Turn the Tide Again
Mass protest can break the momentum of authoritarianism
Tomorrow, people across the country will take to the streets with a clear message:
No Kings. No Billionaires. No ICE. No War.
More than 3,000 events are planned all around the country. Our partners at Rising Majority have put together materials you can use. Check them out here.
Over the past year, we’ve seen what MAGA is trying to build, and we’ve seen that it can be fought. When they flooded the zone, we pushed back and forced limits. Now they’re escalating again, at home and abroad. The question is whether we show up at the scale needed to stop them—and turn the tide again.
They Flooded the Zone, We Turned the Tide
Over the past year, we’ve been living through a deliberate strategy to overwhelm and disorient opposition. In the opening months of 2025, the Trump administration moved fast: sweeping executive orders, mass firings and purges across federal agencies, aggressive ICE raids in major cities, and open threats to deploy the military domestically. The goal was to move so quickly, on so many fronts, that no one could keep up. Or as Steve Bannon memorably put it, to “flood the zone with shit.”
But last June’s No Kings protests marked a turning of the tide. Millions of people refused to be paralyzed. And that surge didn’t just dissipate. It fed directly into organizing on the ground in the months that followed.
Across the country, resistance took root. Communities mobilized to block ICE raids and defend their neighbors. Labor actions and campus organizing picked back up. And politically, we saw real breakthroughs. The election of Zohran Mamdani and other socialist and left-progressive candidates showed that there was a growing base for something beyond both the radicalized fascist right and the exhausted center.
Just as important, the aura of inevitability around the Trump regime began to crack. By the end of 2025, even some of Trump’s own allies were acknowledging internal divisions and mounting resistance. What had looked unstoppable in January was already running up against real limits by December.
Flood the Zone 2.0: International Edition
Now, in the first months of this year, we are facing a new escalation, a sort of “flood the zone 2.0.” This time the main focus is international. The Trump administration has abducted the sitting president of Venezuela, escalated economic warfare on Cuba, and launched a war in Iran that threatens to spiral into another endless conflict.
This turn outward is not accidental. It reflects the limits MAGA fascism ran up against at home. With courts slowing them down, Congress no longer a blank check, and mounting opposition from states, cities, and civil society, the terrain inside the US became much harder for them to dominate. But those constraints don’t operate in the same way when it comes to foreign policy.
Over decades—and especially since the War on Terror—presidential power in this arena has expanded dramatically. Multiple presidents have repeatedly launched airstrikes without a vote, imposed sweeping sanctions by executive order, and carried out covert operations with little public oversight. It’s one of the few areas where this administration can still move fast, act unilaterally, and reshape reality before anyone can effectively respond.
This is a dangerous shift. Blocked at home, MAGA has moved onto terrain where they can act faster, with fewer checks, and potentially with far greater consequences. Wars are much easier to start than stop. With no obvious off-ramp, the US and Israeli war on Iran is already expanding into a region-wide quagmire. The same pattern risks repeating in all the places Trump has threatened—from Cuba, where a US-imposed blockade is pushing the country into crisis, to Mexico, where he has floated military action against cartels, and even China—each one another front that could ignite beyond anyone’s control.
Time to Rise Again
That’s why tomorrow is critical. We have a chance—again—to turn the tide.
Mass protests like those planned for tomorrow won’t, on their own, defeat authoritarianism. But they do something essential: they break the sense that what’s happening is unstoppable. They make opposition visible. They give people renewed hope.
That that only happens if we show up at a scale that can’t be ignored. Not thousands. Millions. Bigger than last June. Big enough to force every institution in this country to take a side.
And then we need to channel that momentum into something durable. We need to plug people into organizations. Build campaigns where we live and work. Turn protest into tenant organizing, labor fights, immigrant defense, and electoral contests. That’s how mass mobilization transforms into durable, place-based people power.
We will need that power to retake the House—and, if possible, the Senate—in November. To primary Democrats who enable ICE and war. To stop the body-snatchers targeting our communities. To defend and expand bodily autonomy. And to stop a war that is already killing thousands and threatening millions more.
Show Up—and Change It
It’s easy, for many of us on the left, to feel cynical about protests like this.
Some activists look at them and see liberals who aren’t radical enough. Some organizers see a one-off mobilization that doesn’t build real power. Some Black and Brown folks see spaces that don’t reflect them. And the same is true for other marginalized communities.
And the thing is, there’s truth in all of that.
But that’s not a reason to sit it out tomorrow. It’s a reason to show up—and change it.
We change it by bringing bolder and more militant demands into the streets—against war, against ICE, against the targeting of our communities. We change it by showing up and refusing to shrink ourselves. By making protest spaces Blacker, Browner, queerer. By asking who else is missing, and how they can be brought in.
We change it by doing the work to connect this moment to something lasting. By showing up not just as individuals, but as organized forces: with our unions, our DSA chapters, our feminist collectives, our immigrant justice groups, our political organizations. By joining local coalitions and planning committees. By bringing clipboards and gathering numbers. By following up.
Tomorrow can be just another protest—or it can be a turning point. That depends on what we do with it.
So I’ll see you in the streets.
Bennett Carpenter is a queer Southern organizer, trainer, and movement strategist. They are a member of the National Executive Committee of Liberation Road.
Clear-eyed and “pitch perfect.” Thanks!