Editor’s note: The following is based on a presentation by  CPUSA Co-Chair, Joe Sims, at the People’s World  banquet in Philadelphia, PA on June 29, 2025.

I want to begin by congratulating the honorees, Councilmember Brooks and the representatives of Starbucks Workers United.  Thank you both for upholding the rights and dignity of working people. Your advocacy not only gives us hope but it also, to borrow a phrase from WEB Du Bois,  helps us “shine light for the path.” And in these dark and  troubled times we need as much light and hope as we can get.

Light and hope  were in abundance when the socialist Mamdane, defeated the sexist Cuomo in the Democratic primary. 

Speaking of which, both light and hope  were in abundance in New York City last Tuesday night when the socialist, Zohran Mamdane, defeated the sexist Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for Mayor. And when I say defeated, I mean defeated: blew him out of the box. It wasn’t even close. The double digit margin victory sent shockwaves  throughout the democratic establishment – shockwaves throughout Wall Street. What an achievement!

And I don’t know about you but it lifted me right up. And honestly speaking I needed that because, to tell you the truth, I’ve been disturbed over the last several months — very disturbed. And it wasn’t  so much the MAGA victory in November that troubled me as bad as it was. I expected it, what with the Democrats in disarray, and their support for and complicity in the Gaza genocide. I mean they couldn’t even bring themselves to mouth the word “ceasefire” for months. I was like: are you trying to lose the election? Then there was that fiasco of a debate.

The shooting incident in the western part of the state and its aftermath was another troubling development.  I’m talking about the assassination attempt  by that disturbed individual. It wasn’t only the individual act of terror that was concerning: it was also the aftermath.

I’ll tell you a little story: The day it happened I was at a bar in my neighborhood in Manhattan, having a drink or two. They had one of those big screen TVs and CNN was on. I looked up and the news flash came across the screen and they showed one of those what would become an iconic image of Mr. Man, with blood trickling from his ear, surrounded by the Secret Service, pumping his fist in the air. And I just shook my head and said to myself “That’s it. The election is over. They are going to ride this along with all of their vitriol and racist, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ hate all the way to Election Day.” And that’s exactly what happened: so I was not all that surprised on Election Day.

What surprised me was what happened the next day and the day after that:  Each day I awoke to the sounds of silence. I was like: What just did not happen?

Let me provide you with a little more context.  About a month before the election, I was in the Bay Area and a friend in Oakland shared that the organizers of the Women’s March had taken out two permits, one for after the election and the other for sometime around the Inauguration. “Ok,” I reasoned,  “If bad comes to worse there’s something in place to organize around.” I was remembering what happened in 2016. The day after the election, I’m walking down 23rd street and when I get to 6th avenue there are tens of thousands of people marching, hands in the air, shouting “Not my president! Not my president.” I joined the march. A young woman was marching next to me and everyone was holding their hands in the air and I don’t know if I grabbed her hand or she grabbed mine but we held hands and marched that way for half a block. What a great feeling! A militant spontaneous rebellion against Trump and MAGA.

Fast forward to January, 2017, and the Women’s March after the Inauguration. They say one million people were present. I believe it. You couldn’t move. It took me 20 minutes to walk 20 feet. After a while, I turned around and got back on the Metro and went to my God daughter’s in Prince George’s county, my heart filled with pride and respect for organizers.

So you can imagine that this time around on the appointed day of the march I was excited. But when I arrived at the gathering place there was practically nobody there, scarcely 150 to 200 people. I asked myself, “Where are the protestors? What just did not happen?”

What was going on? The silence was palpable. The country, it seemed, was in a state of shock. Stories circulating in the mass media claiming that Resistance 2.0 had failed to materialize added to the problem.  But it couldn’t be that everyone had rolled over and grudgingly accepted the election results. We knew for example that the Working Families Party and 200 other organizations sponsored huge online meetings after the election with something like 200,000 participants. Win With Black Women and Moveon.org also organized huge virtual mass meetings involving tens of thousands. It’s likely that those meetings helped lay the basis for the organizing that’s happening now. The impression, however, back then was that nothing was happening in the streets.

It was a tough time which lasted through the holidays.

The day for the second march turned out to be January 17th and as the date approached things remained uncertain. When our contingent arrived in DC that morning, while they didn’t encounter  a million people or even 100,000, significant numbers did show up and march against the Trump agenda. Women’s groups, environmentalists, local non-profits, and many others numbering in the tens of thousands participated – things were starting to change.

But then MAGA got started. Masked thugs started snatching people off the street and throwing them into unmarked cars. Then Trump sent that plane filled with migrants to a concentration camp in Salvador without due process. A judge ordered the plane back and the administration just ignored the order after which they started regularly ignoring judges orders. A pattern of executive branch lawlessness was set in motion.

Next they went after corporate law firms they didn’t like and the firms  capitulated. Then the administration went after universities. Columbia was the first to fall. The mass media was then targeted and they bent the knee, one after another,  ABC, CBS, NBC.

While all of this was going on Elon Musk and DOGE got to work.  Tens of thousands of workers were fired after which the White House decertified big sections of the union on the grounds of “national security.” In response one would have thought the AFL-CIO would have risen up in righteous indignation, like they did when Reagan broke the Air Traffic Controllers Union  (PATCO) but that didn’t happen – at least not yet.

Alarmingly public officials started being arrested: Judge Dugan in Wisconsin, Mayor Baraka, from Newark, New Jersey, Rep McIver from New Jersey.  And while all of this was taking place,  why weren’t leading voices in the country speaking out? I’m talking about ex-presidents, public intellectuals, religious leaders, and cultural personalities. Instead Clinton’s, Bush’s and Obama’s silence set the stage for others.

The peoples protest movement has been reborn. 

What I’m trying to say here is that there was a vacuum of leadership. But the people wanted to protest and into that vacuum stepped the 50501 movement. It started with the Target boycott, followed by the President’s Day protests, April 5th and then May Day. And while all of this was happening, AOC and Bernie stepped to the plate and organized the Oligarchy Tours. You have got to give them credit: They turned out huge mass meetings in the red states.  And then of course, there was the magnificent several million strong No Kings Day protests of a couple weeks ago.

And now it seems that the “ leadership” has found its voice. Now they are speaking up, buoyed by the millions in the streets. And that’s all right: we need them to speak up.  It reminds me of a time during the Civil Rights movement when people got frustrated at the pace of change and took matters into their own hands, Martin Luther King Jr said, “There go my people, I have to run and catch up with them.”

And today, we see a similar thing happening. The NAACP, for example, is running to catch up. They just disinvited Mr. Trump from their convention which takes place in North Carolina in a couple weeks. It’s the first time in the organization’s history that they disinvited a sitting president. And in their statement they even use the F word. Not the F-You word, but the fascism word. And for good measure they said fascism twice while describing Trump’s policies. Using that terminology is extremely important because we’ve got to understand who and what we’re fighting. Because if you don’t know who and what you’re fighting and you step to somebody, you’re liable to get your butt whipped. You’ve got to be prepared and that means you’ve got to be ready to engage with at least an equal if not a greater force than the one you’re getting ready to go toe to toe with.

And friends, we’re confronting the most powerful ruling class in human history under the grip of the MAGA right. If  we want to have any hope of winning this fight, we’ve got to bring to the table a force capable of meeting them on their own terms, a force who understands and speaks their language – and that’s the language of power. There’s only one force in this country that knows that language and that’s the organized working class. They know it because they have to speak it day in and day out in their confrontations with the bosses. And in those confrontations, they learned through experience on the shop floor that sometimes you’ve just got to shut it down and bring the process of production to a halt.

Only the power of the working class can defeat the MAGA ruling class power. 

But let’s be clear, even the working class can’t do it by themselves. No one can, including African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, women, the LGBTQ community, and youth.  Winning requires the unity of action of all.

And in our opinion the challenge to today is to bring the organized working class into the fight so that they can not only participate in it but lead it. The good news here is that the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists at its recent convention has given us a tool that can help make that happen.  They passed a resolution calling on the AFL-CIO to call a National Day of Solidarity Action in DC to protest Trump and MAGA’s policies. That’s the role Black workers are playing today. The challenge is whether or not we can seize the time and help make it happen.

Folks, the old neoliberal order is dying.  And Trump and MAGA are trying to replace it with one of their own making. But a new order is trying to be born. And we saw that in that election result in New York City last Tuesday. We saw it at the No Kings Day protests, on May Day and on April 5th.   This new movement is trying to lead us to the light and to a renewed hope. It’s up to us to reach out, touch it and make it real.