Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy

“Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens against the obstacles to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”    Howard Zinn

A week has not passed since election day and I find myself in a space here I have some fears and concerns.

I remember attending a big rally in 1992 along the lakeshore in Chicago, just months before the Presidential Election. The crowd was estimated to be 100,000 to hear speakers and listen to musicians. There were civil rights activists, LGBTQ activists and anti-war activists, but the person I remember the most was a labor organizer from El Salvador.

The labor organizer from El Salvador talked about the US-backed counterinsurgency war and the challenges his union faced against the Salvadoran death squads. Near the end of his comments he implored people to not forget about what the US was doing in El Salvador and that is Clinton was elected President it would not change the relationship between the US and his country.

When Bill Clinton entered the White House a few months later his administration continued to fund the Salvadoran death squads and the counterinsurgency war the US was waging with the Salvadoran dictatorship.

One of the fears I have in the coming months and years is that all of the euphoria that people are experiencing because of the Democratic Party victories will not translate into substantive change for people, especially the most marginalized. Will the Democrats make it a priority to Abolish ICE, will they end the US war against Iran and stop funding the Israeli genocide in Gaza? Will the Democratic control of Congress result in Medicare for All, for ending Citizens United, and a massive reduction is US military spending? Will the Democratic Party put an end to the war on trans people, call out police killings of Black people, embrace Climate Justice principles, stop providing massive subsidies and tax breaks to corporations, really tax the billionaire class, release the Epstein files and embrace a living wage for all people?

I don’t expect the Democratic Party to do these things, because they don’t really have a history of doing them. My read on history is that whatever meaningful gains we have made have come from social movements – civil rights, LGTBQ, anti-war, tenant unions, climate justice, environmental justice, disability justice, worker movements and immigrant justice movements.

When the FDR Administration implemented worker rights, social security and other policies that benefited working class people, it was not because FDR thought these were good ideas. The Roosevelt administration, coming into office, faced a nation in turmoil. The unemployed were rioting in Detroit, Chicago, Boston, New York and Seattle. In 1934, strikes broke out all over. There was a general strike in Minneapolis, a general strike in San Francisco, hundreds of thousands on strike in the textile mills of the South. Desperate people were taking action on their own, defying the police to put back the furniture of evicted tenants.

Because there was so much resistance happening all around the country, the FDR Administration was essentially forced to adopt New Deal policies or face even more uprisings from the general public. Civil Rights legislation was adopted during the Johnson Administration because there were hundreds of thousands of people protesting in the streets, getting arrested in the lunch counter sit-ins, and Freedom Riders getting beaten by racists for the whole world to see.

I get that people are excited by the election last week, but that was the easy part and now we have to make, indeed, to force politicians to do what we want.

I am concerned about this possibility, because I have witnessed over and over again in my adult life where white liberal have become comfortable when Democrats are in the White House, control Congress or have the majority on the state level.

During the Clinton years NAFTA was put into place, the Crime Bill was adopted, the welfare system was dismantled, the prison industrial complex grew, immigrants were criminalized and the US provide billions to Israel, maintain the economic blockage against Cuba, began the expansion of NATO, sent the US military to Haiti, bombed Sudan and the former Yugoslavia, attacked Somalia, and bombed Iraq regularly, along with imposing economic sanctions on Iraq, which resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children.

During the Obama Administration he bailed out Wall Street, did not pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform, deported over 3 million immigrants, allowed the wealth gap to grow, continued US imperialism abroad, supported the coup in Honduras, escalated the war in Afghanistan, maintained $3 billion annually in funding to Israel and overthrew the government of Libya.

During the Biden Administration funding for the police was increased, there was no prosecution of those in the first Trump Administration, a failure to increase the federal minimum wage, did not end student debt, deported roughly 4 million immigrants, increased the US military budget, allowed for an increase of oil drilling in the US, saw the billionaire class grow, saw housing costs and housing insecurity increase, along with unconditionally supporting and funding Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The worst part of those years is that so many democrats just defended those administrations, often using the weak ass argument that Republicans would be worse.

What was instructive is that during the Clinton Administration there was a resurgence of the labor movement and a radical anti-globalization movement. During the Obama years there was the Occupy Wall Street Movement and the Movement for Black Lives. During the Biden years there was the ongoing immigrant justice movement, the Defund the Police movement, the Rent is Too Damn High movement and a Palestine Solidarity Movement.

Social Movements were born during Democratic Party control, because they did not meet the needs of so many people around so many critical issues. In a recent article from Crimethinc, entitled, The Hot Potato Changes Hands Again: On the 2026 Midterm Elections:

The core issue at the root of the hot potato pattern is that the existing political order cannot address the instability, disparities, and crises of a capitalist system that has concentrated most of the wealth of society in the hands of a few while inflicting grievous social, psychological, and ecological damage on the rest of us. No political party will initiate the kind of revolutionary transformation that will be required to shift to a more egalitarian and sustainable way of life; such change can only come from grassroots mobilization. As long as there is no widespread, powerful social movement that offers the prospect of addressing these problems through profound change, people will continue rejecting one government after another in increasing desperation.

The article continues by stating:

At best, the election results should function as a mandate for grassroots resistance to the Trump administration’s policies, not as a pressure valve for anxiety about them. We must build the grassroots capacity to defend and care for our communities. If we succeed, Democratic politicians will probably try to co-opt whatever we have achieved by offering to do the same things for us through the state. But they will only offer us what we demonstrate the ability to accomplish ourselves, and it is better to develop the ability to address needs directly and consistently than for the well-being of our communities to depend on the outcome of elections.

Don’t get comfortable, don’t blindly defend the Democrats, and don’t think that fascism is gone. Get involved in social movement work, practice Mutual Aid, resist state oppression, practice solidarity, take risks and fight like hell for collective liberation.