Jim Cason and David Brooks
Correspondents
La Jornada Newspaper
Wednesday, January 21, 2026, p. 3
Washington and New York. Religious leaders, union members, community activists, students and artists across the country are part of a growing wave of opposition and resistance to the right-wing policies and agenda of Donald Trump, whose expressions throughout his first year as president are the largest popular protests in the history of the United States.
“Go out and walk against fascism,” cried high school students who left their classrooms on Tuesday in the capital of this country to mark the first anniversary of the president, while in Minnesota state unions, churches, small business owners, university students and community organizations have called for a statewide strike this Friday, and protest actions are multiplying in various parts of the country, from vigils to marches to actions in defense of immigrants.
In Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, Charlotte and New Orleans, among others, whistles – a symbol of resistance – are heard every day to warn of raids by federal agents.
“In the year since Trump returned to office, the number of protests in the United States has already exceeded those that occurred in the same period of his first administration,” reports Guardian this week based on calculations from Harvard University. “There were more than 10,700 protests in 2025, an increase of 133 percent from the 4,588 recorded in 2017, the first year of Trump’s first presidency.” Experts add that at least one protest has been recorded in almost every county in the country, including hundreds that were won by Trump.
Those expressions of resistance have included the largest national marches ever recorded under the banner of “No Kings” last summer, with 5 to 7 million participating in a single day in actions in thousands of towns and cities, as well as in small but constant symbolic events almost every week.
And this resistance has not been limited to demonstrations and marches in the streets and squares, but in daily events. Teachers, along with parents, have coordinated to protect students from threats from federal agents; volunteers have trained with their neighbors to establish local immigrant protection committees in their communities; Mutual assistance projects deliver food and other aid to neighbors who are afraid to go out into the streets.
In the trenches against the right-wing offensive against education and culture, there are unexpected people as part of the resistance: librarians, museum curators, nurses, scientists and more face attempts to censor books, exhibitions and historical narratives, and attacks against education and public health.
New ecumenical coalitions sprout with people of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist and more faiths nurturing resistance and creating new expressions of opposition and defense of ethics – from Christmas nativity scenes that condemn the persecution of refugees like Jesus to vigils in front of detention centers, to contingents on marches. A new American Pope has appointed cardinal defenders of immigrants and refugees to New York City and Palm Beach, where Trump has his personal Mar-a-Lago club-residence.
▲ Act in support of Greenland in front of Trump Tower in New York.Photo Afp
Artists support migrants
Famous and not so famous artists join the chorus against Trump’s policies, from his attack on culture and the promotion of censorship to attacks against immigrants: Bad Bunny; Bruce Springsteen, who this week called for immigration to “get out and stop screwing Minneapolis”; the band Green Day shouting in Spanish “chinga la migra”; as well as actors like Jane Fonda, Mark Ruffalo and Susan Sarandon and countless other artists giving rhythm and verses and a little beauty to the resistance.
All of this does not stop at just cries of anger and actions of defense and solidarity, it also translates into political changes in the electoral arena. The triumph of the new democratic socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani in the capital of capital and the main city of the country, New York; the election of another democratic socialist, Katie Wilson, as mayor of Seattle; the re-election of the exceptional progressive Michelle Wu as mayor of Boston, among others, show the emergence of a new progressive generation in the shadow of the right. Direct confrontations with the Trump administration by more centrist opposition politicians such as the governors of Illinois and California, the mayors of Chicago and Los Angeles, Charlotte and even New Orleans, and electoral victories by Democratic candidates in recent races in Miami, and for governor of Virginia and New Jersey, are in part perceived as responses to the right’s attempt to prevail across the country.
The White House tries to control the narrative, through its media strategy, that it has absolute control of the country, but every day it is proven that this is false. In fact, the president has had to deploy armed forces in Los Angeles and has threatened to do the same in Seattle, Chicago, New York and now Minneapolis and even invoke the old Insurrection Law to impose military and political control of those cities, although he has had to back down due to the combination of internal opposition and court rulings.
From the beginning, Trump has accused all opponents, critics and opponents as being “radical left” and declared that protests and civil disobedience actions are promoted by “anarchists” and “communists” who want to destroy this country. Some warn that he seeks to provoke to justify the repression and control of cities and states led by his opponents and/or to create a constant spectacle that, he believes, will benefit his allies in the electoral sphere. That he and his cabinet members are willing to beat, arrest and even kill American citizens, even white ones, sends shivers down the spines of some who conclude that this government is capable of anything.
But the fact is that despite the threats, murders, arrests, abuses of basic rights and civil liberties, not only has he failed to impose silence, but the response is increasingly louder as he reaches one year into his government.
The whistles are heard.
