A-Infos (en) US, BRRN: Beyond Protest in the Second Trump Era (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Originally written during the height of the first Trump administration, 
we've returned to this article published by South Florida Resistance to 
update it for the present moment. This article contains the perspectives 
of several BRRN members and does not necessarily reflect the collective 
view of the Federation. ---- By Patrick Berkman ---- It is difficult to 
quantify the sheer amount of chaos, violence, repression, and austerity 
of the second Trump term, and we are barely more than a year in. 
Existing crises have grown more severe, while the U.S. government and 
global capitalist class have unleashed fresh new horrors at home and abroad.

Members of Black Rose/Rosa Negra (BRRN) across the country have been 
organizing alongside their coworkers, neighbors, and classmates to push 
back against the actions of this historically unpopular administration 
and link this present villainy to the systems of domination and 
exploitation that produce it. None of us has the power to resist 
individually, but we do have the power to fight back collectively.

Frustration with the status quo is palpable and growing. An estimated 
eight million people in thousands of cities and towns participated in 
the most recent series of "No Kings" rallies over the weekend of March 
28th. This latest rally was held in the midst of yet another imperialist 
war waged by the US and Israel in the Middle East, after years of 
televised genocide in Gaza, and as ICE agents are actively assaulting, 
kidnapping, jailing, deporting, and killing our neighbors.

These dire developments, witnessed on people's phones and, increasingly, 
with their own eyes, are politicizing and radicalizing moments for 
millions. For example, a Gallup poll in 2017 found that Americans 
surveyed said that they sided more with Israelis than Palestinians, by 
62%-19%. That same poll this February found a plurality siding more with 
Palestinians for the first time ever: 40%-36%. Anecdotal data from 
attendees suggest the current US-Israel war against Iran was a 
galvanizing force for attendance, especially for younger people.

No Kings, "Indivisible" and "50501" protest networks are staffed and 
financed by Democratic Party officials, donors, and consultants. As 
revolutionaries, we know they're not our targets, but many of the people 
who attend the rallies are. For rally-goers who are motivated afterward 
to step up and do more, where will their energies be directed: party 
politics or popular power? And who will present them with that 
alternative, if not us?

Now is the time to build and strengthen organizations in our schools, 
neighborhoods, and workplaces to not only resist the agenda of the Trump 
administration and their outriders, but to take the initiative and pull 
people toward long-term organizing efforts. There are three ways we can 
do this, and all of them are necessary:

Maintain protest mobilizations.
Criticize the right and put forward alternative ideas more compelling 
than what liberals and the official left are offering.
Pull people who are mobilized for protest into long-term organizing efforts.
A Three Pronged Approach
Mass protests critical of Trump's agenda are useful for bolstering the 
morale of those who feel alienated and isolated, for symbolically 
expressing our discontent, and for building connections with others. 
These are significant in their own right and we need to be willing and 
prepared to engage with people by putting forward our critiques and 
perspectives. While the official messaging of a large-scale protest 
mobilization like 'No Kings' is decidedly liberal, by no means is every 
participant. Indeed, many attend these kinds of mobilizations because 
they are frustrated and searching for solutions to very real problems. 
The vast majority of those mobilized don't possess an analysis that 
reveals the structural nature of these problems. It's our role to not 
only give them that analysis but to arm them with a strategy that goes 
beyond protest. This kind of engagement must be by speaking with people 
and building relationship, not simply make speeches or proselytizing 
indirectly. During a moment of mass discontent like this one, people are 
more willing than ever to engage with radical ideas and new ways of 
understanding and acting.

By engaging fellow working class people about our vision for a better 
world and how we can achieve it, we can win more adherents to our 
movement and develop our own ideas in the process of dialogue. This can 
include things like public workshops, informal groups, one-on-one 
conversations, writings, and (to a much lesser extent) social media. 
This needs to continue, increase, and take on a serious reflective 
quality that moves beyond sloganeering and sign waving, toward engaged 
and prolonged communication.

Electoralists have some of the easiest and most-developed onramps for 
newly energized people to get involved in political campaigns: join an 
email list, sign a petition, phonebank, flyer, canvas, donate, vote, 
etc. While it's true that these forms of engagement reveal the 
shallowness of the political project behind them, we still need to build 
onramps to radical and mass organizing that are just as easy, intuitive, 
and welcoming. So many people's reason for doing the bidding of a 
candidate or liberal nonprofit is that they "just wanted to do 
something." Our task is not only to convince the mobilized of why our 
ideas are superior, but, more crucially, to move them from mobilization 
to organization.

This requires us to have mass organizations with real campaigns into 
which the newly mobilized can participate and become rooted in. Students 
should look toward building real, fighting student unions; workers 
should organize in their workplaces by building new unions, getting 
involved in existing unions where they can, and/or building the capacity 
to act like a union within their workplace where a union doesn't exist 
or the existing union doesn't allow for popular participation; 
neighborhoods can build assemblies or issue-based groupings around areas 
that affect them and others around them (from ICE rapid response to 
housing struggles, from environmental problems to confronting police 
violence).

Organizing Our Power
With all that's going on, it often feels like we're running from one 
crisis to the next. This scramble leaves us exhausted, frustrated, and 
often despairing at the lack of gains we've made. The antidote to this 
cycle is to build or become rooted in organizations that build power in 
the institutions and places that are significant to our everyday lives 
and to the material functioning of our society.

Mass-level groups, like labor and tenant unions and the connections 
between them, are the basis for generating the kind of material leverage 
we need if we want to force concessions from those in positions of power 
 whether bosses, landlords, or politicians. These organizations must be 
serious, accountable, and empowering, while also always striving to 
welcome in new participants. Decisions should be made collectively and 
democratically by all those involved. We should actively confront 
oppressive tendencies as a way to build our unity within these groups 
and be inclusive. These groups should be oriented toward action that's 
strategic and independent, with the capacity and willingness to lead by 
example by breaking from the ineffectual directives handed down by the 
Democratic Party and non-profit industrial complex. We must act directly 
to force the hands of the elites where we have power.

We also must act to defend our co-workers and neighbors when ICE 
descends upon them. From Los Angeles to Minneapolis and in countless 
other cities, we can learn practical lessons from the diversity of 
tactics that can be deployed to keep our communities safe. Actions have 
taken the form of non-cooperation, strikes, boycotts, sabotage, 
obstruction, community defense and other forms of pushing back 
strategically, both at the sites of raids and at the sites where we can 
wield the most power, like our workplaces.

In addition to mass-level organizing at points of production and 
exploitation, there are hundreds of thousands of activists, organizers 
and engaged individuals in struggles crossing geography, issue, and 
economic sectoranti-deportation struggles, reproductive justice 
movements, indigenous autonomy movements, antifascist/antiracist 
organizing, environmental justice struggles, queer liberation actions, 
international solidarity efforts, feminist movement building, and so 
many more. The continuation of this rotten system is only possible 
through our labor and acquiescence. We must organize ourselves and build 
our solidarity, organization, consciousness and capacity to fight 
collectively. Our own lives, and the lives of people around the globe, 
depend on it.

Off Instagram, into the Streets
In this process we need to continue with our mobilizations, strengthen 
our bottom-up collective power, and promote our alternatives to 
electoralism and other liberal dead-ends that only serve to reinforce 
this disastrous status-quo. Capitalists, public officials, and those 
operating within institutions of power will not save us. Only we, 
collectively, can save ourselves.

It can be easy to feel overwhelmed by helplessness and isolation, but 
sitting alone with your phone will not solve either problem. 
Helplessness is cured by being of real service to others. Isolation is 
cured by making new friends, connections, and comrades. Doing so will 
require taking risks and leaps of faith. If we believe in the ultimate 
risk, the ultimate leap of faith  social revolution  we must also 
recognize that it can only be built through the little risks and little 
leaps taken by millions of people acting together every week, every day, 
and every hour.

Taking that first step is how each of us realizes that we were never alone.

https://www.blackrosefed.org/beyond-protest-in-the-second-trump-era/
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