How We Can Defeat Authoritarianism Together

The past year has driven home a hard truth to everyone in our movements for social justice: what got us here will not get us where we need to go. Many of the tools we have used to advance rights over the last six decades no longer work. Those in power have shown us there is no limit to their cruelty. Our suffering only increases their ambitions. They are counting on us to live in fear; counting on us to stay separated.

Yet we have good reasons to hope. Millions have poured into the streets to protest the rise of authoritarianism. From Los Angeles to Chicago, Portland, and Minneapolis, community members have self-organized to keep each other safe from brutal and dehumanizing attacks. After years of fragmentation, community-based organizations are coming together in new and meaningful ways to meet this moment with combined strength.

Organizing has deep and powerful roots across community-based, faith-based, and labor traditions. Indeed, it is ordinary people, effectively organized, who have brought forward every major advance of freedoms in this country—from Abolition to Women’s Suffrage to Marriage Equality. 

We must now tap into this power of organized people to defend democracy while we can, and lay foundations for the better society we need. All across the country, in communities large and small, people of good conscience will stand up for one another when we show them how. And in these same places, dedicated organizers will answer the call to make their communities stronger together.

Enter: Organizing for Democracy: a playbook to unleash the power of organizing to defeat those who want to divide us. People’s Action is organizing with our allies in new ways to meet this moment, which is why we created a resource for sharing freely and circulating widely.

What Got Us Here

Community-based organizations like the one I lead, People’s Action, have long worked to fulfill the promise of multiracial democracy by giving ordinary people a voice in how our lives are run and holding the powerful to account. As a movement we have won landmark victories, such as the Community Reinvestment Act, which forced banks to end racial discrimination in lending; Superfund, which forced polluters to pay for the cleanup of their toxic waste; and the Affordable Care Act, which expanded access to health insurance. Yet we have not yet reached the critical mass we need to achieve some of the more fundamental shifts, like health care for all.

Our victories have come from the streets, but also from patient work behind the scenes to advance policies shaped by the voices of those most affected. With all its imperfections, we have relied on representative democracy to advance our cause. Yet as those in power relentlessly chip away at our democratic institutions, we can no longer rely primarily on old avenues of influence. 

The Trump Administration and its allies are swiftly concentrating power to silence dissent, and are undermining our right to vote. This administration has made massive, permanent tax cuts for the wealthiest and for big corporations, delivering $1 trillion to the richest 1%, while cutting $1.1 trillion from food assistance and health care. The Republican–controlled Congress has granted ICE and other agencies $170 billion to create a private, unaccountable army which openly disregards human dignity and the law. We face a new “deportation industrial complex,” in which corporations are racing to cash in by providing this new shadow army with the permanent infrastructure of surveillance software, unmarked cars, detention centers, and deportation flights.

Our adversaries have been swift and brazen in their actions, while our movement has been slow to respond. We’ve become fragmented in our work, and we did not fully anticipate the speed with which our opponents would move to dismantle democracy. 

Where We Need To Go

A little over three years ago, in an interview with Convergence Magazine, I noted: “Our work is to meet people who are going through struggles in their communities, and to bring them together with other people to make changes that they didn’t know were possible.” 

This is as true today as it was then. I believe that when we are motivated by solidarity and love, we can be stronger than brute force. Time and again, organized people have shown us that together, we can end lawless regimes, hold the powerful to account, and lay the groundwork for a more just and humane society. To defeat the enemies of democracy, we must call forth every ounce of courage, imagination, and solidarity we have.

Starting in 2022, when I returned to People’s Action as executive director, I sought out opportunities to build cooperation within our movements for social justice, because no single network and no one of us can do this alone. We need each other to achieve critical mass to win.

This is what motivates the Organizing Revival: our call to summon all those inspired by our nation’s rich traditions of grassroots organizing to come together, fight back, defeat authoritarianism, and create conditions for real democracy.

In 2023, together with twenty national organizations, we made the case for an Organizing Revival as an Antidote to Authoritarianism. This effort has since grown to include the nation’s largest networks of power-building organizations, including Gamaliel, Popular Democracy, Right to the City, Community Change, and the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, with more state and local affiliates joining as our movement grows. Together, we have formed the Organizing Revival Network which represents millions of people across the country and across our member-based organizations.

Our choice to stand together now will determine the fate of our communities and our democracy. We are activating this power, flexing our muscles, and learning together. With Future Currents, this alliance has developed Organizing for Democracy, a robust and scalable training program with a shared curriculum to defend democracy. We have incorporated lessons from the courageous young people, union leaders, and landless farmers who have toppled tyrants in places like Serbia, South Korea, and Brazil, and from all those who fought to end racial segregation here in the United States. 

With these methods, we have already trained thousands of organizers, from hundreds of organizations within our networks and to new partners from labor groups in the May Day Strong alliance. The Organizing for Democracy training is designed to be easily adapted and scaled by organizations to their local conditions. Those we have already trained have gone home to have conversations where they live, train thousands more, and activate millions of new people.

In the coming months, the organizations anchoring the Organizing Revival Network have committed to taking an arc of nonviolent actions together that will impose costs on those who seek to profit from the authoritarian regime. Together, we will build peacefully towards a shared demand that this madness must end.

Targeting Corporations Who Profit from Our Pain

The Organizing Revival Network launched the first of our peaceful actions together in Chicago on November 16. At 18 locations across central Illinois, People’s Action and our allies called on AT&T to end its contracts with ICE, Customs and Border Patrol, and the other federal agencies that have attempted a militarized takeover of our communities. We also call on consumers to not spend a penny on AT&T’s products and services until they end these contracts. 

“We are on the precipice of losing our liberties and freedom if we don’t stand together as a community,” said Donyale Springs, a member of the Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church and The People’s Lobby Clergy Caucus, speaking outside AT&T’s retail location in downtown Chicago. “Their fight is our fight: Get this message out to your churches, to your mosques, and to your temples. Call your families and your friends, and ask them to take a stand against corporations that enable ICE to forcibly remove our neighbors from our streets.”

This may sound like what community-based organizations have done for years: publicly naming and shaming the corporate bad actors who profit by putting necessities like food, housing, and health care beyond our reach, and polluting our water and air.

But two things about this action were significantly different. First, it was organized and supported by the alliance of the more than forty faith-based, community, and labor organizations whose members were present, and second, it focused our attention not only on a single bad actor but on the root causes of the problems.

AT&T is just one of the dozens of corporations that are rushing to profit from the billions ICE and other federal agencies are now spending to terrorize citizens and noncitizens alike. With each of the actions we take, our goal is not only to reach the CEO of a corporation—it is to challenge everyone who profits from our pain. 

We also challenge ourselves to recognize what is happening right in front of us: the scapegoating of immigrants is just the start of the dismantling of our democracy. This hurts every one of us: every dollar spent to divide communities is stripped away from families who need food, housing, and health care.

“You can hide your head in the sand and say, ‘I’m just not into politics,’” Donyale reminded us in Chicago, “But politics is most definitely into you. This moral confrontation is inevitable.” 

Organizing Pivots: New Strategies for Mass Action 

For organizers, we must adopt a new mindset with new tactics to take action at an unprecedented scale. This is something that will only reach its full impact if we do it together, and why we have developed this new set of strategies.

The fundamentals of this strategy will feel familiar to seasoned organizers, but the outcomes are different, because our landscape has changed. Where we once sought to persuade elites to achieve desired outcomes, we will engage in nonviolent noncooperation where we must, and impose political and economic costs on those who seek to profit from the erosion of our rights. Where we once relied on our committed base of members to take action, we must now engage all those who believe in human dignity to join us. 

We have seen people moving into the streets in unprecedented numbers. This is vital, but it is not enough. With each action, we must build strategic strength, and turn every flashpoint into an opportunity for momentum, building towards popular demands that an undeniable majority in this country will support. 

Our work in Chicago has shown us that we can turn ICE and Border Patrol away from communities when we take a stand. At the same time, the forces we are up against quickly find new targets and escalate their cruel and unlawful actions, as we are seeing in Minneapolis. They have almost unlimited resources, and we have no time to waste.

In the coming months, we will be tested as never before. History tells us we have a limited amount of time—perhaps only months—to stop the consolidation of an authoritarian regime. Together, we can turn back the tide of hate. We may see a roaring lion in our path, but we must move forward with conviction and solidarity because we know we are on the right side of justice, and of history. Even when we face danger, we stand up.

This is what People’s Action and our allies hope to offer by sharing this playbook and our commitment to act together. Together, we can stop authoritarianism in its tracks, and revive the promise of democracy. We are ready to act together with love, resolve, and determination. We invite everyone who believes, as we do, that we are better than this dark moment, to join us. When we stand together on the Freedom Side, there is room and hope enough for all.

Featured image: Kimmie Dearest for Convergence