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Harness street power: endorse No Kings!

This essay by Maine DSA member Marianne was originally printed in Building Up, which is published by DSA caucus Groundwork. Reprinted here by permission of the author.

***

When I was making calls last Thursday for Maine DSA’s $19 minimum wage campaign in Portland, a voter asked me, “how screwed do you think we are?,” broadening the scope of the conversation from a single ballot question in a municipality of 70,000 people. I wasn’t sure, I told him. Things look pretty grim. Since the inauguration of the second Trump presidency, we’ve witnessed the brutality and oppression that the US empire has funded abroad come home to roost on the streets of American cities, with masked thugs kidnapping immigrants and assaulting protestors in a show of naked authoritarianism. Republicans control both houses of Congress, and they’re eager to rubber stamp Trump’s far right billionaire agenda.

But it’s not all bad news. A majority of Americans reject rising fascism. Working people are mobilizing to demand something better, but the official opposition, the Democratic Party, is in disarray. In the No Kings protest movement, the Democratic voters are taking to the streets to express their outrage at the administration and its oligarch backers, but also at their own leaders who have failed to resist the fascist takeover happening before our eyes. This raises a question that DSA must answer: Will we meet the mass outpouring of anti-fascist energy where it’s at, seize the chance to make DSA the face of anti-fascism they are searching for, and organize them into DSA? Or are we too afraid that standing next to liberals in the streets will damage our radical brand to even try?

[Read next: What’s at state in Maine in 2026?]

Working people are hitting the streets in record numbers, and we need to be there with them. In Maine where I live, 3,000 people came out to the statehouse for the first No Kings rally on June 14. For scale, that’s in Augusta, a town of 19,000 people in an almost entirely rural state. As socialists, we know that our democracy is flawed at best, slanted in favor of the rich and powerful since our country’s founding. But the ordinary people coming out to protest know that if we don’t defend the limited democracy we have, it can get so much worse.

It’s easy to cringe at the liberal #resistance. I joined DSA in 2017, frightened by the Trump administration and wanting to continue fighting for the demands of the Bernie 2016 campaign. Like so many of my comrades in that wave of newly-minted DSA members, I didn’t think we had much common ground with the pussy hat and pantsuit resistance that emerged from Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the general election. As I saw it, they wanted to go back to brunch. We wanted to build a better world. I was angry at the Democratic establishment over Bernie’s primary loss as much as I was upset about Trump winning the election. And I was living as a man, five years away from when I would eventually come out as a trans woman. In retrospect, some of those liberals probably did want to tune back out as soon as Trump was gone, but many more were deeply sincere about defending LGBTQ+ rights, fighting for racial justice, and taxing the rich, even if we expressed ourselves differently.

Frankly, I was mad but I didn’t feel the visceral fear I do now when I look at what the Trump administration is doing. While Trump may be back in office, it’s not 2017 anymore. This time, only 9 months in, Trump has launched military occupations of our cities and his administration is openly plotting to seize even more unaccountable power. But also this time the mainstream 2025 resistance is built different. The people in the streets are fed up with appeals to norms and decorum in the face of a fascist takeover. This time, they want blood. What they don’t have is a leader.

[Read next: Support, but don’t endorse Platner]

In 2025, corporations and establishment figureheads have abandoned the pretense of opposition. This time around, they’ve chosen to accommodate MAGA rule. The resistance needs leadership, and DSA must lead. We have a duty as socialists to stand with the masses against fascism. In fact, we may be thrust into it whether we like it or not, given the call-out of DSA by name to Trump himself at a White House roundtable on Antifa.

This moment is more than an obligation; it is an opportunity. By joining the popular front against fascism, we can show the millions of outraged working people in this country that we need more than a return to the collapsing neoliberal order that Kamala Harris offered voters in 2024. We can show up on the streets and declare that to fight fascism, we must build socialism. When we do this, we will undoubtedly encounter people whose politics are all over the place or who are brand new to political struggle. These people, like the voter who asked me if we were screwed, are waiting for someone to show them the power that they have. It would be easier if everyone in the streets were all socialists waiting for a party, rather than a diverse group of working people who don’t like ICE agents pulling kids out of classrooms or CEOs raking in millions while everyday people struggle to pay off their debt. But that’s why we became organizers: to turn these people into socialists. One of the best things we do in DSA is develop the skill of talking to regular people about what is wrong in our communities and how we want things to change. We do it when we knock doors and we do it in our workplaces. We need to do it in the streets at No Kings rallies on October 18th.

Sign the petition calling on the NPC to endorse No Kings!

#MaineDSA #politics #resistance

# contentMap.en
Harness street power: endorse No Kings!

This essay by Maine DSA member Marianne was originally printed in Building Up, which is published by DSA caucus Groundwork. Reprinted here by permission of the author.

***

When I was making calls last Thursday for Maine DSA’s $19 minimum wage campaign in Portland, a voter asked me, “how screwed do you think we are?,” broadening the scope of the conversation from a single ballot question in a municipality of 70,000 people. I wasn’t sure, I told him. Things look pretty grim. Since the inauguration of the second Trump presidency, we’ve witnessed the brutality and oppression that the US empire has funded abroad come home to roost on the streets of American cities, with masked thugs kidnapping immigrants and assaulting protestors in a show of naked authoritarianism. Republicans control both houses of Congress, and they’re eager to rubber stamp Trump’s far right billionaire agenda.

But it’s not all bad news. A majority of Americans reject rising fascism. Working people are mobilizing to demand something better, but the official opposition, the Democratic Party, is in disarray. In the No Kings protest movement, the Democratic voters are taking to the streets to express their outrage at the administration and its oligarch backers, but also at their own leaders who have failed to resist the fascist takeover happening before our eyes. This raises a question that DSA must answer: Will we meet the mass outpouring of anti-fascist energy where it’s at, seize the chance to make DSA the face of anti-fascism they are searching for, and organize them into DSA? Or are we too afraid that standing next to liberals in the streets will damage our radical brand to even try?

[Read next: What’s at state in Maine in 2026?]

Working people are hitting the streets in record numbers, and we need to be there with them. In Maine where I live, 3,000 people came out to the statehouse for the first No Kings rally on June 14. For scale, that’s in Augusta, a town of 19,000 people in an almost entirely rural state. As socialists, we know that our democracy is flawed at best, slanted in favor of the rich and powerful since our country’s founding. But the ordinary people coming out to protest know that if we don’t defend the limited democracy we have, it can get so much worse.

It’s easy to cringe at the liberal #resistance. I joined DSA in 2017, frightened by the Trump administration and wanting to continue fighting for the demands of the Bernie 2016 campaign. Like so many of my comrades in that wave of newly-minted DSA members, I didn’t think we had much common ground with the pussy hat and pantsuit resistance that emerged from Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the general election. As I saw it, they wanted to go back to brunch. We wanted to build a better world. I was angry at the Democratic establishment over Bernie’s primary loss as much as I was upset about Trump winning the election. And I was living as a man, five years away from when I would eventually come out as a trans woman. In retrospect, some of those liberals probably did want to tune back out as soon as Trump was gone, but many more were deeply sincere about defending LGBTQ+ rights, fighting for racial justice, and taxing the rich, even if we expressed ourselves differently.

Frankly, I was mad but I didn’t feel the visceral fear I do now when I look at what the Trump administration is doing. While Trump may be back in office, it’s not 2017 anymore. This time, only 9 months in, Trump has launched military occupations of our cities and his administration is openly plotting to seize even more unaccountable power. But also this time the mainstream 2025 resistance is built different. The people in the streets are fed up with appeals to norms and decorum in the face of a fascist takeover. This time, they want blood. What they don’t have is a leader.

[Read next: Support, but don’t endorse Platner]

In 2025, corporations and establishment figureheads have abandoned the pretense of opposition. This time around, they’ve chosen to accommodate MAGA rule. The resistance needs leadership, and DSA must lead. We have a duty as socialists to stand with the masses against fascism. In fact, we may be thrust into it whether we like it or not, given the call-out of DSA by name to Trump himself at a White House roundtable on Antifa.

This moment is more than an obligation; it is an opportunity. By joining the popular front against fascism, we can show the millions of outraged working people in this country that we need more than a return to the collapsing neoliberal order that Kamala Harris offered voters in 2024. We can show up on the streets and declare that to fight fascism, we must build socialism. When we do this, we will undoubtedly encounter people whose politics are all over the place or who are brand new to political struggle. These people, like the voter who asked me if we were screwed, are waiting for someone to show them the power that they have. It would be easier if everyone in the streets were all socialists waiting for a party, rather than a diverse group of working people who don’t like ICE agents pulling kids out of classrooms or CEOs raking in millions while everyday people struggle to pay off their debt. But that’s why we became organizers: to turn these people into socialists. One of the best things we do in DSA is develop the skill of talking to regular people about what is wrong in our communities and how we want things to change. We do it when we knock doors and we do it in our workplaces. We need to do it in the streets at No Kings rallies on October 18th.

Sign the petition calling on the NPC to endorse No Kings!

#MaineDSA #politics #resistance