Like thousands of others, I made the pilgrimage to Pennsylvania in October to canvass for Kamala Harris.
I believed that another Trump administration would be much worse than his first chaotic one: worse for the climate, for environmental justice, for immigrants, for women, for young people – and for most of the people who actually voted for him. This because he has no intention of meeting their needs as he caters to his billionaire backers and works to destroy the “deep state” (what most of us refer to as “government”) through Project 2025.
I canvassed with Seed the Vote, which recruits, trains, and supports volunteers to door knock and phone bank with local partners in swing states. Their strategy is “block and build:” block Trump from another term while building the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Well, the “block” part didn’t work out, but I think the thousands of volunteers who worked with them helped lay the groundwork for what we must do going forward.
In small towns and suburbs outside Philadelphia, I talked with several Republicans as well as Democrats about the economy, and could certainly empathize with them in the way inflation caused me sticker shock at the supermarket for two years. But I also shared how prices have stopped rising and I see my recent food bills coming down.
When I shared my view that inflation was the result of several things that happened before Biden’s time in office – massive spending during the Trump administration to develop Covid 19 vaccines and payments to keep people afloat when their jobs disappeared (things I certainly supported), as well as supply chain woes and price gouging by corporations – they seemed interested in that line of thought. Some of these popular expenditures continued for a time under Biden.
Having civil conversations with people – even those with Trump signs in their yards – made me feel that things aren’t as dire as they seem when we hear Trump’s ravings about immigrants eating pets or a golfer’s penis size.
But now that Trump is returning to the White House, there is fear and trembling on the Left, as his second term promises to be more disciplined, following the Project 2025 playbook – a 900-page document with hundreds of specific proposals and job descriptions for the new federal employees who will carry them out.
The new regime will decimate or even eliminate federal agencies like the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency, appoint hundreds of new judges (easy-peasy with a Republican-controlled Senate), pass billionaire-friendly tax cuts and eviscerate our civil liberties. With MAGA controlling the White House, the Senate, the Supreme Court and likely the House of Representatives, things look grim indeed.
But, along with the mourning and the outrage, we are still organizing. Two days after the election, a coalition of 200 groups held a Zoom call with 120,000 people on it – that’s not a typo. At least 6,000 people signed up to learn how to host local gatherings to discuss a way forward. And I already participated in my first post-election march in New York City, called Protect Our Future.
With Trump’s promises to deport millions of immigrants (who do the essential work most U.S.-born Americans won’t), slap high tariffs on imports (which will send prices skyrocketing) and gut the Environmental Protection Agency, ramp up fossil fuel production, and withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement (all of which will portend climate chaos for all of our children and grandchildren), his second term would be a disaster not just for progressives and moderates, but for his own supporters. Elon Musk, just appointed by Trump to a soon-to-be created Department of Government Efficiency to eviscerate the federal budget, has admitted that such a move will “necessarily involve some temporary hardship.”
As Sen. Bernie Sanders and our own Sen. Chris Murphy have said, we need to be open to listening to and making common cause with Trump supporters who become disillusioned with their leader when he does nothing to help them buy a home or bring food prices down.
While it’s true that “justice delayed is justice denied,” it’s also true that the fight for political, racial, gender and worker rights can always win in the end. But under the Trump administration, because the physics of climate change are indifferent to politics, we may see our right to live on a planet with a stable climate disappear forever. Hopefully that will be enough to motivate all of us to action.
Melinda Tuhus lives in New Haven.