Here's What You Can Do to Oppose Trump

First accept your own responsibility and agency

February 4, 2025

By Marc Cooper

A couple of days ago I wrote on Facebook that if everybody who is asking what should we do would actually start doing we would be a lot better off.

I got peppered with questions asking what is my plan for action, what do I suggest people do.

It’s not my responsibility and it is beyond my capacity to dictate a strategic plan. Don’t look to me, look to yourselves.

That said, let’s get down to brass tacks, and I will offer and to some degree and restate ideas I have put out there this past week and will, lower down, in this piece show you some specific examples of people already fighting back.

But first, my First Principles. We need organization not performative resistance, That means the first thing you can do is accept reality and your responsibility in it.

A lawless, erratic and zealous authoritarian regime is already in place. It is already morphing into a dictatorship led by Donald Trump. Executed by Elon Musk’s gang of acolytes and supported fully by a collaborationist Republican Party.

They have full control of the state. Period. The Democrats have no power and not much desire for confrontation.

The first thing to do is to stop playing mind games and wishing things were different. We are in for the long haul. This could take years of work to restore democracy. Even if the Democrats win the House in 2026 it will hobble Trump. But it will not dismantle MAGA which could still win in 2028.

Consequently, you have to make the personal decision as to whether or not you are in this fight – or not. If you are in you MUST accept your own agency and nor try to outsource the opposition to others. If you are in, you must accept that that the level of risk and sacrifice on you part will escalate as the dictatorship digs in deeper.

If you are not up to that, OK. Then stand back and stop pretending.

Two: You must think strategically about whatever actions/s you might get engaged in. Are they going to have real impact or are they only an emotional catharsis.

This does not imply you need to be physically at risk…though it might. For those who are older and frail, you can organize a group of youth that you can help educate and guide until their own wings are steady enough to go out on their own. Among many other actions. Try your local church even if you are an atheist. Start with 3 people and then ask them to bring 3 more to the next meeting.

But, I repeat for the tenth time, YOU are the opposition. It took Chileans 17 years to depose the Pinochet dictatorship at a risk 100 times greater than we face. And it has taken more than 35 years after that to reconstruct their democracy.

If Chileans could organize against a military regime that engaged in mass murder, torture and draconian repression, certainly we can eventually defeat MAGA.

When I say WE, I mean WE the people. Not Chuck Schumer and the DNC. If we build a strong enough opposition, many Democrats will join in later. But don’t look to hem to lead.

We begin by seeking out others like us and using our imagination and our rage to sketch out what will be effective, There is NO other route.

I will readily admit to our weaknesses. Americans have no experience in dealing with dictatorial regimes. Worse, we lack a history of strong opposition institutions beneath us. The labor movement is a shadow of itself 50 years ago. We have no history of national student organizations, only the upsurge in the late 60’s that collapsed. We have no history of powerful social democratic or socialist parties to combat the Right. We have a timid media and lack even a single large opposition newspaper or broadcast outlet, We are an atomized society that must now INVENT new forms of opposition and solidarity willing to fight.

I am currently in Chile, several hours behind the U.S. I intended to write this piece this morning. But by the time I got up my perspicacious friend Micah Sifry at The Connector already beat me to it and said much of what I planned to and in many ways better than I might have.

Given that, I now quote him at length as to what people are already doing and what challenges that presents. Micah Sifry:

As I write this, people are in motion. Over the weekend, there were marches to defend immigrants in places like Los Angeles, Houston, Greensboro, San Jose and elsewhere; Monday morning, federal workers and others joined outside of the federal Office of Personnel Management to tell Elon Musk to “Fork Off” (a reference to the “Fork in the Road” email sent to two million feds last week urging them to take a buyout and leave government); Monday night a big crowd gathered near New York University’s Langone Hospital to demand that it keep providing life-saving healthcare to trans kids.

Outside U.S.A.I.D.’s headquarters on Monday, workers and their supporters were joined by Members of Congress, where Rep. Jamin Raskin (D-MD) declared, to cheers, “Elon Musk, you may have illegally seized the Treasury Department, but you don't control the money of the American people--the US Congress does that…We don’t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk.” Tuesday, a coalition of groups led by Indivisible are planning to rally outside the Treasury Department. Wednesday, a new decentralized protest group calling itself the “50501 movement” is aiming to stage protests in all fifty state capitols….

…In some other universe, we would already have a functioning, federated network of state organizations capable of organizing and coordinating opposition to the Trump onslaught, but instead we have the Democratic party on the one hand, and a loose coalition of national progressive organizations and labor unions that are mostly “associations without members” (in Theda Skocpol’s words), capable of speaking on behalf of lots of angry but atomized individuals but not deeply rooted in local bases that they know intimately. If we’re lucky, the energy of the next few months will go into making those associations stronger and more capable of organizing and coordinating local, state and national action. We shall see. No one else is coming to save us.”

Micah also adds in his piece the same warning I issued above:

We’ve entered a very dangerous part of the second Trump presidency. Not just because he and Musk are flexing their muscles, but also because street protests—especially ones that are spontaneous, un-permitted and semi-leaderless--have their own tricky logic. Will police in all those state capitols respect protestors’ right to free speech? Will protestors stay peaceful? Will instigators or agents provocateurs try to stage a confrontation to draw in repression? As protests spread, will Trump and Musk back down? Given how much Trump and many of his minions vocally lust for an opportunity to call on the military and police to suppress dissent, the risk of a terrible escalation is high. But what choice do we have but to stand up and put our bodies onto the gears of the machine to try make it stop?

I totally agree with no reservation. I recommend that you read the rest of this issue of The Connector by Micah Sifry as he surgically dissects the recent DNC election. You should also subscribe to his a The Connector substack. Always great.

DON’T MOURN. ORGANIZE. +++

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