Interim judgment. Are you nervous? Or are things getting better? Who is winning? I refer to “him and his” versus “you and ours.” I refer to fascism versus liberation. Is there a scorecard, a tally sheet to consult? I can’t see it. Can you? When I look at what’s out there, at what’s going on, it is hard for me to see clearly where we are at. It is hard for me to decide who’s winning. Too much noise to hear. Too many events to see. Too much muck to navigate.

On one side, Trump keeps piling on. Nuclear tests. Murders at sea. Deportations. Personal enemies attacked. Misogyny and racism. Tariff chaos. Science, health, climate, and truth pummeled. Personal gestapo emergent. War threats. Wrecking ball meets gargoyle builder. And much more, of course. The Orange Monster bulldozes on. And yet, of late, limping.

And on the other side. We keep rising. Humongous demonstrations. Ice agents blocked. Courts finding voice. Elections won. Doors knocked. Meetings multiplying.     Boycotts stirring. And then Mamdani beats Wall Street. Mamdani’s acceptance speech envisions a new beginning. Incredible. Some Republicans buckle. Some MAGA-ites reel. More than some.

So who has the momentum? You read their side. They have it. You read our side. We have it. I wonder: Who has it? I bet you wonder too. But here is the thing. For what we do next, it doesn’t matter. If we are winning, that’s nice, but we have to keep fighting until he and his are totally gone. If he is winning, that’s not nice, but we have to keep fighting until he and his are totally gone. Either way, it is one task.

Above the muddy fray, resides a prize that we should have our eyes glued to. It isn’t a particular policy. It isn’t this or that violation. It isn’t one grotesque person. It is to reveal Trump and Company as garbage incarnate and to unceremoniously dump them. So long, been horrible to know ya. It is to end every deadly dirty component. But it is also to not resurrect the conditions that bred them.

But what would such a victory actually look like? It would be nice to know. I’d like to have it in mind. You would too, I bet. An hour ago I read Mamdani’s acceptance speech. I shed tears doing so. I found it incredibly inspiring. So what will full victory, which his words to my eyes certainly seek, actually look like? Will it be dissolution of fascism’s support that leaves fascism isolated and breathless? Will it be the ignorant, malevolent thugs still in office but hamstrung. Will electoral victories strip off pieces of their power one after another? Will the thugs be out of office, reduced to being gone baby gone? Will it be a massive General Strike that stops nearly everything, fills nearly every Main Street, and ends only when the thugs vacate their posts? I don’t know. I doubt anyone knows. But whatever it is, I know we aren’t there yet so the situation now is that we have to work to get there. And then, from there, we have to keep going until we achieve new relations which can not only never yield such abominations again, but, which instead begin to yield forever-increasing liberation. For myself, for what it is worth, my intuition, my hope, and my belief is that Mamdani winning over Wall Street has turned the tide. We have the momentum now.

And so what will it require to continue the fight? It will require whatever grows resistance and than also wields resistance in ways that peel away MAGA support. In ways that win conditions that nurture and welcome still more resistance. In ways that roll back Trumpist constructions, and that more positively begin to evidence and win new relations, a new society, a new world. 

And what can do all that? The gritty grassroots details will emerge only as the fight is fought. But are there some key steps we can know even now? Some key steps that are begun already in some places and can soon be undertaken or expanded everywhere? 

How about to escalate the frequency of mass events? How about we incorporate greater militance via having sober, disciplined, civil disobedience for those ready to engage in it before or after the large turnouts? How about we do not curtail participation in the larger events but continue and enlarge them to arouse and repeatedly present our scale? How about we also evidence a broadening focus of a sort able to raise costs that elites really do not wish to bear? How about we broaden our overarching, unifying resistance slogans and demands to end genocide and war, to fiercely tax the rich, to eliminate the electoral college, to remove money from politics and more? 

How about we broaden the base of our resistance to include more labor, more youth, both urban and rural, and to include more diverse communities from New York to San Antonio, from Chicago to Phoenix, from Cleveland to Portland, from Detroit to Los Angeles and including every county along the way? 

How about we boycott beyond Tesla? We demonstrate on weekdays to spur work stoppages and feeder marches from schools to major unifying events? We begin to initiate on-going local grassroots assemblies, sometimes encampments, able to move participation from episodic to continuous and to generate grassroots policy proposals able to push school boards, corporate heads, Mayors, and Governors? 

How about we move toward the resistance’s countless component movements, organizations, and constituencies more openly and aggressively materially and physically supporting each other? How about we methodically move toward and in time finally undertake a general strike? How about we win. Like I said, I read Mamdani’s victory speech about an hour ago. Who will do all this? Read his speech. 

But none of this will be easy and there will be many other words spoken telling us how hard the tasks are, how long our struggle will take, how powerful corporations, banks, police, fear, loathing, repression and especially cynicism are. Trying to convince us to shut up and kneel. But do we need to be told all that? I read Mamdani’s speech an hour ago. I don’t think he needs to hear all that. I don’t think we do either.

Of course we shouldn’t engage in magical thinking. Of course we shouldn’t make believe we are going to win the world by next Wednesday. But nor should we think much less bemoan that it will take forever to win. We don’t know how long it will take. No one does. But for what we need to do, knowing that doesn’t even much matter unless we talk about obstacles in ways that entrench cynicism or we talk about prospects in ways that foster ridiculous overreach. I read Mamdani’s speech an hour ago. He doesn’t do that stuff. We shouldn’t do that stuff either. He talked plainly and with feeling. We should do that too. He celebrated wins but did not exaggerate them. We should do likewise. We should keep our eyes on the prize but sensibly address current realities. 

Winning will certainly be hard, but not impossible. Our talk must be about our capacities. Our aims. We must address the obstacles we face as challenges that we must and will overcome. Our task is to identify doable immediate steps toward winning, to enact them, and then to do it again. And again. The ultimate winning will come when it comes. When we have made it happen. That’s the spirit and inclination and commitment I heard in Mamdani’s speech. What a welcome sound. Give it a listen.

Our situation is of course incredibly complex. Our struggle has countless details. And yet, our situation is also actually pretty simple. It has only a few really key components. System defenders will muddy the waters with new violations and atrocities every other day. They will impose complexity that is meant to crowd out clarity. We will need to respond to their wild excesses but to do so always with a clear focus on key aspects. 

As great as our collective accomplishments have been, our resistance will need to better welcome minorities from their home communities, to better welcome youth from their schools, to better welcome workers from their workplaces. Our resistance will need to better threaten and disrupt and replace what Trump and Co. worship which is only their profits and their power. And as we work to do all that, our resistance will need to better speak to what MAGA is rightly mad about. Our resistance will need to speak to and win over MAGA’s working class members. I heard that in Mamdani’s speech too. I heard his 90,000 volunteers. 

We are in a race. They want to entrench oligarchy, authoritarianism, fascism, whatever you want to call it, so that thereafter to uproot them becomes vastly more difficult. That is the prize their eyes are on. It is their agenda. We want to get rid of them before they have solidified that level of power and we want to then move on to win vastly more than merely reinstating pre-Trump prior business as usual. In this race how we play matters greatly—but we have to win. To win is essential. That is what I read in Mamdani’s victory speech an hour ago. To win is essential. 

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