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direct action
A Movement-Based Opposition to Trump and MAGA
Social self-defense against the MAGA juggernaut can be the starting point for creating the world we want beyond MAGA.
Oct 09, 2025
As President Donald Trump launches illegal armed attacks against American cities, peaceful civilians, and people in foreign countries that have not attacked the US, it may look like a sign of strength and a harbinger of a future of total domination. But Trump’s turn to such extreme forms of violence is less an expression of growing power than an attempt to distract from the growth of opposition, the loss of public support, and the splits within the ranks of his own supporters. It is a sign not of strength but of weakness.
This report lays out a strategy to take advantage of that weakness to defend society against Trump’s MAGA assaults. That strategy is based on the principle of “social self-defense”—that all the people and institutions harmed by Trump’s autocracy can and must come together to protect society against his assault.
Resisting and eventually eliminating Trump and his MAGA tyranny requires more than his loss of popularity. It requires a concerted opposition that can rally powerful social forces to undermine his means of domination. In our two-party system, the responsibility for opposition lies on the opposition party—the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, with a few outstanding exceptions, the leadership of the Democratic Party has so far failed in its duty to oppose Trump’s burgeoning autocracy.
In response to the intensifying attack on democracy, millions of people in thousands of locations have joined actions to oppose his juggernaut. In the absence of adequate resistance in the electoral arena, an alliance of popular movements is functioning as the primary opposition to Trump’s authoritarian rule.
The emerging movement-based opposition aims to halt and undo the harm that has been done by the Trump regime, but it is not directed toward returning to the world as it existed before Trump.
This “movement-based opposition” has emerged rapidly during the first year of Trump’s presidency. It is represented by the mass nonviolent resistance to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Los Angeles and elsewhere and the 5 million participants in No Kings Day and other national days of action. It is developing significant power as more and more people see and experience the harm the Trump administration and the MAGA Congress are inflicting on individuals, groups, and society as a whole. This movement-based opposition is no longer a marginal force but is now MAGA’s most powerful opponent.
Sometimes called a non-electoral or independent opposition, such a movement-based opposition is a convergence of social movements that performs some of the classic functions of an opposition party without the goal of itself taking power in government. It draws diverse constituencies out of their silos to combine their power, but uses direct action rather than electing candidates as its means to exercise that power. Like a political party, it brings together different constituencies around common interests, exposes the lies of those in power, and wins support for alternatives.
This movement-based opposition can mobilize popular rejection of the MAGA agenda, block Trump’s initiatives, prod Democratic politicians into action, split off Republicans, and help lay the groundwork for “people power” nonviolent uprisings—aka “social strikes”—if they prove to be necessary to overcome authoritarian rule.
Trump’s authoritarian juggernaut is currently entering a more violent, militarized phase. At home, this includes the huge expansion of ICE, the military occupation of American cities, and the political repression using the assassination of Charlie Kirk as a pretext. Abroad, it means the bombing of Iran; the illegal, unprovoked attacks on Venezuelan boats; and ongoing collusion with genocide in Gaza. Who knows what else is in the works.
The opposition is also entering a new phase. This was heralded by the resistance to ICE and military occupation in Los Angeles that included community-based support groups; constant identification, tracking, and filming of ICE agents; mutual aid support for targets of ICE attacks; ongoing opposition from state and city officials; refusal of the Dodgers to let ICE enter their stadium; and refusal of grand juries to indict—out of the 38 felony cases filed by Trump’s US attorney, only seven have resulted in indictments. Opinion polls indicate that such exposure of ICE abuses had led public opinion in California and nationwide to shift against Trump’s anti-immigrant policies.
Chicago, Washington, DC, New York, Memphis, and other cities are readying for similar resistance. An estimated 25,000 demonstrated in DC against the occupation of the city. The National Guard troops sent into Los Angeles and Washington, DC have been widely reported to be antagonistic to their assignments. The majority of Americans are opposed to Trump’s deployment of troops to American cities and feel their own rights and freedoms would be less secure as a result. The opposition to Trump’s plan to occupy Chicago with the National Guard met so much resistance from Chicago citizens and unions, the mayor of the city, and the governor of Illinois that he initially reversed himself and announced that he was not going to send the troops because a railroad executive had advised him, “You're gonna lose Chicago, sir.”
As Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gutted America’s vaccine programs and other defenses against Covid-19 and other health threats, major medical associations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics denounced the new policies and promulgated their own treatment standards. Top officials in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other health agencies publicly resigned in protest—and hundreds of CDC employees, including some in full service uniforms, gathered outside the agency, cheering and clapping for the three officials who had quit. Four states, flouting Trumpian policy, announced a “health alliance” that made its own science-based standards for vaccination. Florida’s plan to eliminate all vaccine mandates was reversed in just two days following a furious backlash from medical experts and political opponents.
There are three mutually reinforcing strategies for the movement-based opposition’s struggle against Trump’s domination: nullifying his initiatives, voting his supporters out of office, and mass “social strikes” that mobilize enough people to make his continued rule impossible.
The emerging movement-based opposition aims to halt and undo the harm that has been done by the Trump regime, but it is not directed toward returning to the world as it existed before Trump. That is clearly not what the people want, and it offers little hope of solving our real problems. The movement-based opposition includes many different groups with different visions of the future. It is based on agreement about the immediate aim, plus agreement to disagree about other things. It should encourage discussion of areas of disagreement while bracketing them when they might interfere with immediately necessary collaboration.
The process of working together and defining common interests itself can help identify new areas of agreement and encourage mutual acceptance of differences. Indeed, Social Self-Defense against the MAGA juggernaut can be the starting point for creating the world we want beyond MAGA. As Abraham Lincoln said of the Civil War, it can become the means for a new birth of freedom.
For a growing database of more than 500 organizations that seek volunteers for many forms of social self-defense, go to https://allofusdirectory.org/
For the full Labor Network for Sustainability Report on which this piece is based go to “A Movement-Based Opposition to Trump and MAGA.”
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Anti-Whaling Activist Paul Watson Freed After Denmark Rejects Japan's Extradition Request
"My arrest has focused international attention on Japan's continuing illegal whaling operations and their intent to go back to the Southern Ocean," said Watson. "So, in fact, these five months have been an extension of the campaign."
Dec 17, 2024
The prominent anti-whaling activist Paul Watson was released Tuesday from prison in Greenland after Danish officials rejected a request by Japan to extradite him.
Watson was arrested in Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, in July due to a warrant issued by Japan in 2012, which alleged that Watson had interfered with a Japanese whaling vessel and caused injury to a crew member in 2010, according to The New York Times. He could have faced up to 15 years in jail if convicted.
"I am certainly relieved as this means I get to see my two little boys. That's really been my only concern this entire time. I understand the risks of what we do and sometimes you get arrested—although I am proud of the fact that I have never been convicted of a crime," Watson told the Guardian. Watson's two sons are aged three and eight.
To the outlet AFP, he said: "My arrest has focused international attention on Japan's continuing illegal whaling operations and their intent to go back to the Southern Ocean... So, in fact, these five months have been an extension of the campaign."
Watson, a Canadian American who co-founded Greenpeace and founded Sea Shepherd—a group that uses direct action to protect marine wildlife and oceans—was traveling in July with 25 volunteers on a mission to the North Pacific for the Captain Paul Watson Foundation (CPWF), which he started after leaving Sea Shepherd in 2022. When the vessel arrived in Nuuk, Greenland to refuel, Danish police arrested him.
The CPWF denounced the surprise arrest, which came as Watson planned to intercept a new Japanese factory whaling ship.
Watson was also featured in the Animal Planet television show Whale Wars that ran from 2008 until 2015, in which he led efforts to disrupt Japanese whaling on the high seas.
Japan has a long, complicated history with whaling. Whale meat was seen as an important protein for the country after World War II. Japan joined the International Whaling Commission, an international body that placed a moratorium on commercial whaling in the 1980s, in 1951. In 2019, Japan left the body and began catching whales commercially the same year, according to the International Whaling Commission.
In 2014, the International Court of Justice ruled against Japan in a case involving charges that Japan was using a scientific research program as a front for a commercial whaling venture in the Antarctic.
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'Victory': Gas Drilling Project Paused After Greenpeace Occupies Platform in North Sea
"Today's events show that people power works!" a campaigner said. "Whether it is occupying a gas rig or challenging it in court, people will not be silent, we are standing up to the fossil fuel industry."
Jun 04, 2024
A Dutch court on Tuesday ordered a pause to a gas drilling initiative in the North Sea after Greenpeace activists occupied a platform owned by the company behind the project, leading the environmental group to declare "victory" as it pushes for an end to new fossil fuel infrastructure in Europe.
The activists sought to disrupt the work of Dutch energy company ONE-Dyas, which had just received the go-ahead for offshore drilling from the Dutch government last week and quickly sent the drilling platform to the site, which is about 12 miles from the German island of Borkum and straddles Dutch and German waters.
"The science is clear, we must stop digging and drilling for fossil fuels if we are to avoid the worst of climate chaos," Mira Jaeger, energy expert from Greenpeace Germany, said in a statement released earlier on Tuesday, before the court decision. "We cannot afford any new fossil fuel extraction projects. Not in the North Sea or anywhere else."
"Today's events show that people power works!" Jaeger said in another statement following the ruling. "Whether it is occupying a gas rig or challenging it in court, people will not be silent, we are standing up to the fossil fuel industry."
🔊VICTORY: The gas drilling platform currently occupied by @greenpeace_de and @greenpeaceNL activists has been ordered to stop their drilling activities by a Dutch court.
Resistance WORKS! #StopFossilGas https://t.co/MRhJZ2ZXiQ pic.twitter.com/5d6x2jzO6l
— Greenpeace International (@Greenpeace) June 4, 2024
Greenpeace, an environmental group that engages in nonviolent direct action, has previously occupied oil and gas rigs in the North Sea and elsewhere. Last year, the group's campaigners occupied a platform contracted by Shell, a multinational oil and gas company, as it made its way to work in U.K. waters.
The planned Borkum drilling project, which Greenpeace has said would threaten rocky reefs and a local nature reserve, has been the subject of a legal and regulatory fight in recent years. Environmental and community groups filed a lawsuit against it in Dutch court, and a judge halted the project for over a year starting in April 2023. However, following court-ordered changes, the Dutch state secretary for economic affairs and climate approved the project last week. On Monday, Offshore Energy, a trade publication, declared that the project, which it said involves an investment of more than $500 million, had "no more legal woes" and would produce gas by the end of the year. A Dutch official noted the importance of a domestic supply of natural gas in approving the project, Offshore Energy reported.
With the company moving quickly, Greenpeace activists aimed to block the installation of the platform on Tuesday. Five of the 21 who went to sea for the action occupied the platform, called Prospector 1, and tied themselves to pillars, according to Greenpeace. The occupation lasted 8 hours, ending when news came of the court ruling.
Tuesday's ruling suspended the approval granted by the Dutch state secretary for economic affairs, and is to be followed by a hearing on June 12. The decision came at the request of environmental and community groups, which submitted an application on Friday for "provisional relief." The groups aim to block the drilling initiative entirely, arguing that ONE-Dyas should abandon its "legal tricks" and "accept reality and abandon the project."
Greenpeace, which was one of the plaintiffs in the application, reiterated its demand on Tuesday that the project be permanently canceled, while calling for the E.U. to abandon all fossil fuel infrastructure projects.
"The Borkum project is just the tip of the iceberg: in Europe, fossil fuel companies are pushing European states into such massive, unnecessary investments just like TotalEnergies’ LNG terminal in France, or OMV’s Neptun Deep gas drilling project in Romania," the first Greenpeace statement said. "But the European Union can and must put its member states on a path away from fossil fuels, by banning new fossil fuel projects and investing in an energy system based on renewables and energy sufficiency."
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