What The Hell America!

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have ignored the advice of Democratic thought leaders to “roll over and play dead.” Thank God. Their anti-oligarchy mass rallies have brought out record-breaking numbers, testifying to a widespread popular desire to resist Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

Filling the void left by Chuck Schumer and his cowardly ilk, Bernie and AOC are becoming leaders not just of leftist activists, but also of the Democratic Party’s mainstream liberal base. The hard question now is how to harness all this energy into a movement capable of actually defeating Musk, then Trump.

Team Bernie has already taken major strides in this direction. It’s not just that the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour has energized ordinary Americans and spread a resonant anti-billionaire, pro-democracy message. These events also have had a concrete strategic focus, as one of Bernie’s advisors explained online: “For those asking, yes these [rallies] are tied to action. All have been in or near GOP-held swing districts and we are following up with specific actions to pressure their Member to vote NO on any Medicaid cuts or billionaire tax breaks — or else face electoral consequences.”

This is all essential. But Bernie and AOC could take an additional step: ask all rally attendees to become organizers. The fate of our country depends in part on channeling the excitement of these events into an escalating, mass-based campaign.

To generate the scale of resistance necessary to win, attendees not only need to take action like signing a petition or attending an upcoming protest, but also get dozens of their coworkers, friends, and neighbors to do the same — and not just once, but as part of a sustained, escalating effort. In other words, plugging into organizing. High-attention moments like big rallies can be used to directly onboard everybody looking to fight back. General calls to get involved aren’t enough. People need specifics and next steps.

To be fair, the fact that “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies haven’t yet made such organizing asks isn’t really the fault of their hosts. It reflects the weakness of a too-timid US labor movement and a too-small, too-fragmented Left. There have been lots of actions since Trump was elected, but they’ve been relatively uncoordinated and small-scale. If we had already succeeded in galvanizing a cohesive movement capable of attracting fence-sitters, AOC and Bernie would very likely be boosting it.

But the reality today is that we desperately need America’s two main progressive tribunes to leverage their popularity and platforms to supercharge today’s incipient grassroots efforts and help create a cohesive mass movement that doesn’t yet exist.

Since Bernie and AOC have such high profiles, and since our country’s crisis is so dire, any organized campaign that they choose to jointly boost or launch would likely go viral. My two cents is that the best target is the cartoonishly evil and deeply unpopular Musk, and that the best message is saving widely loved services like the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Social Security, and the National Parks from the attacks Musk is currently carrying out against them.

What concretely could Bernie and AOC encourage people to do? Most immediately, they could ask people to become organizers for the upcoming April 5 “Hands Off!” day of action called by MoveOn, Indivisible, the Working Families Party, and others. April 5 has the potential to be huge. But the ask of their followers can’t just be to show up at their local rallies. People also need to be encouraged and assisted to spend the next two weeks actively persuading their coworkers, neighbors, and beyond to take part.

We already have smaller scale examples of what such outward-facing campaigning can look like. The Federal Unionists Network, for example, is recruiting and training significant numbers of new organizers — from both federal workers and broader communities allies — in the process of building for the April 5 day of action, which it sees as the launching point for further escalation in its distributed organizing campaign to save our services. Like Bernie and AOC’s recent tour, April 5 itself will be another great opportunity to absorb tens of thousands of new organizers into campaigns capable of scaling up today’s resistance.

Imagine tens of thousands of veterans, federal workers, and allies sitting in and risking arrest at Republican congress members’ offices to say no to cuts to the VA and federal services. Scores of senior citizens could do the same to save Social Security. One-day sickouts of air traffic controllers could paralyze air travel to pressure Trump and Congress. Illegally fired federal workers across the United States could march back into work, backed by thousands of supporters, to demand they be immediately placed back on the job. And mass faculty-student-worker petitions culminating in demonstrations and strikes across the nation could force university administrations to resist Trump’s authoritarian crackdown.

All of these types of actions are within the realm of possibility. And there’s a very good chance that such widespread backlash would force Trump to beat a retreat and throw the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to the wolves, blowing up the new administration’s momentum and aura of invincibility. But only a popular movement driven forward by a growing number of volunteer organizers can make all that happen.

Though it’s easy to give into despair these days, there are solid reasons for political optimism. The new administration’s policies are unpopular. Its already low levels of support are continuing to drop. And because today’s anti-Trump movement is more focused on economic concerns, more rooted in labor unions, and more anti-billionaire than the 2017-era Resistance, it has the potential to definitively overcome MAGA by sinking deeper roots among working people.

But to achieve this goal, the first thing we need is to transform today’s energy into sustained mass action. That can happen if Bernie and AOC ask their followers to start organizing.