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austerity
'This Is Going Global': Anti-Austerity Protests Spread From Spain and France to Chile, Belgium, and Beyond
Protests across Europe have focused on education cuts, while a Gen Z-led movement has spearheaded demonstrations over voting rights in India.
Oct 08, 2026
"We are going to sweep away the old world," said the deputy of the French National Assembly on Thursday, highlighting a rapidly growing global protest movement, largely led by students and young people, against austerity measures.
Clémence Guetté, a member of the left-wing French party La France Insoumise, or France Unbowed, added that "the youth wants to change everything," posting on social media a video of a massive demonstration in Paris—just one of several cities across France where students have led more than 250,000 people in protests demanding education funding and decrying cuts in the proposed 2027 national budget.
But Guetté noted that while France's growing protests—and the violent response of the police—have captured international attention, with thousands of people demanding the resignation of President Emmanuel Macron in Place de la Bastille, Paris on Thursday, the movement against austerity and corrupt governance has spread across Europe and is also gaining traction across Latin America and South Asia.
"The youth of the world are rising up," said Guetté.
The protests against education cuts, dilapidated school buildings, and crowded classrooms in France began in mid-September in lower-income Parisian suburbs before spreading nationwide.
As they have shown no sign of slowing down, thousands of miles away in India, the Generation Z-led Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)—so named because the chief justice of the Supreme Court derided unemployed young people as "cockroaches" this year—has spearheaded calls for the resignation of the country's top Election Commission official.
The Election Commission has been accused of an illegal purge of voters over its “special intensive revision” of voter rolls, which has included removing more than 130 million names.
The CJP initially took to the streets over the summer to demand the resignation of the Indian education minister, due to leaks of the country's medical school entrance exam, which had delayed university admissions for millions of students and forced them to retake the intense exams. CJP organizers said the scandal has led to the suicides of more than 20 students.
Those protests were ultimately successful in forcing Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan out of office.
Thousands of supporters joined a demonstration in Bengaluru on Thursday as the CJP condemned the detention on Wednesday of politician Rahul Gandhi, a leader of the opposition against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as well as other protesters.
Leaders of the mass protest movement on Thursday rejected allegations that the protests, which have also been met with violence from police, are "destabilizing the country."
"When you declare living people as dead [on voter rolls] for your political gains, that is destabilizing the country," said one organizer.
When you declare living people as “Dead” for your political gains, that is destabilising the country. https://t.co/FZTPkKgBJk
— Cockroach Janta Party - CJP (@Cockroachisback) October 8, 2026
As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, Spain residents have also been inspired in recent days to take to the streets by the tens of thousands following the eviction of María del Carmen Abascal Martín, an 87-year-old woman who died this week before she was able to return home, as the demonstrations over housing justice were underway.
After Maricarmen's eviction on September 23, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, announced new rental regulations and protections for vulnerable tenants, but lawmakers rejected the package. Sánchez responded by dissolving the legislature and calling for snap elections in November.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people have marched in Madrid, Valencia, and other cities to demand a general strike and affordable housing across Spain, where the average rent has doubled over the last 10 years.
More than 1,000 people have set up encampments at Puerta del Sol in Madrid and Plaza Catalunya in Barcelona, saying they will not leave until the government takes concrete steps to protect tenants.
🇪🇸 Maricarmen Abascal, the 87-year-old woman whose eviction sparked housing protests in #Spain, has died, Madrid's tenants' union said on Wednesday.Abascal became a symbol of Spain's housing market on September 23 when she was evicted from her life-long Madrid home on a stretcher after the real estate firm that owned the apartment drastically hiked the rent.
— FRANCE 24 English (@France24_en) October 8, 2026
In Chile, student unions led protests last week against proposed education cuts in the country's 2027 budget, put forward by conservative President Jose Antonio Kast. Chilean national police blocked people from marching through Santiago last Thursday toward La Moneda presidential palace, with officers firing water cannons and tear gas at the crowd.
According to the undersecretary of the interior, at least 17 people were arrested, and Kast condemned the protests.
One commentator on the social media platform X called on the public to connect "the dots on these Gen Z protests."
Across the globe, they said, "young people can't get hired. Can't afford rent. Can't afford a house. Can't see a future."
"The streets are the only place left," they added. "This is going global."
Another recent entry into the international protest movement came last week in Belgium, where students in Liège were reportedly directly inspired by the France protests to speak out against rising education costs and overcrowding in schools.
The city's main train station was temporarily closed on Thursday and traffic was disrupted, and more than 100 protesters were arrested.
“We support each other because we’re facing pretty much the same issues,” Alfred, a 19-year-old student, told Reuters of the connection between the Belgian and French unrest.
Students in Italy, Ireland, and Germany have also called for protests over soaring university costs and government disinvestment in education, particularly as worldwide energy costs have gone up due to the US-Israeli war on Iran.
In Rome and Turin, high school students began occupying their schools on Monday under the slogan, "Let's do as in France."
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'Savagery': Horrific Injuries as French Police Crack Down on Nationwide Student Protests
A 15-year-old's hand was blown off, a 16-year-old suffered a devastating eye injury, and a 14-year-old reportedly lost most of his teeth as Amnesty International accused French police of using disproportionate force.
Oct 06, 2026
Young people across France suffered horrifying injuries this week as riot police attacked high school and university students, faculty, and parents who were joined by striking workers in the latest nationwide mobilization over the country's underfunded education system.
Hundreds of thousands of students, workers, and their supporters rallied at more than 170 demonstrations across France Tuesday, with the arrest total topping 6,000 people—including roughly 4,400 minors—since the current wave of demonstrations began on September 28, according to the country's Interior Ministry.
The school blockades and other protests began in blue-collar Parisian suburbs and rapidly spread across the country as students and their supporters demanded more teachers and staff, smaller classes, improved school buildings, an end to socially discriminatory university admissions, and an education system that does not force working-class youth to bear the cost of government austerity.
The Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), one of France's largest unions, urged its members to join Tuesday's mobilization alongside students and educators. The union said it would stand with high school and university students "including through strikes," while demanding major investment in public education.
"Beyond the issue of resources, students are demanding greater equality and social justice, aware that the policies of [President] Emmanuel Macron and his successive governments have deliberately damaged the principles of the French public education system," a coalition of unions including CGT said in a statement of solidarity.
Such solidarity was visible on the streets Tuesday as students from Épinay-sur-Seine marched alongside SUD-Rail railway employees, while education workers formed human chains to protect young protesters from police. Workers also joined students blockading a high school in Montpellier.
Protesters in some cities were met with police violence.
Police in riot gear charge student protesters in Nantes, France on October 6, 2026. (Photo by Sebastien Salom-Gomis/AFP via Getty Images)
"The repression is the same as that employed against the Yellow Vests except that now it's our kids who are in the streets," said Julien, a CGT Total refinery worker and union activist, referring to the 2018 economic protests that swept the nation. "The high school and university students have opened the way, and we have to follow them."
Coline, a high school student in Le Havre, said that workers physically placed themselves between young protesters and police.
"Union members formed a human chain between us and the CRS," she said. "All workers should do it because our demands are theirs. They portray us as rioters when we just want a future."
Alarming scenes of police terror shocked many observers.
In Lens, a 15-year-old student suffered a devastating hand injury during clashes near his high school Monday. According to La Voix du Nord, the teenager lost his hand after a police grenade exploded. The precise circumstances remain under investigation, chiefly by the Inspection Générale de la Police Nationale (IGPN).
A fellow student, Chloé, rejected the authorities' claims that the teenager was injured when he picked up the grenade.
"The police started coming toward us," she told La Voix du Nord. "So we all started running in the opposite direction. They threw smoke grenades at us... We were running. We couldn't see. And my high schoolmate got it in his hand."
She said the injured student began shouting, "My hand! My hand!"
"I turn around and see that he doesn't have a hand anymore," she recounted. "We all gathered around him."
"We're students, we're young," Chloé added. "There's no need to do that. It was useless; we were already leaving."
A 14-year-old in Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône reportedly suffered a double jaw fracture after being struck by a tear gas grenade fired at close range. Le Monde said the incident is among several cases being investigated by the IGPN.
Another 14-year-old reportedly lost most of his teeth after a police officer apparently fired a grenade at his face at close range during a protest northwest of Paris.
“His jaw is sealed shut, he can no longer speak, and he eats through a straw,” his mother told reporters.
In Tours, a 16-year-old reportedly suffered a severe eye injury when police fired "less-lethal" projectiles, including rubber-coated steel bullets, into a crowd of protesters during a high school blockade.
Another student, 16-year-old Isabella, connected the police crackdown to the class inequalities underlying the movement.
"Everybody told us that school was the great leveler, but today that is not the case at all," she told The Guardian. "A teenager in the suburbs of Paris is never going to have the same opportunities as a student from the city center."
The protests have also become a political flashpoint, with Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his left-wing La France Insoumise party openly backing the students while rejecting government accusations that they are responsible for the unrest. LFI lawmakers have appeared alongside protesters, while Mélenchon has condemned the police response and called on his supporters to nonviolently resist what he called police “savagery.”
On Tuesday, French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez refused to apologize for the police violence, drawing calls from the left for his resignation.
Amnesty International accused French authorities of answering protests with "disproportionate" force.
“Footage and testimonies widely reported over the last week raise alarming concerns about the dangerous use of tear gas, batons, and restraint techniques by police," Amnesty International France president Anne Savinel-Barras said Monday. "Tear gas grenades have been discharged recklessly, and rubber bullets have been fired, causing serious injuries."
“Authorities must ensure that any response to demonstrations is necessary and proportionate, and that children and young people peacefully demanding their right to education are protected rather than being beaten, tear-gassed, or arbitrarily detained," she added. "The priority should be the de-escalation of tensions, and authorities must take all available precautionary measures to avoid the need to use force.”
At least dozens of protesting educators, parents, and labor unionists have also been injured by police during the demonstrations.
Some police also reportedly refused to attack protesters.
Workers interviewed during the protests appeared undaunted and focused on their own demands, as well as those of the students.
“We’re sick of wage freezes; 60% of low-wage public sector workers are paid less than the minimum wage for a full workweek,” CGT Poitiers official Vincent Bohan told World Socialist Web Site during a march in Paris last week. “More and more people rely on us, but there are not enough of us to meet the population’s needs.”
“When you hear Macron’s speeches, each one more provocative than the last, with billions of euros spent on killing, while people in France are starving, one feels like telling him: Stop... help people struggling here rather than killing people elsewhere," Bohan said, referring to rising tensions with Russia and France's testing of a new generation of nuclear missiles. "Frankly, we are very worried.”
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Can the Billionaire Oligarchs Buy Their Way Out of Populist Outrage?
Working people notice when they're getting screwed but a massive right-wing media infrastructure exists to redirect their anger, probably the oligarchs’ greatest achievement.
Oct 06, 2026
Will the worldwide revolt against oligarchy reach America before the billionaires buy our elections this fall?
Two weeks ago tomorrow, on September 23rd, Madrid’s police had to cordon off a downtown street to carry an 87-year-old woman named María del Carmen Abascal out of the apartment she’d lived in for seven decades. She normally uses a wheelchair, so they carried her out on a stretcher, which provided some truly inflammatory social media video. All because her landlord wanted to raise the rent, which requires a change of tenants.
The pictures of María being carried out of her apartment lit Spain on fire; she’s become the face of the nation’s housing crisis which has seen average rents nearly double in the past ten years. This past weekend tens of thousands marched again, with about a thousand people camped out in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol: one banner read “Looking for an apartment, selling a kidney.”
While the pressure campaign worked on the landlord, who backed down and agreed to let her go home, it didn’t work on the “conservative” politicians who dominate the Spanish parliament. When Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government proposed emergency tenant protections, the conservative opposition parties joined forces to kill them in parliament. As a result, Sánchez has pretty much been forced into taking the gamble of calling a snap election for November 29th.
Spain is the microcosm, but this is happening all across the developed world. France is on fire because students are tired of their schools being starved for resources. Populist movements are sweeping the European continent.
Forty-five years of “conservative” neoliberalism and austerity — all specifically designed to make the rich richer at the expense of working class people — have left average citizens furious.
And that fury is driving two parallel movements; the big question before us is which one will prevail both this fall here and over the next few years worldwide.
One movement is reflected in the encampment in Puerta del Sol where people understand that the landlord, land speculators, and the morbidly rich are the cause of their pain. You could call this the New Deal movement, for shorthand.
The other is seen in the far-right parties that have been topping the polls in Germany, France, and Britain by telling those same frightened people that it’s not the billionaires that are the problem; it’s that brown-skinned immigrant with a funny name or the queer kid who lives down the street.
Whichever side wins the argument over who’s the villain in today’s economic crisis for working people will be the one that ends up running these countries, including America.
We’ve seen this movie before here in America, although most people have no memory of it and could only vaguely recognize a quick telling of history.
The last time the morbidly rich held as much of our nation’s wealth and political power as they do today was the Gilded Age from the 1880s to the late 1920s, and popular rage at the oligarchs led to real progressive change:
- Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, and then progressive Republican Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft used it to break up the railroad and oil trusts along with dozens of others.
- The Tillman Act of 1907 made it a crime for corporations to give money or any sort of support to federal candidates for office.
- The income tax arrived in 1913 and the estate tax in 1916, and by the 1930s Franklin Roosevelt was building Social Security, the right to unionize, and the rest of the New Deal on that simple foundation.
- After World War II, democracies around the world copied FDR’s American New Deal formula, and that tightly regulated capitalism along with high taxes on the morbidly rich produced the largest middle class in history.
Then working class people and progressives got complacent, thinking this would be the new normal forever, with a single paycheck being the entrée into the middle class. The oligarchs, however, were just getting started, just like they did during the Industrial Revolution following the Civil War that produced the first Gilded Age.
As I lay out in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, the counterattack began in 1971 when a corrupt tobacco lawyer named Lewis Powell wrote a memo for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urging corporate America to step up and use their great wealth to seize control of our courts, campuses, media, low-media-cost low-population states that could be flipped Red, and Congress.
The Heritage Foundation and ALEC followed within two years, as rightwing billionaires started buying radio stations, newspapers, and television networks, while Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan turned the project into government policy.
The regulations and tax rates that had restrained great wealth and political corruption came down, and the money and political power of giant corporations and the morbidly rich have largely controlled both our politics and our economy ever since.
Working people noticed they were getting screwed but by then there was a massive rightwing media infrastructure to redirect their anger, probably the oligarchs’ greatest achievement.
For example, when Bush’s 2008 property- and bank-crash set off real rage at the banks and their oligarch CEOs, Koch-funded front groups organized it into the Tea Party and pointed it at Obama and his attempts to give all Americans healthcare.
It hit its peak of success when Donald Trump came down the escalator in 2015, telling voters he didn’t need anybody’s money because, as he put it, “I’m really rich.” Suddenly it wasn’t the rich who were screwing average Americans: it was the rich who’d save us!
To pull it off, he appropriated New Deal and Great Society language, promising to save and even strengthen Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; this is what con men have done throughout history.
The voters wanted their New Deal back with its middle class security on a single paycheck, but, true to Republican form, what they got instead was trillions in tax cuts for billionaires like Trump and his cabinet, paid for with almost a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid, an experimental program in six states to further privatize Medicare, and threats to cut Social Security.
One of the most interesting laboratories for finding out whether billionaire money can still buy public opinion the way the Kochs did with the Tea Party is Prop 40 in California, the 5 percent one-time tax on that state’s roughly 230 billionaires that will cover the healthcare shortfall the state will experience because of the Big Beautiful Billionaire’s Bill’s cuts to Medicaid.
A billionaire-backed group has gathered more than $187 million to stop it, while the measure’s backers have only pulled together an estimated $31 million. Google’s Sergey Brin alone has put in over $100 million.
The billionaires’ group even succeeded in getting two decoy measures, Props 41 and 42, on the same ballot, written so that if either one gets more votes than Prop 40, the billionaire tax dies even if a majority of Californians vote for it.
And the ads for the “No on 40” campaign is featuring teachers, firefighters, and the head of the state’s Planned Parenthood affiliates while the “Yes on 40” side says in the official voter guide that actual teachers, nurses, and Planned Parenthood workers support the tax.
It’s the same kind of phony grassroots campaign Reagan used when he promised cutting taxes and killing unions would increase prosperity, and when the Tea Party and GOP warned against “communism” in Obamacare, forcing the end to the possibility of a public option.
This same billionaire and corporate money is now pouring into the Senate races nationwide, using tools the robber barons of the late 19th century could have only dreamed about.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee released a deepfake of Texas Democrat James Talarico in a dress with a disclosure so small and faint that Berkeley digital forensics expert Hany Farid said most people wouldn’t immediately know it was fake. Another group produced a phony “Daisy” ad portraying him as a doctor performing gender surgeries on children.
In Michigan, Republicans greeted Abdul El-Sayed’s primary win with ads built around his full name and the Muslim Brotherhood, and their main super PAC has committed $51 million to that one race. On Sunday, I watched MS NOW play two of the newest deceptive Republican deepfakes, one putting Talarico in a makeup chair and another inventing “terrorists” in El-Sayed’s family.
Spending just on Senate races is projected to pass $3.4 billion this cycle, and most of the big money is just now starting to hit the airwaves and, thus, tightening the races that had seemed were in the bag for Democrats.
And if the lies don’t work, there’s always the power of our currently-billionaire-run government to insert itself in ways that can spin an election out of control. Last September Trump signed a national security memorandum called NSPM-7 that directs the FBI, the Treasury, and the IRS to go after the networks and funders behind what it calls domestic terrorism, and it lists among the “indicators” of that terrorism:
“anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity.”
By that standard, María’s Spanish neighbors camped in a public square to protest a greedy landlord could find themselves under investigation. Add the masked, anonymous, trigger-happy ICE thugs already working our streets with their new electric shock gloves, and the machinery of a “papers, please” society is right here right now.
There’s no way this one single election will settle all this. During the first Gilded Age, it took 45 years to go from the Sherman Act to Social Security — with quite a few lost elections along the way —and the people who won that fight went through it never knowing if they’d prevail or not; the biggest intervention was probably the Republican Great Depression.
But this November is a hinge moment in history. A Congress that can check Trump, a billionaire tax passed in the biggest state in the union, and senators like Talarico and El-Sayed who explicitly have run against the Epstein billionaire class would tell every Republican and the oligarchs who own them that their old trick of pointing at immigrants and trans kids has stopped working.
On the other hand, if the deepfakes, decoy ballot measures, massive rightwing media penetration, algorithmic manipulation on billionaire-owned social media platforms, and billions in ads win out instead, they’ll be used in every election from here on.
The easy lesson here is that if Spain’s protesters got an 87-year-old woman back into her home by showing up, we can do the same for our democracy that’s been so badly battered by 45 years of Republican con men and Democratic neoliberals.
The next No Kings day of action is Saturday, October 17th, and “No Kings” has always meant “No Oligarchs,” too.
Check your registration at vote.org, call your members of Congress through the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell them you want deepfake political ads outlawed, and if you live in California, vote yes on 40 and no on 41 and 42.
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'The Struggle Continues' for Today’s Generation of French Students
The French student movement has a long history of political activism based on organized protests and occupations not only for the improvement of their learning experience and school conditions but also against capitalism, consumerism, imperialism, and police repression.
Oct 03, 2026
France is presently in the throes of nationwide student protests that have turned increasingly violent as the police crack down on students, using tear gas and heavy-handed tactics as students blockade entrances to their schools and even set fire to several schools across France.
The students, aged between 15 and 18, are protesting over poor school conditions (overcrowded classrooms, crumbling infrastructure, heavy workloads, teacher shortages) and demand increased funding for schools. Thousands have been detained, mostly minors, and dozens injured, including some 50 law enforcement officers.
The high school protests begun in Aubervilliers, a low-income Paris suburb, but quickly spread nationwide, as usually happens with students protests in France. University students have now joined high school schools across France, thus creating an even more volatile situation for the French government. Incidentally, the student protests are unfolding alongside massive public-sector protests over pay and working conditions.
French students have also shown that they are always on the side of the workers’ fight for better working conditions and in their struggle for an alternative socioeconomic and political order.
France is indeed in crisis mode, economically, politically, and socially. Weak growth and deteriorating public finances have been the norm for several years now, while austerity is being advanced by the political establishment as the only available solution to the country’s economic problems and financial misery. French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu presented an austerity-driven government budget on October 1 that proposes 43 billion euros in new fiscal measures to reduce the deficit.
However, the budget bill is surely expected to face a rough ride as France has a deeply divided parliament that has repeatedly rejected austerity-driven budget proposals, forcing in fact several prime ministers since 2022 to step down. Lecornu’s government may very well be the next one to collapse as it is highly unlikely that either Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) party or Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s left-wing France Unbowed (LFI) party (which France’s Interior Ministry has actually classified as far left) will make compromises, especially in light of the fact that France’s next presidential election is scheduled for April 18 and May 2, 2027, and looks like the run-off election will be between Le Pen and Mélenchon.
In addition, France’s bond market is under growing pressure as its 10-year yield has reached the highest level since 2002. With the cost of borrowing money hitting a peak, France, which has faced sluggish growth for years, is likely to see even slower growth in 2027 than in 2026. This situation seems to be serving the far-right RN party particularly well, which has already scored a “historic victory” by securing enough seats in the recently held Senate election to establish its own caucus for the first time.
In the meantime, the student protests are being used both by Le Pen and government officials to target Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party for allegedly deploying agitators and using rhetoric to stoke students’ anger.
There is little doubt that the concerns of French students are legitimate. Their grievances with the poor state of schools have been building since this summer’s heatwaves, which exposed “the poor state of schools, with poor insulation and no air conditioning,” according to Vincent Latour, a professor of British Studies at the University of Toulouse-II-Le Mirail. Moreover, the president of Union Syndicale Lycéenne (USL), 19-year old Ryad Rani, said that student grievances had elicited no response from the government and that the movement will continue with the protests until its demands are satisfied.
The French student movement has a long history of political activism based on organized protests and occupations not only for the improvement of their learning experience and school conditions but also against capitalism, consumerism, imperialism, and police repression. It doesn’t need outside agitators in order to mobilize and take action into its own hands and is definitely not controlled by any political party. French students have also shown that they are always on the side of the workers’ fight for better working conditions and in their struggle for an alternative socioeconomic and political order, which is precisely why the current student protests coincided with the public-sector workers strike against the government’s austerity policies. And poor school conditions are not the only reason behind the ongoing student protests. As Mael Breton, a high school student taking part in the protests said, “We want fewer police because we think there is a huge amount of police repression, both against high school student movements and social movements more generally.”
It is true that local MPs from the LFI party were quick to lend support to the protests and the blockades once they started. But those actions were not initiated by the LFI, and students outright rejected “claims that they are manipulated by radical-left politicians.” Once the protests and the blockades started, students utilized various social media platforms to articulate their grievances and make their slogans and the measures taken known to the rest of French society.
The year 1968 was one of great turmoil and unrest. We live in a different world today. But what was true for workers and students in May 68, remains true for today’s generation of French students: “The struggle continues.”
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Trump's GOP Is Ripping This Nation Apart. The Question Is: Why?
The morality of today’s Republican Party has been laid bare. But it boggles the mind the depth of this destruction and cruelty.
Jul 14, 2026
Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill — which gave the top 1% fully $118 billion this year in tax cuts — turns a year old this week and Republicans in Congress actually celebrated the largest cuts to food assistance and Medicaid in American history.
They told us it was about fraud, about lazy people gaming the system, about restoring the dignity of work. Exactly a year later we can now see what it was really about in a line of cars outside a food bank in Phoenix.
That’s where ProPublica found Ana Alvarez on a recent morning, a single mother of five who works at a restaurant and lost her family’s SNAP benefits last September. She reapplied in December and the government still hasn’t processed her application.
She calls the agency every week and gets told to keep waiting, so she clips coupons, her kids don’t go to the zoo anymore, and as the summer heat bears down she’s doing grim arithmetic on rent, the car payment, and the electric bill that keeps the air conditioning running. She’s one reason Arizona has lost more than half of its SNAP recipients in a single year.
In Michigan, a widow named Sarah works two food service jobs to raise her 9-year-old daughter on $219 a month in food assistance, help she’s needed since her husband died suddenly six years ago. Last Christmas one of her employers wrote a single number wrong on her renewal paperwork, one missing zero, and the state cut her off.
And in Atlanta, Human Rights Watch documented a 36-year-old supermarket cashier who was working and meeting every requirement until she gave birth in late 2025, at which point Georgia shut off both her Medicaid and her food stamps, claiming she’d failed to report the job she was standing at every day. She’s spent the months since trying to get her coverage back while the medical bills pile up. In the party of family values, apparently, having a baby is now a firing offense.
None of these women are cheats or freeloaders. They’re workers, mothers, widows: exactly the people these cynical Republicans swear they’re protecting. But the numbers tell the story: more than 4 million Americans have been pushed off SNAP since the bill passed, the steepest drop since Clinton’s 1996 welfare cuts, and in just the 13 states that publish the data, roughly 808,000 children have lost food assistance.
The Congressional Budget Office projects millions more will lose Medicaid as the work requirement paperwork machine grinds through the states, even though more than nine in ten of the people targeted are already working, in school, caring for family, or disabled.
The cruelty built into the bill isn’t a side effect: it’s the whole reason for the “enhanced” paperwork requirements. Every mother who gives up in frustration, every widow tripped up by a typo, every application left to rot in a backlog is a line item of savings that can translate into a larger tax cut for Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg while the poorest households actually see their taxes go up.
That’s the morality of today’s GOP laid bare. They looked at Ana Alvarez’s five kids and Sarah’s daughter and that new mother in Atlanta, and they decided the billionaires needed the money more.
Every day, it seems, we see or hear about another way in which Trump and his lickspittles in Congress and the various federal agencies are tearing down our country, weakening our defenses, pitting Americans against each other, looting our government, and making life harder for everybody except the morbidly rich.
The question nobody seems to have an answer to is, “Why?”
— Is it that, as Craig Unger seems to suggest, that Trump’s been a Russian agent for decades and is setting us up to lose to the newly-forming Axis of Russia and China?
— Is it that he spent so many years burning with rage and embarrassment at not being accepted by New York high society that he’s just come to hate America?
— Could it be that American-values-hating foreign powers that have poured literally billions of dollars into the Trump family are paying him to tear us apart so they’ll never again have to endure the humiliation of having their human, civil, and women’s rights records called out by a future administration?
— Is it possible it’s all just to pay for tax cuts for billionaires?
— Or are his, Vance’s, and Musk’s white supremacist, Christian nationalist, libertarian, and/or neo-Nazi ideologies so intense that they’re willing to essentially burn the country down just to expel immigrants, deny benefits to people of color, elevate the rich, crush unions, and re-subordinate women?
These are serious questions for which I can’t find credible answers that explain the entire spectrum of their behavior. Why would Trump and the GOP:
— Condemn 12 million Americans to sickness and early death by gutting Medicaid (and the biggest cuts don’t even kick in until right after this fall’s election)?
— Destroy American soft power by killing USAID, thus condemning millions to death?
— Fire so many workers at the Social Security Administration that just getting through to sign up or get help has turned into a multi-day slog?
— Gut the State Department at a time diplomacy is most needed for world peace?
— End food assistance (SNAP) for millions when one-in-five American children experience hunger?
— Refuse to enforce laws and rules that allow workers to form unions in their workplaces?
— Propose forcing all new Medicare recipients onto Medicare “Advantage” corporate scam plans?
— Refuse military aid to Ukraine for over a year to give Russia time to finish off their genocidal job?
— Stop the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from going after fraudsters and banks when they rip people off?
— Eliminate a major NOAA program designed to warn communities about the dangers of flooding and other extreme weather crises?
— Politicize the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Election Commission?
— End net neutrality so none of us are safe online?
— Shut down anti-cyber-warfare operations in the federal government?
— Defund university research that leads to innovation and saves lives?
— Cut unemployment insurance benefits across Red states?
— Terminate support for people with student loans and gut scholarship programs?
— Slash Affordable Care Act outreach budgets and allow junk insurance plans?
— Reverse over 100 environmental rules, including those on clean air, clean water, and chemical safety?
— Weaken Dodd-Frank, including gutting oversight of “too big to fail” banks and stress tests for mid-size financial institutions?
— Dial back OSHA workplace safety standards and inspections?
— Cut taxes to rich people while raising them via tariffs on working class folks?
— Change the Federal Trade Commission to allow more monopolistic, rip-off corporate behavior?
— Make it harder to vote and harass Blue states by demanding their voter information?
— Work to prosecute women who have miscarriages or abortions?
— Make it harder to qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI)?
— End auto emission standards and increase our reliance on fossil fuels?
— Pack the courts with judges the American Bar Association says are “unqualified”?
— Destroy our faith in our elections and set up election workers for harassment?
— Fire the Inspectors General (who find waste, fraud, and abuse) across multiple federal agencies?
— Weaken whistleblower protections?
— Put the military on the streets of our cities in violation of Posse Comitatus?
— Use state power to punish political opponents and those who’ve investigated Trump’s crimes, alleged Russian collusion, and corruption?
— Create a network of concentration camps across America?
— Allow a shadow cabinet of billionaires and theocrats via Project 2025?
— Attack judges and prosecutors, leading to violence and threats of violence?
— Foment violence (like on January 6th) as a political strategy?
— Destroy our asylum and refugee systems?
— Pardon insurrectionists, rapists, cybercriminals, and other wealthy criminals?
— Defund the IRS so they can no longer audit the morbidly rich, leading to the loss of hundreds of billions in federal revenues?
— Ban books and censor libraries?
— Criminalize trans and queer people?
— Roll back gun safety measures?
— Defund the arts, humanities, and public media?
— Gut vaccine and other programs that keep Americans healthy?
— Nakedly politicize the military?
— Expand federal surveillance powers while kneecapping oversight?
— Criminalize free speech, particularly on college campuses?
— Attempt to revoke birthright citizenship?
— Attack press freedom and bar the Associated Press from the White House?
— Sabotage the US Postal Service?
— Undermine the census?
— Scale back civil and women’s rights enforcement?
— Normalize autocratic language like “vermin,” “scum,” and calling immigrants “animals”?
— Expel millions of brown-skinned immigrants who’ve already gone through the legal process to get work permits and are on a path toward citizenship?
— Create international fiscal chaos with an on-again, off-again TACO tariff policy?
— Cancel the suicide hotline for queer kids?
— Gut our national parks and sell off our federal lands to wealthy friends of the administration?
— Create a vast, secret, unaccountable police force with masked officers whose identity is concealed?
— Allow the president to accept hundreds of millions in obvious bribes from foreign powers in violation of the Constitution?
— Work so hard to conceal the crimes of a notorious sexual predator?
And this, of course, is just a partial list of the ways Trump and the GOP have weakened our nation, reduced our standing and prestige in the world, corrupted our government, and immiserated working class families.
Many of the theories about why Trump and the GOP would enthusiastically do so much damage to our people, our military, and our democracy contradict others.
For example, why would billionaires want tax cuts at the expense of damaging the economy that made them rich? Why would we promote a muscular military policy like bombing Iran while simultaneously destroying morale within the ranks of our military and kneecapping our intelligence agencies?
“Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is,” sang Bob Dylan back in the 1960s.
Today, we’re there.
Why do you think Trump and the GOP are working so hard to ruin our country?
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Starmer Expected to Resign as PM, But UK Left Warns of 'More of the Same' From His Replacement
Jeremy Corbyn said Andy Burnham would be "accepting too much of the austerity that we've had imposed upon us" and "doesn't appear to be doing anything different internationally."
Jun 20, 2026
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to announce as soon as Monday that he will resign, according to new reports, as Labour supporters abandon the party.
But many on the left remain skeptical that his likely replacement, Andy Burnham, will truly bring the "change" he promises.
Britain's Observer newspaper reported on Saturday that the prime minister appeared "resigned" to stepping down, well aware that "support isn't there" for his continued leadership amid the party's dismal unpopularity.
Though Starmer swept away nearly a decade and a half of Conservative rule in 2024, his honeymoon has been short-lived. His embrace of austerity in the face of a cost-of-living crisis and his government's ferocious crackdowns on pro-Palestinian speech have left progressive supporters seeking alternatives like the ascendant Green Party.
Meanwhile, his hard-right pivot on immigration has done little to siphon votes from Brexiteer Nigel Farage's far-right Reform UK party, which currently leads in national polls.
The immediate trigger for Starmer's reported resignation was Burnham's victory in Thursday's Makerfield by-election, which marked the former mayor of Greater Manchester's return to Westminster. Burnham comfortably defeated a Reform UK candidate, and The Guardian reported that he was expected to have support from about 200 Labour MPs in a leadership challenge against Starmer.
Burnham emphasized during a victory rally that it was "a last chance to change" Labour as it heads for electoral oblivion.
Responding to what he said were requests from constituents to "do something to make life more affordable," Burnham called for an end to "trickle down economics," with government interventions to bring down utility bills and rail fares, public procurement of businesses, pushes for reindustrialization, and job guarantees for people ages 16 to 18.
But some leaders on the British left have warned that Burnham will do little to deviate from Starmer's failures.
While he has pledged to reverse Starmer's welfare cuts and privatizations of public services, Burnham has also committed to maintaining the party's spending limits, which may make significant changes impossible.
Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn, who led the Labour Party from 2015-20, said that while he personally likes Burnham, "his basic economic strategy and views... seem to me to be accepting too much of the austerity that we've had imposed upon us."
The ex-leader also said Burnham "doesn't appear to be doing anything different internationally," noting that he has not given a straight answer on whether Britain should conduct an inquiry into the UK government's policy on Gaza and its supply of weapons to Israel.
Burnham has also drawn criticism for saying he would maintain Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who has spearheaded hard-line changes to UK asylum policies and has enforced the repressive ban on Palestine Action, which has led to the arrest of thousands of nonviolent protesters, many of whom have been charged with terrorism.
"The architect of Labour’s cruel plans on settled status and persecution of free speech and protest stays in place," said Green Party leader Zack Polanski, who said it was a sign of "more of the same."
Remarking on Burnham's team of economic advisers, who include former chief economists for the Bank of England and Goldman Sachs, Polanski said it "isn’t a team of advisers which looks like challenging wealth and power."
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Virginia Republican Appears to Fake Phone Call to Dodge Question About GOP's Social Security Cuts Plan
"Wittman is just an embarrassment to Virginians everywhere," said one Democratic campaigner. "This phone call was about as serious as he takes the needs of his constituents."
Jun 10, 2026
A vulnerable House Republican went to comedic lengths on Tuesday to avoid answering questions about Speaker Mike Johnson's plans for possible Social Security cuts.
The Republican Speaker was recorded earlier this week saying that under a GOP plan to be released next year, popular programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security needed to be “adjusted and fixed"—comments that were widely interpreted as a signal that cuts to crucial benefits were in the works.
On Tuesday, as a reporter from Meidas Touch approached him to ask about Johnson's "secret plan to cut Social Security," Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) suddenly whipped out his cell phone and began speaking into it, apparently to avoid the difficult question.
Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA) faked a phone call for roughly 90 seconds after being asked about Speaker Mike Johnson’s comments regarding potential Social Security cuts.
The phone's screen remained visible, with his cheek inadvertently tapping different parts of the display. pic.twitter.com/y3ST5AX651
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) June 10, 2026
A video posted by the outlet shows Wittman walking and speaking into the phone while the screen was still visible, seeming to indicate that no phone call was actually taking place.
As Meidas described: “The phone’s screen remained visible, with his cheek inadvertently tapping" the phone and changing parts of the display, which does not occur when an actual phone call is happening.
Wittman's conversation, which went on for about 70 seconds, was vague and nonsensical: "Hey, how you doing? I’m good. I’m good with that. I’ll be there in just a few minutes," he said. "I've got some more efforts that I want to talk to you about. There are actually more things that we have to be working on."
Just before Wittman put his phone away, the reporter, who’d continued walking next to him, asked again: “Congressman, what is Mike Johnson’s secret plan to cut Social Security?” Wittman continued to walk, refusing to acknowledge the reporter, before speeding away.
According to Drop Site News reporter Julian Andreone, it’s not the first time Wittman has pulled such a stunt. He posted video of Wittman taking another conveniently-timed phone call last week, right as the journalist approached to ask about a proposal in the next military spending bill to integrate the US and Israeli militaries.
Oh hey! He did this to me & @DropSiteNews last week! https://t.co/lR40fjKNw1 pic.twitter.com/kGs69cL9Ec
— Julian Andreone (@JulianAndreone) June 10, 2026
This interaction came a day after Johnson complained on a radio show on Monday about the large amount of spending on “entitlement programs,” as Republican lawmakers have long called earned benefits, and suggested unspecified changes.
“The reason we’re in trouble is because over 74% of federal spending is on autopilot, mandatory spending. That’s your entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and things like Social Security,” Johnson said. “They have to be adjusted and fixed. We have a plan to do that next year.”
The next day, a report from the Social Security Board of Trustees showed that the popular retirement program would be unable to pay out full benefits by 2032, a quarter earlier than projected last year.
Nancy Altman, the president of Social Security Works, said that the shortfall has been exacerbated by Trump policies that have slashed revenue going toward the program, including a tax bill that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy, tariffs that have slowed economic growth, the war with Iran, and policies targeting immigrants.
It is perhaps understandable why Wittman might want to avoid giving more details on Johnson's plan. Voters overwhelmingly oppose efforts to raise the retirement age, cut benefits, or raise workers' payroll taxes, all of which have roughly three-quarters disapproval or more, according to a late-May survey by the Ronald Reagan Institute.
Amid high inflation and soaring gas prices, a YouGov/Economist poll on Tuesday showed that approval of Trump's handling of the economy has hit a new low point of just 29%, compared to 63% disapproval. That disgruntlement has filtered down ballot to the point where Republicans' longstanding advantage over Democrats on the economy has evaporated, which puts candidates in competitive districts like Wittman in jeopardy this November.
Democrats are already incorporating Johnson's comments into their midterm messaging. A release on Tuesday from the Democratic National Committee War Room noted that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by Republicans and signed by Trump last year is projected to add potentially as much as $5 trillion to the national debt over ten years, largely to pay for tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans while cutting safety net programs like Medicaid.
It also highlighted comments by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last year describing the "Trump accounts" enacted as part of the megabill as a "backdoor for privatizing Social Security."
"Donald Trump and his loyal foot soldiers in Congress aren’t even trying to hide their plans to gut programs that hardworking Americans rely on," said DNC Rapid Response Director Kendall Witmer. "Trump and Republicans already made the largest cut to Medicaid in history, and now they are taking every opportunity to sell out working families and rip away retirement benefits, healthcare, and food assistance.”
Attorney Salaam Bhatti, one of several Democrats running in a crowded primary to challenge Wittman, used the embarrassing clip of him as a springboard.
"I'm running for Congress against him," he said of Wittman. "My platform: Don't ignore people, Medicare for All, tax billionaires, campaign finance reform."
Matt Royer, a digital strategist for Democrats in Virginia, said: “Wittman is just an embarrassment to Virginians everywhere. This phone call was about as serious as he takes the needs of his constituents in VA-1. Is it any wonder this race is now a tossup?”
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'Hands Off Our Pensions': Belgian Workers Take to the Streets in General Strike Against Austerity Measures
It's the latest of several national strikes over the past year and a half against policies that one union leader said will heighten "inequality" and "poverty."
May 13, 2026
Much of Belgium ground to a halt on Tuesday as tens of thousands of workers flooded the streets of Brussels as part of a general strike against government austerity measures.
Schools closed, public transit operated with reduced service, and flights out of major airports were grounded as workers walked off the job. Instead, they marched through the capital clad in red and green, the colors of Belgium's major labor unions, with some carrying signs that read, "Hands off our pensions" and "We will not pay the price of their wars."
According to Morning Star, as many as 100,000 people took part in the strike, which was called by the nation's three biggest trade unions in protest of measures by Prime Minister Bart De Wever's government that the unions say slash pensions, reduce wages, and attack collective bargaining.
The marchers called on the government to roll back plans to raise Belgium's retirement age to 67 and have called for an end to what the unions have dubbed a “pension penalty” that would cut benefits for those who retire early.
Amid rising costs caused by the US-Israeli war against Iran, the unions are also outraged by a proposed temporary cap on wage indexation, which requires wages to rise in tandem with inflation.
It's part of a broader trend of the government loosening labor rules for employers, which unions say has led to longer, more irregular hours and diminished employees' work-life balance.
"People will have less money left over and will still have to work more flexibly and longer," said Ann Vermorgen, the chair of the Confederation of Christian Trade Unions. "Even the Planning Bureau says that the reform will promote inequality and that poverty will emerge.”
Tuesday's general strike was just the latest over the past year and a half, as the unions have refused to let up on their push to reverse De Wever's agenda.
Gert Truyens, the chair of the General Confederation of Liberal Trade Unions of Belgium (ACLVB), said that with the pension penalty and the other labor proposals, the government was displaying “total disregard” for social dialogue by “unilaterally imposing things without discussing them with the trade unions and employers.”
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Trump Doesn't Have to Eliminate FEMA to Screw Disaster Victims
Just look at all of the ways the Trump administration has been slowly killing the federal relief agency in practice.
Dec 12, 2025
President Donald Trump’s Federal Emergency Management Agency Review Council was scheduled to vote Thursday on a report containing several recommended changes to FEMA. This was supposed to happen during a meeting from 1:00 to 3:00 pm ET. However, I and many others who registered to attend virtually never received links for a meeting that was eventually canceled with no notice or explanation.
CNN reported Wednesday that the review council was planning “to recommend dramatic downsizing and overhaul—but not elimination—of the agency.” Too much is being made of the council’s decision to back away from the earlier demands of Trump and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem for the outright abolition of FEMA. Abolition would require an act of Congress, an institution that (contra Trump and, often, John Roberts) actually does still exist. And besides, the Trump administration doesn’t need to formally eradicate FEMA to destroy it; just look at all of the ways they’ve been slowly killing the agency in practice.
Here’s a fresh stunning example: Starting on December 15, FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery is set to be led by Gregg Phillips, an election-denying conspiracy theorist with no relevant experience. That’s how you effectively demolish an agency without congressional approval. The QAnon-supporting Phillips is one of many examples of profoundly unqualified personnel now calling the shots at FEMA after experienced leaders, along with thousands of rank-and-file staff, were pushed out.
How else? Require every grant over $100,000 to be personally approved by Noem. That’s most grants, to be clear, as the Central Texas flooding disaster revealed in tragic fashion. Much of the Trump administration’s deadly assault on FEMA reflects ideas found in Project 2025, whose main architect is Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought. That right-wing policy road map calls for foisting ever more responsibility for emergency preparedness and response onto states and localities despite the fact that only the federal government has the personnel and financial wherewithal to manage major disasters.
That Trump and his allies, many of whom are openly authoritarian, don’t seem worried about a negative political fallout is ominous.
Making matters worse, Trump is telling governors to step up while Noem and Vought are restricting relevant funding. The Trump administration continues to deprive communities of funding for hazard mitigation and infrastructural resilience even though every $1 invested in risk reduction saves an estimated $6 to $13, not to mention countless lives. As usual, Vought’s obsession with “fiscal responsibility” is a rhetorical ploy to justify slashing programs he doesn’t like.
We won’t know for sure until the final report is voted on, but according to CNN, the FEMA Review Council is expected to promote more of the same old austerity. A draft viewed by the outlet reportedly calls for cutting FEMA’s workforce “in half” and making it harder for states to qualify for federal disaster assistance. A longer draft was produced collectively by the council, but Noem, in her capacity as council co-chair, reportedly took a hacksaw to it, altering it in regressive ways. The forthcoming Noem-authored report should be interpreted as a continuation of the Trump administration’s lethal dismantling of FEMA. So too should the move to put Phillips in charge of the agency’s lifesaving disaster response and recovery work.
Phillips’ appointment comes at a time when the Trump administration is already delaying and denying disaster aid. There’s an apparent pattern of political retribution that warrants congressional investigation. Trump seems to relish opportunities to publicly praise “loyal” states when (partially) approving disaster assistance while punishing perceived enemies (e.g., rejecting requests from Illinois despite record-breaking damage).
That said, Trump’s abuse of the disaster declaration process—one component of Vought’s broader war on the federal government’s pro-social capacities—is harming working people everywhere. Republican-led states (e.g., Arkansas), swing states (e.g. Michigan and North Carolina), and pro-Trump counties in Democratic-led states (e.g., western Maryland) are not immune from the White House’s attacks on FEMA.
It remains to be seen whether Democrats will make Trump and his fellow Republicans pay a political price for abdicating the federal government’s responsibility to care for disaster victims. Ultimately, ignoring people in their moment of greatest need is bad politics. That Trump and his allies, many of whom are openly authoritarian, don’t seem worried about a negative political fallout is ominous; it suggests they don’t think they’ll have to face a fair news environment (hence the fixation on Trump-friendly oligarchs running elite media companies) or a fair election ever again.
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Mamdani's Win Is Proof That an Organized Public Can Defeat Organized Money
The most consistent project of elite politics is to cultivate resignation: Nothing can change, no one like you can win, best not to try. When that illusion breaks, even in a single city, it sends tremors outward.
Nov 06, 2025
Zohran Mamdani’s election in New York City is not simply a local upset. It is a breach in the ideological dam that has kept American politics safely contained for generations.
This victory is historic not because one office suddenly overturns entrenched power, but because it demonstrates that such power can be overturned at all.
For decades, political life in the United States has functioned as a managed marketplace in which both parties advertise different brands, yet deliver the same fundamental product: deference to private wealth, hostility to social investment, and a belief that the public should expect very little from its government beyond punishment and surveillance.
On Tuesday, that spell cracked.
Zohran's win feels like the beginning of the first meaningful challenge to the neoliberal consensus in a generation.
Mamdani won not by courting the wealthy, not by flattering real-estate interests, not by running a campaign tailored to the comfort of cable-news pundits.
He won by naming the obvious: that the city belongs to its people, not to absentee landlords; that housing, transit, childcare, food, and dignity are fundamental rights, not privileges; that a budget is a statement of who matters in society—and it’s long past time a city as wealthy as New York put working people first instead of billionaires and real-estate developers.
The bipartisan establishment will attempt to minimize this moment. They will continue to fund hysterical hit pieces designed to make people afraid of those challenging their rule. But their real fear is that this victory might prove contagious.
If New Yorkers can elect someone who openly challenges concentrated power, asks the wealthy to pay their share, and speaks in plain moral terms about economic justice, then perhaps Los Angeles can. Perhaps Cleveland, Minneapolis, Atlanta, and Kansas City.
The danger, from the perspective of those who currently command the political economy, is that people elsewhere may decide to stop begging for crumbs and begin organizing for a real seat at the table.
Power relies on a population convinced of its own helplessness. The most consistent project of elite politics is to cultivate resignation: Nothing can change, no one like you can win, best not to try. When that illusion breaks, even in a single city, it sends tremors outward.
Across the country, millions watching the election results saw something rare in American politics: Proof that a campaign rooted in solidarity can beat one rooted in capital. They saw a future in which the public is not a spectator to its own dispossession. They saw permission to believe in their own power.
They saw that politics need not be reduced to a stage-managed rivalry between corporations wearing different campaign colors.
As someone who saw this possibility in the presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders, who saw our movement defeated by this same bipartisan establishment, this moment gives me a renewed faith in America's capacity to fight back against oligarchy. Zohran's win feels like the beginning of the first meaningful challenge to the neoliberal consensus in a generation.
And that is why this victory matters. Not because one candidate triumphed, but because a barrier was crossed. The belief that the public must endure austerity while wealth accumulates above it has lost its inevitability. The idea that the mass media can manufacture consent for a Wall Street-approved candidate every time has shattered.
The attacks on Mamdani were relentless these past few months. But their hollow and desperate efforts failed. The majority didn't buy it, and they went to the polls to send Andrew Cuomo packing.
For the first time in a long time, the message is simple and electrifying:
The people can win. And if they can win here, they can win anywhere.
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