Defiance
Just two months into Trump's second term, tens of thousands of everyday Americans—blue and red—are beginning to push a new kind of resistance.
Boycotting Tesla dealerships, slow-walking DOGE orders, showing up at town halls and red state capitals, re-casting Happy Hours as ‘Angry Hours’ for ‘pissed-off’ co-workers—ordinary Americans are now doing some DIY organizing of their own. This time, they say, power needs to rise outside Washington, without the establishment pulling all the strings.
CHICAGO—A few weeks ago, I was invited by some fellow creatives to attend an event they were calling our community’s first “Angry Hour.” They defined it as a “Happy Hour for ‘pissed-off’ optimists who can tell that the world is broken but who still hold hope that we can repair it.”
Curious, I couldn’t resist. A group of us, blue and red, packed into a place called Surge Billiards, a popular bar and high-end pool hall in this city’s trendy Logan Square neighborhood, grabbed a few beers and pierogies, and soon, close to 80 people had also shown up. Each of us were then handed a Sharpie and a fill-in-the-blanks name tag. Would we describe ourselves as being “pissed-off?” or “optimistic?” (Circle one and write why.) I circled “optimistic” and, seeing a few others do the same, I wrote “mobilizing opportunity.”)
It was an ice-breaker. Soon, the room thundered with shared tales of anger at Congress and swapped stories about how the recent funding cuts tied to Project 2025 would be putting a freeze on creative work for nonprofit clients. Others shared stories about friends fired from federal jobs joining class action lawsuits to fight what they called “the Trump/Musk power grab.” A few people slapped Post-It notes onto a wall near the bar to share some state funding resources which could be tapped to keep projects going—regardless of how things might ultimately play out.
There was no specific agenda. Organizers said they were just offering a way to help build up relationships and connections to prepare for what they called “the coming storm” and its aftermath, for better or worse.
More Signal, Less Noise
Fast forward a few weeks to now, and it’s impossible to not see and hear that hundreds, if not of thousands of other ordinary Americans have also begun to self-organize, on their own, as the new Trump administration continues to downsize the federal government.
Federal workers unions, defense veterans, national park rangers, scientists, women’s groups, postal workers and civil rights groups—are also organizing, and they are among dozens of citizen groups pairing up with national organizing networks like Indivisible and MoveOn to gain new leverage and reach.
Left-leaning media people also are pushing ahead. The new progressive podcast, the MeidasTouch, is now getting nearly as much listenership in some weeks as is Trump’s favorite podcaster, Joe Rogan. Another radio show, Pod Save America, the progressive podcast hosted by former aides to former President Barack Obama, is also getting new attention. It has clocked a 70 percent increase in hours played on Spotify since mid-January.
Meanwhile, the right-leaning media site, The Bulwark, is also stepping forward. Last week, it launched Bulwark+, which Bulwark Editor Jonathan Last describes as the Substack news site's move to build “a community that is going to be part of a broader solidarity movement.” In a recent post entitled How to Think (and Act) Like a Dissident Movement, Last writes: “…We must stop viewing political life through the lens of American politics as we have known it, and adopt the viewpoint of dissident movements in autocratic states.”
It’s true that none of the recent rallies and protests which other self-organized citizens are creating or attending come even close in flash and size to the 2017 anti-Trump uprisings witnessed just after the president’s first weeks in the White House. The 2017 Women’s March in Washington, for example, was, at the time, the largest single-day protest in U.S. history, held on the day after Trump was first sworn into office.
“It’s different this time—smaller, but what’s happening now is just as important,” says American Historian Heather Cox-Richardson. “We’re seeing a different kind of power building now, by the people, frustrated and feeling like they have to get involved and push back if nobody else will. …It already seems to be building some new kinds of steady and sustained momentum.” Adds journalist Ali Velshi: “It’s starting to organize something that could change the political landscape, too, as many Americans look for new leaders who will show up to fight for and with them in these coming months and years.”
“The Left Still Has a Pulse”
Nobody understands this better than Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Velshi says—two progressive icons who have begun to push both red and blue voters across the country to pursue a new path forward— and says journalist Emily Witt, “show people that the left still has a pulse.”
Sanders and AOC embarked last week on a national tour called “Fighting Oligarchy,” and the turnout has been unexpectedly large: 34,000 attended their Denver rally Friday, making it the largest rally of Sanders’ career and the largest held in Denver since Barack Obama held a rally there in 2008. Another 23,000 people attended their rally in Tuscon on Saturday; an estimated 15,000 turned out in Tempe, Arizona, earlier in the week. “We need to be reaching dissatisfied voters in both parties,” Ocasio says, “where they’re at.”
A recent poll by Statista shows that 60% of Americans are getting uncomfortable with Trump’s efforts to shrink the government and oppose the closure of the federal Department of Education, while recession fears and Elon Musk continue now to batter Trump’s approval ratings and show some soft spots within his MAGA base of support. A March 13th Quinnipiac survey shows that concerns over the U.S. economy are actually more intense now than they were at the end of the Biden Administration, with the percentage of voters describing the economy as “not so good” or “poor” increasing to 76%, up from 64% in December.
What’s Ahead?
National organizing groups like Third Act, Indivisible and MoveOn have set April 5th as Hands Off Day, encouraging people to rally nationally against Trump/Musk cuts being made in everything from Social Security programs to veterans services to NATO funding and cancer research.
“If we’re going to successfully defend democracy, our economy and the rule of law in America, it will be because civil society rises to do so, and the people, not the politicians, start to put pressure on those in power,” says Taylor Lorenz, the author of Extremely Online and the User Mag newsletter on Substack. Taylor said in a recent podcast that “freeing ordinary citizens to speak up and step forward creates the conditions for the opponents of Trump and MAGA to win future elections—but not because the establishment is pulling the strings. …These new forms of organizing efforts by ordinary citizens will help create the foundations for a stronger path forward, beyond the kinds of politics no longer working.”
Will the momentum continue? It’s too soon to tell, but Velshi says the recent surge of small and large protests against Trump is very unusual to see this early in a president’s four-year term of office.
“Just think about it for a second,” he said over the weekend. “Tens of thousands of people—not just blue but even some red voters are also now feeling pushed aside—and are showing up for rallies.”
“…Trump just took office a couple months ago and the midterms are still more than a year and a half away,” he said. “This is unheard of. There is something new happening here, and it cannot be underestimated nor overlooked.”
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You know I am on the frontline of this, photojournaling some of the DC protests. Having photojournaled Trump 1.0, I can say with a fair amount of confidence that when the weather warms, the crowds come out.
Of the 1.0 winter protests, only the Women's March really stands out as massive in my mind.
I will also say that I am seeing a greater volume of protests in Trump 2.0 than I did during 1.0, and the crowds are not small. They are almost always in the hundreds and sometimes thousands. Again, this is not normal for winter.