It’s been an entire year since Donald Trump returned to the White House. For many, it has been much longer. The Trump administration wasted no time attacking people across the United States and the world.
But last year was not just limited to attacks. It was also marked by resistance. People bravely took to the streets against the Trump administration, put themselves at risk to defend their immigrant neighbors, and even rejected Trump’s violence beyond the United States.
A year after the start of the second Trump administration, it is essential to reflect on how people have fought back and remember that the government is not as strong as it pretends to be. By doing so, we can learn lessons for our future fights against the far right.
A growing movement against ICE
As a candidate, Trump called for mass deportations and has delivered on this promise egregiously. ICE and other federal agencies have terrorized immigrant communities across the country. However, this terror has reignited hatred toward the agency, manifesting in widespread examples of communities defending their immigrant neighbors.
Every case is important, but some communities have been especially combative, which has helped people better understand what the fight against ICE can be like. Street clashes in Los Angeles showed that ordinary people could force Trump’s forces to retreat. Notably, SEIU mobilized its members after ICE attacked union leader David Huerta, marking a first manifestation of the strategic role the union movement can play.
Many of the Los Angeles examples inspired other street confrontations in Chicago, Portland, and now Minneapolis. In fact, the fight in Minneapolis has taken resistance to ICE to a new level. The city has been in constant activity following the murder of anti-ICE activist Renée Nicole Good. Unions are starting to play an even bigger role by calling for “no work” on January 23, laying the groundwork for a new chapter of the anti-ICE movement, one in which work can play an even bigger role.
Millions in the streets
Beyond street clashes and community resistance to ICE, mass protests have shown that the desire to fight affects much broader sectors of society. This is reflected in the No Kings demonstrations [no queremos reyes]which mobilized millions of people to the streets. The nationwide protests, in addition to mobilizing crowds in large cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, also included protests in states with a strong Republican component and small communities.
The No Kings protests have addressed a wide range of issues. They have denounced Trump’s firing of thousands of public employees and funding cuts to important services such as education and environmental protection. The protests have also expressed solidarity with prominent figures in Trump’s attacks on immigrants, such as Kilmar Ábrego García and pro-Palestine activists such as Mahmoud Khalil. Widespread solidarity with these figures prompted the courts to rule against Trump in his attempts to keep Ábrego García imprisoned in El Salvador and accelerate the deportation of Khalil and other pro-Palestine activists.
Importantly, the recent No Kings demonstrations showed signs of growing anti-imperialist sentiments in the United States, with an explicit call: “Hands off Venezuela, no war for oil!” Many who attended the latest protests made a connection between Trump’s violence against communities in the United States and his violence abroad.
This widespread sentiment against Trump’s attacks on workers in the United States and abroad was also expressed at the polls when New York elected Zohran Mamdani as mayor. Beyond the figure of Mamdani, whose role as a Democrat in an executive position limits his ability to confront the extreme right, his historic electoral victory expresses growing support for progressive and even socialist proposals in the face of the crises faced by workers.
International protests against imperialism
As the new leader of US imperialism, Trump has continued the genocide in Gaza and has aggressively sought to dominate Latin America. Like its domestic agenda, its imperialist agenda has been confronted.
The Palestine movement saw a powerful example of international solidarity with the Sumud Global Flotilla, which attempted to break the siege of Gaza. Workers, students and activists from more than 40 countries worked together to demonstrate that, instead of relying on capitalist countries and institutions like the United Nations, activists from around the world, by organizing internationally, can lead the fight against the worst atrocities of imperialism. The example of the Sumud Global Flotilla triggered a general strike in Italy, which reminded the world that workers, using the power given to them by their strategic positions, can stop production with strikes at the port or by blocking roads and railways. In this way they can even twist the hand of the imperialist governments complicit in the Israeli genocide.
Latin America, which is increasingly the target of US aggression, has also shown the limits of Trump’s attacks abroad. In response to Trump’s threats to take over the Panama Canal and the complicity of the Panamanian government, the country witnessed powerful strikes and student mobilizations. This was an early sign of the growing class struggles throughout Latin America. Bolivia recently experienced a powerful uprising against the new far-right government’s attempts to attack workers and open the country to extraction, largely in alignment with the United States. In Ecuador, votes rejected Trump ally Daniel Noboa’s attempt to consolidate his power and open a US military base. Argentine President Javier Milei, one of Trump’s closest regional allies, has also faced resistance from retirees, students, health workers and the country’s socialist left, and a new process of resistance is expected in the face of the attempt to pass a slave labor reform.
Resistance to Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine” to control Latin America requires a response to match, a general strike throughout Latin America to resist Trump’s looting of Venezuelan oil, continued military threats to the country, and the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
From Los Angeles to Minneapolis, Ecuador to Italy, and everywhere in between, workers, students, and communities are facing violence from the Trump administration. We’ve already dealt blows to their agenda, and we’re just getting started.
This article was originally published on the Left Voice site, part of the La Izquierda Diario International Network in the United States.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
