By Carl Davidson
Antifascist movements don’t arise out of nowhere. The clique now
in the White House sets them in motion by inflicting one outrage
after another against people’s liberties, lives, and livelihoods.
In the past week alone, some 550 grassroots protests emerged in
every state—with dozens, naturally, in D.C. itself, the seat of
federal power. That power is now split into three: those defending
the fascists, those enabling it by conciliation or silence, and those
taking stands against it in various ways. We have to learn how to
use contradictions among those on top, while healing contradictions
among the people at the base.
I am thrilled by the tens of thousands turning out in the heartland
for Bernie and AOC. A large coalition of the progressive organizers
behind the upsurge has already formed.
It’s calling on all of us to turn out on Saturday, April 5, 2025.
There will be a very large mobilization in D.C. But if you can’t make
it there, substantial local mobilizations also will take place in nearly
every city and college town in the country. (Our local Democrats
are calling one on April 5, 1pm, at the Beaver County Courthouse).
We have dozens of reasons to join them and even more demands to
be raised. The tip of our spear must aim at the ICE/DHS secret raids
against immigrants, documented or not, who have spoken out against
the genocide being inflicted on Gaza. The thugs start here because
they consider it low-hanging fruit, our weak point, believing that
these voices are a despised minority within another unpopular
minority of a wider peace and justice movement. We demand a
foreign policy in tune with the UN Charter and its Principles of
Peaceful Coexistence.
We must do a deeper exposure of Team Trump and prove them
and their policy of division wrong. The core value in all our
diverse narratives of who we are and what we want is solidarity.
An injury to one of us is an injury to all of us. We don’t have to
agree with everything any of those targeted might say. But we
must stand with them on the right to speak, the right to equality
before the law, and the right to due process. Most of all, we want
their voices in our campaigns and organizations.
Our 14th Amendment gives these “due process” rights to all
persons in our country, whether they are citizens or not. If you
think otherwise, you are abandoning what it means to be an
American. You are abandoning the legacy of our “Second Revolution,"
of the 500,000 or more who perished, Black, white, and otherwise,
those who “gave the last full measure of devotion.” Moreover, “It
is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work
which they who fought,” for a nation rooted in an abolition democracy.
This is the core value that is never granted to us by our “betters,” and
never can be. Why? Because, self-evidently, these core values and natural
rights are part of our nature as social beings. Tyrants can deny them
or try to restrict them, but they can never take them away.
We demand that today’s anti-American neo-confederates stop all
their fascist projects. We aim for their removal from power. We
demand that they and any successors respect the rights of immigrants
and welcome those fleeing injustice. We demand that they stop their
attacks on veterans, whom Trump has always despised, and restore
the VA and its hospitals and benefits. We demand they cease their
attacks on the Department of Labor and the NLRB. All workers have
the right to form unions in every state and to stand up for better wages,
working conditions, and the expansion of social justice. We demand
the restoration of all DEI measures won in all the civil rights battles
of every decade. There is one race, the human race, and we defend
the rights of all, regardless of skin color, nationality, language, or
religious faith. We demand respect and equality for all women, including
health care and abortion rights. The attacks on doctors and their
female patients must cease and desist in every state. Likewise for
all LGBTQ persons. In short, we want consistent democracy for all
the exploited and oppressed, all along the line.
Our task in the weeks ahead is to join these movements and “fan the
flames of discontent.” But we also must avoid a trap, one this writer
observed earlier in the Jesse Jackson campaigns of the 1980s.
My organization at that time, the League of Revolutionary Struggle,
or LRS, played an important role in shaping Jesse’s Rainbow Coalition.
Jackson started with a firm base in Chicago’s Black and Latino
communities. But LRS did important work in bringing in Chicanos,
Chinese-Americans, Filipinos, and all Pacific Islanders and others.
(I worked with a small team taking Jesse to Iowa and Nebraska,
bringing in progressive farmers, the “green stripe” in the Rainbow).
We saw ourselves as “building a movement.” But Jesse frequently
warned us:
“My job is to shake the cherries down from the tree. But I can’t do
it all. Your job is to gather up the harvest on the ground.”
We found the wisdom in that warning the hard way, soon after the
election activities ebbed. All the “build a movement” assertions
turned into empty air. We won a few new recruits to the LRS here
and there, but not much else, even though a few of us continued
with staff positions in Jesse’s Rainbow-Push operation in Chicago.
We fell into the “build the movement” trap. We do not create movements.
We can see what actually builds them every day, with the flurry of Oval
Office assaults and inflections on us everywhere. Wherever there is
oppression, there is resistance. But it’s also true that movements, like
everything else in the universe, move in waves; they flow, and they ebb.
At one point of upsurge in the “long 1960s,” we thought it would be
ever upward and onward, and when the ebb came, our old set of tactics
for flow failed miserably. Think of the Weather Underground as an
extreme case in point.
We can help build movement in many ways, such as by fanning the
flames. But to avoid the hidden trap, we must also build structured
campaigns and new mass organizations within movements.
Organizations of all sorts are our most essential weapons, including
but not limited to our own socialist organizations. The socialists who
think straight matter a great deal. As Uncle Ho once noted, “the harder
the core, the broader the front.” We have a far-sighted strategy and
tactics. If we deploy them well, everyone in our common front can
grow.
But the key important lesson arises as the wave begins to ebb. We have
to know when to cast the net out, during the flow, and when to draw
the net in, when the crest begins to ebb. We need to keep stronger and
larger campaigns, like Rev. Barbour’s “Third Reconstruction” and
organizations within it that can survive and thrive either way, so when
the next wave comes, we start on higher ground with better and larger
organizations. We especially need this when we are in Gramsci’s “war
of position,” where we engage in our “long march” winning “strong
points” (Lenin) in all of them. Why? Because at some point the crisis
deepens, and we face the tasks of winning governing power—a war
of movement that can start to “capture the castles,” tactically, at all
levels, starting with cities, counties, and states.
At some point, the war of movement will arise everywhere, and a dual
power will become a new power. This will create new problems. We
would all love to have these new problems on our plates, but we are not
there yet. For the moment, we solve the problem of organization-building
within movement-building.
Here's a closing hint for an efficient way to do all this: when you go to
a protest event or action, take a clipboard, pens, and calling cards with you.
Then ask questions of people you don’t know, outside your comfort zone,
listen to them, and ask more. Learn to persuade by sharing common
passions of weal and woe. Record and report. If you don’t take these
tools, you are simply an activist. If you do and you use them well,
you are an organizer and a party-builder. Now is the time for us to build.
Carl Davidson is a veteran organizer with roots in the New Left
of the 1960s, where he served as a Vice President and National
Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society. He continues
to write prolifically.
