Harry Targ
Gandhi once wrote, “Even the most powerful cannot rule without the cooperation of the ruled.” A Trump tyranny will not be able to continue without the support and acquiescence of those whose lives and future it is destroying. It will only be able to pursue its destructive course if they enable or acquiesce in it. A movement can overcome the most powerful regime if it can withdraw that cooperation. https://pdacnm.org/2025/02/08/defending-society-against-maga-tyranny/
So as we begin the latest phase of educating, agitating, and organizing the multitudes we might reflect on the patterns of resistance that have been used in the past and may still be useful today. Jeremy Brecher has recently published a lengthy discussion of forms of “social self-defense” which give direction to how progressives, the multitudes, might resist the onslaught of President Trump/Musk’s new policies and parallel policies imposed on people at the state and local levels.
In addition, peace traditions as well as the labor left have engaged in patterns of resistance at various points in history. Gene Sharp’s 198 forms of non-violent resistance provide a useful checklist which may have applicability to today’s struggles.https://commonslibrary.org/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/
Moving Ahead in 2025 the Following Questions Remain
1.How do we organize locally and statewide, particularly in “red states”
2.How do we develop in our literature and public agenda the view that what we are struggling against is a forty-year program of austerity, redistributing the wealth and power from the many to the few. And how can we effectively show that our local struggles parallel those in other states and countries.
3.How can we effectively link our theoretical understanding of history, much like Rev. Barber’s provocative discussion of the three reconstructions, to the concrete campaigns we are engaged in
4.How can we take the general worldview and discuss:
-the threat to voting rights
-racist police practices
-the transformation of a 150-year tradition of public education into for-profit charter schools
-the deregulation of environmental controls at the very same time that fires, floods, draughts are increasing
-the rationing of health care and the rising cost of medication
-the use of state enticements to bring investors who create low wage jobs that worsen income inequality
-the use of government to destroy the right of workers to form unions of their choosing and to honor the work of those unions to defend worker rights
-the support for war and violence everywhere and the danger of nuclear war
Below are the substantive strategic issues that we face, now with a brutal new billionaire racist oligarchy.
-the proportion of work devoted to inside and outside strategies
-the relative weight and autonomy to be given to national, state and community organizations
-the connections between socialist, labor, environmentalist, peace, anti-racist, feminist, educational and other organizations
– the relationships we need to create between varying decision-making bodies, local organizations and issue committees
– finally thinking tactically such as relating to Gene Sharp’s 198 forms of non-violent activity.
https://www.brandeis.edu/peace-conflict/pdfs/198-methods-non-violent-action.pdf
Conclusion
The world is in turmoil. Protests across the globe have some common origins, causes, and solutions. While communities have their own problems, they are not too different from those elsewhere. The ongoing work must involve addressing specific issues while being cognizant of the general, building coalitions of shared responsibility and respect, organizing people power from the streets to the centers of power, and reconstructing institutions that serve, not oppress the people.
