuffed with other misguided notions. For example, it instructed an independent agency to strip federal certification from previously certified voting machines, and it even ordered states to give Elon Musk’s DOGE team access to the voter rolls to search for “fraud.” (Hmm, what could possibly go wrong with that?!)
The Brennan Center went to federal court. Representing the League of Women Voters, together with allies, our attorneys argued that this was illegal and unconstitutional. Last week, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly agreed. In a powerful 120-page opinion, she wrote, “Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States — not the President — with the authority to regulate federal elections.” She issued a preliminary injunction blocking the key part of the executive order. (Other elements are still being litigated.)
The judge focused on the Constitution’s Elections Clause, which gives states the duty to set rules for the “times, places, and manner” of elections — and gives Congress the power to make national voting laws. That provision is the basis for the Freedom to Vote Act, the sweeping pro-democracy legislation that came within two votes of passing three years ago. It does not give a president any personal authority over elections, and certainly not the writ to act like a king.
The executive order came as part of a wide-ranging effort to undermine the vote. As my colleagues Sean Morales-Doyle and Lauren Miller Karalunas note, much of this strategy is set out in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 policy blueprint — and it’s right on schedule. Next on the agenda is using the Justice Department to chill future efforts to safeguard elections.
The Guardian reported Monday that Justice Department leaders “have removed all of the senior civil servants working as managers in the department’s voting section and directed attorneys to dismiss all active cases, part of a broader attack on the department’s civil rights division.” The department itself was founded in large measure to protect the voting rights of Black formerly enslaved people after the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Division is considered a crown jewel. Now the cop has been pulled off the beat.
Already, the administration had purged the cybersecurity experts at the Department of Homeland Security who worked to protect voting systems. Trump even directed the Justice Department to investigate Chris Krebs, the esteemed expert he appointed to lead the cybersecurity office during his first term. Krebs’s infraction? He had affirmed the integrity of the 2020 election.
Krebs spoke out to raucous applause at a packed technology conference in San Francisco, his first public comment since being targeted. “Cybersecurity is national security,” he declared, adding, “To see what’s happening to the cybersecurity community inside the federal government, we should be outraged. Absolutely outraged.”
These efforts are reflected in the SAVE Act, which if enacted would be the worst voting law ever passed by Congress. It would require citizens to produce a passport or birth certificate to register or even to re-register — and as the Brennan Center’s research shows, 21 million Americans don’t have ready access to those documents.
The SAVE Act passed the House on a nearly party-line vote. Now it is before the Senate. Encouragingly, senators have vowed to block the measure, and if they stand firm, they have the votes to do so. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) called it a “bad faith bill cynically intended to disenfranchise millions of eligible voters.” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) reiterated her opposition on Fox News, saying, “It makes it harder to have women vote, it makes it harder if you don’t have a passport.”
If the SAVE Act is defeated — if, in fact, it never comes to a vote — let’s not just move on. This would be a signal victory.
History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. The fight to vote has been a defining struggle throughout American history. Always, people have had to press to get or keep access to our democracy, and just as consistently, some have tried to shrink the circle.
We at the Brennan Center will take a moment next week to celebrate our work and the organization’s 30th anniversary. Our annual Brennan Legacy Awards dinner will honor Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland. And we will honor and hear from the Broadway musical Suffs, which tells the story of how women won the right to vote in the United States. Presenting our awards will be Celina Stewart, CEO of the League of Women Voters, our client in the recent lawsuit.
For most of the play, we see the contest between insider strategies and street protests, backstage strategists and charismatic public figures such as Inez Milholland. The racism that tried to keep Ida B. Wells from marching with her fellow suffragists down Pennsylvania Avenue and the powerful political leaders who tried to stop the expansion of the franchise.
The musical ends on a contemporary note. Today’s activists join with the suffragists, recognizing the need to fight for equality even when “you won’t live to see the future that you fight for/Maybe no one gets to reach that perfect day.” That song’s title is a good reminder of what we must continue to do at this moment of challenge: “Keep Marching.”
Michael Waldman
April 29, 2025
Brennan Center for Justice
​
Posted by Duane Campbell
 
Defeat Fascism/Fight for Democracy 
List of opportunities:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cRIJsSJwtF72ckJ8QLQu5cDCGnoeh5OIIjwqRkDKdBg/edit?usp=sharing

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From the National Political Committee — May Day Solidarity
​May Day is a uniquely international holiday, where workers of the world unite to celebrate our history and demands for our future — and it’s a holiday with deep American roots. A May Day 1886 protest demanding 8-hour work days (something we so often take for granted) led to the Chicago police brutalizing a crowd of protestors in Haymarket Square, and a series of violent events which led to the unjust state executions of 7 “Apostles of Labor.”
Socialists must remember these roots. This fight has never been easy, but we stand on the shoulders of giants, arm in arm with our comrades across our own organization — over 70,000 strong — and our siblings in the labor movement, the renters’ rights movement, the Palestinian liberation movement, the migrants’ rights movement, and so many more. 
Because of this solidarity, we have incredible opportunities to organize and exert our collective strength, working locally and nationally in unison with mass movements around the world, to pick big fights against the boss class, and to win. We are stronger every day, even as the forces of capital work to slow us down, because we continue to build this solidarity.
We’ve witnessed the strength of this solidarity in the last few weeks, as hundreds of thousands of people have come out to the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour to see democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speak out against the system that oppresses us, even in deep red parts of the country like Idaho and Bakersfield, California. The rallies feature labor organizers representing people who form the backbone of our economy, from rideshare workers to farmworkers, and socialist electeds building the bench downballot, like DSA city councilmember Eunisses Hernandez in Los Angeles. The message is clear: a better world is possible, and we need class solidarity to win it. DSA members are showing up in force at local stops of this tour to canvass attendees and show how we are ready to give people the chance to be protagonists of their own history and build the working class power we need at scale to take on the oligarchy.
DSA chapters all across the country are planning May Day events, and we have officially joined the May Day Strong movement, organized with the Chicago Teachers Union and Bargaining for the Common Good. We’re encouraging DSA members everywhere to plug in — check out our May Day toolkit for ways to get involved. You can find your nearest chapter and their contact info here, and check the May Day Strong Map to find an event near you!
This year, mobilizing on May Day is even more urgent:

• In spite of the objections of the Supreme Court, members of Congress, and millions of working class people, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a father and union worker, is still being detained illegally in El Salvador.
• Pro-Palestine organizer and former UAW member Mahmoud Khalil is being held illegally in ICE detention in Louisiana.
• Over two hundred thousand federal workers have lost their jobs and nearly a million more have been told that their right to bargain over working conditions no longer exists.

And before you hit the streets on May 1, please join us for a mass call on April 29. On this call — Fight Oligarchy: Build to May Day 2025 — you’ll hear from labor organizers, immigrants’ rights activists, and DSA chapter leaders on how you can fight back this May Day against attacks on our unions, rights, and essential services. 

 
Over 30,000 attended  the Folsom, California, Fighting Oligarchy Tour event  on April 15.
The video below is a very close repeat of the speech by Bernie Sanders on the tour given in over 15 cities and locations.
He clearly states the goals of the tour, to which we should pay attention.
​

​Trump and his MAGA movement are conspiring with oligarchs to turn the U.S. into a rightwing authoritarian state. The labor movement can play a key role in fighting back.
 Bill Fletcher Jr. 

In These Times.
 
One of the principal difficulties facing the Democratic Party establishment and most leaders of organized labor is a failure to accept a fundamental reality: there is no normality. The failure to grasp this state of affairs has led to strategic paralysis and a tendency to believe that by being the ​“adults in the room,” the Democrats — or the trade union leadership — can embarrass the Republicans and force them to engage in good faith behavior. That is not the case.
The rise of President Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement has represented the morphing of a broad, rightwing populist movement into a fascist movement that seeks to destroy constitutional democracy. The current purging of the federal government, through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), aims at both opening the doors to a kleptocracy as well as ensuring loyalty to the MAGA vision and its retrograde goals.
Yet while MAGA can be defined as fascist (or postfascist), what we do not yet see is full fascism in power. Rather what we are now witnessing appears to be something along the lines of Viktor Orbán’s regime in Hungary and, ultimately, a Putinesque regime, i.e., increased rightwing authoritarianism. Still, the aim of the Trump regime remains to destabilize all real and potential opposition.
MAGA, as a movement, has converged with the objectives of that segment of the capitalist class often referenced as ​“oligarchs.” Particularly situated in high tech, this group of capitalists has become very influential through their control over critical online and communications systems. Initially aligned, for the most part, with Democrats, the oligarchs appear to have decided that they are nothing short of superior beings that must seize the reins of government in order to operate it much like a business, and for their own ends. This includes expanding their wealth, but also for those, such as Musk, who have a quasi-science fiction vision of a future where the elite abandon Earth and settle Mars or some artificial satellite, there is the need for direct governmental involvement in such projects. Along with the oligarchs are those in the business class who simply wish to ravage the federal kitty, leading to the emergence of kleptocracy.

Read more.
https://inthesetimes.com/article/unions-labor-trump-oligarchy-fascism?

A much needed guide to Resistance. 
By Kurt Stand. March 25,2025.  Z Network. 

“The Democratic Party’s failure to address the cost of living crisis, its refusal to maintain the expanded pandemic safety net, and its continued funding of a genocide fueled much of the despair that paved the way to Trump’s restoration.  In order to survive his presidency, and defeat his movement, we must defeat this very despair.  Otherwise, it will continue to be used by Trump, who has shown himself adept at exploiting genuine pain and alienation, only to carry out the billionaire class’ arsonist agenda.
“In an earlier era of rising fascism, FDR said, ‘Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations — not because the people of those nations disliked democracy, but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion, government weakness.’ The task before us is to end this false choice — to build the institutions that protect the most vulnerable among us while putting forward an agenda that improves working peoples’ lives.”

The Crisis of Division
Donald Trump’s reelection as president reflects the deep crisis of U.S. (and global) capitalism – a crisis powerful corporate sectors are seeking to resolve by placing new restrictions on democratic rights and removing existing restrictions placed on capital.  Although marked by chaos and confusion, the measures taken by Trump and – perhaps more relevantly – by Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, reflects that orientation: destroying government regulatory agencies, attacking work-place protections and worker rights, eliminating any hint of civil rights and racial or gender justice by destruction of DEI programs.  The attacks on immigrants and Palestinian rights activists, cruel in their implementation are designed to inhibit the ability of people who defend the rights in their communities, schools or workplaces, to inhibit global solidarity and opposition to war.  As such, they serve as an opening wedge to a more generalized assault on civil liberties and democratic rights.
The narrow nationalism promoted by Trump similarly seeks to limit restrictions on US trade and military policy inherent in multinational bodies – even those the U.S. dominates.  This attempt to overcome the relative decline of the U.S. in the world economy is behind a seeming “go-it-alone” assertion of unbridled power.  The “free hand,” pursuing foreign policy has its analogy in asserting a “free hand” domestically.  Hence his rejection of police accountability, his threat to use the military for domestic repression, threats against political opponents.  More to the point, his rejection of any concept of international law reflects his rejection of the rule of law domestically.  Constitutional law is fundamental to the functioning of political democracy – and the law has provided a framework within which working people have defended their rights, the terrain through which popular movements for social justice have sought to expand those rights.  Thus what we see is an ever clearer assertion of the power of capital, of US militarism, of the wealthy elite, to eliminate any impediments to expansion.  It is a sign of weakness, not strength, but is all the more dangerous for that.
Trump’s victory rested on a different appeal.  His and Vance’s campaign was marked by vicious attacks on immigrants, on the transgender community, on “childless cat ladies”, on the “enemy within.” Yet he also campaigned as a leader who would bring back jobs, end inflation, create economic growth, bring peace to the world by displays of power.  The slogan “Make America Great Again,” was designed to promote an image of safety and stability.  Holding this together was Trump’s projection of himself as someone invincible, an appeal to the irrational that was stoked by the violence of his rhetoric. 
Kamla Harris’ campaign was unable to sufficiently counter this because corporate power in the Democratic Party did not want to challenge the corporate power at the heart of our country’s political and economic failings.  Critically, she challenged Trump as an individual, without addressing the underlying fears that generated his support.  
Read more. Leading to strategy. 
https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fascism-and-resistance-all-of-us-or-none/
 
 

Celebrating Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta  -Defend Immigrants Rights
 
















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​March 31  ,2025 is Cesar Chavez’s birthday and Cesar Chavez Day – a state holiday in California,  one of eight states to recognize the  date, and one of the few holidays  in the nation  dedicated  to a labor leader.    Hundreds marched in  Sacramento and dozens of other cities held commemorative marches on Saturday with an emphasis on protecting the immigrants among us. Thousands are mobilized today in the California Central Valley for the difficult and current battles to protect the immigrant families.   The California and the U.S. economy are  dependent upon the labor of migrants. 
 
Celebrating Chavez became a national commemorative holiday in 2014 based upon the decision of Barack Obama. ( that means you don’t get the day off )
 
In the planning document for NS we say,
 
DSA and the broader Left must join forces to confront the international rise of authoritarianism and the electoral victory of the Trump/MAGA forces.  Together we will work to build a center-left coalition in defense of democracy. DSA must jettison a growing tendency towards a  “go it alone” approach that devalues coalition work and glosses over the importance – indeed, the necessity – of a center-left coalition to defend democracy from neo-fascism.
Given the above, North Star understands its role in DSA as:

• Developing organizational clarity on the imminent danger of a neo-fascist seizure of political power, and the concomitant loss of U.S. democracy, as the defining feature of the political moment;
• Urging DSA to play a constructive role, as the primary focus of its work, in organizing a broad progressive coalition that can expand towards the political center to oppose that neo-fascist danger.

 
Certainly the broad coalition we need to build to oppose fascism  must include the immigrants among us. 
DSA conventions in 2021 and 2023 passed resolutions on immigrants rights, but little was achieved until now. 
 
DSA’s new International Migrants Rights working group has a good updated analysis of this work.  They say, 
 
https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/dsa-defend-migrants-rights
With the start of Donald Trump’s second term, we face once again widespread dehumanization of migrants, mainstream calls for mass deportations, and rising racism and nativism. In just the first week of his administration, Trump has issued executive orders declaring a national emergency and sending over a thousand troops to the US-Mexico border, reinstituting the “remain in Mexico” policy blocking legal asylum claims, and seeking to end birthright citizenship. Under his direction, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has started to conduct raids across the country. 
Though fear and worry are spreading, it is important to remember that this is not the first time we have faced this threat. DSA’s newly formed International Migrant Rights Working Group (IMRWG) builds on a legacy of socialists supporting international and anticapitalist migrant struggles and fighting against organized border imperialism and mass deportation
To consider the needed participation of popular working class organizations and unity see here. 
https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fascism-and-resistance-all-of-us-or-none/?
 
 
The UFW was founded in the early 1960’s of the United Farm Workers (UFW) by Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz and others. The UFW joined the AFL-CIO.
 
NAFTA,  The North American Free Trade Agreement passed by the U.S. Congress in  1994,  has produced  massive migrations of exploited workers, refugees, displaced farmers, and  agricultural workers, as a result of an  unjust global political and economic system ( neo liberalism) that works for the benefit of transnational corporations and at the expense of working people. Most of the jobs created in Mexico come without benefits and without a written contract.  
​
Much of the current wave of migration to the United States from
Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean can be traced to NAFTA , and the 2017 updated CAFTA, and other unjust “free trade” agreements that enabled subsidized U.S. agribusiness to flood these societies with cheap produce, destroying the livelihoods of millions of small farmers and other rural workers. 
            NAFTA created a loss of over 680,000  jobs in the U.S. and over a million jobs in Mexico. People who lost their jobs moved to the cities or to the U.S. producing immigration.  NAFTA was a trade agreement for the corporations.  U.S. owned transnational corporations, including  Ford, Chrysler, Apple, and more eliminated jobs in the U.S. and moved these jobs to other nations where labor was cheaper. 
            Economic change forced by NAFTA made a small group of people in Mexico much richer, and a group of people in the U.S. much richer, but it made the vast majorities in both countries poorer.  
 
         A  goal of trade agreements is to make it profitable  for U.S. corporations to relocate their manufacturing  to Mexico and other developing countries. This has the effect of putting U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world.  This eliminate manufacturing jobs in the U.S.  and it pressures U.S. workers and unions to accept concessionary bargaining to keep jobs here. 
For more on the role of immigration see
https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/steps-toward-a-labor-informed-position-on-immigration
and here:
https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/dsa-defend-migrants-rights
 
The UFW was the  first successful union of farm workers in  U.S. history. There had been more than ten prior attempts to build a farm workers’ union.   Each of the prior attempts was destroyed by racism and corporate power. Chávez and Huerta chose to build a union that incorporated the strategies of social movements and community organizing and allied itself  with churches, students,  and organized labor.  The successful creation of the UFW changed the nature of labor organizing in the Southwest and contributed significantly to the birth of Latino politics in the U.S. The UFW showed unions that immigrants can and must be organized.    
 
Both Chavez and ( former  DSA Honorary) Chair Dolores Huerta have received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and have been recognized by the U.S. Department of Labor and in the California Hall of Fame for their work. 
 
Dolores Huerta remains active as a staunch advocate for women’s rights and reproductive freedom.  She was an honorary DSA chair, a founding board member of the Feminist Majority Foundation and a member of the board of Ms. Magazine.  She is active in Democratic Party conventions and campaigns and frequently speaks at universities and organizational forums and union halls  on issues of social justice and public policy. Huerta  continues to develop community leaders and to advocate for the working poor, immigrants, women and youth as president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation.
 
César Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz, and others deliberately created a multiracial union. Mexican, Mexican-American, Filipino, African-American, Dominican, Puerto Rican and Arab workers, among others, have been part of the UFW.  This cross-racial organizing  was necessary in order to combat the  prior divisions and exploitations of workers based upon race and language. Dividing the workers on racial and language lines, as well as immigration status,  always left the corporations the winners.
 
In the 60's, Chávez and Huerta became the pre-eminent civil rights leaders for Mexican and Chicano workers, helping with local union struggles throughout the nation.  They worked tirelessly to make people aware of the struggles of farm workers for better pay and safer working conditions. It is a testament to their skills and courage that the UFW even survived. They were opposed by major interests in corporate agriculture, including the Bruce Church and Gallo Corporations as well as the leadership of the Republican Party, then led by  Ronald Reagan.   Workers were fired, beaten, threatened and even killed in pursuit of union benefits . Non-union  farm workers today  continue to live on  sub-poverty wages while producing abundant crops in the richest valley, in the richest state, in the richest nation in the world.  
 
In response to corporate power, Chavez developed new strategies such as the boycott, based upon  his personal   commitment to  non-violence in the tradition of Ghandi and  Martin Luther King Jr.  César Chavez died in his sleep on April 23, 1993 near Yuma, Arizona. 
 
Today Mexican, Mexican-American and Latino  union leadership is common  in our major cities and in several  industries and Latino union leaders increasingly play an important role in local, state, and national elections.  For example, the mobilization of Latino families and voters was critical to the re-election of Barack Obama.  The UFW was a school for organizing.  Hundreds of activists in labor and community organizations owe their skills to UFW training and experience.    Along with improved working conditions, salaries, and benefits for the unionized workers, training this cadre of organizers remains a major legacy of the UFW.
 
The UFW is also known for helping to create the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975, under then-Governor Jerry Brown, which gives farm workers collective bargaining rights.  The law was made necessary by a 1972 Teamsters Union raid on UFW contracts.  Sadly, the victory was only partial. While farm workers are often able to win elections under the ALRB, they seldom can win a contract.  Growers stall and delay until the workers leave the area. 
 
Today, only about 5,000  farm workers enjoy benefits on the job. Wages and benefits in non union  farm labor have again been reduced to the pre-union levels.  
Thousands of new immigrants harvest the crops, often indigenous Zapotec and Mixtec people from the south of Mexico, and only a small percent are in unions.  The new generations of immigrants and migrant labor hardly know Chavez’s name nor the UFW’s contributions. Yet, in other regions immigrants are being organized into unions such as Justice for Janitors and Unite/Here by activists who learned their organizing skills working with the UFW. And, Latino political leaders often made their first commitments on a UFW picket line.
 
Chavez taught us that all organizations have problems, that all organizations are imperfect. Many curriculum packages for schools stress his emphasis on service to others.  The union experienced both external and internal conflicts. But building popular organizations, while messy, builds people's power and democracy. In creating the UFW, Chavez and Huerta organized thousands into a union and inspired millions. 
 
The organizing side of the UFW legacy changed the Southwest and organized labor.      The movement led by Chavez and Huerta reduced the oppression of farm workers. Many people, descendents of earlier generations of farm workers, learned to take a stand for justice.  They learned to not accept poor jobs, poor pay, or unsafe working conditions as natural or inevitable.  Rather, these are social creations which can be changed through organizing for economic and political power.    
 
Today, thousands of new immigrants harvest the crops, often indigenous Zapotec and Mixtec people from the south of Mexico, and only a small percent are in unions.  The new generations of immigrants and migrant labor hardly know Chavez’s name nor the UFW’s contributions. Yet, in other regions immigrants are being organized into unions such as Justice for Janitors and Unite/Here by activists who learned their organizing skills working with the UFW. And, Latino political leaders often made their first commitments on a UFW picket line.
 
The generation that created the UFW is passing. A new generation of political activists, mostly within the Democratic Party, has emerged since the Chavez generation.  Organizing the May Day 2006 massive immigrant rights demonstrations was significantly assisted by persons trained within the UFW.  A new, significant Latino union and political base has been created in the nation. 
 
Chavez's and Huerta’s legacy is significant for popular struggles, Chicano/Mexicano self-determination and immigrant workers’ unions.  The UFW taught us how to organize for power and for justice.  Chavez is present in all of our work.  You can find out more about this remarkable leader at www.ufw.org; http://www.chavezfoundation.org/;
http://www.farmworkermovement.org/ 
 
Duane Campbell is professor emeritus of bilingual/multicultural education at California State University-Sacramento; author of Choosing Democracy: A Practical Guide to Multicultural Education, 4th Edition, (Allyn and Bacon,2010); and former chair of Sacramento DSA.
He currently serves on the steering committee of the North Star Caucus.,
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

​Faculty Unions Sue Trump Administration Over Free Speech.  3/25.
NEW YORK– The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the AFT today sued the Trump administration on behalf of their members for unlawfully cutting off $400 million in federal funding for crucial public health research to force Columbia University to surrender its academic independence. While the Trump administration has been slashing funding since its first days in office, this move represents a stunning new tactic: using cuts as a cudgel to coerce a private institution to adopt restrictive speech codes and allow government control over teaching and learning.
The plaintiffs, who represent members of Columbia University faculty in both the humanities and sciences, allege that this coercive tactic not only undermines academic independence, but stops vital scientific research that contributes to the health and prosperity of all Americans. The terminated grants supported research on urgent issues, including Alzheimer’s disease prevention, fetal health in pregnant women, and cancer research.
The Trump administration’s unprecedented demands, and threats of similar actions against 60 universities, have created instability and a deep chilling effect on college campuses across the country.  Although the administration claims to be acting to combat antisemitism under its authority to prevent discrimination, it has completely disregarded the requirements of Title VI, the statute that provides it with that authority–requirements that exist to prevent the government from exercising too much unfettered control over funding recipients. According to the complaint, the cancellation of federal funds also violates the First Amendment, the separation of powers, and other constitutional provisions.
“The Trump administration’s threats and coercion at Columbia are part of a clear authoritarian playbook meant to crush academic freedom and critical research in American higher education. Faculty, students, and the American public will not stand for it. The repercussions extend far beyond the walls of the academy. Our constitutional rights, and the opportunity for our children and grandchildren to live in a democracy are on the line,” said Todd Wolfson, president of the AAUP.
“President Trump has taken a hatchet to American ingenuity, imagination and invention at Columbia to attack academic freedom and force compliance with his political views,” saidAFT President Randi Weingarten. “Let’s be clear: the administration should tackle legitimate issues of discrimination. But this modern-day McCarthyism is not just an illegal attack on our nation’s deeply held free speech and due process rights, it creates a chilling effect that hinders the pursuit of knowledge—the core purpose of our colleges and universities. Today, we reject this bullying and resolve to challenge the administration’s edicts until they are rescinded.”
“We’re seeing university leadership across the country failing to take any action to counter the Trump administration’s unlawful assault on academic freedom,” said Reinhold Martin, president of Columbia-AAUP and professor of architecture. “As faculty, we don’t have the luxury of inaction. The integrity of civic discourse and the freedoms that form the basis of a democratic society are under attack. We have to stand up.”
The complaint alleges that the Trump administration’s broad punitive tactics are indicative of an attempt to consolidate power over higher education broadly. According to the complaint, the administration is simultaneously threatening other universities with similar punishment in order to chill dissent on specific topics and speech with which the administration disagrees. Trump administration officials have spoken publicly about their plans to “bankrupt these universities” if they don’t “play ball.”
Universities have historically been engines of innovation in critical fields like technology, national security, and medical treatments. Cuts to that research will ultimately harm the health, prosperity and security of all Americans.
“Columbia is the testing ground for the Trump administration’s tactic to force universities to yield to its control,” said Orion Danjuma, counsel at Protect Democracy. “We are bringing this lawsuit to protect higher education from unlawful government censorship and political repression.”
The lawsuit was filed in the Southern District of New York and names as defendants the government agencies that cut Columbia’s funding on March 7 and signed the March 13 letter to Columbia laying out the government's demands required to restore the funding, including the Department of Justice, Department of Education, Health and Human Services and General Services Administration. The plaintiffs are represented by Protect Democracy and Altshuler Berzon LLP.
The full complaint can be read here.
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About the American Association of University Professors
 
 

North Star Steering Committee Endorses April 5th National Day of Action
Update: 
According to Ashik, the NPC SC just voted to approve sponsoring the April 5th demonstrations. Details forthcoming. Great work!”
​
 
Although  there were fewer responses to the recent survey of NS members than the SC had hoped for, the results are clear:

1. Should NS continue as a caucus -  yes
2. Should NS be involved in the resistance – yes
3. Should NS push DSA as a whole to become involved in the resistance – yes.

 
In response to these results, the North Star Steering Committee, at their March meeting, discussed the importance of working with an existing coalition, currently led by Indivisibles, but with widespread national support.
 
The Steering Committee took the following actions/.  .:

1. NS endorses the National Day of Action scheduled for April 5th; and
2. NS will urge that the NPC also endorse the April 5th Day of Action and will urge other caucuses to also endorse the April 5th action.    

 
The April 5th National Day of Action is a mobilization against the Musk/Trump political and economic attack on all of us.  Please join – or help organize – one of the many events near you.
 
More information on April 5th can be found here:  https://handsoff2025.com/?SQF_SOURCE=indivisible  and
Here: https://act.womensmarch.com/survey/April5Pledge_Typeofaction/ and
Here: https://www.mobilize.us/handsoff/?tag_ids=26053  (and other places)
 
Bill Barclay and Barbara Joye, for the NS SC

 
Defeat Fascism/Fight for Democracy
List of opportunities: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cRIJsSJwtF72ckJ8QLQu5cDCGnoeh5OIIjwqRkDKdBg/edit?usp=sharing

 
Defend Migrants’ Rights -DSA
David Cisneros.
With the start of Donald Trump’s second term, we face once again widespread dehumanization of migrants, mainstream calls for mass deportations, and rising racism and nativism. In just the first week of his administration, Trump has issued executive orders declaring a national emergency and sending over a thousand troops to the US-Mexico border, reinstituting the “remain in Mexico” policy blocking legal asylum claims, and seeking to end birthright citizenship. Under his direction, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has started to conduct raids across the country. 
Though fear and worry are spreading, it is important to remember that this is not the first time we have faced this threat. DSA’s newly formed International Migrant Rights Working Group (IMRWG) builds on a legacy of socialists supporting international and anticapitalist migrant struggles and fighting against organized border imperialism and mass deportation. 
Eighty-five years ago Guatemalan-American labor organizer and socialist Luisa Moreno delivered her now-famous “Caravans of Sorrow” speech to the Fourth Annual Conference of the American Committee for Protection of the Foreign Born in Washington, D.C. In her speech, she decried the government-sponsored “repatriation” campaigns of the early and mid 1930s, which had led to up to one million Mexican immigrant and Mexican-American citizens being forcibly or “voluntarily” (at the end of much coercion and racism) deported to Mexico. At the time, local and federal officials, and even some labor leaders, such as the American Federation of Labor, called for this mass removal, claiming that Mexicans were stealing jobs from citizens and creating social problems. Moreno challenged these claims, showing that the U.S. economy, especially in the Southwest, had been built on the backs of migrants. She pointed to the real villains, the agribusiness companies exploiting migrants to get rich. Moreno stated: 
“What would the Imperial Valley, the Rio Grande Valley, and other rich irrigated valleys in the Southwest be without the arduous, self-sacrificing labor of these noncitizen Americans? . . . Has anyone counted the miles of railroads built by these same noncitizens? One can hardly imagine how many bales of cotton have passed through the nimble fingers of Mexican men, women, and children. And what conditions have they had to endure to pick that cotton? . . . These people are not aliens. They have contributed their endurance, sacrifices, youth, and labor to the Southwest. Indirectly, they have paid more taxes than all the stockholders of California’s industrialized agriculture, the sugar beet companies and the large cotton interests that operate or have operated with the labor of Mexican workers. Surely the sugar beet growers have not been asked if they want to dispense with the skilled labor cultivating and harvesting their crops season after season. It is only the large interests, their stooges, and some badly misinformed people who claim that Mexicans are no longer wanted.”
Moreno fought against mass removals and migrant exploitation on multiple fronts. She was an organizer for the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America, a union chartered by the Congress of Industrial Organizations that organized many Mexican, Asian, and black women in canning and food processing. Moreno also co-founded (with several other Latina communists) the Congress of Spanish Speaking Peoples (El Congreso de Pueblos de Habla Español), one of the first leftist Latinx and immigrant rights organizations, as part of a broader popular front against racial and capitalist fascism in the US.  
As we face the most recent rise of nativist campaigns for mass removal, DSA’s IMRWG, newly reformed in 2024, is drawing from this and more recent struggles for socialist internationalism and migrant justice. Over the last year, the IMRWG has been bringing together seasoned organizers from previous immigrant rights campaigns across DSA with new organizers and chapters. We’ve been reaching out to national immigrant justice organizations to create an anti-imperialist and abolitionist movement against borders and for freedom for immigrants. 
The IMRWG was reformed in the summer of 2024 as the Biden administration reinstituted Trump’s asylum bans and as congressional Democrats pushed for a draconian border bill, which was eventually scuttled by Republicans at the command of Trump. Members of the International Committee, the Abolition Working Group, and the former DSA Immigrant Rights Working Group wrote a “Statement on Migration and International Solidarity Between Working People” that was approved by NPC in August. 
In the fall, the group organized a “Solidarity Across Borders” webinar series that featured four interconnected discussions on border and migration issues. Session 1, “Understanding Border Imperialism,” featured activist and scholar Aviva Chomsky speaking about how U.S. imperialism and neoliberal capitalism fuels migration. In the second session, Marcela Hernandez from the organization Detention Watch Network connected migration to abolition, speaking about the importance of “Resisting Mass Incarceration and Migrant Detention.” Session 3, titled “Resisting the International Reach of the ICE/CBP Agenda,” brought Margerita Nuñez from the Colective de Monitoreo in Mexico to speak about how the U.S. immigration enforcement regime is extended throughout Mexico and Central America. In the fourth and final session, Valeria Ramirez, David Abud, and Brandon Mancilla, members of DSA’s National Labor Commission, spoke about the need to resist exploitation and build organized labor power among migrant communities. In addition to these political education efforts, the IMRWG also coordinated with YDSA and the Cornell grad union in a successful campaign to fight the expulsion from Cornell of DSA-member and migrant Momodou Taal.
Since the 2024 election, the IMRWG has worked with local chapters and the NPC to build a coordinated and sustainable organizing response to Trump’s nativist agenda. Over 150 people joined a post-election strategy call, Defending Migrant Rights in 2025, to strategize about how to fight at the local level against expansion of deportation and detention and for worker’s rights for migrants. At this meeting, the working group launched its organizing support program for chapters, where experienced immigrant rights organizers can coach chapters interested in doing local migrant rights work. 
This month, in another mass call on January 12, the working group launched the Defend Migrant Rights Toolkit, another pillar in our efforts to build migrant justice organizing across DSA. In addition to offering tools for power mapping and advice on building coalitions with local migrant rights organizations, the toolkit shares concrete examples and strategies for chapter campaigns and actions such as know-your-rights trainings, ICE watch, and building sanctuary networks. Along with this toolkit, the IMRWG will be launching a coaching program to support a cohort of DSA chapters committed to building local migrant rights organizing projects.
One of our central principles is the importance of working in respectful and productive coalition with the wide variety of organizations in the migrant rights ecosystem, many of whom have decades of experience in local and regional efforts to improve conditions for migrants and building bridges of solidarity between communities across race, language and nationality. We are also committed to organizing against all forms of carceral control, seeing migrant detention as central to broader systems of mass incarceration. 
The IMRWG draws on a legacy and present of socialist, internationalist, and coalitional migrant organizing. As Moreno’s organizing history attests, we aim to work intentionally and carefully with multiple organizations, from labor unions to national and international migrant justice organizations. The “large interests” and their stooges are emboldened by Trump’s victory, and they see the chance to exploit and expel migrants even more vehemently. 
To help IMRWG defend migrant rights in 2025, sign our individual interest form to get involved with the working group. Chapters should fill out the chapter interest form to schedule a visit from a working group member to a chapter meeting, request a coaching session from an experienced migrant rights organizer, and check out the toolkit for more resources. 
Finally, on Tuesday, February 25, join the IMRWG for “Immigration 101: No Human Is Illegal” to learn more about how the immigration system works and how we got to where we are today. 


DAVID CISNEROS IS A MEMBER OF CHAMPAIGN-URBANA DSA, AND A MEMBER OF THE DSA INTERNATIONAL MIGRANT RIGHTS WORKING GROUP, THE ABOLITION WORKING GROUP, AND THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE.
Reposted from Democratic Left.
 

Together, we must fight for our long-held values and work with people around the world who share them
Bernie Sanders
Fri 28 Feb 2025
For 250 years, the United States has held itself up as a symbol of democracy – an example of freedom and self-governance to which the rest of the world could aspire. People have long looked to our declaration of independence and constitution as blueprints for how to guarantee those human rights and freedoms.
Tragically, all of that is changing. As Donald Trump moves this country towards authoritarianism, he is aligning himself with dictators and despots who share his disdain for democracy and the rule of law.
This week, in a radical departure from longstanding US policy, the Trump administration voted against a United Nations resolution which clearly stated that Russia began the horrific war with Ukraine. That resolution also called on Russia to withdraw its forces from occupied Ukraine, in line with international law. The resolution was brought forward by our closest allies, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and dozens more democratic nations. And 93 countries voted “yes”.
Rather than side with our longstanding allies to preserve democracy and uphold international law, the president voted with authoritarian countries such as Russia, North Korea, Iran and Belarus to oppose the resolution. Many of the other opponents of that resolution are undemocratic nations propped up by Russian military aid.
Let’s be clear: this was not just another UN vote. This was the president of the United States turning his back on 250 years of our history and openly aligning himself with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. This was the president of the United States undermining the independence of Ukraine.
And let us not forget who Putin is. He is the man who crushed Russia’s movement towards democracy after the end of the cold war. He steals elections, murders political dissidents and crushes freedom of the press. He has maintained control in Russia by offering the oligarchs there a simple deal: if you give me absolute power, I will let you steal as much as you want from the Russian people. He sparked the bloodiest war in Europe since the second world war.
It has been three years since Russia’s brutal, unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine. More than 1 million people have been killed or injured because of Putin’s aggression. Every single day, Russia rains down hundreds of missiles and drones on Ukrainian cities. Putin’s forces have massacred civilians and kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian children, bringing them back to Russian “re-education” camps. These atrocities led the international criminal court to issue an arrest warrant for Putin in 2023 as a war criminal.
Not only is Trump aligning himself with Putin’s Russia, he is prepared to extort Ukraine for its natural resources. While a proud nation desperately fights for its life, Trump is focused on helping his billionaire friends make a fortune excavating rare earths and other minerals.
But Trump’s turn toward authoritarianism and rejection of international law goes well beyond Ukraine.
The president sees the world’s dictators as his friends, our democratic allies as his enemies and the use of military force as the way to achieve his goals. Disgracefully, he wants to push 2.2 million Palestinians out of their homeland in order to build a billionaire’s playground in Gaza. He talks openly about annexing Greenland from Denmark. He says the United States should take back the Panama canal. And he ruptures our friendship with our Canadian neighbors by telling them they should become the 51st state in the union.
Alongside his fellow oligarchs in Russia, Saudi Arabia and around the globe, Trump wants a world ruled by authoritarians in which might makes right, and where democracy and moral values cease to exist.
Just over a century ago, a handful of monarchs, emperors and tsars ruled most of the world. Sitting in extreme opulence, they claimed that absolute power was their “divine right”. But ordinary people disagreed.
Slowly and painfully, in countries throughout the world, they clawed their way toward democracy and rejected colonialism.
At our best, the US has played a key role in the movement toward freedom. From Gettysburg to Normandy, millions of Americans have fought – and many have died – to defend democracy, often alongside brave men and women from other nations.
This is a turning point – a moment of enormous consequence in world history. Do we go forward toward a more democratic, just and humane world? Or do we retreat back into oligarchy, authoritarianism, colonialism and the rejection of international law?
As Americans, we cannot stay quiet as Trump abandons centuries of our commitment to democracy. Together, we must fight for our long-held values and work with people around the world who share them.
 
 
 

Ukraine Solidarity Under the Trump Administration
by Ukraine Solidarity Network (US) | Feb 22, 2025 | 0 comments
 
On the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the United States under the Trump administration is now pushing negotiations for a “peace” settlement. The Ukraine Solidarity Network-U.S. (USN) opposes any attempt to impose a settlement that is not acceptable to the Ukrainian people.
Anyone with an ounce of compassion wants this war to end as soon as possible, but it is morally unacceptable for outsiders to demand that Ukraine surrender. USN continues to support the right of the Ukrainian people to self-determination and to decide for themselves what are acceptable terms for a peace deal. USN will continue to build moral, political, and material support for the people of Ukraine in their resistance to Russia’s invasion, to its occupation of Ukrainian lands, and to its repressive rule over people in the Russian-occupied territories. USN will continue to support Ukraine’s war of resistance, its right to determine the means and objectives of its own struggle, and its right to obtain the weapons it needs from any available source.
USN opposes the changes for the worse in US policy on Ukraine under the new Trump administration. The Biden administration at least condemned Russia’s illegal war of aggression and supported Ukraine’s self-defense, even if that military aid came with many strings attached and was often too little and too late to defeat the Russian army on Ukrainian land.
More;

https://www.ukrainesolidaritynetwork.us/ukraine-solidarity-under-the-trump-administration/
 

 
So there is work to be done to make them (resistance organizations)  better. It best proceeds from joining with Indivisible and others on the local level and forming an ongoing campaign structure, one that can invite others to take part in the local leadership.
 
Carl Davidson,
https://carldavidson.substack.com/p/leftlinks-weekly-for-feb-21-2025?
Left Links.
The country is still divided after one month of Trump in power. But the numbers today are more like 45% for Trump and 55% anti-Trump, or even 40% over 60%. Rachel Maddow did an excellent survey last night, Feb. 20, on MSNBC, if you want the details. This means the Trump-Musk regime is still strong, but now we have the wind at our back. There is a progressive majority out there, and it’s starting to wake up. But it’s still not organized as well as it needs to be. Still, now we have an edge.
So, who are the current leaders of the 50501 insurgency? Our best estimate is three components. First is a combination of Indivisible, Our Revolution, and the Justice Democrats, all outgrowths of the Bernie campaigns that combined electoral work with mass actions.
Second, it is a militant minority and a critical force of young people. Many of them appear to be based in the ecological Sunrise movement, and a variety of NGO advocates for Black rights, reproductive rights, immigrant rights, and queer rights. The usual suspects on the ultraleft—Party of Liberation and Socialism, several factions of DSA, Workers World, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), and Socialist Alternative—all seemed to have been caught flat-footed by the erupting events. Some jumped in to go with the flow, while others covered them with some restraint, trying to figure out where they might fit in or not.
The third component was labor or a section of it. The most obvious were the federal workers being thrown out of their jobs, the AFGE, and other unions. They have formed a wide and informal ‘Federal Unionist Network’ or FUN to mobilize for the protests. Others are Nurses United and the Communications Workers, both longtime backers of Bernie, plus the Working Families Party, and the Progressive Democrats of America.
The exact components and size of the 50501 protests, naturally, have varied from state to state. But several things are held in common. First, the main blow is against the Trump-Musk regime and fascism, combined with a wide defense of democracy. Groups are free to bring whatever demands and banners they like, but this is the main thrust. Second, they insist they are not interested in civil disobedience at this point, peaceful or otherwise. They want no confrontations with the police. Third, while critical of those Democrats still sitting on their hands, they welcome them to change and join the fight, along with dissident independents and GOPers as well.
So there is work to be done to make them better. It best proceeds from joining with Indivisible and others on the local level and forming an ongoing campaign structure, one that can invite others to take part in the local leadership. Especially important are Black Women’s groups, others fighting for people of color, and a wider range of labor organizations. Additional ocal churches should also be invited, along with student representatives from every local school and college campus. Finally, link up horizontally with similar campaigns in every nearby city so as to be able to mobilize statewide.
While this work is hard and ongoing, it requires little fuss. It’s all in tune with the emergent motion and direction.
What’s harder is building the organizations of the left. This takes some understanding, the most basic of which is ‘knowing the time of day.’ We are in a nonrevolutionary situation, not on the cusp of revolution. We fight for reforms or to reverse policies. We are on the defensive, not the offensive, and are likely to be so for some time. Even if we are in DC or our state capitals, it is not time to ‘storm the Winter Palace.’ 
Here it helps to make use of Gramsci’s distinction between ‘the war of position’ and the ‘war of movement.’ The first is where we carry out a struggle to build up our forces at the base and take ‘strong points’ in all the institutions of civil society—unions, churches, schools, community groups, and the like. The second is where the adversary is very divided and weakened, and we can and do enter a period of ‘dual power,’ where we take governing positions from the other. While these can be separated in time, it’s also worthwhile to view them as inter-connected, a ying-yang of sorts, where moments of a tactical ‘war of movement’ can take place within a strategic ‘war of position,’ and vice versa.
Let’s turn back to building the left, or the organizations of socialism. This period requires two magic weapons: a clipboard (with signup sheet and pens) and a business card (or introductory brochure or even a newspaper, a rarity these days). We do not go to events or protests without these, and we make persistent use of them when we are there. Don’t just gather with friends. Get out of your comfort zones. Talk with people you don’t know. When appropriate, get their emails and other info. Give them yours. If you find someone very close, ask them to join or come to your next meeting. As sales managers always tell their new sales people, ‘After your presentation, don’t forget to ask for the order!’
These discussions are one place where ‘going on the offensive’ is vital. We refuse to let our adversaries frame the debate. We are not interested in a discussion of how to trim government waste. We are interested in defining and determining what people need and then properly getting the government to meet those needs. We reject Reagan’s idea of the worst words in the English language, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’ We are not ‘antigovernment,’ we are against the bloodsucking vampire class of billionaire capitalists using it against us. Every step of the way, we should reject the arguments they would like to have—such as who are the deserving and undeserving poor, or who are good immigrants and bad immigrants—and counterpose those we want to have—we have the means to do away with poverty, so who does its continuation serve? Or why are people around the globe being forced to move, and how can we help and welcome them? We are all capable of doing radical education, the key link in building organization. Just never forget the educators must themselves be educated.
And sources on our Resist Fascism site.
 
Defeat Fascism/Fight for Democracy
List of opportunities: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cRIJsSJwtF72ckJ8QLQu5cDCGnoeh5OIIjwqRkDKdBg/edit?usp=sharing

What Is to Be Done – 2025.
By Duane Campbell
For more than the last year the DSA national leadership has often prioritized working to support the agenda of one part of the leadership of the Palestinian Solidarity movement  more than  consideration of the calls to respond to the dangers of a rising fascist movement in the elections of 2024.  These decisions to prioritize this form of Palestinian solidarity was made by a small majority of the members of the NPC. 
Following this direction, DSA as an organization made only marginal and localized efforts in the 2024 national election. I believe that there were substantive contributions made by individual DSA members. However, the election was won by authoritarian fascist, anti Palestinian forces. 
Clearly, the strategy of this militant segment of the Palestinian solidarity forces has failed and the strategy of DSA’s national leadership following them also failed.  While organizing against U.S. aid to the Israeli government and against the genocide was  appropriate, honorable, and needed, ignoring the consequences of a victory for fascist forces in the 2024 election  was obviously a failure. While the Palestinian electoral abstention effort did not cause the electoral loss by itself, along with DSA it was one of several constituencies that contributed to the loss.   Each group had their own reasons.  I am not blaming the abstention effort for the Democratic Party loss. 
 I am saying, OK ! You have tried that. It did not work.  Now what?
The strategy failed.  The Palestinian people are worse off  as a consequence of the election victory of the Trump/ fascist forces.  For evidence of the failure – just look at Gaza.  And, take a look at Trump’s proposal for Gaza.
Although the Palestinian solidarity movement in the U.S. is militant, well organized, and influential in DSA, the strategy still failed. It failed the Palestinians, the Ukrainians, Afghan refugees, at least 11 million working people in the U.S. and millions worldwide who have lost food and medical assistance in the last 3 weeks. 
The U.S. is presently experiencing a coup by right wing fascist forces.  They have gained control of the federal government.  They have cut funding for health care, food support, education, air traffic safety, FEMA assistance and more.  They are mounting a full-scale assault on U.S. labor. And, they are seeking to deport at least 11 million workers.  We must pay attention to the domestic forces of fascism. 
We have 4-6 months to stop this coup.  After that it will be much more difficult to oppose these forces.( see the history of Chile and many others).  The MAGA /fascists seek to return to a form of government that existed in the U.S. South from 1876 until 1960, and a form that existed in South Africa until 1992. 
What should DSA do?  What should North Star do?
WE should reverse course, stop tailing after the failed strategy of one section of the effort prioritizing the Palestine solidarity movement (which has failed), and join with other popular forces to defend the working class from the takeover by an oligarchy.  We should turn left and make defense of the working class our priority. If we lose this battle the pain for working people will grow. The fascist government will reverse much of the social progress of the last forty years prior to the November election.  If the fascists can consolidate their electoral victory It will require decades of work, struggle, and pain to gain back the democratic rights we had prior to the November election.
 Largely performative actions such as the recent demonstrations called for by PSL and others that are not connected to a realistic analysis of the political terrain are of secondary importance.
DSA should engage with others  such as those listed below operating from realistic assessments of political strategies to build the pro-democracy defenses of our rights, our liberties, and the constitution. 
 
Next steps for turning left developed by many organizations are available on our Defeat Fascism/Fight for Democracy pages.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cRIJsSJwtF72ckJ8QLQu5cDCGnoeh5OIIjwqRkDKdBg/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.es6myhajhn20
DSA should join the resistance.  There are plans, strategies, organizing guides and links to active organizations in the resistance.
Duane Campbell.
Sacramento, California. 
An individual opinion. Not a caucus  decision. 
 

Focus on the coup
 
Imagine if it had gone like this. 
Ten Tesla cybertrucks, painted in camouflage colors with a giant X on each roof, drive noisily through Washington DC. Tires screech. Out jump a couple of dozen young men, dressed in red and black Devil’s Champion armored costumes. After giving Nazi salutes, they grab guns and run to one government departmental after another, calling out slogans like “all power to Supreme Leader Skibidi Hitler.”
Historically, that is what coups looked like. The center of power was a physical place. Occupying it, and driving out the people who held office, was to claim control. So if a cohort of armed men with odd symbols had stormed government buildings, Americans would have recognized that as a coup attempt. 
And that sort of coup attempt would have failed. 

[Timothy Snyder. Author of On Tyranny; Twenty Lessons from The Twentieth Century]
Now imagine that, instead, the scene goes like this.
A couple dozen young men go from government office to government office, dressed in civilian clothes and armed only with zip drives. Using technical jargon and vague references to orders from on high, they gain access to the basic computer systems of the federal government. Having done so, they proceed to grant their Supreme Leader access to information and the power to start and stop all government payments.
That coup is, in fact, happening. And if we do not recognize it for what it is, it could succeed.
In the third decade of the twenty first century, power is more digital than physical. The buildings and the human beings are there to protect the workings of the computers, and thus the workings of the government as a whole, in our case an (in principle) democratic government which is organized and bounded by a notion of individual rights.
The ongoing actions by Musk and his followers are a coup because the individuals seizing power have no right to it. Elon Musk was elected to no office and there is no office that would give him the authority to do what he is doing. It is all illegal. It is also a coup in its intended effects: to undo democratic practice and violate human rights. 
In gaining data about us all, Musk has trampled on any notion of privacy and dignity, as well as on the explicit and implicit agreements made with our government when we pay our taxes or our student loans. And the possession of that data enables blackmail and further crimes.
In gaining the ability to stop payments by the Department of the Treasury, Musk would also make democracy meaningless. We vote for representatives in Congress, who pass laws that determine how our tax money is spent. If Musk has the power to halt this process at the level of payment, he can make laws meaningless. Which means, in turn, that Congress is meaningless, and our votes are meaningless, as is our citizenship.
https://open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p/the-logic-of-destruction?
 
It is a coup.  Focus on the coup.
 
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS.  Feb. 5, 2025.

FEB 5
From the beginning, the idea has been to overwhelm you. To flood the zone, as Steve Bannon promised, with so much stuff that the media would not be able to process it in time—like a butcher saddled with too much meat for the throughput of a single grinder.
But you do not have to consent to being flooded. Do not participate in the fragmenting of your attention so far and so wide that you cannot prioritize, you cannot see bigger patterns, you cannot identify the merely unwise policies from the flagrantly illegal and unconstitutional ones.
Of all the things going on—including other baldly unlawful actions such as attempting to gut birthright citizenship and to fire people who did their jobs investigating insurrectionists—the single thing we should be most focused on right now, the first among equals of this corrupt and boorish new administration, is this:
The handing over of the keys to the American Republic by a mendacious president to a megalomaniacal oligarch. Elon Musk is a wealthy private citizen who, relatively late in the game, happened to become a Trump supporter when he saw which way the wind was blowing. Now he has burrowed his way into the bowels of the federal government and is waging what can only be called an anti-constitutional coup.
He is deep in the systems of the United States Treasury Department, including payment systems related to your taxes. He is within reach of the most sensitive and private information you have—information you may have always trusted was safe and should not trust anymore. He is rampaging through other federal agencies, claiming the authority to fire people. He has attempted to shut down the federal aid agency USAID, boasting of feeding it to the wood chipper.
There are now fevered speculations about where he and his young coder minions will go next: the Department of Labor? HR records of every federal employee?
What Musk is doing right now, along with Donald Trump—but also usurping Trump’s at least elected authority—is waging a coup against the Constitution of the United States. Undermining the basic distribution of power within the American constitutional order. Usurping the power of Congress for a private citizen who happens to be very rich.
You may have voted for whoever you voted for; you may have done so for whatever reasons you did. But surely the desire to be ruled by Elon Musk was not one of them.
https://open.substack.com/pub/anandwrites/p/icymi-focus-on-the-coup?
 

​The U.S. has repeatedly tried to remove nonwhite people from society, often leading to generational trauma.
 January 31, 2025
By
 Kate Morrissey
 
President Donald Trump has wasted little time since returning to the White House carrying through on his vows to stop certain immigrants from coming to the United States and to remove many who are here. Over the past months, Capital & Main has explored and reported on migrants and asylum seekers who’ve been detained at the border, examining their fate and the rules that keep them in custody. This is the first in a two-part series looking at the history of mass deportations in the United States and what it portends for the future.


 
Pedro Rios’ paternal grandparents were both born in the United States, yet the government forced them to move to Mexico in the 1930s. They were teenagers at the time.
Rios, the director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S./Mexico Border Program, guesses that government officials sent his grandparents on trains to the border, but he doesn’t know the story. That’s because neither of them talked about the experience. 
He said his grandmother seemed to be unable to forgive the part of herself that led her to be expelled from her home country.
“She despised being Mexican to some extent,” Rios said. “I think it was because of the discrimination that she lived through.”
Over its history, the United States has repeatedly worked to exclude and remove people in moments when xenophobic, nativist and white supremacist voices have been able to sway public opinion towards fear, including the exclusion of Chinese immigrants, forced removals of Mexicans and Mexican Americans and the relocation and incarceration of Japanese and Japanese Americans. The result of those efforts was often generational trauma, with elders unable to talk about what they went through, as in the case of Rios’ family. 
Now, with promises of mass deportation from the Trump administration, many academics see that history poised to repeat itself. 
Roberto D. Hernández, a professor of Chicano and Chicana studies at San Diego State University, said the racialization of Mexican and Mexican American people during deportation efforts of the 1930s and 1950s is similar to the messaging from white supremacist groups today. 
“This kind of fear has long-term generational consequences,” said Kevin Johnson, a professor of law and Chicano studies at the University of California Davis. 
Rios has witnessed that first hand.
“It’s unfortunate that the politics take precedence over people’s lives and the destruction that separation and forcefully removing people from their homes causes to family,” Rios said.
Rooted in Racism
From their earliest appearances, the United States’ laws, policies and practices that limited certain nationalities’ ability to come or to stay were tinged with racist concerns about nonwhite men marrying white women and with fears that immigrants would take jobs and other opportunities away from people born in the United States.
In the 1800s, Western states, including California, passed laws limiting Chinese and other Asian nationalities from entering their territories, owning land and marrying white women. In 1879, California’s new constitution enabled state officials to remove immigrants that they deemed to be “detrimental to the well-being of the state.”
Johnson said vigilante groups also took it upon themselves to scare Chinese residents into leaving. In the 1870s, many Chinese workers lived in the town of Truckee, California, where they helped tunnel through mountains to complete the Transcontinental Railroad.
One night in 1876, a group of white vigilantes went to the homes of some Chinese workers in that town and set them on fire. As the cabins burned, the vigilantes shot the people who fled, killing one. 
The vigilantes were tried for murder and acquitted by an all white jury, Johnson said. The group later received a cannon salute in celebration, and one of the members went on to become the town’s constable. The incident became known as the “Trout Creek Outrage.”
“It’s been often forgotten in California that our citizens as well as our government as well as the federal government engaged in these horrible acts,” Johnson said.
Mass Deportations
With the onset of the Great Depression, state and local officials blamed Mexican immigrants, who had previously been welcomed during the labor shortages of World War I, said Hernández, the San Diego State University professor.
Back then, Hernández said, the anti-immigrant rhetoric was purely economic. He said that’s different from the Trump administration’s tactics, which have used criminalization in addition to economic complaints to vilify immigrants. 
Though the federal government will lead deportation efforts under the Trump administration, the plans include deputizing local law enforcement to assist and pulling in military or National Guard for support. Hernández and Johnson both worry that these plans harken back to practices in the 1930s and 1950s that saw U.S. citizens deported alongside immigrants.
In the 1930s, local authorities, including police, rounded up people believed to be Mexican and sent them south. Most were taken away on trains and ships, Hernández said.
 
More: https://capitalandmain.com/fear-and-expulsion-under-trump-history-is-poised-to-repeat-itself
 
 Resistance material here.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cRIJsSJwtF72ckJ8QLQu5cDCGnoeh5OIIjwqRkDKdBg/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.es6myhajhn20
​

 Robert Reich, Jan.29.2025.
The forces of Trumpian repression and neofascism would like nothing better than for us to give up. Then they’d win it all. But we cannot allow them to. Protect the vulnerable, organize boycotts and keep fighting.

​
In light of Trump II’s predictably cruel and bonkers beginning, many people are asking: “What can I do now?” Here are 10 recommendations. 
1. Protect the decent and hardworking members of your communities who are undocumented or whose parents are undocumented. 
This is an urgent moral call to action. As Trump’s ICE begins roundups and deportations, many good people are endangered and understandably frightened. 
One of Trump’s new executive orders allows ICE to arrest undocumented immigrants at or near schools, places of worship, health care sites, shelters, and relief centers — thereby deterring them from sending their kids to school or getting help they need. 
So-called “sanctuary” cities and states have laws prohibiting their schools, public hospitals, and police from turning over undocumented individuals to the federal government or providing information about them. These are sensible policies. Otherwise undocumented people who are ill, including those with communicable diseases, won’t go to public hospitals for treatment. Parents will be reluctant to send their children to school. Crime victims who are undocumented will hesitate before reporting crimes for fear that they could then face being deported.
If you trust your mayor or city manager, check in with their offices to see what they are doing to protect vulnerable families in your community. Join others in voluntary efforts to keep ICE away from hospitals, schools, and shelters. 
Organize and mobilize your community to support it as a sanctuary city, and to support your state as a sanctuary state. Trump’s Justice Department is already launching investigations of cities and states that go against federal immigration orders, laying the groundwork for legal challenges to local laws and forcing compliance with the executive branch. Your voice and organizing could be helpful in fighting back. 
I recommend you order these red cards from Immigrant Legal Resources Center and make them available in and around your community: Red Cards / Tarjetas Rojas | Immigrant Legal Resource Center | ILRC. You might also find these of use: Immigration Preparedness Toolkit | Immigrant Legal Resource Center | ILRC.
2. Protect LGBTQ+ members of your community. Trump may make life far more difficult for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other people through executive orders, changes in laws, alterations in civil rights laws, or changes in how such laws are enforced.
His election and his rhetoric might also unleash hatefulness by bigoted people in your community. 
I urge you to work with others in being vigilant against prejudice and bigotry, wherever it might break out. When you see or hear it, call it out. Join with others to stop it. If you trust your local city officials, get them involved. If you trust your local police, alert them as well. 
3. Help protect officials in your community or state whom Trump and his administration are targeting for vengeance. Some may be low-level officials, such as election workers. If they do not have the means to legally defend themselves, you might help them or consider a GoFundMe campaign. If you hear of anyone who seeks to harm them, immediately alert local law-enforcement officials. 
4. Participate or organize boycotts of companies that are enabling the Trump regime, starting with Elon Musk’s X and Tesla, and any companies that advertise on X or on Fox News. Don’t underestimate the effectiveness of consumer boycotts. Corporations invest heavily in their brand names and the goodwill associated with them. Loud, boisterous, attention-getting boycotts can harm brand names and reduce the prices of corporations’ shares of stock. 
5. To the extent you are able, fund groups that are litigating against Trump. Much of the action over the next months and years will be in the federal courts. The groups initiating legislation that I know and trust include the American Civil Liberties Union, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, Center for Biological Diversity, Environmental Defense Fund, and Common Cause. 
6. Spread the truth. Get news through reliable sources, and spread it. If you hear anyone spreading lies and Trump propaganda, including local media, contradict them with facts and their sources. 
Here are some of the sources I currently rely on for the truth: Democracy Now, Business Insider, The New Yorker, The American Prospect, The Atlantic, Americans for Tax Fairness, Economic Policy Institute, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, The Guardian, ProPublica, Labor Notes, The Lever, Popular Information, Heather Cox Richardson, and, of course, this Substack.
7. Urge friends, relatives, and acquaintances to avoid Trump propaganda outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, X, and, increasingly, Facebook and Instagram. They are filled with hateful bigotry and toxic and dangerous lies. For some people, these propaganda sources can also be addictive; help the people you know wean themselves off them. 
8. Push for progressive measures in your community and state. Local and state governments retain significant power. Join groups that are moving your city or state forward, in contrast to regressive moves at the federal level. Lobby, instigate, organize, and fundraise for progressive legislators. Support progressive leaders. 
9. Encourage worker action. Most labor unions are on the right side — seeking to build worker power and resist repression. You can support them by joining picket lines and boycotts and encouraging employees to organize in places you patronize. 
10. Keep the faith. Do not give up on America. Remember, Trump won the popular vote by only 1.5 points. By any historical measure, this was a squeaker. In the House, the Republicans’ five-seat lead is the smallest since the Great Depression. In the Senate, Republicans lost half of 2024’s competitive Senate races, including in four states Trump won. 
America has deep problems, to be sure. Which is why we can’t give up on it — or give up the fights for social justice, equal political rights, equal opportunity, and the rule of law. The forces of Trumpian repression and neofascism would like nothing better than for us to give up. Then they’d win it all. We cannot allow them to. 
We will never give up. 
***
Beyond these, please be sure to find room in your life for joy, fun, and laughter. Do not let Trump and his darkness take you over. Just as it’s important not to give up the fight, it’s critically important to take care of yourself. If you obsess about Trump and fall down the rabbit hole of outrage, worry, and anxiety, you won’t be able to keep fighting. 

more; Resources for 2025 North Star 
Defeat Fascism / Fight for Democracy: 
Action Opportunities:
 
Defeat Fascism/Fight for Democracy 
List of opportunities: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cRIJsSJwtF72ckJ8QLQu5cDCGnoeh5OIIjwqRkDKdBg/edit?usp=sharing
​

For years and years in the corporate media, you'd only heard the word 'oligarch' preceded by the word 'Russian.' But oligarchs aren't uniquely a Russian phenomenon or a foreign concept. 
No. The United States has its own oligarchy.
When I first started talking about this, many people didn't understand what I meant. Well, that's changed.
When the 3 wealthiest men in America sit behind Trump at his inauguration, everyone understands that the billionaire class now controls our government. They also understand that one of the major functions of government policy will be to make these incredibly rich people even richer and more powerful.
When those same 3 men control some of the largest media and information distribution channels in America, everyone understands that the billionaire class now controls our media. They also understand that one of the major functions of that billionaire owned media (think Musk and twitter) will be to manufacture massive amounts of disinformation and outright lies.
When 1 of those men spent hundreds of millions of dollars to elect Donald Trump and another used his power as a newspaper owner to withhold an endorsement of Kamala Harris, everyone understands that the billionaire class now significantly controls our politics, as well. They also understand that one of the major functions of our political system is to maintain the pretense that we are a real democracy when, in fact, the average citizen has less and less impact over what goes on.
But it is not just Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. 
Today in America we have more income in wealth inequality than we have ever had. We have more concentration of ownership in the financial services sector, health care, agriculture, transportation energy, food and housing than we have ever had. We have more media consolidation than we have ever had. And we have a political system that is increasingly controlled by the billionaire class.
Add it all together and what you see is a nation and world trending very strongly toward oligarchy – where a small number of multi-billionaires exercise enormous economic and political power over everyone else. Increasingly, government is just one more entity owned by these enormously powerful forces. 
So, in the midst of all of this, where do we go from here?
First, we don’t have time to moan and groan and bury our heads in despair. Yes. Many of us are angry and frustrated at a Democratic Party establishment that continues to turn its back on the needs of working people. But our job now is not to look back, but to look forward.
Let me be clear. One of the tools that the Oligarchs use to maintain their position of power is to make it appear that real change is impossible, and opposition is useless. They have the power. Ain’t nothing we can do about it. That’s the way it is and always will be. Give up trying.
Fortunately, these masters of the universe are wrong. Very wrong. 
What history has always taught us is that real change never takes place from the top on down. It always occurs from the bottom on up. It occurs when ordinary people get sick and tired of oppression and injustice - and fight back. That is the history of the founding of our nation, the abolitionist movement, the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the environmental movement and the gay rights movement. That is how we elected dozens of progressives to Congress and made the Congressional Progressive Caucus one of the most important entities in the U.S. House of Representatives. That is the history of every effort that has brought about transformational change in our society.
It won’t be easy but, together, we will educate, organize and build an unstoppable grassroots movement around a progressive agenda that is based on the principles of justice and compassion, not greed and oligarchy. Together, we will lead the fight to create the kind of nation and world we know we can become. 
Sisters and brothers, we are right now in the midst of a struggle between a progressive movement that mobilizes around a shared vision of prosperity, security and dignity for all people, against one that defends oligarchy and massive global income and wealth inequality.
It is a struggle that, for ourselves and future generations, we cannot lose. Let us go forward together. 
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders 

Ideas Toward a Strategy 
Anca Stefan,
Bennett Carpenter,
And Nzinga Amani
 
The most critical task for the coming period will be to block MAGA forces from consolidating hegemony around their political project. With few formal political levers under our control, our ability to do so will depend on concerted, coordinated opposition from all across society. The tasks involved in doing so will vary with the political terrain.
The Convergence Editorial Board has offered some thoughts on how we can adapt our Block and Build strategy to the new political situation, and is interested in deepening the conversation. Here Liberation Road shares its perspective.  Excerpts Please email [email protected] if you have ideas to put into the mix.

Blocking the Right
The greatest risk right now is that MAGA will manage—through a combination of violent repression and distribution of privilege—to obtain the consent or acquiescence of sufficient forces to consolidate hegemony around a new governing paradigm—a framework for how society, government and the economy operate. Neoliberalism, the dominant governing framework since the 1980s, is no longer able to contain growing social, environmental, and economic contradictions, and virtually all sectors of society—including the ruling class—are unsure about how to restore equilibrium. Amidst this uncertainty, right-wing forces are attempting a “slow-motion coup” to consolidate a new long-term hegemonic power structure, rooted in authoritarianism, white Christian fundamentalism, and ethnonationalism. Their control of all branches of the federal government heightens the risk that they will succeed. 
Luckily for us, right-wing forces have not yet consolidated a hegemonic bloc around their social, political, and economic agenda. MAGA’s electoral victory, while broad, was shallow. Many of their ideas are deeply unpopular, and the “common sense” remains highly contested. With control of all levers of federal government, they may be able to impose major portions of their agenda by force and fiat; but without securing the consent of key social forces, they will not be able to consolidate their control. 


Accordingly, the most critical task for the coming period will be to block MAGA forces from consolidating hegemony around their political project. With few formal political levers under our control, our ability to do so will depend on concerted, coordinated opposition from all across society—including organized labor, social movements, churches and faith communities, students and universities, culture and media figures, civil servants, military members, and even sectors of capital. The good news is that there are many forces within and across all these social sectors who oppose the MAGA agenda or can be won over to our ranks. From black bloc anarchists to retired military generals, student radicals to soccer moms, immigrant rights groups to small-business owners, the range of forces currently or potentially opposed to Trump’s authoritarian agenda is quite broad. 
Broadening the anti-fascist front
As these examples show, however, this broad anti-fascist front contains many contradictions. Our ability to block MAGA will depend, in part, on our ability to hold together this heterogeneous coalition in the face of internal divisions and external attempts to divide us. Doing so will require us to step out of our comfort zones, embrace contradictions, and be willing to engage people with whom we have deep disagreements. We don’t need to ignore or deny those differences, but we do need to recognize our shared interest in preserving a liberal democracy (however imperfect) where our ability to struggle over those disagreements is defended. Our shared mantra must be defense of civil society, civil liberties, and civil rights. 
Thus, where differences threaten to fracture our coalition’s ability to oppose fascism, we must subordinate them to our shared commitments: to uphold core democratic principles; to oppose right-wing political violence; and to defend those targeted by the state from persecution. Where elements of our coalition waffle on these key points of unity, we must reorient them to the stakes and reorganize them to our side. Because fascists always start by targeting the “weak points” where they perceive our front as most vulnerable, it will be especially important to maintain unity around defense of fascism’s first targets: immigrants, trans people, and other “enemies within” singled out for early attacks. 
Luckily, ours is not the only front to contain deep contradictions. The fight now breaking out between tech billionaires and MAGA populists over H1B visas highlights just one of many divisions among our opponents. The “chainsaw” Elon Musk wants to take to the federal budget would wreak enormous pain on middle-class MAGA supporters. The millions of deportations the latter are clamoring for will be fiercely fought by key sectors of capital. Anti-abortion extremists are pushing policies that will be resented and resisted by everyone from Larry Hogan to Joe Rogan. We must be ready to exploit these and other divisions within the fascist bloc to weaken their front and win more forces to our side. 
Building the Left
Even as we work to strengthen the broadest possible anti-fascist front, we must work to increase the power, influence, and leadership of the Left within it. The failure of the centrist Democratic establishment to successfully defeat Trump in this election demonstrates the paucity of their ideas and the limits of their leadership—and offers left and progressive forces an opportunity to increase ours. 
To do so, our organizations will need to scale our communications, deepen our base building, and develop the infrastructure to connect mass mobilizing with deep organizing. Hundreds of thousands are looking to make sense of this loss, to understand the changed terrain, and to reorient to the tasks ahead. The Left must develop a clear vision, program, and strategy that can help people make sense of this moment, and broadcast it widely. 
Just as our ability to defeat the fascist right depends on maintaining unity across a heterogeneous anti-fascist front containing both left and centrist forces, so too our ability to successfully vie with centrist forces for greater leadership within that front will depend on a unified and coordinated effort from across the progressive and socialist Left. Indeed, precisely because we need to successfully balance those two struggles, our unity is doubly important. It is thus imperative that the Left work towards greater alignment and coordination among labor unions, independent political organizations (IPOs), elected allies, progressive groups, socialists, and mass-based social movement organizations (especially of oppressed genders and oppressed people of color). We must learn to combat what Mao called the “mountain stronghold mentality” in which each compact unit of struggle, cut off and isolated from the others, comes to view itself as the vanguard or the resistance. 
Applying this strategy to diverse terrains
The tasks of blocking the right, broadening the anti-fascist front, and building the Left will look different in red, blue, and purple states and regions:
In states, cities, and regions under Democratic control, we must refuse fascism,
creating sanctuaries and refuges where we have the power to say, “This will not happen here.” In these places, we must enshrine and defend existing rights—around abortion access, gender-affirming healthcare, immigrant justice, civil liberties, democracy, and much more. Simultaneously, we must push for bolder, transformative policies that can provide an alternative governing model to masses of people rightly disillusioned by the failures of neoliberalism. We should strive to make these regions into beacons, sending out bat signals that another, better America is possible.  
In states, cities, and regions under MAGA control, we must resist fascism.
This includes protecting our communities through sanctuary networks and community self-defense; creating alternative institutions that can provide mutual aid and community care; and using cultural resistance, protest, and acts of civil disobedience large and small to rally our people and win over public opinion. Because the Left has more experience than centrist Democrats with protest and disobedience, resistance offers us opportunities to win more leadership inside the multiracial pro-democracy front; simultaneously, we must be ready to take advantage of opportunities to bring in centrist and working-class Republicans disillusioned by MAGA rule. 
In states, cities, and regions that are “swing” districts or under divided rule, we must contest fascism.
This will involve connecting ongoing issue fights with a long-term electoral strategy. Because we know short-term parachute campaigns cannot organize the durable majorities needed to elect and protect pro-democracy candidates as part of a coordinated movement strategy to decisively defeat MAGA, the work of organizing toward the 2026 and 2028 elections must start now. Labor unions should target these areas for deep worker organizing; community-based groups should run issue campaigns; IPOs should begin prospecting, recruiting, and training candidates; sitting electeds should engage their voter base year-round; and all of these efforts need to synergize and integrate with each other as much as possible.
These three terrains are not mutually exclusive. Deep blue states contain contested districts decisive to control of Congress. Deep red states have progressive regions that can become safe havens and sanctuaries. At the national level, we are all now living in the equivalent of a red state. That means movements that have been organizing for years in red states and regions are now our best experts on how to organize within and against fascist rule. Progressives living in major metros and Democratic states sometimes forget that MAGA-dominated states in the South and Southwest contain some of the largest concentrations of Black, Indigenous, and Latine communities, the liveliest social movements, and the longest lineages of struggle. Now is a good time to listen to and learn from them. 
Refusing, resisting, and contesting right-wing authoritarianism on all three of these terrains will be important. But fights on red and blue terrain are both, in different ways, defensive battles—attempts to protect against the attacks of an authoritarian federal government (in one case with the support of local and state officials, in the other, without). Electorally, it is only on purple, contested terrain that we can mount a counter-offensive to break MAGA’s governing majorities. In Fall 2024, our forces flooded swing states and districts with dollars, staff, volunteers, and other resources, rightly recognizing that these regions were the critical fault lines that would determine whether we defeated MAGA. But we maintained this concentration of our limited resources for only a few short months. What would it look like for the Left to be that laser-focused for the next four years?
Challenging ourselves to meet the moment
The tasks outlined above are enormous, multi-faceted, and complex, and no single organization can manage them in isolation. Indeed, any talk of “building the Left” must first recognize the relative weakness and fragmentation of the socialist, labor, and social movement Left in this dire political period. Without seriously grappling with this, any call for a left strategy or program will be quixotic—a call to arms without an army.   
The reality is that we are facing this moment of fascist threat with historically low levels of organization. Our progressive non-profit organizations are many, but far too small. Our authentically mass organizations are few, and rarely consolidated around our politics. (While some mass organizations possess left leadership, few are mass left organizations, precisely because we have not yet won the working-class masses to a left politics and program.) A resurgence of popularity for labor unions has thus far failed to translate into higher levels of organization. The same can be said for renewed interest in socialism, which has not yet led to a renewal of socialist organization—with the notable exception of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which remains internally divided and disorganized.
The reality is that we are facing this moment of fascist threat with historically low levels of organization.
All these components of the social movement, labor, and socialist Left will be necessary in the fights ahead. But without greater collaboration and coordination among them, we will be unable to form a pole powerful enough to contest against both fascist forces and the backward centrist leadership of our broad democratic coalition. To implement a left strategy, we must cohere and coordinate as a Left, which will be challenging. All organizations have impulses to silo, and for left and progressive organizations these are compounded by additional factors: non-profit funding models that incentivize differentiation over collaboration, longstanding divisions within organized labor, and the socialist Left’s ingrained tendencies towards vanguardism and sectarianism. 
We don’t need to start with a total transformation—and in fact we can’t. Some have already started discussing the need for leftists and progressives to cohere around a single presidential candidate in 2028. If we are to successfully coordinate those kinds of major interventions, we must sow the seeds through multiple smaller, practical efforts that gradually increase the scope of our tactical and strategic coordination, beginning right now. This can be as simple as co-producing events, sharing draft plans with our allies while they are still in development (rather than planning first and seeking collaboration after) or even just getting in the process of asking, “Who else should be in this room right now?” This is how we can build trust, test alignment, and begin to strengthen ourselves as a cohesive Left.
The structural failures of neoliberalism and the three-fold crisis of economy, ecology, and empire have created an opening—an interregnum—where different forces compete to determine what will follow. The fight is so intense precisely because we are in a period where dramatic change is possible. This is a high-stakes political moment for the Left. Our ability to scale our organizing, break down silos, and coordinate our efforts will determine if we can meet it.

Nzinga Amani, Bennett Carpenter and Anca Stefan offer this article on behalf of the National Executive Committee of Liberation Road.
Recommended

Block and Build 2.0
By
The Editors

​As we honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I am reminded of the power of his vision. This vision continues to guide us in our work today. Dr. King's dream of equality, justice, and a "Beloved Community" resonates deeply with our shared mission at LULAC. His strong commitment to nonviolence as a force for change reminds us that unity, courage, and action make progress possible.
This year, we find ourselves at a historic crossroads. The path ahead is uncertain, and challenges are many for the Latino communities we serve across the United States and Puerto Rico. Yet, I want to assure you that our sense of purpose has never been stronger. We are not merely observing the changes around us; we are preparing and taking deliberate action to confront them with clarity and determination.
In the spirit of Dr. King's teachings, our strategic focus this year is embodied in the theme: "Mission Possible: Protecting Freedom, Justice, and Democracy in the Spirit of Nonviolence."This guiding principle underscores the importance of safeguarding the fundamental rights that Dr. King so passionately championed. It also serves as a call to action for each of us.
LULAC is moving forward with a multifaceted strategy to empower and protect our communities. One significant effort is our robust "Know Your Rights" campaign, developed in partnership with a coalition of like-minded organizations. This initiative provides critical knowledge to our communities about their rights when interacting with law enforcement, ICE, or Homeland Security. Empowering our families with this information enables them to navigate challenging situations safely.
LULAC: LEAGUE OF UNITED LATIN AMERICAN CITIZENS. 

​ 
Martin Luther King jr. 

By Jamelle Bouie
Opinion Columnist
 
The way most Americans talk about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., more than 50 years after his assassination, you might think that he gave exactly one speech — on Aug. 28, 1963, in Washington — and spoke exclusively about racial harmony and his oft-mentioned dream of integration.
But King, of course, is a more complicated figure than his sanctified image would suggest, and his body of work — his writings, speeches and interviews — is deeper and more wide-ranging than most Americans might appreciate. With our annual celebration of King’s life on the immediate horizon, I thought it would be worthwhile to look at one of his lesser-known, although by no means obscure, speeches, one in which he discusses the struggle for global peace.
King first delivered “A Christmas Sermon on Peace” on Christmas Eve, 1967, at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he served as co-pastor. He begins with an observation and a prophetic warning:
This Christmas season finds us a rather bewildered human race. We have neither peace within nor peace without. Everywhere paralyzing fears harrow people by day and haunt them by night. Our world is sick with war; everywhere we see its ominous possibilities.
“If we don’t have good will toward men in this world,” he goes on to say, “we will destroy ourselves by misuse of our own instruments and our own power.”
King wants his congregants and listeners to experiment with nonviolence in arenas beyond the struggle for racial justice in the United States. But to do that, he says, one’s moral and ethical obligations must become ecumenical rather than sectional or parochial:
Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective. No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone, and as long as we try, the more we are going to have war in this world.
“We must either learn to live together as brothers,” he says, “or we are all going to perish together as fools.”
This sets up the main message of the sermon, which is that all life is interrelated and interconnected. “We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny,” King says. “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality.”
This isn’t an idle call for personal decency; it is a reminder that in pursuit of justice, how we relate to each other in our means will affect our eventual ends.
“We will never have peace in this world,” says King, “until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.”
As King continues his sermon, he moves to familiar ground. He emphasizes the necessity of love and compassion in the struggle for equality. “I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and I’ve seen hate on the faces of too many sheriffs, too many white citizens’ councilors, and too many Klansman of the South to want to hate, myself; and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear.”
He also comments on his 1963 speech at the March on Washington, reminding his audience that his famous dream was just that, a dream, and not a reality. “I tried to talk to the nation about a dream that I had, and I must confess to you today that not long after talking about that dream I started seeing it turn into a nightmare,” he says. “I watched that dream turn into a nightmare as I moved through the ghettos of the nation and saw my Black brothers and sisters perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity, and saw the nation doing nothing to grapple with the Negroes’ problem of poverty.”
Nonetheless, King concludes his sermon by reaffirming the dream of his 1963 speech, that “every man will respect the dignity and worth of human personality,” that “the empty stomachs of Mississippi will be filled,” that “men will beat their swords into plowshares” and “justice will roll down like water.”
I think that this is among King’s most powerful sermons, both rhetorically and in the radical humanity of its message. And although he is speaking to questions of war and peace that may not be as acute to Americans in 2023 as they were to Americans in 1967, I think the larger message of obligation and interconnectedness is as relevant today as ever.
Our problems are global problems: a rising tide of chauvinism and authoritarianism; corruption that touches and distorts representative institutions around the world; and, of course, climate change. King’s observation that for any of us to do anything we must rely on the work and labor of someone halfway around the world — “You go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that’s poured into your cup by a South American” — is truer now than it was then, and demands that we recognize the fact, not for self-flagellation but for solidarity.
To connect to laborers around the world, to see that their struggles relate to ours and ours relate to theirs, is to begin to forge the “network of mutuality” that we will need to tackle our global problems as well as to confront the obstacles to our collective liberation from domination and hierarchy.
Most Americans do not think of Martin Luther King Jr. as a democratic theorist, but he is exactly that. And here, in this sermon, he makes clear that what a peaceful and equal society demands — that is, what a truly democratic society demands — is our mutual recognition of each other, here and everywhere.


 
 

​ 
Saying No to Fear
 
Standing Up to Donald Trump’s Fear Tactics

“Real power is — I don’t even want to use the word — fear.”
Donald Trump made that remark to the journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in March 2016. Fear is, of course, a favorite tool of the president-elect. He has used it for decades to intimidate opponents, critics and allies to give up, give in or give way. He built his real estate empire through lawsuits and threats against rivals and partners.
He cowed and demolished political opponents through humiliation and invective. He consolidated control of the Republican Party and silenced G.O.P. detractors with pressure tactics and threats to end careers. And as president, he used the power of the office and the power of social media to make life miserable for anyone he chose.
His goal in these efforts has been to push people to check themselves rather than check his power. Now, as he prepares to re-enter the Oval Office, Mr. Trump is using fear not only with Congress but also with other essential independent institutions such as courts, business, higher education and the news media. The goal is broadly the same: to deter elected officials, judges, executives and others from exercising their duties in ways that challenge him or hold him accountable. He wants to make dissent so painful as to be intolerable.
America’s leaders and institutions must remain undeterred. They will need to show courage and resilience in the face of Mr. Trump’s efforts as they continue to play their unique roles in our democracy. Vigilance is everything: If institutions surrender to the fear and coercion — by bending the knee or by rationalizing that the next right actions aren’t worth the fight, stress or risk — they not only embolden future abuses; they are also complicit in undermining their own power and influence.
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The early results suggest reason for concern.
Mr. Trump has put forward several selections for his cabinet who are unacceptable — Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — yet there are precious few senators, defense experts, military and intelligence leaders and other principled statesmen on the right who are willing to stand up to the president-elect’s insistence on confirmation.
When one did — Senator Joni Ernst, the Iowa Republican who voiced reasonable concern about Mr. Hegseth’s qualifications to be defense secretary — Trump allies besieged her until getting both of the outcomes Mr. Trump sought: She issued positive commentsabout Mr. Hegseth and, in doing so, discouraged others from standing up to him in the future.
Chief executives of tech companies seem to have learned the same lesson: After challenging misinformation, hate speech and criticism from Mr. Trump and his allies in the first term, several leaders have showered him with public praise and million-dollar donations for his inauguration, with Mark Zuckerberg going as far as nixing Meta’s fact-checking program while shilling for the president-elect by branding the election as a “cultural tipping point.” Ford, G.M., Boeing and other companies have sent money and fleets of cars for the inaugural, hoping to stay on Mr. Trump’s good side ahead of his threatened trade wars.
Some of this can be chalked up to people jockeying for personal advantage with a highly transactional president. Some may reflect genuine acceptance that the country has elected a flawed leader to disrupt the status quo. But those sentiments cannot be fully disentangled from the threat posed by Mr. Trump: his determination to get his way by all means necessary, including abusing powers at his disposal to take revenge on those he thinks have crossed him or even just failed to support him in critical moments.
That threat is real: Mr. Trump has selected people for top legal and law enforcement positions who have threatened in the past to retaliate against some of those who challenged him. And that is to say nothing of his informal ability to direct troll armies to harass critics. In the absence of leaders across civic life continuing to play their roles — including standing up against illegal and immoral actions when necessary — the acquiescence to fear will free Mr. Trump further from the checks and balances that have served our nation so well.
 
NY times Editorial Board. Jan 17,2025.
More. 
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/opinion/donald-trump-fear.html
 
 

,It's a week away from inauguration and around the movement we hear some common patterns. Some folks are deep in a kind of pre-anxiety — bracing for the coming storm. Others are pulled into reactionary action — doing whatever they can with rushed energy. And others are tired and detached — emotionally checked out from the moment. 
There's value in each response. Pre-grief can help us gain equanimity in the face of what's coming. Acting keeps us from falling into despair and keep our muscles fresh for what's next. And being detached may be healthy — a way that people are protecting themselves so they won't spend the next 4 years fretting about every wild idea that comes out of Trump's mouth.
We're not saying that every strategy is the best of what we have to offer — but it's okay to not be too hard on ourselves. This is a marathon. Pace yourself.
We're also noticing something else that seems important. We think of it as a kind of spiritual conditioning. We see it most strongly this way: people are turning to other people. People are largely showing up for each other in grief and support and opening homes to care for each other. The direction we all need to go is more love, more neighborliness of that kind, and more open doors. So we want to affirm the ways people aren't only strategizing and planning, but also spending time with people they trust and love and licking their wounds. This is a very human thing to do.
Over at Choose Democracy we're taking an inhale after some intense weeks. We wanted to just take a moment to share what we've been up to and some resources we're tracking that may be useful to you.


VIRAL RESOURCES
We're grateful and blown away that Daniel's article on 10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump has won has gone viral with over 1.2 million views. It's a helpful piece to acknowledge different roles and ways of processing. 
It's since been reprinted thousands of times. This has led to many follow-up interviews, three we wanted to highlight: Daniel talked more about the roles on The Authoritarian Podcast and talked in depth through each of the key points with the podcast The Majority Report. And lastly,adrienne marie brown and Autumn Brown's podcast (How to Survive the End of the World) had a longer-view flowing conversation about where we are.
Waging Nonviolence published some follow-up articles by nonviolent expert Maria Stephan on How we can meet the challenges of authoritarianism and from movement strategist George Lakey: Can nonviolence struggle defeat a dictator? This database emphatically says yes.
Over 80,000 people have downloaded the trainings Daniel and Eileen Flanagan put together. The agendas are for trainings you can adapt/use in a Trump era — from action security to strategic escalation to mutual aid. (You can some of those below — everything is at WhatIfTrumpWins.org.)
Plus coaching hundreds of groups (contributing to some of the guides below). So yes, it's been a busy time for us.
Lastly, the talented David Fernandes helped us turn the wordy article into short videos.Please share! These videos take the wisdom of Daniel's viral article into bite-sized videos: TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook. (Likely our final post on some of these channels!)
Please share to help get the videos out!


ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Many groups are hatching plans and much is still shaping up, but we have some resources we've run across we'd like to share:

• Want to plug in but have no idea where to start? We worked with friends to create the Resistance Guidebook — with practical ideas about starting points for people who are feeling the need to do something but not sure about what.
• Are you working in the (federal) government? You may want this guide: Serve the People: a Guide for Civil Servants/Federal Employees/Military. Also familiarize yourself with this new forming group: Civil Service Strong, which offers comprehensive resources for civil servants.
• Are you working on supporting immigrants? Siembra NC has a standout resource called "Defend and Recruit" — download from their frontpage (sign-up required). It explains how to jumpstart multiple strategies from defense hotlines to ICE watch to neighborhood-based defense committees.
• Are you trying to use constituent power to make elected officials more representative? Indivisible created a lovely resource called Indivisible: a practical guide to democracy on the brink. Helpful seeing the local, state, and national strategies for applying pressure on representatives whether you're in so-called Red/Blue/Purple districts.
• And we strongly recommend reading this stand-out article: I Watched Orbán Destroy Hungary’s Democracy. Here’s My Advice for the Trump Era.

Lastly, we could use your support! We're a tiny, lean team of mostly volunteer effort. There are direct impact organizations you know who deserve your money — groups who are at the frontlines of the coming waves. If you have money after that, we'd appreciate the support to help pay us for our offerings. Thanks.

Be kind to each other in these times.
Warmly,
- Choose Democracy