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fascism
To Stop Trump, the Pro-Democracy Movement Must Center Workers
Marches alone won't beat authoritarianism; the movement has to fight where working people already fight.
Apr 19, 2026
Last month, 8 million people marched in the largest single-day protests in US history for "No Kings 3." More than 3,000 rallies were held across the country in a “record-breaking” display of opposition that an estimated 1 in 50 people participated in.
To translate that march into a movement, the fight to have your voice be counted is one working people have to take up every single day. The warehouse worker getting a Sunday night text saying they need to be in tomorrow even though she requested that day off for her daughter's physical therapy. The tenant whose rent jumps $200 with no explanation.
For working people, those fights start at work, in their neighborhoods, and at the polls. To have a successful pro-democracy movement in the United States, we must recognize working people's struggles as central to stopping authoritarianism, not separate from it.
I'm the founding executive director of Organized Power In Numbers (OPIN). Before that, I helped lead the campaign to win Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and organized car wash workers in Los Angeles. Lofty speeches about democratic norms don't move working people. Winning does. Fighting for power at work, increasing the minimum wage, lowering utility bills, and providing free healthcare are the same as fighting for democracy.
Our hope for defending democracy is in a movement of the multiracial working class that wins material gains and builds solidarity across race, industry, and immigration status.
Signing a union card is often where working people who have been systematically disenfranchised first experience democratic power. They vote on contracts, elect leaders, and make collective decisions. Winning stable schedules, workplace protections against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, or living wages teaches people that power doesn't only belong to employers and landlords. It can belong to them.
In LA, I helped organize car wash workers, mostly undocumented. No overtime, no breaks, and bosses stole wages constantly. At one shop, the owner refused to let workers use the bathroom, telling them to urinate in a drainage grate instead.
After years of organizing, hundreds of car wash workers won a union contract with bathroom breaks and better wages. They built a network where workers understood their rights. When one shop faced retaliation, workers from other sites showed up.
However, not all workplace organizing automatically builds that larger sense of power. Some unions negotiate good contracts and go quiet when ICE raids their members' neighborhoods, when states close polling places, or when Black women lose 319,000 jobs in the public and private sectors. Focusing only on workplace interests without connecting to the bigger fight against authoritarianism leaves those union members isolated and feeling powerless.
When President Donald Trump tells workers they’re poorer because immigrants took their jobs and no bold labor movement responds, the resentment goes toward scapegoats instead of the billionaires responsible. That’s how authoritarianism grows.
To win against fascism, candidates, campaigns, and movements will have to connect with and run on the agendas that matter to working people.
At OPIN, we've reached more than 27 million poor and working-class people in the Sunbelt over the last six years. Through thousands of organizing conversations, the common thread was that housing costs, groceries, and utility bills keep them up at night. We organize our campaigns around what workers need: clear pathways to dignified jobs and stronger communities, not lectures about civic duty.
That’s not just good organizing strategy. History shows that authoritarianism is stopped when labor and democracy are bound together. Our hope for defending democracy is in a movement of the multiracial working class that wins material gains and builds solidarity across race, industry, and immigration status.
Countering the power of bosses and landlords builds a base of people who won’t accept it from the White House either.
That’s the force that can beat fascism. And it’s the same force that showed up on March 28 for No Kings 3.
Now we need those movements to merge, for more of us to move, to take risks collectively, for all of our well-being.
Labor can’t advance while ignoring the assault on democracy. And the pro-democracy movement can’t ask working people to defend abstract principles while they’re still fighting for a voice of their own. We need higher wages, stable schedules, and a voice on the job alongside the solidarity and political power to beat authoritarianism.
That’s why labor and community organizations are planning for a day of action on May 1 around taxing the rich, protesting ICE and illegal wars, and expanding democracy, all together. It's the only way to win.
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The Fight for a Livable Climate Is the Fight Against Fossil-Fueled Fascism
The fossil fuel industry is funding fascism because they know they lose in a democracy. Young people are ready to fight for both, because we see them as inseparable.
Apr 04, 2026
In early 2025, Sunrise launched a campaign to make polluters pay for the effects of climate disasters. This campaign had the usual strengths: a focused message, easy to villainize targets, and real opportunities for state-level wins. It allowed us to engage the public directly following climate disasters, when attention to the climate crisis is highest.
But taking the campaign from the drawing board to the streets felt like pulling teeth. It was hard to recruit young people, bring local hubs on board, and build organic momentum. Our leadership team felt unmotivated and lethargic. Ignoring the elephant in the room of escalating fascism was getting to all of us.
In response, our leadership team came together over the summer to reevaluate and reassess the broader landscape. We watched Immigration and Customs Enforcement escalate in Los Angeles, watched as President Donald Trump broke every rule in the book and rapidly consolidated power. He was gutting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), dragging us back into the coal era, joking about running in 2028, and threatening to cancel elections. It became very clear that running a Make Polluters Pay campaign was like bringing a knife to a gunfight (figuratively of course).
Here’s what we realized:
1. Local Wins Cannot Outpace an Administration Fully Captured by Big Oil
From a purely emissions perspective, we were losing. We could get a few polluters to pay for cleanup costs. In some states, like California or New York, state legislation mattered a good amount. But while we were focused on state-level policy, the Trump administration was opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, reversing vehicle emission standards, withdrawing from international climate agreements again, eliminating the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) tax credits, and staffing the EPA with fossil fuel executives. It was changing the green economy so that there was less incentive to build wind and solar, pausing IRA-funded projects, and actively driving up pollution. We were just being outstripped.
2. We Can’t Wait This Out Until Trump Leaves Office
Many of our partner organizations decided to focus on local organizing for three years in order to prepare for what we wanted to win when we won back power. However, this approach depends on stable democratic systems, and the ability to organize freely. Both of which are increasingly unrealistic based on our assessment.
First, Trump may not leave office. He’s openly discussed ignoring term limits. He’s installing loyalists throughout the military and Justice Department. Republican state legislatures are passing laws that would allow them to override election results. Trump has looked at changing ID requirements to require proof of citizenship to vote, and has gerrymandered and mandated Republican states redraw districts. Even if he personally leaves, it’s very likely that he will change the rules of the game to make it basically impossible for a Democratic trifecta to come to power—and because of our levels of polarization, that’s the starting point for climate legislation.
Second, protest is being criminalized. Anti-protest laws passed in 17 states since 2024. Sunrise itself was going to be targeted. Our infrastructure was likely to walk out of the next few years weaker, not stronger.
We need a movement that can force Trump out of office. That won’t be a single-issue movement.
3. Under a Functional Democracy, We Would Already Have Widespread Climate Action
As we started to explore further, it became clear the links between rising fascism and the climate crisis.
Public opinion data currently shows that people support climate action by significant margins: 65% of Americans support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant; 72% support transitioning to clean energy. Majorities support Green New Deal-style investments.
In a functional democracy, that should translate to legislation, easily. But our fight for Build Back Better—what later got watered down into the Inflation Reduction Act—taught us that it wasn’t that simple. The broken link—the reality that our government is more bought out by pharmaceutical companies and fossil fuels than it is accountable to everyday people—is exactly how Donald Trump won, promising to be an un-buyable strongman.
And fossil fuel companies recognized that as well. The Biden administration was a clear lesson for fossil fuels: Under a democracy, they will lose their business model. So they’ve made a calculated decision to fund authoritarianism, because under authoritarianism, they win. Fossil fuel industry donations to Trump’s 2024 campaign reached record levels. Trump promised oil executives whatever they wanted in exchange for $1 million in campaign donations. Oil executives are staffing his administration at unprecedented rates. This is fossil-fueled fascism. If we want to stop the climate crisis, we need a democracy that can’t be bought.
4. We need a massive base
The final reason came down to our base and organizing. At the end of the day, Sunrise has always been by and for young people, and the reality that we saw on the ground was that young people were deeply concerned about rising authoritarianism and didn’t know what to do about it. Running a climate-only campaign under these conditions felt like we were ignoring reality. Our members had an intuitive sense that to stop climate change, we needed to stop authoritarianism first.
The last six months have only confirmed that instinct. Students showed up in record numbers to fight for sanctuary campuses and to stop Donald Trump’s compacts with universities. Our hotel non-cooperation campaigns went viral, and since we’ve broadened our focus, young people have increasingly come to consider Sunrise their political home.
Sunrise’s Strategic Pivot
So we made a decision: Sunrise is pivoting to end authoritarianism and win a democracy capable of addressing the climate crisis.
We’re still a climate movement, but this moment requires the acknowledgment that climate action is impossible under authoritarianism. Winning democracy is a precondition for winning climate policy. The fossil fuel industry is funding fascism because they know they lose in a democracy. Young people are ready to fight for both, because we see them as inseparable.
Our strategy is ambitious, reflecting the scale of the challenge, with three main goals:
- Build the youth base and organizing infrastructure needed to defeat authoritarianism;
- Win structural democracy reforms like proportional representation and public financing that make oil industry capture impossible; and
- Use that democracy to pass transformational climate legislation and defend it long-term.
It’s ambitious, but it’s the only path that works.
This piece was first published on the Sunrise Movement Substack.
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Iran Accuses Trump Allies of 'Fascist Mindset' Akin to Hitler for Invoking Ancient Empires to Justify Aggression
"Even though the US has no ancient empire, it now claims to represent the 'West' and uses European history to justify its brutal military aggression on the Iranian nation," said a spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry.
Apr 01, 2026
As President Donald Trump and his allies invoke the conquests of ancient empires to justify waging war across the Middle East, a leading Iranian diplomat says they have adopted a "fascist mindset."
"Even though the US has no ancient empire, it now claims to represent the 'West' and uses European history to justify its brutal military aggression on the Iranian nation," wrote Esmaeil Baqaei, the spokesperson for Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a post to social media Tuesday.
The regional war launched at the end of February by the US and Israel has entailed numerous attacks on civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals, residential areas, and water and energy facilities in Iran and Lebanon.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said on Tuesday that at least 1,598 civilians have been killed in Iran, including 244 children. The Lebanese Health Ministry said on Wednesday that at least 1,318 people had been killed since Israel began its assault on Lebanon, including 125 children.
As Baqaei pointed out, multiple figures in Trump's orbit have justified the carnage by portraying the war as an existential conflict of civilizations.
He referenced a comment made by former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon, who is now one of MAGA World's most popular podcasters.
In a recent episode of Bannon's War Room show, he called for "total war" against Iran and said the US was "gonna go back and redo what Alexander the Great did 2,300 years ago."
STEVE BANNON: If we're gonna go to war, let's go to total war. And what I mean by total war, let's shut down everybody trading with them. Let's go to UAE and say, hey, you’ve got like two hours to go to Dubai and shut it all down. The Pirate Cove in Dubai. Gotta stop. We gotta… pic.twitter.com/t4xDqSmCS5
— Bannon’s WarRoom (@Bannons_WarRoom) March 28, 2026
Bannon was referring to the Macedonian general's famous invasion of Persia in 330 BCE. Alexander's conquest, which led to the absorption of Persia, was carried out with historic brutality—from the mass killing, displacement, and enslavement of countless people to the razing of entire cities like Persepolis and Tyre.
Similarly, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), perhaps the most vocal proponent of a full-scale invasion of Iran, asserted on Fox News Sunday that with overwhelming military might, the US could end a “2,000-year-long conflict,” as if to imply that the modern hostilities between the West and Iran are ancient and intractable when they are actually less than 50 years old.
"Such distorted historical references are revealingly similar to Nazi and fascist thinking," Baqaei said, pointing to the German and Italian dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
"Adolf Hitler justified invading other countries by invoking 'Lebensraum' and praising the Roman Empire," he said. "Mussolini used the glory of the Roman Empire to excuse his aggressions in North Africa."
Baqaei's comments also come as Israel has launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon, which it has suggested will result in an indefinite occupation. Defense Minister Israel Katz has described plans to fully demolish Lebanese villages adjacent to Israel's border without allowing displaced residents to return.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Israeli officials are also privately discussing plans to press Lebanon's Christian and Druse communities to "force out any Lebanese from neighboring Shiite Muslim communities who have sought refuge among them as Israeli bombardments flatten Shiite towns.”
Some figures in Israel's growingly influential far-right have described the conquest of Lebanon as part of a broader project to establish "Greater Israel," which would expand the nation's territory to neighboring states across the Middle East and clear out local populations to be colonized by Jewish settlers.
The expansionist vision, and the accelerating violent displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank by Israeli settlers, has been described by critics as an eerie parallel to the Nazi goal of creating "Lebensraum" by pushing out or killing ethnic groups viewed as racially inferior, particularly Jews, in order to create "living space" for Germans.
Portrayals of the war in Iran as a civilizational clash are omnipresent among Trump's closest allies. Some, like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, portray it as part of a holy "crusade" by Christendom against the Muslim world. Others like White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt have described it as a war to defend "Western civilization" from "brutal terrorists" who want to destroy it.
Baqaei said, however, that comments lionizing the war as a renewal of bloody old-world conquest are "reviving" a "dangerous pre-World War II fascist mindset—torpedoing the very modern values of human rights and international law the West claims to stand for."
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