COURAGE IS CONTAGIOUS
On to May Day 2026
“No Kings” was further proof of Donald Trump’s widespread unpopularity. But, as my favorite president, Jed Bartlett, used to say: “What’s next?”
Trump and his MAGA movement won’t be stopped by protest rallies, court decisions or even elections. But they can be defeated, or at least thwarted, with non-violent resistance.
A recent article in Democratization uses the term “U-Turns” to describe how authoritarianism worldwide has been stopped and reversed. The authors found that “52 percent of all autocratization episodes become U-Turns, which increases to 73 percent when focusing on the last 30 years.”
“Autocratization can be defeated through peaceful resistance,” they conclude. “And in 90 percent of the documented cases of U-Turns, democracy levels were either restored to their previous heights (70 out of 102 cases) or improved (22 out of 102 cases).”
Eric Blanc, an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University, writes in Labor Notes that Americans need to begin experimenting with “disruptive, nonviolent, attention-grabbing campaigns that are easily replicable and that can go viral nationwide — something in the same wide-scale grassroots spirit as the immigrant rights upsurge of 2006, Occupy Wall Street in 2011, or Black Lives Matter in 2020.”
In towns where Trump has sent in ICE or troops, Blanc writes, high school students, with the backing of their teachers, could walk out on Friday afternoons to peacefully confront ICE agents and impede their attempts to kidnap people. Teachers, students and family members can join in once they’re free.
May Day Strong, a national network of organizations and workers, plans a series of peaceful but disruptive actions on May 1, 2026 to protest Trump’s actions and pressure businesses and organizations that support him.
Workers and students can call in sick, refuse to shop, hold teach-ins at school or work, go on strike or join nonviolent civil disobedience and marches. Businesses could end their widespread collusions with the regime, sign pro-democracy pledges or voluntarily close. Churches and local elected officials could endorse the day of action and help drive turnout.
“This wouldn’t be another No Kings one-off weekend march,” Blanc writes. “It’d be far more disruptive, it’d be focused on pressuring pillars of support to break from Trump rather than just protesting in general and, perhaps most important of all, it’d be based on months of sustained outwards-facing organizing.”
May Day Strong’s website proposes taxing the rich, keeping ICE out of cities, expanding democracy and defending free and fair elections. They call for a day of “No School, No Work, No Shopping” to “disrupt the violent billionaire takeover of our country and to put working families first. Because when the billionaires break every rule, it’s going to take more than a rally to stop them. Together we show where real power lives in this country: with workers, not billionaires.”
The coalition also calls for protecting Medicaid and Social Security, fully funding schools and healthcare and ending attacks on immigrants, minorities and trans people.
Blanc concludes that there’s no guarantee that these proposed campaigns will catch on or succeed. “Sometimes even the best-planned tactics fall flat, sometimes even the most heroic movements lose,” he writes. “Resistance is always risky. But at a moment when the Trump administration is wielding a wrecking ball against all our futures, the riskiest option is to do nothing.
“Trump wants us to believe he can’t be stopped, because those who believe they’re powerless don’t fight back. Ignore his lies. We can defeat his power grab, and we can build a country where all people, not just the ultra-rich, are able to prosper. Making that future a reality, however, will require a bit more bravery from many more people.”
Sources:
“When Autocratization Is Reversed: Episodes of U-Turns since 1900,” Marina Nord, Fabio Angiolillo, Martin Lundstedt, Felix Wiebrecht and Staffan Lindberg, Democratization, January 2025, issue 32 (5): 1136–59.
“After No Kings, How Can We Escalate?,” Eric Blanc, Labor Notes, October 31, 2025
“May Day Strong,” https://maydaystrong.org/