CPNN

It has been difficult to find good news this year.

Last month it was the fate of Gaza and the fate of Humanity.

This month it is the devastation being wrought by Trump and Musk.

But there are signs of a fightback, light in this time of darkness.

Bernie Sanders, the only declared socialist in the American Senate, is attracting big crowds in his “National Tour to Fight Oligarchy.” This comes even as he targets districts where the Republican Party, the party of Trump, is in the majority. “”Today in America we are rapidly moving toward an oligarchic form of society where a handful of multibillionaires not only have extraordinary wealth, but unprecedented economic, media, and political power. Brothers and sisters, that is not the democracy that men and women fought and died to defend.”

“Trumpism will not be defeated by politicians inside the D.C. Beltway,” he says. “It will only be defeated by millions of Americans in Iowa, in Vermont, in Nebraska, in every state in this country, who come together in a strong grassroots movement and say no to oligarchy, no to authoritarianism, no to kleptocracy, no to massive cuts to programs that low-income and working Americans desperately need, no to huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country.”

The political force with the greatest potential to oppose Trumpism is the trade union movement. In recent years the labor movement has witnessed a resurgence in organizing, and 2024 was no different. Tens of thousands of workers fought for pay raises, increased job protections and union representation. Workers across the United States also linked their domestic struggles with Israel’s assault on Palestine, demanding an arms embargo and an end to the genocide in Gaza.

Organized labor is currently preparing to fight back. Just a week into 2025 the SEIU announced that it was rejoining the AFL-CIO to help fight Trump’s anti-worker agenda. The two unions have been unaligned for almost 20 years. A first sign of the fightback came on February 22 when the President of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employees union, told workers not to obey Elon Musk’s demand for federal workers to justify their jobs or resign.

Despite Trump’s victory, enthusiasm for unions remains high. A recent Gallup poll found that support for unions is at 70 percent — just one point under their highest rating ever.

The American Peace Movement, although reduced in size, continues its struggle for nuclear disarmament and world peace.

Codepink urges us to sign the Peace Clock Manifesto:  “We must stop giving our blessing and consent to endless steps to “control” arms that lead to ever more danger as illustrated by the aging Doomsday clock. Instead, we must demand their abolition, and the transition to a nuclear free world at peace unthreatened by catastrophic annihilation and the ultimate climate change; a nuclear winter.”

World Beyond War urges us to demand the closure of American military bases: “The thousands of military bases, both foreign and domestic, around the world are a critical piece of the war machine that must be dismantled. Closing bases is a necessary step to shift the global security paradigm towards a demilitarized approach that centers common security — no one is safe until all are safe.”

Michael Klare, a veteran peace activist known for his strategic advice, proposes that we support those policy statements by Trump and his cronies that align with a peace agenda. These statements include calls for agreements to reduce nuclear arms, cutting defense spending and shutting US foreign military bases. He reminds us that the old foreign policy establishment of the United States that has risked World War III by their bellicose policies is gone forever, and a new policy elite is emerging. Their agenda is full of contradictions, but their primary goal is to enrich Trump and his cronies, which may, in some cases, lead them to reverse certain militaristic policies.

In publishing Trump’s statements for nuclear arms reduction in CPNN, we asked if it is possible to take his words seriously, “Or are they just part of a game he is playing with the world, much like Charlie Chaplin’s portrayal of Hitler playing with a toy balloon of the world. Let us hope they can be taken seriously in this case.”

In any case, as argued in this month’s blog for the Transition to a Culture of Peace, we cannot sit still but must act more vigorously than ever for peace and justice.