Tag Archives: North America

‘This Is Not Trump’s Country’: 255,000 Have Rallied With Sanders and AOC on Nationwide Tour

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION .

An article by Jake Johnson in Common Dreams

Across the United States—from Nampa, Idaho to Salt Lake City, Utah to Los Angeles, California—nearly 255,000 people have turned out in recent weeks for “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies headlined by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive duo that has railed against President Donald Trump and the corporate-dominated systems that spawned him while outlining a vision of a more just future.


U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rally in Nampa, Idaho on April 14, 2025. (Photo: Natalie Behring/Getty Images)

Over the past six weeks, according to Sanders’ (I-Vt.) office, 254,931 have attended 17 rallies across 11 states and millions have viewed livestreams of the events online. The most recent swing—which included seven stops across four states in less than a week—drew 146,950 people, including in competitive districts with Republican representatives.

“This week, the American people turned out in enormous numbers,” Sanders said in a statement late Wednesday. “And their message was clear. They do not want oligarchy. They do not want authoritarianism. They are tired of massive income and wealth inequality and the greed of the billionaire class. They are tired of a corrupt political system that allows billionaires to buy elections. And, most importantly, they are prepared to fight back.”

The massive, enthusiastic rallies signal mounting nationwide anger over the Trump administration’s large-scale firings of federal workers, assault on fundamental rights, climate destruction, lawless detention and deportation of immigrants, and push to gut Medicaid and other key programs.

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Questions related to this article:

Where in the world can we find good leadership today?

The struggle for human rights, is it gathering force in the USA?

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“This is not Trump’s country. This is our country,” Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday. “The working class is coming together to defend democracy, fight for one another, and build a better future for all of us.”

The events also indicate a desire among Democratic voters for their leaders to respond more forcefully to the president and his billionaire cronies, including world’s richest man Elon Musk. One recent survey found that 70% of Democratic voters give their party a C grade or below for their response to Trump thus far.

“We need to fight the oligarchy, like the message says. And that’s real, even in a state like Montana, where we’re very red,” one rallygoer told the Montana Free Press at a Missoula event on Wednesday. In the 2024 election, Trump won Montana by just under 20 points and a Republican ousted three-term Democratic incumbent Jon Tester in the Senate.

Another sign of the U.S. public’s readiness to organize and fight back against the Trump administration’s abuses and far-right policy agenda was mass participation in a Wednesday call hosted by the Hands Off! coalition, which helped bring millions into the streets nationwide earlier this month.

According to organizers, tens of thousands of people joined the call, which comes ahead of another national day of action planned for May.

“What we have begun to build is powerful,” Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn, said Wednesday. “As Trump continues to chaotically and carelessly implement his wildly unpopular agenda, he creates more distrust, more outrage, and more backlash against it.”

During a stop in Salt Lake City on Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez told a crowd of 20,000 that “we can make a new world, a better country where we can fight for the dignity of all people.”

“It looks like living wages, Utah,” said the New York Democrat. “It looks like stable housing, Utah. It looks like guaranteed healthcare, Salt Lake City. And it looks like respect for all of our differences, no matter who we are or where we come from.”

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FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION, North America

US: Millions March Against Trump-Musk in Nationwide ‘Hands Off’ Protests

. HUMAN RIGHTS .

An article from Common Dreams (reprinted according to Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

In communities across the United States and also overseas, coordinated “Hands Off” protests are taking place far and wide Saturday [April 5] in the largest public rebuke yet to President Donald Trump and top henchman Elon Musk’s assault on the workings of the federal government and their program of economic sabotage that is sacrificing the needs of working families to authoritarianism and the greed of right-wing oligarchs.


Video of protest in New York City
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Indivisible, one of the key organizing groups behind the day’s protests, said millions participated in more than 1,300 individual rallies as they demanded “an end to Trump’s authoritarian power grab” and condemning all those aiding and abetting it.

“We expected hundreds of thousands. But at virtually every single event, the crowds eclipsed our estimates,” the group said in a statement Saturday evening.

“This is the largest day of protest since Trump retook office,” the group added. “And in many small towns and cities, activists are reporting the biggest protests their communities have ever seen as everyday people send a clear, unmistakable message to Trump and Musk: Hands off our healthcare, hands off our civil rights, hands off our schools, our freedoms, and our democracy.”

According to the organizers’ call to action:

They’re dismantling our country. They’re looting our government. And they think we’ll just watch.

On Saturday, April 5th, we rise up with one demand: Hands Off!

This is a nationwide mobilization to stop the most brazen power grab in modern history. Trump, Musk, and their billionaire cronies are orchestrating an all-out assault on our government, our economy, and our basic rights—enabled by Congress every step of the way. They want to strip America for parts—shuttering Social Security offices, firing essential workers, eliminating consumer protections, and gutting Medicaid—all to bankroll their billionaire tax scam.

They’re handing over our tax dollars, our public services, and our democracy to the ultra-rich. If we don’t fight now, there won’t be anything left to save.

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Questions related to this article:

The struggle for human rights, is it gathering force in the USA?

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The more than 1,300 “Hands Off!” demonstrations —organized by a large coalition of unions, progressive advocacy groups, and pro-democracy watchdogs—first kicked off Saturday in Europe, followed by East Coast communities in the U.S., and continued throughout the day at various times, depending on location. See here for a list of scheduled “Hands Off” events.

“The United States has a president, not a king,” said the progressive advocacy group People’s Action, one of the group’s involved in the actions, in an email to supporters Saturday morning just as protest events kicked off in hundreds of cities and communities. “Donald Trump has, by every measure, been working to make himself a king. He has become unanswerable to the courts, Congress, and the American people.”

In its Saturday evening statement, Indivisible said the actions far exceeded their expectations and should be seen as a turning point in the battle to stop Trump and his minions:

The Trump administration has spent its first 75 days in office trying to overwhelm us, to make us feel powerless, so that we will fall in line, accept the ransacking of our government, the raiding of our social safety net, and the dismantling of our democracy.

And too often, the response from our leaders and those in positions to resist has been abject cowardice. Compliance. Obeying in advance.

But not today. Today we’ve demonstrated a different path forward. We’ve modeled the courage and action that we want to see from our leaders, and showed all those who’ve been standing on the sidelines who share our values that they are not alone.

Citing the Republican president’s thirst for “power and greed,” People’s Action earlier explained why organized pressure must be built and sustained against the administration, especially at the conclusion of a week in which the global economy was spun into disarray by Trump’s tariff announcement, his attack on the rule of law continued, and the twice-elected president admitted he was “not joking” about the possibility of seeking a third term, which is barred by the constitution.

“He is destroying the economy with tariffs in order to pay for the tax cuts he wants to push through to enrich himself and his billionaire buddies,” warned People’s Action. “He has ordered the government to round up innocent people off of the streets and put them in detention centers without due process because they dared to speak out using their First Amendment rights. And he is not close to being done—by his own admission, he is planning to run for a third term, which the Constitution does not allow.”

The protest organizers warn that what Trump and Musk are up to “is not just corruption” and “not just mismanagement,” but something far more sinister.

“This is a hostile takeover,” they said, but vowed to fight back. “This is the moment where we say NO. No more looting, no more stealing, no more billionaires raiding our government while working people struggle to survive.”

(Editor’s note: This Common Dreams article includes many videos as well as the one cited on the image above. They include videos of protests in Washington, D.C., Boston, Philadelphia, Portland, ME, Buffalo, NY, St Paul, MN, Oakland County, MI, Columbus, OH, Colorado, Catawba County, NC, as well as London, Paris, Frankfurt and Brussels.)

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HUMAN RIGHTS, North America

Resistance is alive and well in the United States

. HUMAN RIGHTS .

An article by Erica Chenoweth, Jeremy Pressman, and Soha Hammam in Waging Nonviolence

“Where is the resistance?” is a common refrain. Our research affirms that resistance is alive and well.

Many underestimate resistance to the current Republican administration because they view resistance through a narrow lens. The 2017 Women’s March in particular — immediate in its response, massive in its scope and size — may inform collective imaginations about what the beginning of a resistance movement should look like during Trump 2.0.

In fact, our research shows that street protests today are far more numerous and frequent than skeptics might suggest. Although it is true that the reconfigured Peoples’ March of 2025 — held on Jan. 18 — saw lower turnout than the 2017 Women’s March, that date also saw the most protests in a single day for over a year. And since Jan. 22, we’ve seen more than twice as many street protests than took place during the same period eight years ago.


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In February 2025 alone, we have already tallied over 2,085 protests, which included major protests in support of federal workers, LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, Palestinian self-determination, Ukraine, and demonstrations against Tesla and Trump’s agenda more generally. This is compared with 937 protests in the United States in February 2017, which included major protests against the so-called Muslim ban along with other pro-immigrant and pro-choice protests. Coordinated days of protest such as March Fourth for Democracy (March 4), Stand Up for Science (March 7), rallies in recognition of International Women’s Day (March 8), and protests demanding the release of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil suggest little likelihood of these actions slowing down. These are all occurring in the background of a tidal wave of lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s early moves.

Historically, street protest and legal challenges are common avenues for popular opposition to governments, but economic noncooperation — such as strikes, boycotts and buycotts — is what often gets the goods. Individual participation is deliberately obscure, and targeted companies may have little interest in releasing internal data. Only the aggregate impacts are measurable — and in the case of Tesla, Target and other companies, the impacts so far have been measurable indeed.

Consider the protests against Tesla in response to Elon Musk firing federal workers and blocking federal funding. The multifaceted campaign has a quite specific goal: punish Tesla, Musk’s signature company. In addition to protests at Tesla showrooms and charging stations, people have also sold their Teslas. Others have called on mutual funds to divest from Tesla stock. The stock price has dropped significantly in the last month, perhaps in part due to Musk’s DOGE work.

This shift toward noncooperation over large-scale protests may be strategically wise. In 2017, many who attended Women’s Marches remained deeply engaged in civic activity, funneling into groups and coalitions like Indivisible, Swing Left, Run for Something, Fight Back Table and the like. People who aligned with Indivisible and groups like it were almost certainly responsible for saving the Affordable Care Act in 2017, largely through pressure on elected members of Congress. The MAGA faction had not yet consolidated control of the GOP, and within a year the “blue wave” flipped the House during the 2018 midterms. Under such conditions, protests and political pressure made a lot of strategic sense.

Those groups and others still remain active, but today’s political terrain may call for a more muscular movement strategy. The MAGA faction controls the GOP and enforces strict discipline among its members through fear and the threat of a well-funded Republican primary opponent in the next election. The Supreme Court majority is solidly on the right. Elected GOP officials are abandoning town halls and discouraging constituents from calling their offices. Street protests endure but are increasingly surveilled and high-risk, as the detention of Mahmoud Khalil suggests. Uncertainty about whether the Trump administration will ignore the First Amendment and weaponize the government to persecute political oppositionists looms large.

In the face of such changes, the public’s most powerful options are often withholding labor power and purchasing power. Calling in sick from work or school, refusing to buy and stay-at-home demonstrations are notoriously difficult to police. Last month, an inestimable number of people participated in such actions to highlight a Day Without Immigrants. The prominence of billionaires in the administration and populist anger toward them make this type of approach even more viable in today’s climate.

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Questions related to this article:

The struggle for human rights, is it gathering force in the USA?

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Indeed, the diversification of resistance methods puts the United States on a similar trajectory to many democracy movements of the past. In anti-authoritarian movements of the 20th century, economic noncooperation — more so than protest alone — was the coordinated activity that split elites and made way for democratic breakthroughs. In apartheid South Africa, it was the enormous economic pressure — through boycotts of white-owned businesses, general strikes, divestments and capital flight — that brought the white supremacist National Party to heel and elevated reformers who were willing to do business with Nelson Mandela and the ANC. In communist Poland, it was the ability of trade unionists to credibly call for general strikes (and credibly call off such strikes) that gave the Solidarity movement the leverage to negotiate a peaceful democratic transition. Gandhi’s noncooperation campaigns in India made the colony ungovernable by British colonial authorities.

And when the Nazis invaded and occupied Denmark in the 1940s, noncooperation was near-total. No one remembered how to run the railroad. Teachers had to leave school early to tend to their gardens. Factory workers slowed down or stopped production altogether. Danes obscured the identities of their Jewish neighbors, gave them temporary haven, and secured their passage through fishing boats to neutral territory, saving thousands of lives.

Similarly, in Czechoslovakia, six days after the Soviet invasion in 1968, the newspaper Vecerni Prah published “10 commandments,” writing: “When a Soviet soldier comes to you, YOU: 1. Don’t know 2. Don’t care 3. Don’t tell 4. Don’t have 5. Don’t know how to 6. Don’t give 7. Can’t do 8. Don’t sell 9. Don’t show 10. Do nothing.” These oppositional habits of thinking and practice, nurtured over two decades through underground popular schools, art, literature and outlawed news sources, ultimately paved the way for the Velvet Revolution.

Indeed, the United States has its own storied history of resisting authoritarianism through noncooperation. Pro-independence colonists living under the British crown organized campaigns to refuse to buy or consume British goods; refuse to abide by laws requiring colonists to export raw materials to Britain; refuse to serve on juries under crown-appointed judges; and develop alternative institutions including the Continental Congress itself. The Boston Tea Party was a defiant act of noncooperation — a refusal to import, consume or pay taxes on the crown’s tea. In 1815, John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson of his hope that historians would recall those acts of noncooperation — and not the war of independence — as “the revolution,” that “was in the minds of the people.”

Much later, during the civil rights movement, desegregation was first tangibly achieved in large part through noncooperation campaigns like the courageous school attendance by the Little Rock Nine, the Montgomery bus boycotts, the lunch counter sit-ins and boycotts of businesses in Nashville and elsewhere, strikes among sanitation workers in Memphis, and other acts of refusal to abide by the Jim Crow system of racial segregation. These took place in combination with marches and demonstrations that were powerful and dramatic displays of the moral power of the movement, and legal action that demanded the government abide by its own Constitution.

That Americans seem to be rediscovering the art, science and potency of noncooperation — combined with a robust protest capacity and legal action — shows that resistance against Trump’s agenda in America is not only alive and well. It is savvy, diversifying and probably just getting started.

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Erica Chenoweth

Erica Chenoweth is a political scientist at Harvard Kennedy School and co-director of the Crowd Counting Consortium. Chenoweth is the author of “Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know” and co-author of “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict.”

Jeremy Pressman

Jeremy Pressman is a professor of political science at the University of Connecticut and co-director of the Crowd Counting Consortium. His most recent book is “The Sword is Not Enough: Arabs, Israelis, and the Limits of Military Force.”

Soha Hammam

Soha Hammam is a postdoctoral research associate at Harvard Kennedy School’s Nonviolent Action Lab, where she researches political mobilization and law enforcement responses across the U.S. She was previously a Democracy Visiting Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and a Peace Scholar Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace.

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HUMAN RIGHTS, North America

International Women’s Day: Canada and USA

. WOMEN’S EQUALITY . .

A press survey by CPNN

Here are the photos from Canada and United States.

CANADA, MONTREAL, QUEBEC

Hundreds gathered in downtown Montreal on International Women’s Day Saturday to protest U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial policies and views on women’s rights. (Canadian Broadcasting Company)

CANADA, TORONTO, ONTARIO

Torontonians marched in celebration of womens’ contributions to Canada and the world at large. The theme of this year’s march was to defy rising political agendas attacking the rights of women to choose freely and to succeed equally in the workplace. (Toronto City News)

CANADA, VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Vancouver hosts International Women’s Day march. (Global News)

USA, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Hundreds of people took to the streets in downtown Chicago on Saturday for International Women’s Day. They started with a rally at Daley Plaza, then marched in solidarity to Trump Tower, expressing rears the Trump administration will roll back rights for women.
(YouTube)

Question related to this article:
 
Prospects for progress in women’s equality, what are the short and long term prospects?

USA, EUREKA, CALIFORNIA

A few hundred celebrants and protestors gathered in front of the Humboldt County Courthouse to make statements about women’s rights and freedoms and the current political climate in Washington, D.C. (Times-Standard)

USA, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

Protesters gather at Pershing Square in Downtown Los Angeles during a march on International Women’s Day on March 8, 2025. “The goal of the day is to help people “build community” and “practice democracy,” particularly at a time when democratic resistance to President Donald Trump’s Administration presents as fractured.” Hence the sign “Stop Trump” Jen Osborne—Getty Images. (Time Magazine)

USA, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

A woman speaks to a group of demonstrators as they attend the International Women’s Day march on March 8, 2025 in New York City. Kena Betancur—Getty Images. (Time Magazine)

USA, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

Thousands of people participated in the Bay Area’s annual International Women’s Day. Among the signs visible in the video: RESIST No Oligarchs Save Democracy; NO KINGS NO TYRANNY; HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE 170 MILLION WOMEN SCORNED(CBS News)

North America, WOMEN'S EQUALITY

10,000+ Turn Out in Warren, Michigan to ‘Fight Oligarchy’ With Bernie Sanders

. HUMAN RIGHTS .

An article by Brett Wilkins from Common Dreams

The Democratic Party may have twice stymied Sen. Bernie Sanders’ White House ambitions, but the National Tour to Fight Oligarchy launched  last month by the democratic socialist has been drawing crowds that would be the envy of any presidential campaign.

On Saturday, more than 10,000 people turned out to see Sanders (I-Vt.) speak in Warren, Michigan. Not only did they pack the main event space—the gymnasium at Lincoln High School—literally to the rafters, they filled two overflow rooms, with hundreds turned away outside, according to Michigan Advance.


(Click on image to enlarge)

“We have an administration that is leading us to oligarchy, an administration that is leading us to an authoritarian form of society, an administration that is leading us towards kleptocracy,” Sanders said at the beginning of his speech.

Noting that three of the world’s richest men—Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—sat in the front row of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Sander said that “instead of a government of the people, by the people and for the people, we have now become a government of the billionaire class, for the billionaire class.”

Sanders also took aim at Trump’s false election claims and the wider “post-truth” trend on the right, telling the crowd: “We’re up against a phenomenon that we have never seen, and that is the Big Lie. The Big Lie is not just stretching the truth; the Big Lie is not just fibbing. The Big Lie is creating a parallel universe, a set of ideas that have no basis in reality.”

The senator also linked past struggles against injustice with the current crisis, arguing that “the change that we have experienced over hundreds of years of our nationhood only occurs when ordinary people stand up against oppression and injustice and fight back.”

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Questions related to this article:

The struggle for human rights, is it gathering force in the USA?

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Sanders was joined on stage by United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain, who wore a T-shirt reading “Eat the Rich” and told the audience that “billionaires don’t have a right to exist.”

Wayne County Health Director Abdul El-Sayed, who ran for Michigan governor in 2018 and is considering a Senate run, pointed to the size of Saturday’s crowd in Warren as proof of the enduring power of progressivism.

“They want us to step back, and today, all of you have said that we are not stepping back, we are stepping forward,” El-Sayed told Michigan Advance. “We are recognizing that in one another, we have all we need to build that government for the people and by the people.”

In a dig at the unofficial motto of some Silicon Valley startups, El-Sayed said that the Trump administration wants “to move fast and break things.”

“But what they’re breaking is the government that our hard-earned tax dollars have been funding,” he said. “And we’re here to say that that is our money, that is our government, take your damn billionaire hands off of it.”

The Warren rally was the latest on a tour that’s seen overflow crowds at almost every stop. Thousands also turned out in Altoona, Wisconsin  on Saturday and Kenosha, Wisconsin  on Friday to see Sanders speak.

There’s more to Sanders’ tour than just raging against Trump and the oligarchy. He chose to visit districts where Republicans narrowly won congressional races, hoping to pressure GOP lawmakers to vote against proposed cuts to programs upon which working-class people rely, in order to pay for the $4.5 trillion cost of extending Trump’s first-term “tax scam” that overwhelmingly benefited the ultra-wealthy and corporations.

“Today, the oligarchs and the billionaire class are getting richer and richer and have more and more power,” Sanders said in a statement Friday. “Meanwhile, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and most of our people are struggling to pay for healthcare, childcare, and housing. This country belongs to all of us, not just the few. We must fight back.”

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HUMAN RIGHTS, North America

AFSCME, United States: It’s Time to Get Organized

. . DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION . .

An article from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Union

[Editor’s note: An excellent article about the AFSCME initiative by Fortune Magazine may be found here.]

In 1968, when Dr. King addressed AFSCME-represented sanitation workers during their historic strike in Memphis, Tennessee, he said that “only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.”

These are some dark times for our country. Elon Musk, billionaires and anti-union extremists have amassed more power than ever before – and they’ve been granted free reign to implement the radical Project 2025 agenda.

AFSCME is fighting back. Already, our lawsuits have helped reverse the illegal firings of thousands of federal workers, including AFSCME members.

But the illegal attacks on federal civil servants are just the tip of the iceberg. An even bigger threat now looms over public service workers, at every level.

The House has passed a budget resolution that sets the stage for nearly a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and other federal programs – all to pave the way for even bigger tax breaks for billionaires.

These cuts won’t just rip away health care from millions of seniors, children, Americans with disabilities and working families. They will starve state and local budgets of critical federal funding for hospitals, schools, nursing homes, prisons, transit systems, and all the essential services AFSCME members provide in our communities every single day.

These cuts also would stack the deck against public service workers headed into contract negotiations. The cuts could lead to pay cuts, furloughs and hiring freezes. Our jobs, hard-won benefits, and retirement security are threatened. Our workplace health and safety and even our right to form a union are under attack.

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Question related to this article:
 
What is the contribution of trade unions to the culture of peace?

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The billionaires behind this agenda don’t understand the first thing about what working people go through or why anyone would pursue a career that’s about serving others instead of getting rich.

Indeed, Elon Musk himself – the richest man in the world – has spread online propaganda comparing public service workers to genocidal murderers like Hitler at the very same time he’s pushing for massive cuts to vital public services relied on by seniors, veterans, children, and millions of Americans.

But as Dr. King reminds us, we are not lost in the darkness. Mobilizing and organizing to grow our union’s power has always been AFSCME’s North Star, and that is exactly how we’re going to fight back now.

AFSCME has launched a new campaign, called Get Organized, or AFSCME GO.

The GO campaign is all about making sure everyone in the AFSCME family understands what’s at stake in this fight. It’s about standing up to the billionaires and anti-union extremists trying to steal our power, and defeating any efforts to gut Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

Through Get Organized, we will bring more workers without a voice on the job into the AFSCME family. We will increase engagement among current working members and retirees alike, empowering everyone to build on AFSCME’s proud legacy of activism.

We have faced big challenges before. The billionaires behind the Supreme Court’s decision in Janus v. AFSCME tried to take us out of the ball game completely, but they failed. They failed because they underestimated AFSCME members and our capacity to organize, mobilize and grow. They underestimated Americans’ overwhelming support for unions that give workers a seat at the table and a voice on the job. And they are underestimating us once again.

The battle lines have been drawn. We may not win every fight, but we will emerge stronger than ever before.

Turning crisis into opportunity. Turning defense into offense. It is the AFSCME way. It’s time to fight back. It’s time to get organized.

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DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION, North America

CODEPINK at International Working Women’s Day 2025

. . WOMEN’S EQUALITY . .

An article from Codepink

This year’s International Working Women’s Day was a welcome respite from the chaotic, maddening, and often heart-wrenching news cycle that is defining 2025. Our local chapters showcased last weekend that we will never let ourselves be defined by, nor distracted by the chaos and cruelty that’s being unleashed on us and our sisters all over the world. Instead, we focused on meeting people where they are at and growing the movement one person at a time.


From Los Angeles to Dallas, from Massachusetts to London, UK, our local chapters centered international working women’s resistance to send a powerful and urgent reminder that if women around the world are standing together – liberation from imperialism and militarism is inevitable! 

CODEPINK’s birth 23 years ago also culminated in powerful action on IWWD 2003, kicking off our alternate, feminist vision for peace against the backdrop of U.S. militarism and violence against women at home and in the Global South. 

Our chapters are doing the hard work of movement building. Many of them showed up to Women’s Day events in their community and brought flyers that educate on war and peace in a way that makes sense to anyone and everyone. This sparked lively conversation with people our movement wouldn’t otherwise reach. Scroll down to read more and see action photos!

CODEPINK Bay Area honored the revolutionary struggles of working women within Turtle Island and the Global South by holding community-led workshops to oppose fascism. Bay Area Organizer Cynthia stated, “The event was a beautiful collaboration of many groups. People were happy to receive our CODEPINK flyers. A highlight was the Palestinian Feminist Collective workshop where we learned about the crucial role of women in Palestinian life and resistance.”

CODEPINK London, UK took to the streets to mark the International Feminist Strike 2025 as part of a global anti-colonial movement.

We asked our CODEPINK London Regional Organizer, Nuvpreet: In the spirit of IWWD, what does true solidarity with international women look like? 

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Questions related to this article:

Do women have a special role to play in the peace movement?

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“As feminists in the imperial core, we must recognize that our governments fund, support, and maintain systems of militarism and colonial domination that harm women across the world. Our role is to oppose and end these systems so that women across the world can live in peace.”

CODEPINK Milwaukee did not let their local IWWD protest forget the women of Palestine! They brought signs, chants and extra PINK to the streets of Milwaukee! The women of Palestine are our sisters!!!

CODEPINK North Carolina showed up at their first event together with the message that militarism and war has no place in our feminism! Or at IWWD!

We asked our National Co-Director, Danaka: How do we care for ourselves and each other all year round? 

“It’s pretty easy to get swept up in the constantly devastating news cycle. But I try and remember that feeling defeated isn’t helping anyone…it’s not helping me, and it’s certainly not doing anything for women in the Global South who my country is bombing, starving, or exploiting. When I practice my feminist values of care, solidarity, and curiosity – how could I ever feel hopeless? There’s billions of people in the world with kind hearts, we just need to organize them.” 

CODEPINK NYC joined partners to host an educational screening of Leila and the Wolves (Leila wa za’ib) followed by a discussion on women leading resistance and liberation movements. 

Kurt from CODEPINK NYC reflected after, “The discussion was just as impactful as the movie itself. It felt good to be in a room where people could share their thoughts openly, even when the topics were tough. I walked away feeling really grateful for the chance to connect in community over such an important film. Thanks to everyone who made the event happen!” 

Our chapters have their work cut out for them as they disrupt the war narrative everywhere. And the work hasn’t stopped at IWWD! Last week, CODEPINK London, UK made news launching  BasesOffCyprus, a brand new coalition-led campaign to end joint US/UK surveillance flights aiding Israel’s genocide, which forced the UK government to publicly respond. Our chapter in Missouri is organizing to stop Israel Chemicals Limited from opening up a new facility in St. Louis. CODEPINK North Dakota is working on kicking Elbit Systems out of their state. The chapter in Chicago is part of a massive coalition to divest from Israeli bonds. They are taking on the war machine locally while educating and activating their friends and neighbors. 

Thank you to all those that brought messages of peace and justice to their International Working Women’s Day actions! We cannot do this work without each of our amazing local leaders, online organizers and global partners. 

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global, North America, WOMEN'S EQUALITY,

Wilmington, Delaware: Visionary Peace Youth Art Exhibition

EDUCATION FOR PEACE .

An article from Pacem in Terris

This year’s Visionary Peace Youth Art Exhibition was a smashing success! More than 550 young artists, teachers, and their friends and families filled the Wilmington Public Library Commons with exuberance and positive energy for peace. 

On exhibit were 546 examples of peace art from 32 different schools and community organizations. Now we look forward to continuing the momentum at our Traveling Peace Kick-off event in April.

Pacem in Terris is grateful for all who participated in the exhibition, for our volunteers, and for ongoing financial support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, the Laffey-McHugh Foundation, and Incyte.

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Question for this article:

Do the arts create a basis for a culture of peace?

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For those of you who missed it, here’s a little glimpse of the magic!


Pacem in Terris is a grassroots organization committed to building relationships that transform minds to foster healing and peace.

Our programs provide opportunities to develop a collective understanding of both our different experiences and our shared humanity.

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EDUCATION FOR PEACE, North America

Remarks by Michael Klare on strategy for the peace movement

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY .

Excerpts from YouTube videoconference, Trump’s Second Term: NATO, War, and the Economy

At this point we are in a new reality and we need to understand it and figure out how to be relevant and effective. . . .

The establishment that determined American foreign policy for 75 years since World War II has been replaced with a new foreign policy establishment with which we have to contend. . .

The old establishment was composed of foreign service officers and the top leadership of the military as well as the elites in the top think tanks in Washington DC and the academic elitse, the top law firms, the top bankers, old wealth Ivy League, Atlanticists to the core. The love French wine and speak French. Their priority was
to preserve US dominance as the number one power,
to promote capitalism,
to maintain global order so that capitalism can function in an orderly fashion,
to promote US values abroad,
to promote Western solidarity.

Well, now we have an entirely new foreign policy elite that’s going to be making the decisions and it’s in the process of formation and we need to understand it better.

I would say it consists of
° number one, the Trump organization itself which has international corporate interests,
° then the Trump family, the capitalists who have attached themselves like Elon Musk to the Trump Empire and seek to profit from a new foreign policy
° you have the right-wing think tanks that have emerged, the Heritage Foundation being the most reasonable of the group
° then there’s the America First Institute and others that we barely knew a year or two ago
° you have the new media moguls set up to escape Facebook
° the new wealth from technology and medical supplies and the like.

We have to learn more about them. What are their priorities? So far as I could tell:
° to promote crony capitalism around the world
° to enrich Trump and his cronies
° to promote white supremacy internationally and domestically. We see this in the outreach to the alternative for Germany, by Musk and Vance and Rubio support for the white Africaners in South Africa and their claim that they have been discriminated against, and there are other
° their priority is to plunder the world’s resources, especially those that bear on the the emerging industries like artificial intelligence, including rare earch minerals and lithium
° to stop the flow of migrants
° and promote the preservation of oil and gas as the dominant energy supply indefinitely into the future . . .

We shouldn’t think that the old elite is still there and we could talk with them and accomplish anything that way. We can’t. They’re gone and we have to figure out how to be effective and accomplish anything with this new power elite that governs Washington under Trump. That means totally new strategies so I’m going to suggest briefly what some of those strategies might be. People may think I’m off course here, but i don’t see any other choice.

So here are the kind of strategies that we should be pursuing.

First of all to encourage Trump, encourage them when their priorities align with ours.

Now Donald Trump has said that he wants to reduce the risk of nuclear war and to negotiate with Russia and China for nuclear arms reductions and controls to try to reduce nuclear risks. [See CPNN article.] I say yes! Go for it! Let’s support him in that and help them accomplish those goals.

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Questions related to this article:
 
The peace movement in the United States, What are its strengths and weaknesses?

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He’s also talked about cutting defence spending. I’ve advocated that with my colleagues and friends for 50 years without any success whatsoever to overcome the military industrial complex. These people say they’re going to do it, and maybe they can. So go for it! Let them go at the military-industrial complex!

They say they want to return US troops from around the world and shut US bases around the world. We’ve been talking about that for decades without any success. If they could do that maybe, we should cheer them on and say go for it!

They say they want to avoid US entanglement in foreign wars, and, well, I share that objective!

They talk about economic competition with China but not military confrontation. We should encourage them. Yes, we could compete with China economically but let’s avoid war. Let’s have negotiations.

So thats our first pathway: encourage them when they’re pursuing goals that align with ours.

Our second pathway, I think, is to persuade these Trumpist elites that it is in their best interests to embrace our priorities.

I think making Ukraine safe from Russia is a priority for us and it’s in their best interests if they want to exploit Ukraine’s resources. I know you find that objectionable and for all kinds of reasons, but if exploiting Ukraine’s resources will impel them to provide security assurances to Ukraine, to protect Ukraine in whatever ways military at least from invasion by Russia in the future, yes, we should persuade them it’s in their best interest to keep Ukraine safe.

I’ll quickly summarize the other pathways.

A path to Palestinian statehood may sound like the last thing they’re going to agree to, but it’s in their best interests if they want to do business all over the Middle East. The Trump organization and their cronites they want ties with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Well, the only way to get there is at least to accept the notion of Palestinian statehood. So, yes, promote ties with the Saudi oil monarchs if that entails acknowledging their demand for Palestinian statehood.

The third pathway, quickly, is our other task to expose the contradictions and the vulnerabilities and the dangers in their priorities, to expose their own weaknesses.

For example, high tariffs. Trump thinks this is great, but it’s going to damage the interests of his crony capitalists and the people who voted for him like farmers. So let’s expose how what Trump is doing is going to harm his own constituencies. Nail him on it!

Another example is dividing Europe and having an economic fight with Europe. However good that sounds to him, it’s good for China and China is their number one bet. I don’t like making that point about China and its global interests, but the fact is that what Trump is doing in Europe is a win for China and in Africa, too.

So, that’s our job. I think we have to come up with a strategy to be effective in this new world and do so in a way where we could find some leverage or some way to have more effectiveness in this new world. What we did before won’t work. So, I encourage you to think anew and come up with new strategies. . . .

. . . (In the peace movement) We’ve lost that common sense of purpose around opposition to nuclear weapons and nuclear war that was universal . . . so in a multipolar world what we have to do is to recreate that kind of mass movement against nuclear weapons and nuclear war. Because there are people in China and Russia who are just as afraid of it as we are.

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DISARMAMENT & SECURITY, North America

The Labor Movement Won Big Victories in 2024. Now It Must Fend Off Trump

. . DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION . .

An article by Michael Arria in Truthout

(Editor’s note: On February 22, 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.)

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. While the labor movement undeniably gained ground in 2024, union organizers now face the looming return of Donald Trump’s pro-business agenda. However, unions are preparing to fight back.


A Starbucks employee pickets outside of a closed Starbucks store during a strike on December 23, 2024, in New York City. ADAM GRAY / GETTY IMAGES

Wage Gains

Thousands of workers achieved wage gains through organizing, whether that be through state-level ballot campaigns or strikes and union negotiations. Ballot initiatives in Alaska and Missouri led to voters boosting the states’ minimum wages in November. The ballot question approach also established paid sick leave in Missouri, Alaska and Nebraska.

“If you can put it on the ballot, people love to vote for a raise,” Fairness Project Executive Director Kelly Hall told Truthout shortly before the election. “This strategy has resulted in raising the wage every time it has gone on the ballot. It’s been a very effective tool for helping to separate common-sense issues like raising the wage from the partisan politics that keep these highly popular issues locked up in state houses.”

After a three-year campaign, American Airlines employees negotiated a five-year deal in September that includes back pay from their 2019 contract expiration and an immediate 20 percent pay hike. The new contract also makes them the first flight attendants to have pay during boarding time guaranteed in a union contract. (Delta, which has fended off several unionization campaigns from flight attendants, was the first to pay flight attendants during boarding.)

“The coolest thing is I had people from so many different unions across the country texting me congratulations,” a Chicago attendant told Labor Notes. “You know, a win for one is a win for all.”

The Transport Workers Union (TWU) secured a new four-year contract for Southwest flight attendants, giving them a 22.3 percent raise by May 2025, and Delta Air Lines raised its starting wages to $19 in response to a union-organizing campaign.

A seven-week strike earned Boeing machinists a 38 percent wage increase over the next four years, 401(k) contribution increases and new signing bonuses.

A three-day strike initiated by the International Longshoremen’s Association resulted in a 62 percent pay increase over six years for thousands of dockworkers.

Union Campaigns

From October 1, 2023, to September 30, 2024, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) received 3,286 union election petitions, which was up 27 percent from the 2023 fiscal year.

Overall, union petitions doubled during the Biden years, thanks in no small part to the pro-labor bent of the administration’s NLRB. Through a number of decisions, such as Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, which established a new framework for bargaining, the board made the process easier for workers and undid many of the restraints that were instituted during Trump’s first term. Union petitions haven’t just increased; the win rate for union elections has risen over the last few years.

Seventy-three percent of the employees at a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted to join the United Auto Workers (UAW). The massive victory came after unionization efforts narrowly failed at the plant in 2014 and 2019.

Nearly 10,000 nurses at Corewell Health of Southern Michigan voted to join the Teamsters in one of the biggest NLRB elections in decades, despite a robust union-busting campaign from their employer.

“Health care workers like Corewell Teamsters were praised as heroes during the COVID-19 pandemic, but their employer has had little to no appreciation for them since,” said Director of the Teamsters Public Services Division Peter Finn in a press release after the victory. “Nurses are tired of being disrespected, paid poverty wages, and denied access to the same high-quality care that they provide.”

Thousands of public school employees voted to unionize in Virginia’s Fairfax County, in a victory that affects over 27,000 workers. The win came just four years after the state’s assembly passed legislation overturning a law prohibiting public employees from unionizing.

The unionized editorial staff at Forbes went on a strike in December to protest the business magazine’s slow-walking contract negotiations. It was the first work stoppage in the history of the 107-year-old magazine.

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Question related to this article:
 
What is the contribution of trade unions to the culture of peace?

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“We formed this union to protect the standards of a professional newsroom and create a more inclusive and transparent workplace, as well as for job security, equity in pay and opportunity, and accountability,” said Forbes Statistics Editor Andrea Murphy in a statement. “Management’s only interest is to delay, stall and obstruct, as well as try to block our members from protected union action. We are taking this unprecedented step to show that we will not allow such disrespectful behavior towards our negotiations to continue.”

They walked out again in December, purposely timing it to coincide with the release of the magazine’s popular 30 Under 30 lists.

The ongoing, high-profile labor battles at Amazon and Starbucks continued. Thousands of Amazon workers went on strike for days at the height of the holiday season. “Make no mistake the Teamsters will never let up and workers will never stop fighting for their rights at Amazon,” said a union representative after the work stoppage ended. “Stay tuned.”

December also saw a five-day strike from Starbucks workers across multiple cities after contract talks broke down. The organizing effort got a boost from the NLRB in 2024, as it determined that the company had broken the law by informing workers at its flagship Seattle store that they would lose benefits if they unionized.

Gaza Solidarity

The domestic struggles of 2024 occurred amid Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, which has been fully supported and funded by the Biden administration. Many workers understandably view the struggles as interlinked.

“The agricultural worker in Idaho may not realize it, but the chickpeas he harvests may be sold to Sabra — jointly owned by PepsiCo and the Strauss Group, Israel’s largest food and beverage manufacturer,” wrote Illinois union plumber Paul Stauffer for In These Times. “Penn Hospital is partly funded by donors to the University of Pennsylvania, some of whom have threatened to pull their donations because they think school officials haven’t done enough to quiet pro-Palestinian voices on campus. The bulldozers that crushed displaced Palestinians as they hid in their tents in Gaza were Caterpillar D9Rs, manufactured in East Peoria.”

Massive labor unions like The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the UAW publicly called for a ceasefire, but rank-and-file members of those organizations are pushing for more action.

Purple Up 4 Palestine, a collective of SEIU workers organizing against imperialism, criticized their union for endorsing Biden amid the carnage. The group is calling on SEIU leadership to call for an end to the genocide, an end to the siege on Gaza, an end to U.S. military support for Israel, and support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.

Within the UAW, a group of rank-and-file members are pushing the union to divest from Israel bonds.

Trump’s Return

Donald Trump’s return to power signals more tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. It also means the restoration of a pro-business labor board. Any hope of the NLRB maintaining a Democratic majority during a portion of Trump’s second term was extinguished after the Senate blocked President Biden’s renomination of board chair Lauren McFerran. Trump will be able to immediately nominate two pro-business Republicans to the vacant seats and is expected to quickly dump the board’s current general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo.

Many pundits have suggested that Trump’s victory represents a realignment of the working class, but it’s safe to assume that Trump won’t exhibit any of the public nods to organized labor like those from the White House over the past four years. Biden became the first U.S. president to walk a strike picket line, when he joined UAW workers in Michigan in 2023. During the aforementioned dockworkers strike, Biden refused to intervene despite mounting pressure from Republicans and business groups, despite using his authority to block a strike from rail workers back in 2022.

Additionally, many immigrant workers face a potential threat during a Trump administration, as he has vowed to launch a massive deportation program.

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.

In remarks made at a roundtable discussion shortly after the decision, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler stressed the need for solidarity among workers.

“We just finished an election cycle where one party spent the entire time telling working class people across this country, ‘Look how different you are from each other,’” said Shuler. “‘He’s an immigrant. She’s transgender or they worship differently than you do’ and it worked to some degree, right? We watched it. The scariest thing in the world to the CEOs, to the billionaires in this country and the folks like Donald Trump who do their bidding, is the idea that we might one day see through that. That there is a barista and an airport services worker and a fast food worker and a home care worker and a teacher and a warehouse worker and a cook and an electrical worker, all of them together saying, ‘Your fight is my fight.’ It terrifies them.”

Despite Trump’s victory, enthusiasm for unions remains high. A recent Gallup poll found that disapproval for unions is at 23 percent, the lowest level in almost 60 years. Support for them is at 70 percent — just one point under their highest rating ever.

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DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION, HUMAN RIGHTS, North America