After serving as an MC at Baltimore's version of 2025 spring resistance rallies, Johns Hopkins University political scientist Lester Spence has tried to figure out: where do we go from here? His edited reflections seem important to share.
Folks used the rallies to lash local efforts to national ones and to provide proof-of-concept and to present political opportunities for people who weren’t connected on the other. ... If the May Day rally represented coalition proof-of-concept, No Kings represented proof that there were thousands of people looking to join something bigger than themselves.
... However, both skewed older and white. ...
Baltimore has been and remains segregated, even though it is increasingly multi-cultural and multi-racial. ... There aren’t that many of us connected to both worlds. Which makes political organizing between them difficult.
Alongside local segregation there’s the political dynamic generated by the Trump administration. Its secret police attacks on Latinx populations ... have politically and socially demobilized them to the point where many find it difficult to conduct normal day-to-day activity much less engage in political activism. The level of courage required for Latinx public participation cannot be overstated. Nor can the viciousness of state attacks against them. And then [there's the] “let’s sit this one out” rhetoric unique to black Baltimore communities ...
... I’d suggest that for the average No King’s Day attendee in particular, what they’re experiencing now—with cuts to USAID and other federal government bodies—may be the first time they’ve experienced the underside of the American state. ... This isn’t quite the case for Latinx populations although perhaps it hasn’t been as vicious as this. And this isn’t quite the case for black populations in Baltimore, particularly working class ones. ...
Neither rallies really spoke to this as effectively as they could have (and as I was one of the MCs, I bear responsibility). Going forward we have to bring together three populations—the white populations bearing government cuts (but not experiencing police violence), the black populations (experiencing local police violence), and the Latino populations (experiencing national police violence). At the very least that means showing up for rallies.
But it also means generating popular education programs that can generate understanding about the shared (yet unique) nature of these struggles. And then lashing them up to political projects that combine electoral strategies—putting people in office at the local, state, and national level—with referenda strategies.
What those of us connected to the efforts that skew white and old have to do is work within those spaces to get people within them to commit to broader action. That broader action has to first involve getting people within these groups to see that the fascist turn didn’t start with Trump and didn’t move from Germany to here.
In developing this new understanding people have to get that these dynamics affect all of us, no matter where we are. The ally point of view would have us believe that there are certain populations who are affected and certain populations who aren’t. The role of the ally is to recognize how certain populations are affected and then aid them in their struggles.
This is wrong. It quite simply isn’t the case that there are people who aren’t affected and people who are. It is true that there are populations who are the victims of discriminate indiscriminate police violence and populations who don’t tend to be. ... [but] everyone loses materially and psychically.
This dynamic has to then translate into action. And working on the idea that it’s just a bit at a time, it isn’t about generating the equivalent of a May Day march among people who haven’t ever marched. It is, though, about getting people to commit to actions designed to change local conditions. Knowing that changing those local conditions end up building the community we need to change national conditions.
That last point is important. We need local actions. Some of this from Spence seems peculiarly Baltimore-oriented. Baltimore is not California. In California, Latinos and various Asian-origin groups and individuals are more easily central to the resistance mix and can lead the way.
I don't know whether I agree with his implication that the time for big marches is past. There are plenty of people who still need to experience the high that goes with seeing our numbers. And our numbers are increasing according to all public polling. People don't like the incompetence and cruelty on display in the Trump regime. So long as we are able to come together at scale, it's good that we should.
When people ask what they can do to fight the BUMP, the Big Ugly MAGA Power, my first answer these days is to talk with and bring in more of your neighbors. We need to grow. That increases the value of the little local actions blossoming everywhere. One such outpouring, the TeslaTakedown, went national and helped crash Trump's brother-in-destruction.
Support all the little campaigns cropping up, as you are able. Support immigrants, individually and collectively. Support trans people, on whom the assault is life-threatening. Support teachers. Support union workers. Get the communities you belong to engaged. This is a time for creativity and boldness. The Trump project is vicious, but it is also phony, a house of cards. Let's blow their house down with our numbers.
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