Center for the Working Poor

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A new wave of movements against Trumpism is coming
Our job is to translate outrage over his agenda into action toward a truly transformational vision.
Mark Engler and Paul Engler November 9, 2024
For many of us, the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s decisive electoral victory has been a time of deep despair and mourning. There has been plenty of commentary trying to make sense of Trump’s win and the factors that led to it. But no analysis changes the fact that the outcome represents a serious blow to our most vulnerable communities, a sharp setback for causes of economic and social justice, and a profound challenge to whatever semblance of democracy America has been able to secure. We have lived through it before, and it feels even worse the second time around. It is right that we take this as a moment to grieve.
But even amidst our feelings of sorrow or hopelessness, we can recognize that political conditions are not static. As we step out of our grieving and look ahead, there are reasons to believe that a new social movement cycle to confront Trumpism can emerge. And in making this happen, we can draw on lessons from what has worked in the past and what we know can be effective in confronting autocrats. Our job will be to take advantage of the moments of opportunity that arise in coming months to hold the line against Trump’s authoritarianism — and also link them to a vision for creating the transformative change we need in our world.
Here’s why we can expect a new wave of movements to arise.
Trump is a trigger
We have often written about the importance of “trigger events” in sparking periods of mass protest. Social movement organizers can labor for years in relative quiet, carrying out the long-term “spadework” — as civil rights icon Ella Baker called it — of consciousness raising, leadership development and building organizational structure. But there are also moments when issues of social and economic injustice are thrown into the spotlight by a dramatic or expected public event: A shocking scandal, a natural disaster, a geopolitical conflict or an investigative report revealing gross misconduct stokes widespread outrage and sends people into the streets.
In these moments, activists who had previously faced a drought of public interest now find themselves in a torrent. The rules of ordinary politics seem to be suspended. And movements that can capitalize have unique opportunities to alter the political landscape, redefine the terms of debate around an issue and have impacts that ripple throughout the system.
In 2016, Trump’s election itself served as a trigger event. A wide range of groups, from the liberal ACLU to the more radical Democratic Socialists of America, saw membership and donations surge as concerned progressives braced for what was expected to come from his administration. New groups also emerged, such as Indivisible, which began as a viral Google Doc about how to confront elected officials and compel them to resist the Trump administration. It then quickly grew into an organization with more than 4,000 affiliated local groups by 2021.
At the same time, outrage among women about Trump being able to take office in spite of his overt misogyny led them to mobilize in record-breaking numbers. A call to action went out immediately after the election, and on January 21, 2017, the day after Trump’s inauguration, upwards of four million people rallied in Women’s March events, spread across every state in the nation. Scholars tracking participation identified this as “likely the largest single-day demonstration in recorded U.S. history.”
This time around, the mood is different. The shock of “how could this ever happen” that many experienced eight years ago feels distinct from the gut-churning sense of “it is happening again” that is sinking in this time around. As the New York Times described it, there is a “stunned, quiet and somber feeling,” sometimes accompanied by resignation, rather than an immediate impulse to rise up in resistance. That said, established progressive groups that have created space for members to gather to make sense of the electoral outcome and plan a response have seen a strong response. Most notably, a mass call two days after the election organized by a coalition of 200 groups — including the Working Families Party, MoveOn, United We Dream and Movement for Black Lives Action — drew well in excess of 100,000 people, with thousands signing up for follow-up community gatherings.
There is no better antidote to hopelessness than action in community.
There will be more opportunities to come. It is highly likely that future trigger events will arise as Trump begins implementing his agenda. Although he won a commanding electoral victory, a significant portion of his gains can be attributed to rejection of the status quo and a desire on the part of voters to sweep out a broken political establishment. On a policy level, Trump is often incoherent. Although he presents himself as a champion of those left behind, he cannot deliver for working people. Instead, many of the things that he will attempt may prove to be deeply unpopular, from tax cuts for the wealthy and attacks on women’s rights, to unconstitutional power grabs and cuts to social services or public benefits.
Should Trump begin to carry out the program of mass deportations that he has promised, resulting in separated families and shattered communities, conservatives could quickly find that their overreach has sparked backlash and defiance — not only from defenders of human rights but even from business people alarmed at the economic disruption.
In late 2005, when the Republican majority in the House pushed through a piece of anti-immigrant legislation known as the Sensenbrenner Bill — a measure which, among other impacts, would have created penalties for providing humanitarian services to undocumented immigrants — it gave rise to a series of massive immigrant rights protests in the months that followed. Hundreds of thousands marched in 2006, not only filling the downtowns of major cities like Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles, but also flooding public squares in places such as Fresno, Omaha and Garden City, Kansas. These actions galvanized the Latino vote and had lasting impacts in multiple election cycles that followed.
Likewise, in the early days of Trump’s first term, his administration’s “Muslim ban” prompted rallies and civil disobedience at airports around the country. While the ban was being challenged in court, the actions served as major public flashpoints, both bolstering local groups and giving rise to national formations such as , while also prompting cities to make vows to protect migrants.
Public revolt can cut both ways: The rise of the Tea Party in 2009 became a significant hindrance to Barack Obama’s ability to pursue a progressive economic agenda. But whether such mobilizations come from the left or right, it is important to recognize that they can have significant consequences.
Activism during Trump’s first term was able to create a sense of an administration that was embattled and mired in controversy, rather than one carrying out a popular mandate. While most presidents can expect to enjoy a bump in popularity following their inaugurations, Trump instead faced record-low approval ratings. And while conservatives passed a major tax law that favored the rich, they were unable to realize other top goals such as the repeal of Obamacare. With the 2018 midterms, movements played a significant role in creating one of the most dramatic swings in recent electoral history, propelling a wave that both swept Democrats into power in many states and deprived Republicans of control of the U.S. Congress, closing their window of maximum legislative power.
Looking forward, Trump will trigger outrage. But outrage alone is not enough. It needs to be translated into action. Movements must be ready to capitalize on and extend the opportunities that Trump’s policies create. Here, preparation is helpful: By anticipating and planning for trigger events, movements can position themselves to take maximum advantage.

A new wave of movements against Trumpism is coming Our job is to translate outrage over his agenda into action toward a truly transformational vision.

"Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children." --- Khalil Gibran

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.

No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (Repeated By Brittany Koteles)

No matter what age any of us is now, we are going to be bored and lonely during what remains of our lives.

"We are so lonely because we don’t have enough friends and relatives. Human beings are supposed to live in stable, like-minded, extended families of fifty people or more.

Your class spokesperson mourned the collapse of the institution of marriage in this country. Marriage is collapsing because our families are too small. A man cannot be a whole society to a woman, and a woman cannot be a whole society to a man. We try, but it is scarcely surprising that so many of us go to pieces.

So I recommend that everybody here join all sorts of organizations, no matter how ridiculous, simply to get more people in his or her life. It does not matter much if all the other members are morons. Quantities of relatives of any sort are what we need".-- Kurt Vonnegut

"If you are working on something you can finish in your lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough."-- Wes Jackson.

Climate change is here people.

Drought Touches a Quarter of Humanity, U.N. Says, Disrupting Lives Globally The crisis, worsened partly by climate change, has been accompanied by soaring food prices and could have consequences for hunger, elections and migration worldwide.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/opinion/loneliness-epidemic-mental-health.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20231221&instance_id=110687&nl=opinion-today®i_id=117130440&segment_id=153149&te=1&user_id=c0670e80fbd5e0d2a1465b87b5827440

Opinion | The Life Span of Loneliness Times readers, ages 16 to 93, open up about feeling alone.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. — Rumi

Any fans of Gramsci out there? In our latest, Paul and I were inspired to write a short primer on the Italian theorist and organizer, who has been influential for many of the movements we study. We try to draw out key lessons for social movements, and to make an argument for why he should not be relegated to academic classrooms.
Link to article in comments below!

I think this is one of my favorite artilces I have ever written with my brother Mark Engler. Certainly we took more time on this, than almost anyother. Half dozen original interviews with organizers in Spain, condensing the points of hundreds of pages of articles, and a few books. After all that work, one this is for certain. Barcelona en Cummu is an amazing experiments of movements taking over a city government. We progressives in the US have so much to learn from them. https://wagingnonviolence.org/2023/05/lessons-barcelona-en-comu-ada-colau/?fbclid=IwAR1HDFKF-FYxKrWbWl_TVhuIxjNL2FA-wI-eH5d4_K1wU5Uqab0EhZ_htlE

Lessons from Barcelona's 8-year experiment in radical governance Activists who took over Barcelona’s City Hall have made lasting progressive gains, while also confronting the limits of being in power.

Our Artilce on the "world as it should be" and the World as it is"-- just came out in waging nonviolence. This is often called a tension between strategic and prefigurative politics. How do we train our activist and organizers in understanding the conflict between these things? The community organizing tradition uses the framework of "world as it is" and the "world as it should be".
I still think this is one of the most important philosophical concepts we need in our lives. Something to help understand how to be in the world and act strategically.

Changing the ‘world as it is’ into the ‘world as it should be' Resolving the conflict between being visionary and being pragmatic is critical for those who want to transform society.

https://wagingnonviolence.org/2022/12/why-movements-need-revive-song-culture/

Why movements need to revive song culture Music is making a comeback in movement spaces, as organizers rediscover how singing strengthens the capacity to create social change.