Documented and undocumented workers are being deported without due process to the notorious Salvadoran prison CECOT. Student protesters are being kidnapped in broad daylight. Over one million federal workers have been stripped of their rights to negotiate a union contract. Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs are estimated to cost U.S. families $4,600 extra this year on top of the current cost-of-living crisis. 

Many are questioning if it’s possible to resist Trump’s authoritarian, pro-billionaire agenda. Since his inauguration, Trump’s favorability is already down 14%. His favorability among young men aged 18-29, considered a stronghold of his campaign, has declined a staggering 29 points. Inflation is the number one reason. Trump’s agenda is being rejected by more and more working and young people.

But, it’s not enough to know what we’re fighting against. We need to know what we’re fighting for. Some billionaires want a return to pre-Trump “normalcy”. In 2020, we were told we just needed to get back to the “norm” and elect Biden as the lesser of two evils. Well, four years of “normal” capitalism under Biden saw high inflation, a continued decline in real wages, crackdowns on student protesters, and deportation levels higher than what even Trump is doing today. It strengthened Trump and the far right, who are emboldened to go even further than they did during his first term.

Trump can be defeated. But it won’t come through continuing to place faith in the Democratic Party or just waiting things out till the midterms. Following May Day, we need to escalate the movement against Trump. The next step should be to start building for a one-day strike to put Trump on notice. We’re coming for the billionaires where it hurts: their profits. 

The Movement So Far 

Pockets of resistance have existed since Inauguration Day. In many cities, you’d see fifty protesters against the mass layoffs of federal workers one day, a hundred people out to protest the deportations of immigrants another day, two hundred to protest the kidnapping of student protesters, and so on. All of these protests shared Trump and Musk as common enemies, and many were organized by new organizations such as 50501 and the Federal Unionists Network (FUN). Many protests were led by people with little organizing experience, but felt they had to do something given the scale of ferocity of Trump’s attacks.

The labor movement and union leaders have started to organize rallies against Trump’s attacks on union workers. The National Association of Letter Carriers and the American Postal Workers Union collectively organized over 500 rallies nationally in protest of Trump and Musk’s plans to privatize the postal service, which would place hundreds of thousands of good union jobs at risk. 

Millions of people took to the streets for the April 5th “Hands Off!” protests in what has been, by far, the largest day of action against Trump this year. Now, the AFL-CIO, which represents over 15 million workers, is organizing rallies on May 1st in several cities to mark International Workers Day and protest Trump’s attacks on the labor movement, an important step to be built on further.

Labor Leaders Need To Lead

Escalating protests are a crucial component of building a movement to defeat Trump. It’s encouraging that many of these more recent protests have steered away from focusing on just one issue and instead raised demands that can bring together wider forces: against the mass layoffs, deportations, the war in Gaza, and the deepening cost-of-living crisis. But feet in the streets alone are not enough. How can we actually defeat an authoritarian leader like Trump?

In statements and at protests, the overwhelming emphasis of some union leaders like AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler is to “fight like hell in the courts”. But Trump is purposely ignoring the decisions of the courts. In an Oval Office interview alongside the President of El Salvador, Trump aide Stephen Miller claimed that the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling against the deportation of union member Kilmar Abrego Garcia was actually a decision in Trump’s favor! 

Working-class power doesn’t come from the courts or through writing letters to our elected representatives. Working-class power comes from the billions in profits workers produce for billionaires like Trump. It comes from our power to stop the economy dead in its tracks until we get what we demand. 

Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, offered a different approach to Shuler’s: that workers across different industries should strike together—a general strike—against the Trump administration and its attacks on workers. This cannot just be a talking point to be raised and dropped at a whim. Labor leaders like Nelson need to boldly organize to this end.

Rank-and-file workers have a critical role to play in transforming our unions into fighting and democratic tools to push back against Trump’s billionaire agenda. Where leaderships aren’t offering the necessary lead, union members should get together and propose resolutions advancing clear action steps, including walkouts and strikes, and build opposition groups to take on and replace conservative leaderships. The examples of the letter carriers’ ‘Build a Fighting NALC’ and the federal workers’ ‘Federal Unionists Network’ show that a serious fight can be organized even when elected union leaderships fail to provide a lead.

Democrats Are A Failed Opposition

The highest profile act of resistance so far from the Democratic Party was the “heroism” of Sen. Cory Booker who … talked for a long time. Remarkably, during his 25-hour speech Booker managed to avoid mentioning the kidnappings of pro-Palestine student protesters on college campuses, surely because of his own party’s role in paving the way for these attacks. He followed this up by voting for more military funding for Israel, just as videos were released of the IDF murdering paramedics in Gaza.

Democratic strategist, James Carville, has publicly offered the strategy most Democrats seem to be following: play dead and wait till the midterms. Carville thinks we should all just stomach whatever attacks come between now and 2026 and hope Trump shoots himself in the foot. He has also come out against “pronoun politics” and is arguing the Democrats should only talk about the economy and drop the social issues. No need to worry, we can just get our rights back in a couple years time. Until then, we will surely continue receiving fundraising texts and emails from the Democrats promising that if you just “Vote Blue No Matter Who” one more time we can stop Trump. 

Election setbacks for Trump and the Republicans can absolutely reflect a shifting tide against his authoritarian, pro-billionaire agenda. The recent conservative loss in the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court election, which Musk dropped $25 million on, shows the growing rejection of Trump even in states that voted for him in 2024. If Republicans lose seats in the midterms, it will show a rejection on the part of many working people of Trump’s authoritarianism and his right-populist economic agenda, which will inevitably fail to meet working peoples’ needs.

But the Democratic Party’s willingness to play dead, their commitment to representing the interests of billionaires and massive corporations, and their backsliding on issues like trans rights shows that they don’t even come close to offering the alternative to Trumpism working people need. 

Bernie Sanders’s “Fighting Oligarchy” tour is beginning to draw thousands, and even tens of thousands at every stop. The platform Bernie ran on in 2016 and 2020 for Medicare for All, raising the federal minimum wage, and waging war against the billionaire class is still immensely popular and offers a real alternative to the right populism of Trump. If these rallies are turned into mass organizing events, they would be far more powerful. This would mean not focusing on the distant midterms or the 2028 presidential race, but building the struggle now and laying the foundation for building our own party that refuses to take corporate and billionaire donations, has roots in the labor movement, and is committed to actively opposing Trump’s anti-worker agenda through building movements in the streets and in our workplaces. The dead end approach by Bernie of funneling movements back into voting Democrat needs to end. Any party willing to “play dead” at a moment like this is unfit to effectively oppose Trump and the far right.

How South Korean Unions Defeated A Wannabe Dictator

The U.S. labor movement does not have to start from scratch or dive deep into history books to find a strategy capable of defeating Trump. In South Korea only last year, now-former President Yoon attempted to declare martial law. This would have greatly consolidated his power and suspended many basic democratic rights, including the right to strike. 

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) called for strike action, and tens of thousands of workers took to the streets demanding Yoon lift martial law as well as demanding he be impeached. South Korean workers defeated Yoon’s martial law through mass, collective strike action. 

Later, when Yoon’s impeachment case was due to be heard in the courts, the KCTU organized an emergency delegates meeting. Hundreds of worker delegates across various unions set up chairs blocking a busy road, and publicly voted on a plan to wage a general strike again if Yoon were to be found not guilty. Yoon was indicted of attempting to lead an insurrection, in large part due to the pressure of the labor movement. 

Since the strikes, KCTU reports it has grown significantly especially among young women workers. It’s now organizing for stronger public services and is carrying out a campaign, started last year, to organize the roughly half a million undocumented workers in South Korea. The case of KCTU shows that it’s not only possible to defeat authoritarian leaders, but these victories can be a springboard for the labor movement to fight for more.

After May 1st, Escalate To A One-Day Strike!

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man wrongfully deported to El Salvador’s most brutal prison, is a member of SMART, a union representing 230,000 mainly transportation and construction workers. Michael Coleman, the union’s president, is demanding his return which is an important first step. The labor movement needs to be absolutely clear that an attack on one union member is an attack on all union members. 

But if Coleman went further and organized a one-day strike of all SMART members, calling on other building trades unions to not cross their picket line and join them to demand the release and return of their union brother, Trump could be forced to back down and bring him home. Striking New York City taxi drivers were the nail in the coffin for the first “Muslim Ban” in 2017 during Trump’s first term, and it was TSA and air traffic controller sickouts that ended the longest government shutdown in history in 2018/19. This is where our power comes from, and we need to use it if we’re going to really take on Trump. 

Following the 2023 strike at the Big Three auto companies, UAW President Shawn Fain called for the labor movement to organize a general strike in 2028. Major unions like the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), which represent nearly two million members collectively, have already passed resolutions to join the effort, a hugely positive step. Not only should more unions join the call, including the whole AFL-CIO, Fain and other union leaders should come out with a new date significantly sooner to challenge Trump now, not in three years. Millions of workers across all industries would answer the call and Trump and his billionaire administration would be, for the first time, truly on the backfoot.

Trump’s kidnappings of immigrant, pro-Palestine protesters is an attempt to shock and awe. They rightly recognize that many movements, including those capable of taking down authoritarian leaders, can be ignited by students and young people. While some universities like Harvard are, at this point, refusing to give in to Trump’s demands to eliminate DEI and hire faculty aligned with his agenda, these thoroughly ruling-class institutions are anything but reliable allies. In fact they’re the same universities that facilitated brutal crackdowns of the pro-Palestine encampments last year under Biden. 

Student unions and campus activist organizations should take the lead by organizing demonstrations and mobilizing students to larger protests both on and off campus. Many students, especially international students, are scared to take action for fear of arrest, suspension, revocation of financial aid, or deportation. If the labor movement provides a bold lead, with strength in numbers, this could give students the confidence they need to come out on May 1st and beyond to show they won’t back down to Trump’s bullying tactics. Student walkouts, alongside strike action by the labor movement, would be an even more powerful stand against Trump.

All of these struggles, on campus and in the workplace—among immigrants, trans people, and federal workers—should organize mass meetings to build for a national day of strike action in coordination with the labor movement. If Fain used the organizing muscle of the hundreds of thousands of UAW members, or if Bernie Sanders directed the momentum of his Fighting Oligarchy tour to these ends, the movement would be far more powerful.

Taking up the call for a one-day strike points the way to something that can definitively give Trump a fight. To maximize participation, it should be built for at the shop floor level, with democratic discussion and strike committees that involve a wide layer of workers who want to fight back. This kind of organization would also help build unions’ muscles and prepare them to win stronger contracts in years to come. Even if Trump doesn’t back down after a single day of strike action, it would signify a major escalation in the struggle. It could raise workers’ experience and confidence, bring more workers into the struggle, and can be a step towards strengthening the movement to beat him back. When the working class shows its full power, we can take on Trump and the whole rotten capitalist system he embodies.

To truly defeat Trump means bringing in the widest possible layers of the working class. We need to know not just what we’re fighting against, but what we’re fighting for. Socialist Alternative calls for a mass working-class movement that fights for:

• End all deportations and offer full citizenship rights for all! Return all those deported under Trump’s draconian rule.
• Release all student protesters and end campus repression! End the war in Gaza and all imperialist wars
• Fully fund our services! Defend against all attacks made to social security and medicaid.
• We need a federal jobs program! Good union jobs for all and the right to strike for federal workers!
• $25 federal minimum wage with cost of living adjustments to keep up with inflation.
• Stop the attacks on trans rights. Tax the rich to fund trans-inclusive Medicare for All.
• Break with both corporate parties. Build a new workers’ party.
• No tariffs and no corporate “free” trade! Bring the top 500 corporations into democratic public ownership and plan the economy according to human need, not profit.