AND
2025 was another year, marked by blood by the genocide against the Palestinian people, and other terrors of wars proxied by the White House. The destructive desire is manifested internally in the racist persecution of immigrants, which also becomes a business, and in the destruction of institutions in the United States and its, now more than evident, weak democracy.
Yet Tope Folarin, director of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, DC, writes in his year-end newsletter, “that despite the relentless attacks on our neighbors, our cities, and our democracy, we feel almost…hopeful. Because, in many ways, the movements we are a part of at IPS are rising to the occasion. As the Trump administration plummets in the polls and looks for scapegoats, progressives have scored impressive victories at the state and local levels.” (own translation)”.
Folarin cites 10 outstanding victories highlighted by Sarah Anderson and Chris Mills Rodrigo in the fight against inequality in 2025. Illustrating achievements of everyday struggles is more important than ever, particularly in the United States in a clear political and social crisis, driven by a man who has managed not only to seize power for the second time but also to force practically every large capitalist company to accept that to achieve unprecedented economic gains it is worth taking from the poorest the little they have (https://inequality.org/article/10-inequality-victories-of-2025/).
In contrast to the moral degradation propagated by the American president, I think of the philosopher Martha Nussbaum and her theory of the intuition of a dignified human life in which people have the capacity to pursue their conception of the good in cooperation with others. And, of course, in the antithesis of capitalism that the Zapatista movement represents, close to celebrating 32 years of its uprising against the overwhelming single thought of neoliberalism.
Anderson and Mills, of the IPS, list “fights against inequality at the polls” and the victory of the democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in the mayoralty of the most economically powerful city in the country, New York. In 2025, the victories of Democrat Kate Wilson, in the city of Seattle, and those of Ellen Higgins, the first woman, and also a Democrat, for mayor of Miami, and Abigail Spanberger for governor of the crucial state of Virginia, will be added. These and other triumphs point to an optimistic view of the 2026 midterm elections, which will define the course of the United States.
Anderson and Mills continue with labor rights victories such as those of Starbucks “baristas,” whose fight began in 2020, and who this past year achieved significant success in New York by forcing the company to pay $38 million after a municipal government agency discovered that the stale (I say) coffee company had committed systematic violations regarding working hours. And they explain how mega-events, like the Olympics, tend to exacerbate inequality in host cities. With the Olympic Games approaching in Los Angeles, working people are fighting to reverse this gentrification trend, demanding housing and wage increases. In May 2025, they won approval for an “Olympic salary” for hotel and airport employees. When the 2028 Olympics begin, the minimum wage in Los Angeles will be $30 an hour!
In Utah, there were significant victories for the Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which won the first national contract with JBS, the largest meat processing company in the world, covering 26,000 workers, mostly immigrants, including wage increases and benefits. Another victory was that of United National Nurses, which “showed that it is possible to win in the deeply conservative and anti-union south of the United States.”
Other notable successes consisted of raising taxes on the rich to finance human needs. They cite voters in Seattle who approved a ballot measure to tax excessive CEO compensation to fund public housing. Anderson and Mills cite Seattle activist and economist John Burbank, who declared that this vote was a victory against “oligarchs, Amazon, Microsoft, the local Chamber of Commerce, the real estate sector, (…) the Muskites and the Trumpists.” In Colorado, rich people with incomes of more than $300,000 annually were taxed to finance free school meals, production of locally grown food, and increased wages for cafeteria workers.
Progress has also been made against fossil fuels. For example, to fund universal child care in the state of New Mexico, families will save an average of $12,000 a year… “a real game-changer for low-income households in one of the poorest states in the country.” New taxes on wealthy people have also been adopted in several states such as Maryland, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Washington. In Illinois, they have clamped down on corporate tax evasion.
We can add many more to these victories. The newspaper Guardian recounts 14 stories that have been published this year “and that give us reasons to be optimistic about next year, from scientific advances to communities that come together after climate catastrophes, through individual feats of heroism and perseverance.” The newspaper says that in 2025 there was more hope than one could imagine (own translation, see for example the growing wave of human rights activism, from migrants to LGBT people, in the United States. https://tinyurl.com/4mdf5txx”.
It is difficult and even guilty to try to feel optimism in the face of the current debacle, but as the Zapatista phrase says “our profession is hope” and it is urgent and necessary to adopt it.
