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women's march
'Make Billionaires Pay': Coalition Opposed to Destructive Oligarchy Forges Mass Mobilization
"As the US braces for more extreme heat, wildfires, and hurricanes, the Trump administration has been systematically defunding our communities to give handouts to billionaires," said one organizer.
Aug 21, 2025
A broad coalition of progressive organizations on Thursday announced that they are uniting for a mass mobilization event aimed at taking on the billionaire class.
The upcoming Make Billionaires Pay marches, scheduled to occur nationwide on September 20, link together multiple crises—ranging from authoritarianism to the climate emergency to US President Donald Trump's mass deportations—by pointing the finger at the ultra-wealthy oligarchs who have been supporting them all.
Candice Fortin, US campaign manager for climate action organization 350.org, said that billionaires are the connective tissue that links together the major problems currently facing the United States and the world.
"This isn't a new story—billionaires have always prioritized profit over people," Fortin said. "This is a system working exactly as it was designed, but now without even the pretense of justice. As the US braces for more extreme heat, wildfires, and hurricanes, the Trump administration has been systematically defunding our communities to give handouts to billionaires. They're dismantling our democracy, attacking immigrants, and feeding the war profiteers."
Tamika Middleton, managing director for Women's March, also emphasized that today's crises are closely linked together.
"Women, migrants, queer and trans people, and communities of color have long been at the center of overlapping crises, from climate disaster to economic injustice to gender-based violence and forced displacement," she said. "These are not separate struggles; they stem from a global system designed by billionaires who exploit our struggles to maintain power."
Organizers said that these planned actions will focus on advocating for taxing extreme wealth, ending Trump's mass deportation program, and transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
The marches are being convened by Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), Women's March, Climate Defenders, and 350.org, and more than 100 other organizations have endorsed them so far.
The flagship march is set to take place in New York City at the same time the 2025 United Nations General Assembly will be taking place. Other marches are set to occur simultaneously across the country.
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'Unite and Resist': Women's Day Rallies Against Trump Held From Coast to Coast
"This is our day to stand together, make our voices heard, and show the world that we are not backing down," said Women's March.
Mar 08, 2025
Women and their allies took to the streets of cities and towns from coast to coast Saturday for a "Unite and Resist" national day of action against the Trump administration coordinated by Women's March.
"Since taking office, the Trump administration has unleashed a war against women driven by the Project 2025 playbook, which is why, more than ever, we must continue to resist, persist, and demand change," Women's March said, referring to the Heritage Foundation-led blueprint for a far-right overhaul of the federal government that, according to the Guttmacher Institute, "seeks to obliterate sexual and reproductive health and rights."
"This is our day to stand together, make our voices heard, and show the world that we are not backing down," Women's March added. "Women's rights are under attack, but we refuse to go backward."
Women's March executive director Rachel O'Leary Carmona asserted that "the broligarchy that owns Trump is working to 'flood the zone' with hateful executive actions and rhetoric, trying to overwhelm us into submission."
"But we refuse to lose focus," she vowed. "We refuse to stand by."
In San Francisco, where more than 500 people rallied, 17-year-old San Ramon, California high school student Saya Kubo gave the San Francisco Chronicle reasons why she was marching.
"Abortion, Elon Musk, educational rights and trans rights, LGBTQ rights, climate change—all of these things, I am standing up for what I believe in," she said.
Her mother, 51-year-old Aliso Kubo, said that "we came out here specifically to support my daughter and women's rights."
Thousands rallied down the coast in Los Angeles, where protester Pamela Baez told Fox 11 that she was there to "support equality."
"I think I mostly want people to be aware that women are people. They have rights," Baez said. "We just want to show everybody that we care about them. People deserve healthcare. Women deserve rights."
Thousands of people rallied on Boston Common on a chilly but sunny Saturday.
"We are the ones who are going to stand up," participant Ashley Barys told WCVB. "There is a magic when women come together. We can really make change happen."
Boston protester Celeste Royce said that "it was really important for me to be here today, to stand up for human rights, for women's rights, to protect bodily autonomy, to just make myself and my presence known."
Sierra Night Tide told WLOS that seeing as how Asheville, North Carolina had no event scheduled for Saturday, she "decided to step up and create one."
At least hundreds turned out near Pack Square Park for the rally:
Today at the Women's March in Asheville, NC pic.twitter.com/BPAIZORSUd
— Senior Fellow Antifa 101st Chairborne Division (@jrh0) March 9, 2025
"As a woman who has faced toxic corporate environments, living with a physical disability, experienced homelessness, and felt the impact of Hurricane Helene, I know firsthand the urgent need for collective action," Night Tide said. "This event is about standing up for all marginalized communities and ensuring our voices are heard."
Michelle Barth, a rally organizer in Eugene, Oregon, told The Register Guard that "we need to fight and stop the outlandish discrimination in all sectors of government and restore the rights of the people."
"We need to protect women's rights. It's our bodies and our choice," Barth added. "Our bodies should not be regulated because there are no regulations for men's bodies. Women are powerful, they are strong, they're intelligent, they're passionate, they are angry, and we're ready to stand up against injustice."
In Grand Junction, Colorado, co-organizer Mallory Martin hailed the diverse group of women and allies in attendance.
"In times when things are so divisive, it can feel very lonely and isolating, and so the community that builds around movements like this has been so welcoming and so beautiful that it's heartwarming to see," Martin told KKCO.
In Portland, Oregon, protester Cait Lotspeich turned out in a "Bring On the Matriarchy" T-shirt.
"I'm here because I support women's rights," Lotspeich
said in an interview with KATU. "We have a right to speak our minds and we have a right to stand up for what is true and what is right, and you can see that women are powerful, and we are here to exert that power."
The United States was one of dozens of nations that saw International Women's Day protests on Saturday. In Germany, video footage emerged of police brutalizing women-led pro-Palestine protesters in Berlin.
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To Fight Trump 2.0, Everyone 'Needs to Become an Organizer'
"Just last week we had to cap a phonebank for the first time ever because of how many people RSVPed," said a spokesperson for the Working Families Party, which has seen a bump in the number of people interested in their work.
Feb 24, 2025
Grassroots protests organized nationwide. Federal workers finding community online and mobilizing through a new entity called the Federal Unionists Network. A bump in the number of people joining the Democratic Socialists of America and other groups. Rallies in front of federal agency buildings.
It might not look the same as "the resistance" of 2017, but these are just some of the examples of how communities are coming together to fight the second Trump administration's attacks.
Speaking on a podcast episode with Greg Sargent of The New Republic that aired Monday, Leah Greenberg—the co-founder of the grassroots progressive network Indivisible—said that "every month since November, we've broken the record for new Indivisible groups formed" and "we've had massive surges of people showing up locally all over the country."
While shock was the "dominant emotion in 2016," which translated into big mobilizing moments such as the 2017 Women's March, this time around "people weren't shocked anymore...[and] a lot of people understood instinctively that the way out of this was going to be the deeper forms of organizing," said Greenberg.
Ashik Siddique, a co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, echoed this sentiment. DSA is "really trying to find tangible, sustained ways to plug people in and not just be totally reactive," he told Common Dreams. Overall DSA membership has swelled 10% since November 2024, Siddique said, and the group has seen success channeling energies around targeted issues like protecting trans rights.
The Working Families Party, a progressive political party, has also seen a "significant bump" in the people interested in their work since the election, according to Ravi Mangla, WFP's national press secretary.
"Just last week we had to cap a phonebank for the first time ever because of how many people RSVPed," Mangla told Common Dreams.
But the focus on durable organizing does not mean that there hasn't been energy around galvanizing mass mobilization. On February 5, nationwide demonstrations that were a part of "Movement 50501,"—a decentralized rapid response to the "anti-democratic, destructive, and, in many cases, illegal actions" being undertaken by the Trump administration—took place in locations such as Philadelphia; Lansing, Michigan; Columbus, Ohio; Austin, Texas; Jefferson, Missouri, and elsewhere.
Other protests have take place in the streets of Los Angeles to protest the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, at Tesla stores, and in front of federal agency buildings that have been targeted by the Trump administration and Elon Musk's advisory body the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
On February 10, hundreds of protestors gathered outside the office of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency dedicated to protecting consumers from unfair financial practices, following a directive from the Trump administration that all agency staff stay home. Indivisible, WFP, and a third progressive group, MoveOn, also organized a rally that drew over 1,000 people in front of the Treasury Department building in early February in response to DOGE efforts to infiltrate the agency.
Lawmakers in Republican districts have also been feeling some heat. At a recent town hall in Roswell, Georgia, Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) was booed and catcalled while he answered sharp questions about the Trump administration's actions. In one of the tensest exchanges, a speaker pressed McCormick on personnel cuts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Trump administration's attacks on the federal workforce have made federal employee unions an important source of resistance to the White House and moves made by DOGE. A number of the administration's measures have been challenged in court by federal employee unions, and unions more generally.
Federal workers, many of whom have relied on the Reddit page for federal employees r/fednews to find solidarity and share information, also sounded the alarm at over 30 "Save Our Services" rallies around the country last week, including in New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Denver, Boston, Boise, Chattanooga, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., according to the publication Labor Notes. The protests were organized by the Federal Unionists Network (FUN), an informal association of unionists who are working to strengthen existing federal unions and build solidarity across the federal sector of the labor movement.
"Everybody right now and for the weeks or months or whatever it takes needs to become an organizer," Chris Dols, the president of IFTPE Local 98 at the Army Corps of Engineers and a leader in the Federal Unionists Network, told Labor Notes.
"If you're a federal employee and you don't know what your union is, get involved with FUN, we'll help you figure it out," Dols said. "If you don't have a union, we'll help you learn how to organize one."
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