“I do not want to do four more years of ‘Resistance’ nonsense under Donald Trump. Good God,” democratic socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said a few weeks before the election. “Does anyone remember what that was like?”
Yes, we do. The “Resistance” was cringe. Ocasio-Cortez’s comments were funny because they were true: the first Trump administration was awful, and the futility of the liberal “Resistance” was part of the horror. The pussy hats. The safety pins. The childish nicknames for the president like “Orange Man” and “Drumpf.” It’s triggering to even write these things down.
This time around, the vibe is different. Disturbingly quiet, quiescent, even. That’s much worse.
To be sure, socialists are organizing. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani is running for mayor, and socialists are pressing for publicly funded renewable energy. Unions are organizing, too, preparing for the anti-labor onslaught that’s coming.
But we also need a broad coalition that includes but is not limited to socialists and can blunt or derail the worst of the crazy right-wing experiment that is about to unfold. Over 48 percent of American voters voted against Trump. The country has plenty of likely recruits for a mainstream resistance movement against Trumpism. Such a movement should organize around issues with a broad popular appeal.
It could start with defending popular public goods like K-12 schools and universities. Most Americans like their local public schools, and Trump’s promise to destroy the Department of Education will have devastating consequences for public education if carried out. Right-wing movements like Moms for Liberty seeking to use niche cultural issues to destroy public schools have not been especially successful. Indeed, while the anger over lockdowns during COVID was often expressed in right-wing terms, it showed how much people valued their public schools: they were angry to have important…
Auteur: Liza Featherstone
