Part 6 of this series contains the following chapters:

7. Non-Electoral Opposition
8. The Social Strike

Defending Society Against MAGA Tyranny: A Prospectus for Action is a report from the Labor Network for Sustainability, co-published by ZNetwork.org.

Click here to read the report in full: Defending Society Against MAGA Tyranny: A Prospectus for Action

Non-Electoral Opposition

If the Democratic Party is too controlled by corporate and fossil fuel interests and American democracy is too eroded to effectively counter impending para-fascism, is Social-Self Defense powerless? Or are there means of action outside representative political institutions that can undermine the power of the Trump juggernaut?

As we saw in section 4, action outside the electoral system was often effective in limiting the damage of the first Trump regime. For example, mass protest helped preserve the Affordable Care Act. Direct action helped defeat Trump’s Muslim Ban and his proposed wall on the Mexican border. An epidemic of “blue flu” among government employees and the threat of a general strike forced an end to one federal government shutdown and prevented another. The effects of the extra-electoral Trump Resistance have been widely credited with aiding Republican electoral defeats in 2016 and 2020.

These efforts constituted in effect a “non-electoral opposition.” Indeed, movements based on non-violent direct action, like the labor movement in the 1930s and the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements of the 1960s, have often played much of the role of an “opposition party” in America.

A non-electoral opposition is a convergence of social movements that performs some of the classic functions of an opposition party without the goal of taking power in government. It draws diverse constituencies out of their silos to combine their power but uses direct action rather than electoral politics as its means to exercise that power. Like a political party, it can bring together different constituencies around common interests, expose existing leaders and institutions, and present alternatives.

Forty years ago, Poland’s independent opposition — contrasting with the sham opposition in the parliament — played a critical role in the upheavals that led to the rise of Solidarity and the downfall of authoritarian regimes throughout Eastern Europe. The Polish independent opposition was developed to realize Social Self-Defense when the officially recognized parties failed to actually oppose the ruling authoritarian regime and when the regime exercised repressive powers that prevented genuine independent opposition within the purportedly representative system.

The formation of such a political force organized around a popular program to be implemented by mass direct action was very much the conception on which Martin Luther King. Jr. was developing the original Poor People’s Campaign in 1968. The campaign used an encampment in Washington, DC, as the bastion for an ongoing interracial movement to challenge the distribution of power in America. Its “economic bill of rights” called for full employment, a guaranteed annual income, unemployment insurance, a higher minimum wage, low-income housing, and expanded education, all to be paid for by ending the war in Vietnam. The campaign won support from American Indian, Puerto Rican, Mexican American, and poor white communities; King’s engagement in the Memphis sanitation workers strike was part of the coalition-building effort for the campaign. In a 1968 speech to the Poor People’s Campaign King called for “opening of a bloodless war to final victory over racism and poverty.” The campaign was cut short by King’s assassination.

Non-Electoral Opposition: A Successful American Example

What might a non-electoral opposition that draws together a wide coalition for Social Self-Defense by using direct action look like in Trump’s America? Maybe a bit like North Carolina’s Forward Together.

The story of what came to be called Forward Together is told by William Barber II, minister and leader of the North Carolina NAACP.[1]  In 2007 the North Carolina NAACP convened a People’s Assembly with what it called the “fourteen justice tribes in North Carolina.” The assembly, held on Jones Street outside the statehouse, unanimously adopted a fourteen-point agenda representing the concerns of those fourteen tribes. It outlined eighty-one action steps. The People’s Assembly became an annual event. The movement it spawned came to be known as Historic Thousands on Jones Street or HKonJ.

HKonJ chose as one of its first actions support of workers at the Smithfield hog-butchering plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, who had struggled for a decade to win a union. The coalition decided to “change the narrative” by “making the workers’ struggle a moral cause for our whole coalition.” Barber wrote that conversations about “fair wages” or “civil rights” could not be reduced to the self-interest of separate groups: “We were engaged together in a conversation about what kind of economy builds up the common good.” The coalition organized clergy and community leaders to make public statements at grocery stores across the state, asking them to stop carrying Smithfield meats. After months of struggle, Smithfield recognized the union and agreed to a contract. The HKonJ coalition’s relationship to the state’s beleaguered unions was solidified as well.

More direct political action followed. A right-wing takeover of the Wake County school board gutted guidelines promoting racial diversity and began to undermine public education. HKonJ held forums to alert the public to what the board was up to and spoke at school board meetings. “Our job was to shift the public conversation,” Barber wrote.

In response, the board banned protesters from its meetings. Barber says, “Like Bull Connor in Birmingham, they set the perfect stage for civil disobedience.” Coalition members were repeatedly arrested for trying to enter the meetings. At the same time, they mobilized voters for the next election. A year later every member of the school board who had tried to re-segregate the schools was voted out, and the right-wing candidate for state superintendent of schools was defeated.

HKonJ’s research indicated that the biggest reason low-income people didn’t vote was because they couldn’t leave their jobs to do so. In 2007 the coalition pressured the Democratic legislature and governor to pass a voting rights law to allow early voting and same-day registration. Then it mobilized its partner organizations for a voter registration and education campaign that added at least 185,000 new voters in the state. In 2008, all fifteen of North Carolina’s electoral college votes went to Barack Obama.

In the 2012 election a well-organized right-wing backlash took control of the North Carolina legislature and elected Pat McCrory governor. It passed new restrictions on voting rights, gay rights, abortion rights, environmental protection, unemployment compensation, medical care, and education, as well as other elements of the right-wing agenda. It passed a redistricting plan so gerrymandered that it was eventually blocked by federal courts as “unjustifiably discriminating.”

A group of college students with duct tape over their mouths filled the legislature’s observation area to protest voting rights restrictions and were arrested. HKonJ decided to follow suit. On Monday, April 29, 2013, seventeen protesters were arrested in the legislative gallery. The movement, soon to be rechristened Forward Together, decided to return in a week. Thus began North Carolina’s famous Moral Mondays. Over the next three months nearly a thousand protesters were arrested at the statehouse. Eighty thousand people joined the movement’s culminating demonstration. Barber called it a “popular uprising.” Many out-of-state organizations boycotted North Carolina; the NCAA banned holding national championships there.

As the Moral Mondays movement grew, Governor McCrory’s poll numbers fell. Before the 2016 election, Republicans tried to divide the movement, targeting black Christians in particular, through the so-called “bathroom bill” requiring that people use public restrooms matching their “biological gender”—a clear appeal to anti-trans bigotry. Barber and other ministers spoke at church meetings throughout North Carolina, saying that “the fundamental principle of equal protection under the law” was a “constitutional and moral principle” that had to be upheld. They pointed out that the bill wasn’t about bathrooms at all. In fact, it “attempted to codify discrimination, denied all North Carolinians the right to challenge employment discrimination in state court, and overrode the victories of municipal living-wage campaigns.” Once they understood what the bill really did, “workers stood with preachers and LGBTQ activists stood with the business community to oppose the bill.” At the next election McCrory became the first governor in North Carolina history to lose a bid for reelection.

Forward Together eventually became a coalition of 145 organizations representing Christians, Muslims, Jews, nonbelievers, blacks, Latinos, poor whites, unionists, civil rights activists, feminists and environmentalists, doctors and the uninsured, and businesspeople and the unemployed. It represented gay and straight, young and old, and documented and undocumented. This unity was based on a belief that “none of us would be free until all of us were free.” One principle that shaped Forward Together’s actions was simply “showing up to support any group in the state that was standing for justice.” In 2013, Forward Together supported the fight of Planned Parenthood and NARAL against new abortion restrictions. A few years later a hundred people filled a Durham church to demonstrate solidarity with a Durham-raised asylum seeker fighting deportation.

Forward Together sought “powerful images of solidarity” manifested in “daily acts of justice and community building.” Barber writes that “our most directly affected members would always speak to the issue closest to their own hearts. But they would never speak alone.” The movement existed so preachers can “fight for fifteen” and workers can say “black lives matter”; so a white woman can “stand with her black sister for voting rights”; so a black man can “stand for a woman’s right to health care”; so L.G.B.T.Q. folk can “stand for religious liberty”; so straight people can “stand up for queer people”; and a Muslim imam can “stand with an undocumented worker.”

One journalist described the premise of the movement as a “universalist program” for health care, voting rights, reproductive choice, and higher wages, one beginning in “building coalitions among people whom politics have driven apart.” Amid a welter of issues, the defining common ground for Forward Together was a response to the needs of the poor and vulnerable. As Barber put it, “poor and hurting people were the capstone of our moral arch.”

Forward Together played some of the roles of an opposition political party, drawing together diverse constituencies around common interests, criticizing existing policies and institutions, and proposing alternatives. But it exercised power by direct rather than electoral action. Barber said that “effective work for justice in the real world” requires “real political power.” Yet “the battle, while deeply political, wasn’t fundamentally about campaigns and elections.” More than winning seats in the legislature, it was about “exposing the conspiracy of the governing elite to maintain absolute power through divide-and-conquer strategies” and reshaping “the stories that tell us who we are.” Unlike a political party or lobby, Forward Together eschewed running or supporting candidates for office. Yet it transformed North Carolina politics.

Such a movement is hard to recreate at a national level. But the need for Social Self-Defense against Trump’s assault on all such groups may be making its principles and strategies essential.

How a Non-Electoral Opposition Defeated the First Trump Coup

Can a coalition anchored outside the electoral system preserve democracy by overcoming a coup? It happened in the US four years ago.

As the 2020 elections approached, the evidence grew that Donald Trump was planning to overturn the results if he lost. While the Democratic Party campaigned for Joe Biden, a Democracy Defense Coalition gradually assembled over 200 groups to prevent or overturn an anticipated Trump coup.[2]

In September 2020, four activist experts on civil resistance issued a manual called Hold the Line: A Guide to Defending Democracy.[3] Reminiscent of the Indivisible manual that helped launch the resistance to Trump in 2016, it presented a detailed plan for locally based resistance to a Trump coup. It laid out various scenarios in which Trump refused to leave office. It called for forming community-based “election protection” groups. These could start immediately with meetings by a small core group to develop a response plan and recruits others to participate in it. These groups would “hold the line” that all votes must be counted; all irregularities must be investigated impartially and remedied; and election results must be respected, regardless of who wins. Public officials could be called on in advance to state their commitment to these principles. Violation of these “red lines” by Trump or others would trigger these groups into action.

The guide provided sample meeting agendas, templates for “power maps” of forces to influence, tactics “brainstorming sheets,” and other planning tools. It outlined targeted action to “undermine the pillars of support” for an illegal Trump regime. It called for mass popular mobilization based on disciplined nonviolence because “violence will backfire badly against the side that uses it.” It discussed tactics including displaying symbols of protest; engaging in demonstrations, marches, and nonviolent blockades; strikes of all kinds; deliberate work slowdowns; boycotts; divestment; tax refusal; and targeted disruption.

Trade unionists Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Jose La Luz made a related proposal for organized labor to establish “pro-democracy volunteer brigades” in preparation for the election.

We need volunteers who will assist with voter registration; mobilize in large numbers should law enforcement and right-wing militias show up at polling places in order to intimidate voters; block the right-wing from challenging legitimate voters and ballots; and lay the groundwork for massive civil disobedience should the Trump administration attempt to forestall the elections and/or refuse to recognize the results.

After Trump’s coup attempt in January, 2021, an article by Time journalist Molly Ball gave a detailed account of “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.”[4] It described a “vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted.” It was “separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors.”

While no one individual or organization led the effort to ensure a free and fair election, informal coordination emerged. The Fight Back Table, a coalition of “resistance” organizations, gathered activists at the local and national level into a Democracy Defense Coalition. In April Mike Podhorzer, senior adviser to the president of the AFL-CIO, began hosting a weekly 2½-hour Zoom call. That became the center for “a constellation of operatives across the left who shared overlapping goals but didn’t usually work in concert.” The group had “no name, no leaders and no hierarchy,” but it kept its disparate participants in sync.

According to Ball, the effort “drew energy from the summer’s racial-justice protests,” many of whose leaders were a key part of the alliance. They wanted to “harness its momentum for the election without allowing it to be co-opted by politicians.” Their focus became to protect people’s ability to vote in the midst of the COVID pandemic. In Philadelphia, for example, advocates distributed “voting safety kits” containing masks, hand sanitizer, and informational brochures. “We had to get the message out that this is safe, reliable, and you can trust it,” said Hannah Fried of All Voting Is Local. Elsewhere activists recruited “election defenders” who were trained to use de-escalation techniques rather than calling the police. They surrounded lines of voters at urban polling places with a “joy to the polls” message that turned voting into a street party. Black organizers recruited thousands of poll workers to ensure polling places could stay open.

Black Lives Matter had shown that “people power could have a massive impact.” Activists prepared to revive that summer’s street demonstrations if Trump tried to steal the election. More than 150 groups, including the Women’s March, the Sierra Club, Color of Change, Democrats.com, and Democratic Socialists of America joined the “Protect the Results” coalition. The group’s website had a map listing 400 planned postelection demonstrations, to be activated via text message as soon as needed after the election.

Non-partisan election protection was not limited to the left. 22 Democrats and 22 Republicans formed the National Council on Election Integrity, met on Zoom once a week, and produced op eds, letters to the editor, and advertisements in battleground states and warned local officials about potential voting problems. Fearing “the potential for economy-disrupting civil disorder” in the wake of Black Lives Matter, The Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, other trade associations, the AFL-CIO, the National Association of Evangelicals, the National African American Clergy Network, and many other groups issued an election-day statement calling for election officials be given time to “count every vote in accordance with applicable law” without violence or intimidation.   

When it became clear on election night that Trump would lose the election, Protect the Results announced it would “not be activating the entire national mobilization network today, but remains ready to activate if necessary.” Protect the Results then transformed the anticipated protests into a weekend of public celebration.

After the election came the count, the certification, the Electoral College, and the presidential transition. Again, popular action played a critical role in blocking Trump’s attempt at an electoral coup. In Michigan, for example, on election night a busload of Republican “election observers” arrived at Detroit’s TCF Center where votes were being counted. They crowded the vote-counting tables, refused to wear masks, and heckled the mostly Black workers. Within 45 minutes racial justice activists from Detroit Will Breathe, suburban women from Fems for Dems, and local elected officials arrived to protect the count.

As the election-certification process proceeded, Michigan election protectors flooded the Wayne County canvassing board’s certification meeting and testified at length on the right to vote; even the Republican board members voted to certified Detroit’s votes. When two Republican legislative leaders flew to Washington to meet with Trump to discuss having the legislature declaring him the winner, activists tracked down their flights and demonstrated at the airports to call attention to this devious plot. After the meeting, the legislators announced they’d pressed the President to deliver COVID relief for their constituents and informed him they saw no role for the legislature in the election process. When the state canvassing board met for the final step in certification, they were met by hours of testimony while Twitter and other media were flooded with thousands of messages with the hashtag “alleyesonmi.” Both Democrats and one Republican voted to certify; the other Republican abstained.

When on the morning of January 6 Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, the “activist left” was “strenuously discouraging counter activity.” Instead of a battle between Trump’s coup army and leftist militants, Trump was allowed to paint a picture of himself and his supporters as the pathetic perpetrators of a failed coup, fighting not the left but democracy itself.

According to Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, in the end “every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated.” While the particular strategy and tactics of this successful defense of democracy were adapted to the particular threat faced then and there, this experience shows that non-electoral opposition can indeed provide Social Self-Defense against threats to democracy. That may prove even more necessary to block creeping or galloping coups in the new MAGA era.

Building a Non-Electoral Opposition

As we saw in the Prologue, elements of a non-electoral opposition are already in play. To take just one example, the organizers of the largest one-day demonstration in US history, the 2017 Women’s March, along with many other groups such as Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, are organizing a feminist People’s March for January 18, shortly before Trump’s inauguration.

As described in “Social Self-Defense in the First Trump Regime” above, more than fifty prominent environmental, trade union, civil rights, progressive, women’s, gay, and other groups just before Trump’s 2016 inauguration initiated a United Resistance Campaign based on a pledge of solidarity and resistance against Trump: “We pledge to stand together in support of racial, social, environmental, and economic justice for all, and against Islamophobia, xenophobia, racism, homophobia, sexism, and all those forces which would tear apart a democracy of, by, and for all the people.”[5] This effort represented a potential starting point for drawing together a non-electoral opposition.

Although the United Resistance Campaign did not build an infrastructure for continuing cooperation, many of the organizations that initiated it, as well as millions of Trump Resistance activists, supported each other’s causes in very much the way it called for. Action around issues like gun control, abortion, and immigration rights won wide “crossover” support, as did the Women’s March, the March for Science, the People’s Climate March, Black Lives Matter, the Fight for Fifteen, the March for Our Lives, May Day immigrant rights marches, #MeToo, the Red-state Teacher Rebellion, and other actions. They established the rudiments, never fully developed, for a non-electoral opposition.  

There are similar nascent efforts today that could serve as starting points for a non-electoral opposition. The mass calls immediately following the 2024 election had 100,000 registrants and over 200 organizational co-sponsors.[6] They featured a spectrum of speakers including Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Leah Greenberg, co-founder of Indivisible, Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn, and Ash Lee Henderson, co-executive director of the Highlander Center. The upcoming People’s March could provide another growth point. So could the national Poor People’s Campaign. No doubt other potential growth points will emerge.

A non-electoral opposition can develop from the convergence of independent non-electoral initiatives. This can happen both nationally and at state and local levels. It does not require a single national organization, but its builders need a vision of a publicly visible non-electoral opposition and sustained cooperation to realize that vision.

A non-electoral opposition needs to build a shared infrastructure for communications networks, extensive training, and means for joint planning. An inspiration here might be the 2012 “99% Spring,” largely inspired by Occupy Wall Street, in which organizations including National People’s Action, Jobs with Justice, National Domestic Workers Alliance, MoveOn, and the UAW cooperated to train nearly 100,000 people in the history and practice of nonviolent direct action. Thousands of them poured into “99% Power” corporate accountability actions at corporate headquarters during the subsequent weeks. These shareholder actions expressed an embryonic common program, not by holding a convention and propounding a platform but by making the links among issues ranging from taxes and bank regulation to healthcare and housing to climate, militarization and imperialism. At the Wells Fargo action, for example, protesters demanded that the bank invest in green jobs and energy instead of financing payday lenders and private prisons. In the Chicago actions, National Nurses United’s demand for a “Robin Hood tax” on financial transactions linked financial speculation with healthcare.[7] 

One way to start bringing groups together for a non-party opposition could be through “bridging organizations” designed to connect two or more movements, institutions, or organizations. These do not have to be either large or powerful to be effective. They can just be a handful of people who are knowledgeable about and trusted by those they are trying to draw together and who understand the needs and problems of all sides. They can engage in on-going discussions both separately and together to explore areas of agreement and disagreement. They can promote actions that embody mutual support. Ultimately, they can help construct a common program that represents the real interests of all. Those within particular organizations and movements can similarly form networks and caucuses to push for such a collaborative approach.

A non-electoral opposition can include groups that also participate in the electoral process as long as they do not try to subordinate the non-electoral opposition to their electoral objectives. Even a disruptive non-electoral opposition can benefit those working in the electoral arena by awakening people from fear, isolation, complacency, and despair. King’s vision was that the Poor People’s Campaign would inspire millions of poor people to vote. Some unions explicitly supported Occupy Wall Street because they presciently saw that it would help progressive Democrats in the upcoming elections.

It would be neither possible nor wise to lay out detailed plans for non-electoral opposition actions months or years in advance. They will have to be developed based on the ideas and practice of thousands of people responding to the realities of MAGA rule – as they did in the first Trump Resistance. Their coalitions can contest every element of the MAGA agenda. A watchword for such non-electoral opposition might be Adam Michnik’s advice to Poland’s independent opposition: “Be constantly and incessantly visible in public life, create political facts by organizing mass actions, and formulate alternative programs.”[8]

Experiences like the first Trump Resistance, North Carolina’s Forward Together, and the defeat of Trump’s attempted 2020 coup show that, although fascism can indeed happen here, successful Social Self-Defense against fascism can also happen here.

8. The Social Strike

What about a worst-case scenario where neither electoral nor non-electoral opposition has prevented a MAGA tyranny? Where democratic procedures and the right to vote have been so denied that it is impossible to defeat MAGA at the polls? Where both official and vigilante violence are unrestrained by law? Where a substantial part of the population has been bamboozled by lies and distraction? Where those who don’t go along with the program are subject to harassment, beating, jailing, and death? Where all dissent has been effectively branded as treason? And where much of the population has been driven by fear into silence and acquiescence? How is it possible to fight for and win Social Self-Defense under such conditions?

Tyrannical regimes from Serbia to the Philippines to Brazil and many other places have been brought down by “people power” — nonviolent revolts that made society ungovernable and led to regime change. While the U.S. has a tradition of social and labor movements using mass action and local general strikes, it does not have a tradition of using people power for the defense of democracy. However, in other countries where democratic institutions have been so weakened or eliminated that they provide no alternative to tyranny, such methods have emerged and been used effectively. They go by such names as “nonviolent uprisings,” “people power,” and, as they will be called here, “social strikes.”

A social strike in US would probably require a trigger as extreme as the events that just occurred in South Korea, a country with 40 years of firmly established democracy. Rightwing president Yoon Suk-yeol, facing plunging popularity, went on live TV and declared martial law. Yoon alleged that the Democratic Party, which had a majority in the National Assembly, was conducting “anti-state activities” and collaborating with “North Korean communists” to destroy the country. His martial law order prohibited political activities, including gatherings of the National Assembly and local legislatures, and suspended freedom of the press. Yoon reportedly ordered the arrest of various political opponents, including the leaders of the Democratic Party and his own Peoples Power Party.

Soldiers appeared at the parliament and attempted to arrest MPs. Workers, students, and ordinary people flooded the streets and rushed to Parliament where they faced martial law troops and broke through the military blockade. the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and the Korean Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union declared a general strike and a series of strike rallies calling for the resignation of Yoon Suk-yeol and “Beyond Yoon” union demands of just working conditions and public policies that ensure quality public services for all Koreans. Railroad workers, subway workers, metalworkers, and other trade unionists announced they would join the strike. After the military blockade of parliament was broken, the National Assembly was able to vote and blocked the Martial Law order 190 to 0. After six hours, faced with near-universal condemnation, President Yoon rescinded the martial law order. A statement by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions said,

Our citizens, armed with nothing but conviction, rushed to Parliament and stood against the martial law troops. Through sheer determination, they broke through the blockade, enabling Parliament to lift the martial law. Once again, it was our citizens who protected democracy.[9]

When Yoon refused to step down and his party refused to allow him to be impeached, hundreds of thousands of Koreans continued to demonstrate daily for a week. As 200,000 people marched outside, the parliament finally voted to impeach him. The crowd erupted in celebration as the result was announced. Young South Koreans danced, sang, exchanged hugs and waved K-pop light sticks, which had quickly become a symbol of resistance. Yoon was immediately suspended.[10] 

An American equivalent might be if President Trump declared martial law and sent military forces to arrest members of Congress. While such a scenario might seem far-fetched, it is not so far out of line with things Trump and his nominees have previously threatened. Given South Korea’s forty years of democratic stability, such a coup attempt seemed far-fetched to most South Koreans as well.    

There is now an extensive literature analyzing popular resistance to subversion of elections and other forms of coup d’etat. The pioneer of such research was theorist and historian of nonviolence Gene Sharp. His Waging Nonviolent Struggle provides extensive analysis and many case studies of effective nonviolent resistance; his The Anti-Coup focuses in on the use of these methods against illegal seizures of government power.[11] It proposes such guidelines as:

• Repudiate the coup and denounce its leaders as illegitimate
• Regard all decrees and orders from the coup leaders contradicting established law as illegal and refuse to obey them
• Keep all resistance strictly nonviolent – refuse to be provoked into violence
• Noncooperate with the coup leaders in all ways

Stephen Zunes’ Civil Resistance Against Coups[12] analyzes the resistance to twelve coups and provides an expanded theoretical framework. Sharp and Zunes provide invaluable background for anyone who contemplates resisting a possible Trump coup. Here are three examples of successful popular resistance to coups and other anti-democratic behavior by those in power:

In 1988, despite the circumvention of electoral laws, repression of universities, restriction of media, and ethnic cleansing, Serbia under Slobodan Milosevic was still holding elections of a sort. An activist group called Otpor formed around the goal of driving Milosevic from power. It initiated hundreds of small actions of resistance around the country to counter pervasive fear of the regime. Its plan was that activists would compel the regime to call elections; they would create massive turnout around a united opposition candidate; they would join other nongovernmental organizations in carefully monitoring election results so they could document their victory; and they would use mass noncompliance – leading up to a general strike – if and when Milosevic refused to step down.

In 2000, Otpor pushed 18 of Serbia’s squabbling opposition parties to form a coalition to support a unity candidate, promising to deliver 500,000 votes to the unity candidate but threatening to put 100,000 protesters at the door of any politician who betrayed the coalition. As elections approached, the regime called Otpor an “illegal terrorist organization”; police raided its offices and shut down independent radio and TV stations; each day an average of seven activists were arrested.

Meanwhile, the opposition organized ten thousand election monitors. After the election they announced exit polls showing Milosevic had been defeated by a 50% to 35% margin. Instead of accepting the results, Milosevic refused to leave office and demanded a run-off election.

Otpor announced a deadline for Milosevic to concede and 200,000 people demonstrated in Belgrade. The opposition called on the population throughout the country to “perform any acts of civil disobedience they have at their disposal.” Miners struck; TV and radio stations opened their airwaves to opposition voices. As the deadline approached, cars and trucks filled the highways heading toward Belgrade. Police put up roadblocks and were issued orders to shoot, but seeing the size of the convoys they abandoned their barricades. Half-a-million people gathered in Belgrade. Police fired tear gas, but when the crowd stood its ground riot police began running away or joining the crowd. The opposition candidate declared victory and Milosevic accepted his defeat.[13]

Another example: After the assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr. in 1983, Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos met growing protests. Marcos called a presidential election for February 1986. Aquino’s widow Corazon Aquino was backed by all major opposition parties. Marcos’ campaign included vote-buying and the murder of more than 70 opposition workers. On election day casting of fake ballots and falsification of returns were widely witnessed.

Marcos claimed victory, but Mrs. Aquino met with opposition leaders and proposed a long nonviolent campaign of what she dubbed “people power.” Top military officers resigned, withdrew support from Marcos, recognized Aquino as the legitimate winner, and fled to military camps in Manila. The leader of the city’s Roman Catholic Church appealed on nationwide radio for people to nonviolently protect the officers and prevent bloodshed. By midnight 50,000 people surrounded the camps; two days later it was more than a million. Marcos ordered tanks and armored transports to attack. Nuns knelt in front of the tanks and priests climbed on them and led a million protesters – plus soldiers – in prayer. The troops turned back. Next day Marcos ordered another assault, but the commanding officer ordered his troops to return to their base. The military rebels announced that ninety percent of the Armed Forces had defected. Large crowds took over the government television station. The next day Marcos fled the country and Aquino was inaugurated president. Ever since, mass nonviolent direct action has been known around the world as “People power.”

For a more recent example closer to home, consider the “People’s Impeachment” of the governor of Puerto Rico. On July 13, 2019 a Puerto Rican public interest group, Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (Center for Investigative Journalism), released more than eight hundred pages of online chats between Governor Ricardo Rosselló and eleven of his closest cronies. The chat group members attacked and belittled disabled people, fat people, and gays, including Puerto Rican actor, writer, and pop star Ricky Martin. They made jokes about those who had died from Hurricane Maria. And they revealed corruption and toleration of corruption. Governor Rosselló criticized the Puerto Rican former speaker of the New York City Council, Melissa Mark-Viverito, saying, “Our people” should “beat up that whore.” When the island’s chief fiscal officer wrote that he was ‘salivating to shoot’ the mayor of San Juan, Rosselló replied: ‘You’d be doing me a grand favor.”

Dubbed “RickyLeaks,” the revelations caused an immediate public outcry. Almost immediately Puerto Ricans began protesting outside the governor’s mansion calling for Rosselló to resign. #RickyRenuncia (#RickyResign) became an instant hashtag and slogan. Protesters were described as including “unionists, students, socialist groups, unemployed youth, rainbow flag-waving queer and transgender folks, people with disabilities, and elders.” Also spotlighted at marches were a committed group of radical feminists, Colectiva Feminista en Construcción, who had long been clamoring for Rosselló to acknowledge that there was a crisis of violence against women in Puerto Rico.

 For three days the crowds swelled. They were overwhelmingly peaceful, but a few plastic bottles and other objects were thrown at the police—possibly by agents provocateurs. Eventually police began arresting protesters and attacking them with tear gas and rubber bullets. That further incited popular outrage.

Major newspapers and leading political figures from all parties joined the call for the governor’s resignation. At eight every evening people throughout the island banged pots and pans from their balconies, windows, and streets in a traditional Latin American cacerolazo. The day after the first massive Monday march, three women went to the Department of Motor Vehicles office in a municipality of San Juan and removed the governor’s portrait from the wall in protest, setting off a series of copycat takedowns in other governmental offices around the island.

Meanwhile, the crowds outside the governor’s mansion continued to grow larger every day. Early on the morning of July 23, people from across the island boarded trains and cars bound for the capitol. Schools shut down, San Juan’s largest mall shut down, and banks stayed closed in what was widely referred to as a general strike. A march shut down miles of the Las Américas highway. Protesters at the governor’s mansion performed mass yoga and read aloud the 889 pages of chats. Eventually an estimated half million people demonstrated for the governor’s ouster. One-third of the entire population of Puerto Rico participated in the movement.

Facing what appeared a nonviolent insurrection of virtually the entire Puerto Rican people and a threat of impeachment by the legislature, just before midnight Rosselló posted a resignation message on Facebook. Celebrations across San Juan lasted all night. Rosselló was deposed as governor less than two weeks after RickyLeaks became public. These events became known as the “People’s Impeachment.”[14]

As these examples indicate, there is no off-the-shelf model for social strikes. The conditions that give rise to them are varied, although they usually include severe repression and growing popular discontent. Social strikes grow out of extreme grievances and deep anger at the regime. Sudden “trigger events” may kick them off.[15] While preparation can be helpful, sensitivity to the state of popular feeling is also crucial.

There are some guidelines we can draw from many past social strikes.[16] They apply where, as in the US today, most potential participants are not organized into unions or other formal labor organizations; the principal goal is to affect not just the immediate employer but the regime or social structure; and those in authority do not accept such actions as legitimate.

Social strikes express several different kinds of power, all rooted in the fundamental dependence of ruling groups on those they rule. They cause a problem for the owners and managers of the businesses and institutions that they shut down. They appeal to and mobilize a wide public by embodying its values and interests in opposition to the regime. They demonstrate to the authorities the potential withdrawal of consent to which they are vulnerable.

Several criteria must be coordinated in defining the goals of social strikes. Their demands need to represent broad objectives that appeal to a broad public. They need to unify different sectors, such as private employees, government employees, women, educated middle class, business owners, rural poor, urban poor, etc. They need to embody broadly accepted norms. These may be norms broadly held in the society, such as support for democracy; they often are embodied in the existing constitution but denied in practice by the regime. It is often possible in a social strike to combine such broad social goals with specific demands by more local groups that can be met by local officials and immediate employers – release of prisoners, permitting of demonstrations, shorter hours, wage increases, or whatever is important to the participants.

In a context of repression, multiple forms of communication within a movement are essential. Internet and social networking tools have proved themselves crucial in recent social strikes, but they need to be supplemented by a wide range of phone trees, personal networks, word-of-mouth communication, and other media beyond the reach of repressive authorities. Communication needs to perform two functions, each of which has its own requirements. Communication must allow for rapid formation of opinion and consensus. And it must make possible rapid coordination of action.

Social strikes can involve quiet or disruptive street actions, or they can simply involve people staying quietly at home. Street actions allow social strikers and supporters to show their courage, confidence, and resistance to repression; they also provide easy targets for repression.

Social strikes have often involved occupation of workplaces (the Polish general strike that gave birth to the Solidarity union occurred when activists spread the word: Don’t burn Party headquarters; occupy the factories.) Such occupations tend to make repressive violence more difficult. However, they are frequently perceived by the authorities as a fundamental, even revolutionary challenge to their power, making them less willing to compromise.

Social strike tactics need to be selected on the basis of such considerations as 1) what are people willing to do given the present state of the movement; 2) how will the wider public respond to different tactics; 3) what response are different tactics likely to provoke from the authorities; 4) what kinds of outcomes (e.g. showdowns, negotiations, shifts in public opinion, splits and shifts in attitude of authorities; etc.) are different tactics likely to generate.

The ability to shift tactics can be a great asset. When a movement is locked into a particular tactic, its opponents often try to break it by raising the cost and pain of continuing. This can be thwarted if the movement is able to shift tactics on its own initiative. When the authorities are willing to shoot down large numbers of people in the street, for example, occupying workplaces may be the best alternative to submission.

Social strikes often benefit from leadership by example. If one group is ready to take an action and face the risks it entails, their initiative is likely to encourage and inspire others to do the same. This can be the best way to escape the situation where everybody is waiting to act until they see whether others have the courage and commitment to act. Such exemplary actions can precede and lay the groundwork for a social strike. They can also introduce new themes and tactics into an on-going struggle.

Repressive authorities generally try a long string of tactics, including ridicule, ostracism, division, harassment, and repression, to suppress a movement. Only when all these have failed to quell the movement are the authorities forced to recognize that they will have to make concessions or face the threat of movement action indefinitely. Movements that are ultimately victorious often seem to suffer a long string of defeats – witness, for example, the long struggle against apartheid in South Africa.

Movements need to be prepared to continue despite such defeats – that is what makes it possible for them to succeed in the end. They need to interpret such defeats as necessary steppingstones on the path to victory. And they need to master the art of strategic retreat, which, as Mao indicated, consists of conducting small offensives within the context of a broader pull-back. Successful retreats make an opponent’s victories hollow. They establish that, despite repression, challenge from the movement will not go away. As Gene Sharp once wrote, “Massive stubbornness can have powerful political consequences.”

Social Self-Defense against a creeping or galloping MAGA coup is most likely to succeed through a combination of electoral and social strike methods. The overcoming of Slobodan Milosevic’s authoritarian regime in Serbia – while accomplished under circumstances far different from those in the U.S. today — provides an example of how they can be combined.

Resisting the rise of tyranny will no doubt require sacrifice. After all, we are dealing with an aspiring tyrant who lionizes foreign leaders who shoot down demonstrators in the street. But that sacrifice will not be primarily on behalf of one political party vs. another, of Democrats vs. Republicans. It will be a defense of democracy – defense of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Beyond that, it is the protection of that which makes our life together on earth possible. It is defense of the human rights of all people; of the conditions of our earth and its climate that make our life possible; of the constitutional principle that government must be accountable to law; of global cooperation to provide a secure future for our people and planet; and of our ability to live together in our communities, our country, and our world. A MAGA tyranny is a threat to all of us as members of society. Overcoming a MAGA coup is Social Self-Defense.

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[1] Rev. William Barber II, The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear (Boston: Beacon Press, 2016).

[2] Alexander Burns, “How Democrats Planned for Doomsday,” New York Times, January 24, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/us/politics/democrats-trump-election-plan.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

[3] Ankur Asthana, Hardy Merriman, Kifah Shah, Marium Navid, “Hold the Line: A Guide to Defending Democracy,” September 2020. https://www.holdthelineguide.com

[4] Molly Ball, “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.” Time, February 4, 2021.  https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/

[5] United Resistance Campaign, “Unstoppable Together,” United Resistance Campaign, January 2017. http://www.unstoppabletogether.org ; Nadia Prupis, “Groups Nationwide Create Campaign of ‘United Resistance’ to Trump,” Common Dreams, January 10, 2017. https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/01/10/groups-nationwide-create-campaign-united-resistance-trump

[6] Working Families Party, “Making Meaning of the Moment: Post election mass calls,” Working Families Party, December 2024. https://www.mobilize.us/workingfamilies/event/342586/

[7] Jeremy Brecher, “Occupy and the 99% Opposition,” The Nation, July 9, 2012. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/occupy-and-99-opposition/

[8] Adam Michnik, Letters from Prison, (Oakland, University of California Press, 1987), p. 147-8.

[9] Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, “International solidarity with the Korean labour movement: General Strike and Workers’ Power Beyond Yoon Seok-yeol’s Resignation,” Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, December 5, 2024. https://www.tuedglobal.org/bulletins/all-power-to-the-korean-labour-movement-and-general-strike

[10] Raphael Rachid, “South Korean parliament votes to impeach president,” The Guardian, December 14, 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/14/south-korean-parliament-votes-to-impeach-president

[11] Gene Sharp, Waging Nonviolent Struggle (Boston: Extending Horizon Books, 2005); Gene Sharp and Bruce Jenkins, The Anti-Coup (Boston: The Albert Einstein Institution, 2003). https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/resource/the-anti-coup/

[12] Stephen Zunes, Civil Resistance Against Coups (International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, 2018).   https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/resource/civil-resistance-coups-comparative-historical-perspective/

[13] For a detailed account of Otpor and the defeat of Milosevic, see Mark Engler and Paul Engler, This Is an Uprising (New York: Nation Books, 2016).

[14] For more in Puerto Rico’s “People’s Impeachment,” see Jeremy Brecher, Strike!: 50^th Anniversary Edition, (Oakland: PM Press, 2020). “Puerto Rico’s Mass Strike for a ‘People’s Impeachment’ in Chapter 12, “Harbingers.”

[15] Mark Engler and Paul Engler, This Is an Uprising (New York: Nation Books, 2016).

[16] Jeremy Brecher, “Discussion Points Regarding Social Strikes,” Jeremy Brecher, October 23, 2020. https://www.jeremybrecher.org/discussion-points-re-social-strikes/

Jeremy Brecher is a co-founder and senior strategic advisor for the Labor Network for Sustainability. He is the author of more than a dozen books on labor and social movements, including Strike! Common Preservation in a Time of Mutual Destruction, and The Green New Deal from Below.

The mission of the Labor Network for Sustainability is to be a relentless force for urgent, science-based climate action by building a powerful labor-climate movement to secure an ecologically sustainable and economically just future where everyone can make a living on a living planet.

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