Going forward

As I see it, Trump and his administration will largely set the agenda and shape the terrain of struggle as we move into the new year. The popular movements and coalitions will find themselves in a defensive posture, protecting rights and victories secured in earlier times from a right wing extremist authoritarian onslaught. At the top of the Trump administration to-do-list is his much promised assault on the immigrant community, the scale of which we haven’t seen in modern times, probably never. At the same time, I would be surprised if the administration doesn’t move quickly on other fronts as well — legislative, executive actions, trade wars, and the pruning of (or should I say taking a sledgehammer to) the federal government.

What isn’t clear to me is the degree to which the authoritarian, fascist minded strongman will use the state apparatus to exact retribution against his opponents in the state and society. Internationally, it is also hard to see anything good happening on Trump’s watch. In the current two war zones, both the Palestinians’ and Ukrainians’ battles for national rights and justice got more uphill, to say the least. The confrontation with China will likely grow worse as will the political and economic tensions with Canada and Western Europe. Trade wars will break out. The further ascendancy and aggressiveness of right wing authoritarian rule at a global level will gain new momentum and confidence. Any hope of minimizing the worst effects of climate change will be lost. Finally, collective efforts to address global poverty and the proliferation and control of nuclear weapons will flounder.

Against this congealing storm of vengeance, retribution, economic contradictions, war, and counterrevolution, the challenge, it seems evident, is to reassemble at the local, state, and national level the far flung coalition — including Never Trumpers — that took shape in the course of the just completed election. Such a reassembly should include people who sat out the election and Trump voters who hopefully become disaffected by the policies of the incoming administration. In other words, the resistance/opposition to Trump and his underlings in the early going won’t be the singular property of the left or progressives, even broadly understood.

The field, instead, will be crowded and the forms of struggle will be many. And the Democratic Party will be in the middle of the mix. Only a big ship with more than one captain can navigate the country to a safe harbor and a just future in current circumstances. And while we don’t have either Lincoln or Douglass or Tubman onboard this time, we have a rainbow of able, astute, and democratic minded leaders to steer the ship through stormy seas to a safe harbor where freedom bells, we hope, will once again begin to ring!