Saying No to Kings and Yes to the Future

Millions of Americans are currently hard at work doing whatever we can to resist the fascism that has quickly taken hold in the United States. For as long as I can remember, many Americans were discontented with many aspects of the government—both people like me, who have always worked for environmental, social, and economic justice, and the people who would devolve into Donald Trump’s supporters—the same racist, nativist misogynists who have always populated this settler colonial state.

For those of us who value kindness, learning, fairness, diversity, working for a future for the environment, and all the other values hated by the MAGA cult, this is a time that feels like a daily nightmare. Every value we hold is being smashed into the ground by this cult that often feels almost supernatural in its pure evil.

Many of the federal agencies that have been sledgehammered into pieces were funding important programs feeding, educating, vaccinating, researching, and regulating, although often imperfectly. The percentage of our taxes that went to pay for imperialist military interventions was always massive and immoral. Trump’s minions even list some “cuts to woke programs.” These include Minority Business Development, the Environmental Justice program of the Environmental Protection Agency, preschool development grants, and so much more. But, we are now paying more for Trump’s personal Gestapo than all the federal law enforcement agencies together, as well as the massive military budget, including the Iran debacle, while we watch the government defund our states, cities, and towns.

Donald Trump’s regime has ramped up killing the Earth through global heating, discharges of all sorts of poisons into our environment, and mining anything with value to capitalism. We are witnessing the systems that Americans have relied on, maybe even thought would always be part of our lives, disappear overnight. If we had a problem with Social Security, there were offices everywhere, workers being paid to assist. Did we ever think we would need to worry about polio raging back? That a very unwell man with zero medical training would be making health policy, so we are unable to trust any health data and advice being promoted? That the executive branch of the United States would devolve from bowing to large corporations, but largely following the law, to possibly the most corrupt “leadership” in the world? That in 14 months, the corruption would be so pervasive that there is no part of the Trump regime operating without bribery and no-bid contracts?

We will need to be holding serious discussions about how to move ahead as a community, as a town or city, as a state—because we need to model what we want in order to bury Project 2025 in the ground forever.

What are we working for when we resist all of the above? And how much of the old system that has been decimated should return, and how can we work for a new beginning if we are able to eliminate Trump, Project 2025, and the rest of the ghouls who currently hold power? If we are able to overcome the very credible threats to elections by the Trump regime, and move past a likely coup attempt if a major election goes sideways for the fascists, what then? Is our only alternative the Democratic Party of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)? A Democratic Party that stood idly by when then-President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland let Trump skate on all his crimes, including the insurrection of January 6? A Democratic Party that did not prosecute Richard Nixon for Watergate, nor Ronald Reagan for the Iran-Contra scheme?A Democratic Party that was fine with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza?

This is a question we should all be asking, and when we work for change at this time, we need to be very clear about what changes we are looking to enact. Both parties presided over the immense and growing wealth gap, outsourcing of well-paying jobs for working people, a starved education system that put testing above critical thinking, an overwhelmed healthcare system, ever increasing housing costs, an ever growing war budget—these and more are what drove many poor and working class people to believe Trump’s lies that he and the far-right care about their needs. And now, the tech billionaires want to replace millions of jobs with AI—and leave those workers behind.

In the fight against Trump, against fascism, against the MAGA right, we need to show vision: Can we create a system that does not destroy the Earth and takes into account the needs of humans and animals on the planet? Our states are going to have to be a model for the future. Our communities are coming together because we understand how much we need each other at this time of the larger system appearing to disintegrate. We will need to be holding serious discussions about how to move ahead as a community, as a town or city, as a state—because we need to model what we want in order to bury Project 2025 in the ground forever. Going back to 2020 is not possible and not desirable. Creating a vision of a future that can support life on our planet in peace and justice is what we need to strive for.

No Kings!