From Resistance to Reconstruction

A Three-Year Roadmap to Defend and Reconstruct Democracy

photo credit: Jonathan McIntosh, “Fighting Liberty Puppet” (June 14, 2025) CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Liberation Road has put forward a strategic orientation for 2025–2028 — and this article lays out the core ideas. Want to go deeper? Join our webinar on Wednesday, October 15th at 8:00 pm Eastern (7:00 CT, 5:00 PT), where we’ll break it down and discuss how we can block fascism, defend democracy, and build left power towards a Third Reconstruction.

We are living through a moment of profound crisis and possibility. The old political order in the US is breaking down. A dangerous force is rising to take its place: a reactionary movement we call the New Confederacy, rooted in white supremacy, Christian nationalism, and authoritarianism.

Over the next few years, this New Confederacy will attempt to consolidate a fascist, autocratic regime, using every tool at its disposal. At the same time, broad sectors of the population are resisting, often with incredible courage and creativity. Our future will be determined by whether this resistance can be strategically aligned to block fascist consolidation, wrest back control of our country, and open the door to a new, more just reconstruction of our society and government.

In this context, our movements cannot afford to fight blindly or react piecemeal to each new attack. We need a strategy. Liberation Road’s strategy for 2025–2028 is built around three interconnected imperatives:

1. Block the New Confederacy from consolidating autocracy.

2. Broaden the movement to defend democracy.

3. Build the power of progressive forces to lead a Third Reconstruction.

These are not sequential steps to be taken one after the other. They are simultaneous and interdependent objectives, each necessary for the others to succeed. Together, they provide a path to both defend against the fascist onslaught and lay the groundwork for a better future.

Block: Holding the Line Against Fascism

Our first and most urgent task is to block the consolidation of fascist autocracy. The New Confederacy has already made major breakthroughs: seizing control of entire state governments, stacking the federal judiciary, and capturing key national institutions like the Supreme Court. It has constructed a vast media ecosystem and cultivated a loyal base organized through churches, extremist groups, and reactionary political networks. Left unchecked, these forces will rewrite the rules of governance to entrench themselves permanently.

To block this advance, we must understand what the far right is actually trying to seize and control. Regimes rise and fall not only because of what happens in the streets or at the ballot box, but because of the “pillars of power” that uphold a social order. Some of these are governmental — courts, state legislatures, federal workers, local governments. Others are social — unions, schools, faith communities, media, cultural institutions, businesses. Autocrats aim to capture or destroy these pillars, while our task is to defend their independence and strengthen their capacity for resistance. Broadly, there are two kinds of defense, political and social:

1. Political Defense. We must protect the autonomy and integrity of different levels, levers, and branches of government from fascist takeover. This includes defending state and local governments from federal capture, safeguarding fair elections and voting rights, resisting court-packing or judicial coups, and preventing the New Confederacy from concentrating unchecked power in the executive branch. Political defense is about keeping open the institutional space in which a political opposition can organize.

2. Social Self-Defense. Authoritarian movements do not rely solely on government power. They also seek to dominate or destroy the institutions of civil society where people gather, organize, and care for one another: unions, community organizations, faith communities, schools, libraries, businesses, and local media. Social self-defense is the work of protecting these spaces from repression and capture. This can mean activities like protecting a library from book bans, mobilizing consumer boycotts, or building workplace power to resist compliance through work stoppages and strikes.

These two terrains are deeply intertwined. When fascists consolidate their stranglehold over government, they weaponize state power to attack civil society; when civil society is weakened, it becomes easier for them to tighten their grip on government. Effective blocking requires simultaneous action on both fronts: political defense to prevent total capture of the institutions of governance, and social self-defense to protect the grassroots infrastructure of civil society.

Blocking is not only defensive — it is a stage-setting task. The stronger our ability to defend democratic institutions and social infrastructure, the harder it is for the New Confederacy to consolidate autocracy, and the more space and time we gain to broaden a mass pro-democracy front while building the power of the left within it.

Broaden: Growing the Largest Possible Front

Blocking fascism cannot be accomplished by the left alone. History shows that reversing authoritarian consolidation requires forging broad anti-authoritarian coalitions across racial, ethnic, class, gender, religious, regional, and ideological lines. Defeating the New Confederacy will require growing and sustaining the broadest possible pro-democracy front.

Within this front will be forces with very different political orientations. This diversity is both necessary and contradictory. We do not need to deny or paper over disagreements, but we do need to recognize our shared interest in preserving a democratic space where those disagreements can be struggled over. Where differences threaten to fracture our front’s ability to oppose fascism, we must subordinate them to the common task of defending democracy and the people’s rights.

A key principle is consistent defense of civil liberties and rights. Autocratic regimes always begin by targeting the groups they believe are most vulnerable. Right now that means immigrants, trans people, pro-Palestinian organizers, “antifa,” and others singled out for early attack. To resist divide and conquer, we must hold the front together in defense of these and other targets’ civil, political, social, and economic rights. This does not mean everyone in the front has to agree with the beliefs, demands, or tactics of these targets. The test of a truly broad pro-democracy front is whether it can defend the rights of people even or especially when we don’t agree with them.

To sustain this broad front, we must also insist on disciplined nonviolence as a strategic principle. This does not mean passivity or compliance — nonviolent tactics can be militant, disruptive, and courageous. But acts of violence, even by a small minority, can alienate potential allies and narrow our front. Research shows that nonviolent movements are much more effective at sustaining the broad participation needed to resist authoritarianism. Because of this, consistent nonviolence is a strategic imperative for growing and sustaining the broad, pluralistic coalition necessary to resist and defeat autocratic consolidation.

At the scale required to defeat authoritarianism, broad resistance must take many forms. Because we will need widespread resistance across many sectors of political and civil society, we should embrace and encourage a diversity of nonviolent tactics. This creates a low barrier for entry, and allows different groups and organizations to plan actions that make sense for different contexts. In part, then, pluralism and decentralization is a strength. Yet a broad coalition united only by what it opposes, while necessary to defend against fascist consolidation, cannot by itself inspire the broad, hopeful vision of justice and democracy needed to ultimately defeat it. Building that vision — and rooting it in people’s everyday struggles — is the task of the left, and the bridge to Reconstruction.

Build: Aligning a Left-led Strategic Counter-offensive

If we only block and broaden, we are always reacting. To move beyond defense, the left must also build: articulating and fighting for a bold, compelling, actionable vision of racial, economic, gender, and ecological justice. Just like our defensive strategy, this counter-offensive has two related components, social and political:

The Social Counter-offensive

On the terrain of civil society, we must rebuild fighting people’s organizations: unions, tenants’ associations, worker centers, and grassroots groups. Right now many of our fights here are defensive. But we must leverage these defensive fights to lay groundwork for our offense. When we fight book bans, we don’t just defend libraries — we grow networks of educators, parents, and students that can then push for broader curriculum transformation. When we resist deportations, we build trust and infrastructure that can anchor campaigns for full pathways to citizenship. In this way, each defense can become a launching pad for new, proactive demands.

At a national level, one exciting possibility for a coordinated social counter-offensive lies in the United Auto Workers’ call to synchronize union contract expirations on May 1, 2028. If unions across sectors align demands towards such a three-year “Plan 2028,” they can raise standards for millions of their members nationally. And if they can further align demands with a broader coalition of social movement organizations through something like the “Bargaining for the Common Good” framework, this coordination could rebuild capacity for collective struggle while laying foundations for a Third Reconstruction.

The Political Counter-offensive

The same is true on the terrain of the state. Defensive fights to protect federal workers, resist gerrymanders, or defend local government from repression can generate new organizational capacity, new leaders, and new bases of support. The challenge is to leverage that capacity towards a political counter-offensive to unseat the New Confederacy and expand democratic governance at every level.

At the federal level, this means working to break the Republican House majority in 2026, win the Senate and presidency in 2028, and ensure those victories translate into bold reforms. At the state level, it means breaking single-party Republican control where possible, while deepening pro-democracy majorities in “blue” states. In all these cases, we must also challenge corporate Democrats, shifting the balance of power within the pro-democracy front toward the left.

To do this, we need independent political organizations (IPOs) — durable, membership-based organizations that provide infrastructure for year-round work: recruiting candidates, mobilizing voters, shaping policy, and holding allies accountable. By engaging inside the broad pro-democracy front, while also maintaining organizational independence, IPOs ensure that the left’s agenda and base are not submerged within the centrist Democratic Party establishment.

Scaling Up: From State Alignment to a National Political Instrument

Social and political counter-offensives are not parallel tracks — they are a feedback loop, each reinforcing and amplifying the other. When unions coordinate strikes or community groups push demands, they open political space for progressive candidates to run on bold agendas. When IPOs help win candidates into office, they create openings for social movements to advance demands that once seemed impossible. But to be most effective, these social and political counter-offensives must be coordinated. That requires aligning unions, IPOs, and grassroots organizations toward a shared strategy. We can think of such alignment along a spectrum:

• Tactical coalition, temporarily bringing groups together around a single election or issue campaign.

• Strategic alignments, based on developing a shared long-term strategy.

• Shared political instrument, where multiple organizations form a collective vehicle to drive that strategy.

By “political instrument,” we mean a durable entity that brings together a coalition of labor and social movement groups within a party-like structure, but one that operates with more flexibility than the traditional party model. International examples of what this can look like include Brazil’s Workers Party and Spain’s Podemos. In the US, the hybrid governance structure of the Working Families Party—which operates partly as a coalition of social movement organizations, partly as a direct-join party with its own individual members—is an example of what this can look like.

Minnesota offers a glimpse of what this kind of alignment can achieve. There, a coalition of unions, grassroots organizations, and independent forces united around a long-term plan. After helping to win Democratic control of state government in 2022, they advanced sweeping victories — labor rights, immigrant protections, trans rights, climate policy, voting rights restoration, and more. This “Minnesota Model” demonstrates how aligned left-progressive forces can not only resist but also proactively reconstruct democracy.

Towards a Third Reconstruction

At both the state and national levels, left forces should help build towards political instruments that can coordinate our social and political counter-offensive. This should include developing a shared platform and recruiting slates of candidates committed to advancing its demands. These efforts must orient toward building the social and political power to win a Third Reconstruction.

The first Reconstruction, after the Civil War, created a brief but transformative experiment in multiracial democracy before being violently overthrown. The second, during the Civil Rights era, dismantled legal segregation but left racial capitalism and imperial power intact. A Third Reconstruction must go further. It must repair the damage inflicted by neoliberalism and the New Confederacy while creating the institutional and cultural infrastructure for a genuinely democratic, multiracial, feminist, and sustainable society. That means:

• Good jobs, living wages, expanded union rights, and economic democracy.

• Dismantling mass incarceration and racialized policing, securing Indigenous sovereignty, and advancing reparative policies.

• Guaranteeing reproductive justice, defending queer and trans rights, and recognizing care work as foundational to social life.

• Transforming energy, housing, and transportation to both decarbonize and redistribute resources to frontline communities.

But Reconstruction is not only a policy agenda. It is about deepening democracy: creating new forms of self-governance, building people’s assemblies and cooperatives, and institutionalizing co-governance between grassroots groups and elected officials. It means shifting not only what government does, but how power is exercised and who wields it.

Resist, Contest, Refuse, and Reconstruct

Winning such a Reconstruction will not happen all at once, nor will it proceed evenly. It will be built in stages, through a combination of bold advances in pro-democracy strongholds, breakthroughs in contested terrain, and stubborn resistance in hostile territory. Our tactics to fight the New Confederacy must vary with the terrain. So, too, will the secondary contradictions we face with centrist forces, and the tertiary contradictions within our movements.

Resist: Holding Ground in New Confederate Strongholds

In states, cities, and institutions where the New Confederacy currently dominates, our objective is to resist autocratic consolidation and defend our people under conditions of authoritarian control. Resistance means practicing noncooperation and civil disobedience to delay, disrupt, and delegitimize the regime: public whistleblowing, targeted legal challenges, disruptive protest, and acts that shine a national spotlight on local repression. It also means organizing infrastructure to materially and spiritually sustain our communities under siege: sanctuary networks, alternative service delivery systems, mutual aid, and people’s assemblies that begin to prefigure self-governance.

These terrains often require cooperation with establishment Democrats and centrist and center-right allies, despite ideological differences, and secondary contradictions are generally more muted here. Within our movements, pragmatism and reformism can be right errors, overly prioritizing cooperation with these moderate forces to the detriment of left-progressive independence. At the same time, a countervailing risk is revolutionary pessimism: retreating into isolation or symbolic militancy disconnected from mass action. The challenge for the left is to steer a path between cooptation and isolationist militancy, while defending our communities and building durable infrastructure.

Contest: Battling for Power on Divided Terrain

In purple states, divided governments, and other institutions where power is up for grabs, we are in a direct struggle for power — socially, politically, ideologically, and institutionally. In many ways, these are the decisive battlegrounds of this period. Here our aim is to tip the balance toward a durable pro-democracy, anti-fascist majority. That means using every fight — from budget battles to ballot initiatives — to clarify the stakes, polarize against the right, and grow our organized base. IPOs must play a leading role — recruiting, training, and supporting candidates aligned with a Third Reconstruction agenda. But labor and community organizations should also put major energy here.

In these places, contradictions between left and center are fluid. Truces are often temporary — confined to election season or other moments when the shared conflict against the New Confederacy is at its most intense, following which both sides resume their struggle. Within our movements, both “left errors” and “right errors” occur, reflecting the twofold pressure to both block the right and build the left. The challenge is to manage these tensions in ways that strengthen the left’s position vis à vis the center without jeopardizing our shared fight against the New Confederacy.

Refuse and Reconstruct: Advancing in Pro-Democracy Strongholds

In blue states, cities, and institutions where we or our allies hold governing power, our task is twofold. First, to create sanctuaries of defense where we can say: “This will not happen here.” That means enshrining and defending existing rights — abortion access, gender-affirming care, immigrant justice, civil liberties, labor protections — and proactively defying federal attempts to roll them back. But refusal alone is not enough. These strongholds must also become laboratories of democratic possibility — prefigurative zones of Reconstruction where bold policies are tested, people’s protagonism is expanded, and forms of co-governance take shape.

Here, contradictions with establishment Democrats and moderates are often sharp, foreshadowing the more antagonistic struggles between left and center that will intensify if we succeed in defeating the New Confederacy nationally. Because of this, contradictions within our movements tend towards ultra-leftism. The challenge is to win real left victories against the center, without overestimating how much we can achieve in isolation from the larger national fight, or substituting local battles with moderates for the broader nationwide struggle.

One Step Forward Everywhere We Fight

image adapted from graphic by Josh Kahn via The Commons

Across all terrains, our watchword must be “one step forward everywhere we fight.” These stages are not fixed categories but points along a trajectory. In New Confederate strongholds, our three-year plan should aim to move from resistance toward contestation, seizing opportunities to take the offensive by picking winnable fights. In contested terrain, the task is to win contests decisively, converting fragile pluralities into durable majorities in order to actually win governing power. In places where our front already holds power, refusal should expand into reconstruction, where bold experiments in governance and people’s protagonism point the way toward a new future. The strategic objective is always to push one stage further relative to where we began.

History has placed us at a decisive crossroads. The New Confederacy is working to lock in permanent minority rule, but our movements already hold the seeds of a different future in every picket line, sanctuary network, and electoral contest. The question is whether we can align these struggles into a common strategy — one that resists where we must, contests where we can, and begins to reconstruct our democracy where and as we build the necessary power. Taken together, this cumulative motion can build the momentum and strength necessary to decisively defeat the New Confederacy and open the path to a Third Reconstruction.

Bennett Carpenter (they/them) is a queer Southern organizer, trainer and movement strategist. They are a member of the National Executive Committee of Liberation Road.