Introductory remarks presented by Elin Boman at Arise & Resist: Our Time to Act is Now conference, March 15, 2025
Welcome everyone. Thank you for coming to this follow up to our January 19th conference. Today we intend to develop organizing strategies and strengthen our resistance. But before we get to work, it’s important to review how we got here.
The current billionaire regime is a fusion of three projects which could never have won on their own. The first is a political project, the New Right, which has systematically been organizing to take power back since Goldwater’s defeat in 1964. When the Republicans stopped winning national office, they pivoted to winning more localized campaigns, including taking over school boards and rebuilding their base. Their ideology is grounded in contempt for the centralized government which maintains our social safety net.
The second project is fueled by the economic elite, who, also since the mid-60’s, have been stripping wealth from working families. It funded the New Right to increase their own wealth. For instance, the economic elite manipulated the tax code so they no longer had to pay taxes to fund wars that the poor and working class paid for not only with their taxes but also with their lives.
The third pillar of the current regime is the white supremacist movement that is rolling back the civil rights victories of the 1960s, launching a war on immigrants, and openly allying with neo-Nazis.
The merger of these projects triumphed in the last election with one repeated message: that white working peoples’ problems are caused by an incompetent government and stupid liberals; the solution is to cut taxes, shrink government, and push down all non-whites.
In short, we are experiencing a particularly vicious phase of class war, not unlike that waged at the height of the last Gilded Age, another time of immense wealth and income disparities. Yet, despite many commonalities, today’s struggle differs in one seminal aspect: back then, the U.S. was but a regional power. But in the wake of WWII, when the other Western nations lay in ruins, the U.S. emerged as the most powerful military and economic power in world history. Consequently, today’s ruling elite are even more ruthless, intent on maintaining their power and U.S. global dominance at all costs.
For 15 months, we watched our government actively prioritize supporting a regime conducting a genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza over meeting the needs of Americans enduring ever-worsening material conditions. Viewing Israel’s war crimes live-streamed to our smartphones and the brutal repression of U.S. university students demanding no U.S. arms to Israel deepened our understanding of how fundamental control over the Middle East is to U.S. global hegemony, and the profound threat that Palestinian liberation poses to it.
Our path is clear. We have to develop long term strategies to build a majoritarian movement. Their narrative and their organizing strategy is based on division. We need to counter it with a narrative of unity. We can unite people around their shared interests in economic, political, and social democracy and peace with justice.
Of course, we have no choice but to keep opposing, protesting, and refusing to cooperate. But as we denounce, we also have to build unity. We need to develop relationships that draw in new people, keep them involved, and model the society we want to build. We have to work together to support and protect people hurt by the cuts and attacks.
The four projects that came out of our January 19 conference will do exactly that. Our rapid response network will defend immigrants and mobilize us for protests. Our second network will broaden support for Palestinian rights. Our third network will mobilize opposition to billionaire tax cuts funded by cuts in essential social programs. And we’ll bring it all together with a protest in Concord on the 250th anniversary of the American revolution.
