Donald Trump’s electoral victory, on top of the House and Senate’s capture by the GOP, combined with a far Right Supreme Court means that MAGA has control of all branches of the government. This has been a devastating loss to absorb.
We know that having a slumlord back in the White House with his entourage of far Right billionaires, will mean deep pain for our communities. And we aren’t under the illusion that any one politician or party would give our people all that we need but that the terrain we organize on will impact BIPOC communities and the working class broadly, and that the terrain is now far less favorable to us.
The election results have shown us that people are tired of the neoliberal order and the inflation, rent spikes, and lack of affordable housing that have been central to many of our lives. At the beginning of the pandemic, a little more than four years ago, we saw an expansion of the social safety net, a moratorium on evictions, relief checks in the mail, and generous unemployment benefits–all under the Trump Administration. We know that Trump signed off on many of these reforms out of a cynical attempt to maintain voter base, or under massive social and market pressure.
During the Biden Administration people were able to make notable gains when it came to protecting the rights of workers and working class communities, but we also experienced a sharp drop-off in pandemic-era protections, including a failure to extend the eviction moratorium, which impacted millions, and rising inflation due to unbounded corporate profiteering. Our takeaway is that tens of millions of voters felt they were better off under a Trump administration, and that many–like their counterparts across the world– looked to punish parties that they believe want to maintain the neoliberal status quo.
But it's not all bad news: even though it has been dire at the top of the ticket, we saw voters across the country vote in progressive ballot measures that centered worker, racial and gender justice, like minimum wage increases, paid sick leave provisions, state constitutional rights to abortion, and public education protections. We have seen how important housing affordability and security is to the vast majority of people in the U.S. In other words, progressive policies do resonate. We need to continue to fight for the necessary reforms that will shore up our people.And we need to support and uplift candidates who will join us in that fight.
The incoming Trump administration has been crystal clear about their priorities, with well funded think tanks ready to implement Project 2025, and clear intentions: Make no mistake, from the White House to state legislature, the MAGA-controlled GOP are going to attack our people relentlessly. First with a blitz of mass deportations of our undocumented neighbors, and then with repression of everyone who is branded as their political enemies, all the while forcing through a destruction of governmental and social institutions, and instituting a brutal climate of corporate deregulation.
With the recent passage of HR 9495 dubbed the “nonprofit killer” bill, it appears our progressive infrastructure is under attack, with our Palestinian and Arab colleagues at the top of that list. We are clear that we will need to do everything in our power to support and defend our neighbors, organizations, and our communities.
Big real estate interests and landlords will be emboldened by this new administration and will raise rents, continue to evict, fight attempts by their tenants to organize, and they will continue to lobby for financial deregulations that will make purchasing a home harder and harder. Which is why we will fight them and continue to build our power and win the policies that will support our people in having permanently affordable, safe, and secure homes.
As RTTC, Executive Director Dawn Phillips put it:
“This is EXACTLY why we build and have organizations. Because moments like these require that we lean into community and collective action. That we do not isolate and despair. That we exercise our best emotional AND strategic intelligence. Our organization is here and we are working on figuring out how to prepare for what comes next. What we knew to be true before is definitive now, we MUST continue to organize, to fight for ourselves and our peoples' and not let darkness overcome light, hope and love. We got each other and together we can, and will, face what comes next.”
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