Many Fronts, One Struggle
Does the re-election of Donald Trump mark a new phase in US history, toward an attempt to manage systemic crises through more overtly repressive and authoritarian means? Since taking office, the Trump administration and its allies have intensified attacks on the working class, singling out poor and unhoused people, immigrants, trans people and others, while massively expanding ICE and making deportations and militarization increasingly visible.
Today’s revolutionaries must understand the fundamental economic changes being wrought by the digital technology revolution, which is throwing the old methods of capitalist-class rule into crisis while producing a growing impoverished section of the working class who must “kill the system before it kills them.”
Amidst these conditions, poor and dispossessed people in the US and across the world must fight back not only by resisting particular policies and episodes of state violence, but also by building our own independent political power on a platform of basic economic survival and working-class internationalism.
Cedar Monroe with Kenia
Kenia, a leader with Union de Vecinos, reflects on the recent mobilization in Los Angeles against ICE raids. (Leer versión en español.)
An interview with Catalina Adorno
Catalina Adorno, a leader with Movimiento Cosecha, shares experiences from the fight against detention and deportation in New Jersey. (Leer versión en español.)
Nijmie Zakkiyyah Dzurinko, Harrison Farina, John Wessel-McCoy, and Karim Sariahmed
Nonviolent Medicaid Army leaders offer a playbook of organizing lessons drawn from our history and their experience with the Medicaid Cutoffs Organizing Drive in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Massachusetts.
Tim W. Shenk
Published this spring by Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis and Noam Sandweiss-Back, this powerful book debunks lies about poverty and wealth, pulling from the authors’ long experience organizing amongst the poor and communities of faith.
Cedar Monroe
Chaplain and organizer Cedar Monroe interviews Tammy Rosing and Becca Forsyth, organizers from Lancaster County, PA and Elmira, NY about the battle for the Bible as an important part of organizing in the United States today.
Luis J. Rodriguez
A survey of the rapid rise of Mexico’s Morena party, with its slogan of “For the good of all, the poor come first,” and an exploration of how revolutionaries should relate to such a vehicle. (Leer versión en español.)
Kirsten Rokke and Lenny Brody
Reflections on experiences within the US Labor Party in the 1990s, with a particular focus on the contributions of poor people’s organizations with the Party’s ranks.
Willie Baptist, Kristin Colangelo, Phil Wider, and Kirsten Rokke
The authors recount the significance of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) in the US Labor Party of the 1990s, including its leadership of the 15,000-person march on the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, dubbed the “Battle for Broad Street.”
Moses H.M.
Insights on the pioneering survival organizing of poor trans leader Sylvia Rivera, who pushed the gay liberation movement to commit to social transformation and not just assimilation.
Today, the US working class is defending on many fronts against the current offensive of state and policy violence. To coalesce these fronts into one forward-looking struggle against the ruling-class enemy, we need an organization of revolutionary cadre—a “network of leaders in the struggles of the poor and dispossessed everywhere capable of providing strategic political leadership toward fundamental transformation,” in the words of the University of the Poor Program. Read the full Program here.
