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Opinion
An Injury to Immigrant Workers Is an Injury to All Workers
The Trump administration claims that its assault on immigrants will protect American workers. But its masked, armed federal agents are creating hostile environments for all workers, not just immigrants.
Feb 08, 2026
In late 2025, federal immigration authorities detained a non-union janitor who’d accused contractors for Minnesota’s Ramsey County of wage theft.
The worker is now in deportation proceedings. But his courage helped win policy changes in Ramsey County, and his fierce advocacy in a similar wage theft case in nearby Hennepin County also paid off: More than 70 subcontracted workers for Hennepin County received nearly $400,000 in back pay in December 2025.
When someone who fights for workers is detained, “it sends a chill,” Greg Nammacher, president of SEIU Local 26, told me. “When the workers who are stepping up to try and reveal violations are silenced, the standard comes down for the whole industry.”
The Trump administration claims that its assault on immigrants will protect American workers. But its masked, armed federal agents are creating hostile environments for all workers, not just immigrants.
“They treated us like animals. And it’s not some immigrants who are affected—it’s everybody.”
In Minneapolis, federal agents abducted an educator trying to ensure safe dismissal at a high school. In Southern California, they chased a day laborer at a Home Depot onto a freeway, where he was hit and killed by a vehicle. In Chicago, they detained a childcare worker as children watched.
Agents have even directly harassed striking workers.
On December 16, Juanita Robinson was out on the picket line in Chicago when armed federal agents—including border chief Gregory Bovino—approached and demanded identification. The group “interrogated and laughed at our members while they were on the picket line,” according to a press statement from Teamsters Local 705.
“It was scary when they pulled up on us,” said Robinson, who was born in Chicago but calls her immigrant coworkers family. “We’re out there trying to make ends meet, and y’all abusing us,” she said of the agents. “They treated us like animals. And it’s not some immigrants who are affected—it’s everybody.”
The scholarly research backs Robinson up.
By studying “Secure Communities,” a federal program that resulted in the deportation of nearly half a million people from 2008 to 2014, scholars found that upticks in immigration enforcement are associated with increased minimum wage violations and more dangerous workplaces for all workers.
“If I complain to the Wage and Hour Division that I’m not getting paid minimum wage, it might mean that my wages get restored,” said Matt Johnson, a professor at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy. “But it also might affect my coworkers, who were facing similar violations. So when one worker becomes more reluctant to complain,” he told me, it ultimately affects “the rest of the labor market.”
Research also shows that immigration crackdowns actually reduce jobs for US-born workers. Chloe East, an economics professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, says that’s because immigrants and US-born workers “complement” each other rather than compete directly.
For example, in order for a restaurant “to hire waiters, waitresses, hosts, and hostesses, which are jobs typically taken by US-born people, they also have to be able to hire cooks and dishwashers, jobs more often taken by immigrants,” she explained. When they “can’t find anybody to do the dishwashing, they may have to reduce their hiring overall.”
The effect ripples out. “When many people are all of a sudden removed from a local area because of detention or deportation, or afraid to leave their homes to get haircuts and eat at restaurants,” she explained, that hurts the economy “for everybody, including US-born workers.”
The GOP’s so-called ”Big Beautiful Bill” gave the Trump administration an unprecedented $170 billion over and above existing funding to carry out abuses like these. That enormous sum comes directly at the expense of programs that were cut, like Medicaid and SNAP, and could end up hurting all workers and their communities.
They’re trying to “break the unity that we have to have to be able to actually get raises and health insurance and retirement,” Nummacher told me. “Working people have never been able to win these things without being organized.”
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MAGA Is Anti-Black
No matter what Trump or his allies allege, the video depicting the Obamas as apes is entirely consistent with their racist worldview; for them, Black is ugly, dangerous, and savage, while white is beautiful, safe, and civilized.
Feb 08, 2026
On February 5, a video was posted on President Donald Trump’s Truth Social account depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes in a jungle. The racist depiction of Black people as primates dates back centuries. It is meant to represent them as ugly, savage, and unintelligent—as fundamentally incapable of building a human (white) civilization.
The post was deleted 12 hours later. The White House initially blamed an unnamed staffer for posting it. One White House adviser told reporters, “The president was not aware of that video, and was very let down by the staffer who put it out.” Apparently, they forgot that Trump himself had claimed that only he and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino have access to his social media account.
Later that day, Trump admitted that he knew about the video before its posting. He told reporters, “I looked at the beginning of [the video]. It was fine.” He then added, “Nobody knew that that was at the end. If they would have looked, they would have had the sense to take it down.” Neither the current president of the United States nor his staff is apparently capable of watching a 1-minute video before posting it.
Trump refused to apologize, insisting that he “didn’t make a mistake.”
In some respects, Leavitt is right—that Truth Social post shouldn’t surprise anyone. Trump is the nation’s Racist-in-Chief.
Notably, even conservatives condemned the post (albeit meekly). Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) posted on Twitter-X that this is “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) shared Scott’s post, writing, “Tim is right. This was appalling.” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) similarly wrote: “This post was offensive. I’m glad the White House took it down.”
Democrats, by contrast, used stronger language. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said, “Fuck Donald Trump and his vile, racist, and malignant behavior.” Finally, bipartisanship has been achieved!
Despite this outcry, the White House was quick to dismiss the post as being anything newsworthy. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt demanded that journalists “please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
MAGA and Anti-Black Racism
In some respects, Leavitt is right—that Truth Social post shouldn’t surprise anyone. Trump is the nation’s Racist-in-Chief. It’s a slow day indeed if that video is the only racist thing Trump did all day.
In recent months, he has referred to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a sitting Black congresswoman, as “a disgusting person, a loser,” and “garbage.” Trump says that she, a US citizen, “should be thrown the hell out of our country.” To emphasize, not her country, but “our country.”
More broadly, he says that Somalis are “low IQ people” and that Somalia is “barely a nation.” It “stinks” and is “filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.” For Trump, Somalis are savage, ugly, uncivilized, and unintelligent people—fundamentally distinct from the “nice people” from civilized societies like Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Notice the direct parallels between how Trump explicitly describes Somalis on the one hand, and the underlying racist meaning behind comparing Black people to primates on the other. Trump is applying the exact same set of stereotypes in both instances.
For MAGA Republicans, that success is always vulnerable to the threat of “foreign cultures” and Black immigrants, which in this case include both Ilhan Omar and Barack Obama.
Somalia is not the only example. He refers to Haiti as a “shithole” and “hellhole.” That Haitians are “eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats.” This narrative—not only wildly racist, but demonstrably false—was amplified by several Republicans, including Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.), Representative Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and then-Vice President-Elect JD Vance.
Trump’s racism is not an anomaly among MAGA Republicans. Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller remarks, “If Somalians cannot make Somalia successful, why would we think that the track will be any different in the United States? If Libya keeps failing, if the Central African Republic keeps failing, if Somalia keeps failing, right? If these societies all over the world continue to fail, you have to ask yourself, […] what do we think is going to happen?" For Miller, no matter where those people go, the result will be the same: “consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.” Test scores will also consistently drop: “If you subtract immigration out of test scores, all of a sudden our test scores skyrocket!” Like Trump, for Miller, Africans and their descendants are incapable of building a human (white) civilization.
Indirectly, Trump applies this standard to Obama too. Per Trump’s birther conspiracy theory, Obama was born in Kenya. At the same time he promoted that lie, Trump insisted that Obama allowed the US to collapse to the level of “a third world country.” Taken together, from Trump’s perspective, Obama is an African immigrant whose “destructive” policies led to the country “dying.” This is precisely what he and others in his administration allege that African immigrants always do.
A MAGA Black History Month
One might (confusedly) object that all of this is xenophobia, not anti-Black racism specifically—truly a distinction without a difference.
On February 3, Trump issued a proclamation emphasizing that “the history of black Americans is an indispensable chapter in our grand American country.” Thus, he calls upon “public officials, educators, librarians, and all the people of the United States to observe [Black History Month] with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.”
Yet, this objection overlooks a crucial detail: Trump’s proclamation is explicitly not a recognition of diversity—“This month, however, we do not celebrate our differences.” For Trump, Black History Month is not a celebration of Black people, but rather of the ability of “black American heroes” to successfully embrace and defend the “very special culture” that America and Europe inherited. Importantly, for Trump and his allies, the values, beliefs, and principles of that special culture are uniquely white.
This is the white-washed version of Black History Month that MAGA recognizes—one where Black people’s contributions to America are completely divorced from their lived experiences; where it is white values that abolish slavery, end discrimination, and save the nation.
Trump is not honoring Black arts, culture, or philosophy. He is calling on us to remember Black people’s “enduring commitment to the American principles of liberty, justice and equality.” It is those principles that freed the Western Hemisphere from “empires, ended slavery, saved Europe, put a man on the moon, and built the freest, most just, and most prosperous society ever known to mankind.” Black patriots like Coretta Scott King, Booker T. Washington, and Thomas Sowell “fiercely defended the values set forth in the Declaration of Independence and helped to make our Republic the greatest country in the history of the world.”
For Trump, America’s “bedrock belief in equality” is inextricably tied to the nation’s Christian foundation and the belief that all are equal under God. It is that belief “that drove black American icons to help fulfill the promise of [America’s] principles.”
What Trump is expressing here is entirely consistent with the racist worldview that he and other MAGA Republicans endorse. Black values and cultures ruin societies, while white values uplift them. This is why Haiti, Somalia, Central African Republic, and Libya fail to develop, while the US thrives. If Black people succeed, it is because they have championed Christian and Enlightenment (white) principles and values. This is the white-washed version of Black History Month that MAGA recognizes—one where Black people’s contributions to America are completely divorced from their lived experiences; where it is white values that abolish slavery, end discrimination, and save the nation.
For MAGA Republicans, that success is always vulnerable to the threat of “foreign cultures” and Black immigrants, which in this case include both Ilhan Omar and Barack Obama. This vulnerability is why US cities like Baltimore, where more than half the residents are Black, can become “dangerous,” “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”
No matter what Trump or his allies allege, the video depicting the Obamas as apes is entirely consistent with their racist worldview. In every instance, their comments reflect the same underlying dichotomy: Black is ugly, dangerous, and savage, while white is beautiful, safe, and civilized. This is true whether they explicitly state it or metaphorically represent it.
It is this racism that leads Trump to blame Black Americans for violent crimes. It is this racism that leads the Trump administration to invade Minnesota. It is this “racial and national origin animus” that spurs their desire to end Temporary Protection Status for Haitians. It is this racism that makes everyone, regardless of race or citizenship status, vulnerable to the Trump administration’s Christian and ethnonationalist agenda. It is this racism that we must all resist.
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Affordability, Authoritarianism, and the Climate Crisis: The Fight in California
There are real challenges that must be addressed to transition to a clean energy economy while maintaining affordability. And there are difficulties that are intentionally caused by the fossil fuel industry’s insistence on fighting a transition away from dependence on its products.
Feb 08, 2026
In California, as in the rest of the country, there is a war going on between two visions of the future. In one we have affordability, sustainability, and democracy. In the other we have poverty, extreme inequality, authoritarianism, and environmental disaster. Movement toward the first is powered by many organizations and a variety of forms of people power. Movement toward the second is powered by the fossil fuel industry, big tech, white nationalism, and the neofascist wing of the Republican Party. Deciding who will win that battle is the most dramatic question of our time.
The fossil fuel industry is a central player in this story. At the federal level, this was exemplified by President Donald Trump choosing the head of ExxonMobil to be secretary of state in his first term. In the run-up to the 2024 election it was exemplified by the $450 million dollars the industry donated to Republican candidates, with $96 million going directly to Trump’s election campaign. We will probably never know the extent of indirect donations. The industry’s centrality to the story is exemplified by the work done to shut down clean energy projects funded by the Biden administration. It is exemplified by the kidnapping of the president of Venezuela to take over that country’s fossil fuel resources. The industry is showing no signs of changing its strategy of putting profits over climate, over affordability, and over democracy.
Here in California we are at the crux of that battle. California is a global leader in making the transition to a clean energy economy. We have some of the strongest environmental legislation in the world. At the same time, California also produces 118 million barrels of oil per year. The fossil fuel industry is the largest contributor to our state’s politicians. The Western States Petroleum Association is the largest political contributor. Chevron is the second largest.
Most of our politicians would like for California to be a leader in building an affordable and sustainable society, and yet the structural limitations imposed by the political power of the fossil fuel industry are making the transition difficult. Finding a way through that contradiction at the core of our politics is an urgent need for those of us wanting to build a just, sustainable society in California.
In this period, environmentalists cannot afford to ignore the issues of energy prices and job loss. But neither can we allow the fossil fuel industry to slow our progress on getting off of fossil fuels.
Californians, like most people in the US, are being squeezed economically. Prices are rising and wages are stagnating. Politicians who focus on affordability are finding deep resonance with voters and the public. Some California politicians are becoming wary of bold climate legislation, out of concern that voters’ struggles with affordability will lead them to blame politicians’ support for clean energy for rising energy prices. Gas prices in California are some of the highest in the country. No Democratic lawmaker wants to be blamed for high energy bills. Gov. Gavin Newsom is more wary of that than anyone, as he positions himself to run for the presidency.
There are real challenges that must be addressed to transition to a clean energy economy while maintaining affordability. And there are difficulties that are intentionally caused by the fossil fuel industry’s insistence on fighting a transition away from dependence on its products. Politicians and advocacy organizations need to be wary of the traps that the fossil fuel industry is laying to prevent the transition to a just, sustainable society. Industry has laid traps by spiking gas prices and blaming environmental regulation for prices and by pretending that environmental laws are bad for labor. As the world weans itself from fossil fuels, it needs to wean itself from the political power of the fossil fuel industry and from its manipulative messaging.
To fight the traps laid by the fossil fuel industry, environmental organizations need to redouble their efforts to build alliances with those in labor who are not beholden to the fossil fuel industry; to work for regulations that prevent industry from spiking gas prices for political reasons; and to work to keep energy affordable. In this period, environmentalists cannot afford to ignore the issues of energy prices and job loss. But neither can we allow the fossil fuel industry to slow our progress on getting off of fossil fuels. In order to work our way through the maze of challenges in this struggle it is important to understand what impacts gas prices and the tools we have to combat the climate crisis while maintaining affordability and protecting democracy.
The Reality of California Gas Prices
In California, Chevron stations have QR codes prominently displayed that will take you to a site that will tell you how much of the price of gas can be attributed to taxes. They hope to build political support for lowering those taxes and to put the blame for high gas prices on environmental regulations. On those sites, Chevron fails to tell you the amount of the price that is attributed to profits, or even to the cost of the lobbying they do to convince you they need to be able to continue to despoil our environment.
The price of gas at the pump is driven by many things: 37% of the price of gas in California is set by the price of crude oil on the global market, 25% comes from California taxes and fees, and 4% is from federal taxes. Finally, 33% goes to the fossil fuel industry for refining and distribution costs, and profits.
How much of that 33% that goes to the industry is profits? According to the Environmental Working Group, in 2022, the year of a major price spike that made gas prices a political football, “Four of California refiners posted a combined $72.5 billion in record-breaking windfall profits last year, nearly tripling 2021 profits.”
In 2023 Gov. Newsom called a special session of the legislature to pass a law to limit price gouging. The bill created a new agency, the Division of Petroleum Market Oversight, to monitor profits within the industry. It was supposed to also charge penalties for price gouging, but in 2025 the governor put a 5-year moratorium on that out of fears of backlash from refinery closures.
In 2024 the agency published a report that showed that after accounting for other legitimate reasons for California gas to be more expensive than in other states, between 2015 and 2024 excess profits over industry averages of profits in other states were “$0.41 per gallon, costing Californians $59 billion.” If gas is at $4.10 per gallon now, that means that 10% of the price at the pump can be attributed to excess profits. Excess, or windfall profits, are profits over the industry average.
Californians get good roads and clean air as a result of the 25% of the price of gas that comes from state taxes. They gain nothing positive from the 10% that goes to excess profits for fossil fuel companies.
Gas production in California is complicated by a few factors. One is that we have high clean air standards, so gas cannot easily come from other places. Refiners are able to make excess profits because there are very few of them in the state. They are able to act as an oligopoly. Forty-six of California’s refineries closed between 2018 and 2024, according to the state’s Employment Development Department. At the present moment, 90% of our state’s refining capacity is controlled by four companies. We are in a very, very difficult situation of dependence on those few companies.
As we transition to a just and clean economy, we will see more refinery closures. California is slowly and steadily consuming less gasoline: “In-state consumption of gasoline has been declining since 2017, a trend projected to continue. Californians consumed around 13.8 billion gallons of gasoline in 2021, this is expected to drop to 8 billion by 2030 and to less than 2 billion gallons by the 2040s.”
The state has found a few ways to deal with this difficult situation. In 2024 California Attorney General Rob Bonta won a $50 million settlement with two gas trading firms for price manipulations. That same year the legislature passed ABX21, which required refiners to keep a certain amount of supply on hand to help deal with temporary refinery closures. A longer-term solution may need to involve the state taking refineries over and running them in the public interest to smooth the transition away from the use of fossil fuels.
Impacts for Fossil Fuel Industry Workers
Refinery closures are good news for the health of people living in the communities near them. They are not such great news for the tax base of those communities or for the people who work at them. There are around 100,000 people employed by the fossil fuel industry in California now, and several thousand have already lost their jobs in recent years.
A major study on a just transition for California was published in 2021. It was done by economists at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) and commissioned by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 3299, the California Federation of Teachers, and the United Steelworkers Local 675. The report lays out in detail the kinds of policies needed to help workers transition to new jobs at comparable pay to what they have had, and what is needed to support the economic viability of communities facing the transition, and ways to pay for a just transition.
As we have learned with Trump, you don't deal with a bully by giving them your sandwich.
One of the most promising ways the state can support displaced refinery workers is by employing them in the work of plugging abandoned wells. In 2022 the state appropriated $20 million to a Displaced Oil and Gas Worker Fund. The 2022 budget included $20 million to train workers to plug oil wells. The state has budgeted $30 million to workforce organizations to retrain refinery workers for new jobs.
It is possible for California to transition to a clean energy economy while maintaining price affordability, good jobs, and a just transition for fossil fuel industry workers and impacted communities. But that possibility will only be a reality if we get the politics of the transition right. If we don't get it right the industry will continue to continue to punish consumers as a way to threaten politicians, while maintaining excess profits.
The Fight in 2025
In October of 2025 Gov. Newsom shepherded through a set of bills aimed at taming energy prices. Some of them were supported by environmentalists and some of them were opposed. The one that was most forcefully opposed by environmentalists was SB 237, which streamlines permitting for oil extraction in Kern County. It supersedes laws that restrict production near communities and ecologically sensitive areas.
In the lead up to that fight a coalition of environmental groups sent a letter to the governor and legislature arguing that there were other ways to deal with the affordability problem. Their argument boiled down to two main points.
The first was that the sooner we reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, the sooner we are freed from the price of gas. We free ourselves from dependence on oil with renewable energy, public transportation, electric vehicles, and charging infrastructure. California is well along the way in making this transition happen.
The other point they made was that there are ways to regulate the fossil fuel industry to prevent it from punishing consumers. Politicians need to lean into and expand ABX21, the bill that requires refiners to keep a certain amount of supply on hand to help deal with temporary closures. The organizations called for the bill to be expanded to prevent future supply shocks.
The other big thing that happened in 2025 was that a bill that would raise money to clean up the mess left behind by the fossil fuel industry was stopped for the time being, in part because politicians were afraid of a backlash by consumers over the price of gas. The Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act was pulled by supporters when it became clear that legislators, many of whom have been strong environmental allies, did not have the stomach to push the bill forward. Supporters continue to do the groundwork to pass the bill in the future.
That bill would raise money for public goods and would only be paid for by the companies which have caused environmental damage in the state. It would be very good for consumers. But as long as the fossil fuel industry has the power to punish California consumers and blame politicians, the bill is not likely to pass.
The Solutions, an Agenda for 2026, and Beyond: Labor and Environmental Solidarity
For years many in the environmental movement have called for a just transition, where we take seriously the needs of workers whose good union jobs are being displaced in the transition to a clean energy economy. The PERI report of 2021 lays out in detail how that transition could happen with minimal suffering for workers or consumers. But of course the dirty energy industry is not interested in a just transition away from the use of their products. Rather than working to help society wean itself off of its dependence on fossil fuels, the industry has denied the reality of the climate crisis; propagated misinformation; formed alliances with the right wing of labor; and bought politicians willing to use the levers of government to suppress alternatives, stop regulation, and subsidize their dirty energy.
We need to always be sure that we propose solutions that don't benefit one part of society while causing another to suffer.
There are many unions in California ready to fight hard for policies that sit at the intersection of affordability, environment, and democracy. Several of them came out in support of the Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act. But many unions are wary of supporting anything that labor is not unified on. And part of labor in California is committed to supporting the interests of the fossil fuel industry. The Western States Petroleum Association has an alliance with the Building Trades Council, which advocates for shared interests. The building trades have consistently come out in opposition to environmental legislation, even when there were no jobs the legislation put at risk.
Finding ways to form an alliance between labor and environment that is stronger than the alliance between the Building Trades and WSPA is an important part of freeing California politicians to be able to support moves toward a pro-affordability, democracy, and sustainability agenda.
Conclusion
We are in the middle of a transition from a dirty energy economy that requires political control over geographies, which requires dictators and war, to an economy based on sunshine and wind, which can develop into a sustainable system where no concentrations of power are needed, and where all people can have access to the things they need to live well.
Navigating the bumps and difficult spots in the transition requires us to be very thoughtful about how our work sits at the intersection of affordability, sustainability, and democracy. It requires that we maintain as much solidarity as possible among those who are fighting for a world that works for us all. And it requires that we be proactive in dealing with the political machinations of an industry that will stop at nothing to protect its ability to profit.
Solidarity means we are all in this together, we look for solutions that serve a multiplicity of needs, and use our intersectional lenses to make sure no one is left behind. We need to always be sure that we propose solutions that don't benefit one part of society while causing another to suffer.
One response to refinery closure and rising gas prices is to give industry what it wants and hope that they will not punish the state too much. We can slow the transition and allow industry to continue to profit, allow frontline communities to continue to suffer health impacts, and the climate to be destroyed. The other approach is to challenge industry head on, and risk them causing all sorts of damage in retaliation. As we have learned with Trump, you don't deal with a bully by giving them your sandwich. Bullies need to be taken on directly. But as we are also learning from Trump you need to be smart in how you disarm a bully; you need to be proactive in managing and limiting his ability to retaliate.
Some of the steps we need to take to move through the difficult phase of the transition we are in in California are:
- Expose the politicians who do the industry's bidding, so that we have politicians who are more willing to be bold in their support for policies that help us move forward on an agenda that supports affordability, environment, and democracy;
- Pass laws that prevent retaliatory actions and price gauging. This can include amending and expanding the scope of ABX21;
- Encourage the state to be ready to take over our oil and refining resources if needed;
- Keep communicating with the public about who is to blame for the high prices of gasoline, and to not allow those prices to go so high as to harm California consumers;
- Build stronger bridges between labor and environmental organizations; and
- Remind the public that we are on their side and committed to pushing for win-win goals that promote affordability, labor strength, environmental goals, and democracy.
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The Young Have It Rough in Trump's America, But They're Ready to Fight for Their Future
Tending to real-time crises while preparing for the long haul will require leadership from many in both Gen Z and Gen Alpha.
Feb 08, 2026
Here’s a small suggestion from the two authors of this piece (us): Don’t be young in Donald Trump’s America if you can help it. Being young in America right now means you’ll have to contend with stalling job markets, rampant inflation, deep political and economic instability, and impending climate disaster. If you point these things out, you’re labeled a dangerous (and misguided) radical. If you’re too busy trying to make ends meet for you and your family, you get labeled as lazy, apathetic, and defeatist.
This is not to say that older generations are doing okay. They’re not. But at least they’ll get to receive (and not just pay into) social security, which has to make the fascism go down easier. Before we explain or suggest what the young can do about all that, let us start by introducing ourselves, since one of us is indeed still Gen Z.
The authors of this piece are both co-workers and family members. “Theohari,” as some of our colleagues like to call us. Liz is Sam’s aunt and a long-time antipoverty organizer, mother, pastor, and theologian. Sam is a recent college graduate, student organizer, and law nerd. Recently, we were roommates at The Young Organizers Survival Corps boot camp.
Gathering in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains on a 157-acre farm owned and run by the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), The Young Organizers Survival Corps kicked off a six-month leadership development program to help prepare the next generation of leaders to resist authoritarianism—something all too crucial in Donald Trump’s America. A hundred young people converged from more than 22 states, representing dozens of campuses and grassroots organizations. Most of them had already been struggling around issues of tenants’ rights, peace and militarism, immigrant rights, abortion rights, mass incarceration, homelessness, healthcare access, LGBTQ+ advocacy, and so much more in this increasingly disturbed country.
To stand any chance of successfully fighting back, we must offer a competing and more attractive vision of the future—one in which young people come to believe that they will not only survive, but lead secure, fulfilling lives.
In our days at that farm, we studied the hard-won lessons of past social movements, trained young people in the tactics of nonviolent resistance and grassroots organizing, practiced hands-on skills in arts and culture, and learned new methods for and reasons to reclaim the power of our faith traditions.
Movement Education
Haley Farm was the perfect setting for just such a boot camp. The farm once belonged to Alex Haley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Roots and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Both of those masterpieces educated millions of Americans about African-American history and the importance of genealogy, as well as radical political organizing and thought. Urging readers to investigate their own heritage, Haley used storytelling to make the country’s history accessible and inspiring.
The educational mission of Alex Haley and his farm has endured for decades, long past the era in which he and so many others struggled to discover their own political bearings in the Black freedom movement. Since the Children’s Defense Fund bought the Haley Farm in 1994, it has hosted trainings for CDF Freedom Schools, deepened and inspired faith-based child advocacy, convened children’s authors and librarians, hosted the “National Council of Elders” (where young activists and civil rights veterans are able to strategize about the future), and gathered working groups for the Black Community Crusade for Children and the Black Student Leadership Network—and that’s just to begin a list of its work. A couple of months back, for instance, movement elders and Black organizers convened there for training in how to resist this deepening Trumpian moment of growing violence and authoritarianism.
For decades, the leafy folds of the Great Smoky Mountains in the southern Appalachians have housed other epicenters of movement training as well. Haley Farm is just towns away from the Highlander Research and Education Center (once the Highlander Folk School), another freedom training ground. Highlander was founded by popular educator Myles Horton, whose thinking has shaped the work of generations of grassroots leaders, including both of ours.
The Highlander Folk School first emerged as a cradle for organizing during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Led by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), it became the official education arm of the industrial labor movement in the South. Over the next two decades, it played an even bigger role in supporting the civil rights movement. Highlander was where the “mother of the movement,” Septima Clark, first experimented with the literacy programs that would become its “citizenship schools”—a network of some 900 community-based schools that taught tens of thousands of Black Southerners to read and pass Jim Crow literacy tests. Highlander was also where a young Rosa Parks studied before the Montgomery Bus Boycott, where the civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" was popularized, and where generations of organizers and leaders—especially those from the South and Appalachia—discovered the world of activism into which they had been born.
At the Young Organizers boot camp recently, we adorned our classroom with quotes from various movement elders and ancestors, including Black Freedom movement giants who had spent time at Haley Farm and Highlander. One quote from Highlander founder Myles Horton stuck out to us for its prescience. In his autobiography, The Long Haul, he writes:
It’s only in a movement that an idea is often made simple enough and direct enough that it can spread rapidly. Then your leadership multiplies very rapidly, because there’s something explosive going on. People see that other people not so different from themselves do things that they thought could never be done... They’re emboldened and challenged by that to step into the water, and once they get in the water, it’s as if they’ve never not been there… During movement times, the people involved have the same problems and can go from one community to the next, start a conversation in one place, and finish it in another.
At our boot camp, it was clear that, amid much pain in this country, young leaders could start conversations about hope and suggest new strategies for community care and social protest. These conversations were possible only because of the leaders’ clarity around connection. From places like Richmond, Indiana, and Ithaca, New York, to Atlanta, Georgia, and Portland, Oregon, they understood that, no matter their backgrounds, they faced many of the same brutal conditions.
A Turning Point?
Consider the social, political, and economic environment that’s producing the multi-layered crises faced by today’s younger generations. In this rich land of ours, about 45 million people regularly experience hunger and food insecurity, nearly 80 million are uninsured or underinsured when it comes to healthcare, and close to 10 million live without housing or on the brink of homelessness, while our education system continues to score near the bottom compared to the other 37 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Even before Donald Trump reassumed power, young people were affected disproportionately. One year into his second term as president, he and his billionaire lackies have only deepened this suffering.
Indeed, the conditions for discontent among young people are now boiling over. Young workers, students, and children are poised to lose more than any other age group from the Trump administration’s “austerity” policies (which, of course, are anything but “austere” for his billionaire buddies and him). Minors make up 2 in every 5 people currently receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits, and the young will disproportionately go hungry as that program is further eroded. (The Trump administration is already threatening to withhold such benefits from some Democratic-controlled states!) Low economic growth, rising inflation, and deepening unemployment are hurting everyone. However, young workers, regardless of their educational background, are seeing a steeper rise in unemployment than the average worker. Compounded by increasing costs of living, mounting debt, and ever more ecological disasters, Gen Z and Gen Alpha are projected to be distinctly worse off than their parents.
Despite a seemingly endless barrage of think pieces bemoaning the fickleness and apathy of the young, teenagers and young adults have been at the forefront of every significant struggle of this moment.
It’s been this very real pain and insecurity that the MAGA crew and Christian nationalist organizers have successfully leveraged to build a strong base among young workers and students. Organizations like Turning Point USA are now leading massive organizing drives on high school and college campuses, tapping into the real fear and instability experienced by students and other young people. Those groups fob off the real problems of this country (only intensified by Donald Trump) on scapegoats like trans athletes and Somali childcare workers, while offering an alluring vision of an authoritarian Christian future. It matters little that, for most Americans, the vision on offer will be impossible to achieve. And were it to be achieved, it would benefit only the whitest, wealthiest, and “most” Christian Americans. Therein lies both a contradiction and an opening.
Historically, we know that once fascism solidifies power, it can take years of unyielding resistance to revive a democratic society. That means we need mobilization now, while preparing for the fight already at hand that’s likely to stretch on for years to come. Tending to real-time crises while preparing for the long haul will require leadership from many in both Gen Z and Gen Alpha. To stand any chance of successfully fighting back, we must offer a competing and more attractive vision of the future—one in which young people come to believe that they will not only survive, but lead secure, fulfilling lives. And on-the-ground organizing infrastructure must be built up to make that vision a reality.
The Kids Aren’t Alright. But They Could Be.
This moment offers us a heartbreaking reminder of just how vulnerable most young people now are. The young organizers gathered at Haley Farm talked about not being able to afford the basics of life, while some who lived close to the farm asked us to bring leftover food to community members and church friends because so many of them are now living hand-to-mouth.
And such vulnerability and economic precarity are anything but the exception. Dozens of young people indicated that they are hurting in so many ways: by family members being abducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), by being unable to acquire the healthcare they need, or even by being harassed by the feds for protecting their neighbors from state violence. Avenues of traditional politics feel inaccessible as a means of addressing so many of their problems and, where accessible, regularly proved critically insufficient.
We were astounded by the diversity of people and struggles in that room, but we were even more surprised by the ease with which those young leaders grasped their interconnectedness. They hardly needed convincing that some lessons one might draw from the difficulty of running an abortion fund in the midst of attacks on women and the right to choose could also apply to the needs immigrants have in facing ICE’s militarization of their communities. They knew such things to be true because many had lived through them.
Despite a seemingly endless barrage of think pieces bemoaning the fickleness and apathy of the young, teenagers and young adults have been at the forefront of every significant struggle of this moment. Indeed, young people have long taken leadership roles in bottom-up social movements because they so often bear the brunt of our nation’s social and economic inequalities, with few avenues for relief in traditional American politics.
It’s an underappreciated reality of this century that young people have been showing up in a remarkable fashion, leading on-the-ground movements to ensure that Black lives do matter, dealing vividly with the onrushing horror of climate change, while defending economic justice and living wages, not to speak of abortion access, LGBTQ rights, and an end to gun violence. Just this month, inside Dilley Detention Center in Texas, hundreds of imprisoned children led their families in righteous protest after learning of ICE’s kidnapping of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his imminent transfer to Dilley.
The stakes are only getting higher for those of us coming of age at a moment when this country is changing from something like a democracy to Donald Trump’s chilling autocratic version of America. Yet if we know anything from decades of antipoverty organizing, it’s that the unfettered imaginations, moral clarity, and capacity for decisive action of young Americans can always triumph over the misguided political liaisons of their elders. As our communities struggle righteously to wrest this nation from the clutches of full-throated authoritarianism, isn’t it time to cultivate the untapped might of those potentially dispossessed generations?
We need their courageous leadership now more than ever. We have no time to lose!
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