American democracy is on the ropes. Trump and his billionaire backers are doing everything possible to transform our country into an authoritarian state like Hungary or Russia, where the trappings of institutional democracy mask brazen autocratic rule.

Our president’s sinking popularity numbers might not matter so much if his administration is either able to ignore electoral results or to distort the electoral map so badly that there’s almost no way to vote Republicans out.

Far too many Democrats and union leaders naively hoped that the courts would save us. But the Supreme Court has given a green light to Trump’s power grab, and it appears poised to overturn Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the last major legal roadblock to prevent Republicans from disenfranchising millions of Democrats and Black voters across the South.

Are we cooked? Trump would certainly like us to believe he’s unstoppable. Faced with the administration’s relentless offensive against immigrants, free speech, public services, and majoritarian rule, it’s normal to sometimes succumb to despair. But there’s no need to throw in the towel—and there are concrete next steps we can all take to win back the country through nonviolent resistance. As Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) president Stacy Davis Gates reminds us, Trumpism “won’t be stopped just in the courts or at the ballot box.”

REASONS FOR HOPE

Of the many good reasons why you shouldn’t give up hope, the first is that popular resistance is growing, as seen in the recent Indivisible-initiated No Kings day protests, the largest in U.S. history. Second, Trump’s policies are unpopular, and large numbers of Americans are searching for a viable alternative. Third, if opposition to authoritarianism and economic mismanagement becomes wide enough, an anti-Trump electoral wave in 2026 and 2028 might still be large enough to swamp electoral machinations. Fourth, Trump is very old, and it’s not obvious that MAGA can survive its megalomaniac ringleader.

There’s also a fifth, less-discussed reason for avoiding despair: authoritarian episodes abroad have tended to fail. A recent research paper by Marina Nord and four co-authors analyzed all authoritarian episodes since 1900 and found that a surprisingly large number have been stopped and reversed within five years—a process they call “U-Turns.” Their paper found that “52 percent of all autocratization episodes become U-Turns, which increases to 73 percent when focusing on the last 30 years.”

Autocratization can be defeated through peaceful resistance. And in 90 percent of the documented cases of U-Turns, democracy levels were either restored to their previous heights (70 out of 102 cases) or improved (22 out of 102 cases).

Global precedent, in short, suggests that we still have a fighting shot to save American democracy. As the authors somewhat dryly note, their findings show “that authoritarian consolidation is perhaps more difficult than the existing literature sometimes posits. A second implication is that democratizing agents stand a decent chance of turning autocratization around.”

America has certainly entered a dark period when 50/50 odds to save democracy is the good news. But these chances should be more than enough to encourage us to push back rather than succumb to endless doomscrolling.

TIME TO TAKE RISKS

Anti-Trump resistance is not futile. But it is risky. To meet this moment, more individuals and organizations are going to have to leave their comfort zones. We can’t just continue with business as usual.

Some individuals have already risen to the occasion. Look at the countless Chicago residents who are peacefully confronting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Look at federal workers like Ellen Mei and Paul Osadebe, who put their jobs on the line by becoming whistleblowers and exposing how the Trump administration is undermining pivotal services like anti-discriminatory housing enforcement and SNAP food benefits.

Unfortunately, most progressive groups, unions, and churches have not yet seriously pivoted to the new terrain of rapidly consolidating authoritarianism. With some notable exceptions like Indivisible, far too many progressive and left groups remain stuck in their siloed, small-scale ways.

And most unions — with notable exceptions like the CTU — have kept their heads down due to institutional inertia, a fear of provoking Trump’s wrath, or worries about alienating pro-Trump members. This is not a minor limitation. “History shows us that when authoritarianism rears its head, whether it takes root depends on the labor movement’s response,” note Jackson Potter and Alex Caputo-Pearl in an important new piece on how labor can meet the moment.

After No Kings, people are rightly wondering what comes next. These marches have been great at showing large numbers, but defeating Trumpism will require even broader participation and more bottom-up disruption. That’s how we shift popular opinion enough—and how we create enough of a crisis for elites—to overcome MAGA’s electoral machinations in 2026 and 2028.

Our biggest obstacle remains a pervasive sense of fear and powerlessness, especially among working-class people. To turn that around, we should start experimenting with disruptive, nonviolent, attention-grabbing campaigns that are easily replicable and that can go viral nationwide — something in the same wide-scale grassroots spirit as the immigrant rights upsurge of 2006, Occupy Wall Street in 2011, or Black Lives Matter in 2020. And because we have to sustain this energy beyond flash-in-the-pan mobilizations, we’ll have to lean on the momentum of these actions to build on-the-ground organization capable of further expanding and escalating the movement.

How could we spark such a mass nonviolent movement today? Here are two concrete tactics that may have the potential to galvanize a broad-based national upsurge against authoritarianism.

FREEDOM FRIDAYS

Since most workers are currently too scared to strike, we’ll need a smaller group to get the ball rolling. A spark could come from anywhere, but it’s most likely to come from left-leaning layers who face relatively low retaliation risks and are deeply connected to the broader community. Top on this list are high-school students and teachers.

In towns where Trump has surged ICE or sent in troops, high school students, with the backing of their teachers, could start walking out on Friday afternoons, taking to the streets to peacefully confront Trump’s goons, to inhibit their attempts to kidnap our undocumented neighbors, and to demand an immediate end to Trump’s armed occupation of our cities. Teachers, students, and family members who for whatever reason can’t risk missing class or work can join in once they’re free.

Building on viral social media agitation and in-person organizing during the rest of the week, such walkouts and actions have the potential to snowball from one or two schools at first, to a whole school district, to family members and other workers and residents. And once one city shows it’s possible, there’s a good chance this tactic would quickly spread to other cities — a chain reaction similar to the “Fridays for Future” high-school-led climate strikes of 2018-19.

While Freedom Fridays are currently most likely to catch on in response to Trump’s kidnappings and urban invasions, this tactic could be used for any widely and deeply felt issue, including attacks on free speech, essential public services, LGBTQ rights, or voting rights in the South.

NO KINGS, NO BUSINESS AS USUAL

Authoritarian rulers can only survive through the cooperation of key “pillars of support” in society like businesses, schools, the civil service, churches, and the media. That’s why our best bet to defeat the Trump regime is by pressuring such institutions to distance themselves from authoritarianism and to side, explicitly or de facto, with the mass movement for democracy. As scholars of effective anti-authoritarian tactics note, “if these organizations and institutions begin to withdraw their support from your opponent (and some may even start actively supporting your movement), your opponent will no longer be able to maintain control.”

Experience abroad suggests that the most powerful tactic for expressing this type of broad anti-authoritarian alliance is a broad-based general strike—sometimes called a civic shutdown — that includes not only workers, but also supportive local governments, churches, media institutions, professional associations, and even some businesses.

Unfortunately, we’re not currently strong enough to launch such a stoppage. Our country’s main institutional pillars are currently bending the knee to Trump, there haven’t been any wildcat strikes from below, and most top union leaders remain exasperatingly risk-averse.

Fortunately, general strikes are not our side’s only powerful tactic. Our best bet might be to launch a concerted organizing campaign culminating in a “No Kings, No Business As Usual” day of action. On a chosen date—probably May 1, 2026 as the May Day Strong coalition is organizing towards — individuals, organizations, and institutions can participate in a wide range of peaceful but disruptive tactics to pressure pillars of support to move away from the Trump regime.

Depending on their risk tolerance, individuals could call in sick to work or school, refuse to shop, hold teach-ins at school or work, go on strike, or join nonviolent civil disobedience and marches with the goal of pulling away as many of Trump’s pillars of support as possible. Businesses could end their widespread collusions with the regime, sign on to pro-democracy pledges, voluntarily close on the day of action, post No Kings posters in their storefronts or on their webpages, or at least choose not to penalize those who walk out or call in sick. School districts could do some combination of school closures, mass teach-ins, and field trips to rallies. And churches and local elected officials could endorse the day of action and help drive turnout.

This wouldn’t be another No Kings one-off weekend march. It’d be far more disruptive, it’d be focused on pressuring pillars of support to break from Trump rather than just protesting in general, and, perhaps most important of all, it’d be based on months of sustained outwards-facing organizing. To build a powerful movement, it’s what happens between actions that’s most pivotal.

A big national launch call with high-profile guests could hype people up and explain the campaign game plan. In the months leading up to the action, everybody—workers, students, consumers, neighbors, congregants—could focus on pressuring key pillars of society to take a stand. We’d generate this pressure primarily through the time-tested heart of good organizing: talking with peers who aren’t yet on board and asking them to take a small action to show their support, like signing a petition to a CEO or showing up at a school board or PTA meeting.

Students would reach out to all their fellow students, workers to their co-workers, renters and home owners to their neighbors, church members to their religious leaders and fellow congregants, and so on. What this looks like on the ground will vary a lot by town and region, but national organizing trainings, distributed organizing structures, and joint tools—petitions, buttons, lawn and storefront signs, etc.—can help break down organizational silos and help generate a cohesive nationwide campaign of unprecedented scale and unity.

Crucially, in the process, we’d have to listen hard to what people outside our progressive bubbles believe, and we’d have to find concrete ways to show how Trump’s authoritarianism hurts ordinary Americans through higher prices, fewer good jobs, and less safety, security, and freedom. For working people on the losing side of pre-Trump politics, it’s not always obvious why they should care that much about preserving the democratic norms of a system that left them in the cold.

To every major American institution, one question will be posed over and over in a friendly but pointed manner: which side are you on, the people or the autocrats? This question would come with teeth, since big companies and other powerful institutions that refuse to take pro-democracy measures by a certain deadline would become disruption targets on the day of action and in its wake.

Though more than a few powerful bodies will refuse at first to break from the regime—many subsequent cycles of outreach and days of nonviolent disruption will surely be needed—a focus on peeling away Trump’s pillars of support is pivotal because ordinary people can see how their actions can realistically make a difference.

Part of what’s made it so hard to move beyond one-off protests against Trump is that we have so little direct leverage over him in between elections. People normally go to rallies, then go home without much to do in between. But it’s not hard for our peers to see how they can pressure employers, companies, churches, media, schools, and the like, including risk-averse unions. Nothing dissipates despair like a clear plan to win with easy, actionable steps for involving millions of ordinary people.

COURAGE IS CONTAGIOUS

There’s no guarantee that these proposed campaigns will catch on or succeed. Sometimes even the best-planned tactics fall flat, sometimes even the most heroic movements lose. Resistance is always risky. But at a moment when the Trump administration is wielding a wrecking ball against all our futures, the riskiest option is to do nothing.

Trump wants us to believe he can’t be stopped, because those who believe they’re powerless don’t fight back. Ignore his lies. We can defeat his power grab, and we can build a country where all people, not just the ultra-rich, are able to prosper. Making that future a reality, however, will require a bit more bravery from many more people.

Once large numbers of ordinary Americans dare to flex their collective power, all bets are off. As my mom’s hand-made sign at last Saturday’s No Kings rally put it, “courage is contagious.”

---

ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.

Donate