Building an Opposition to Survive the Trump Era

by UB Center for Urban Studies · 02/03/2026

Mass protests have demonstrated a wide range of disagreement with the Trump agenda. But we need smaller local and regional networks to build a more rooted, sustained opposition.

Firelei Báez, *Untitled*, 2013. © Firelei Baez. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Americans roundly oppose Donald Trump’s authoritarian regime and the miserable state of the country. While the president claims that he has a mandate on “mass deportations,” 62 percent of the public opposes his draconian immigration policies. Outraged people in liberal and conservative towns and cities nationwide have come together to defend their neighbors from the terror of abductions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Meanwhile, more than 60 percent of adults blame Trump for the rising costs of groceries — a signature campaign issue of his — and half say his policies are making them worse off financially.

But given the scale of the onslaught, there is a sense that people aren’t resisting enough. The New York Times Opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg described the apparent conundrum: “There’s less hope and more resignation” now compared to Trump’s first term. “In the last election Trump won the popular vote, and most demographics shifted rightward. The resistance has seemed exhausted and demoralized, and leaders in business, law and academia have adjusted accordingly,” she wrote.

Mass protests have demonstrated disagreement with the Trump agenda. But protests have generally been fragmented and localized, proving to be little more than speed bumps for Trump’s reckless agenda. What we need to build a more sustained resistance, one that can pose a real threat to the Trump regime, are more rooted, sustained local and regional networks.

Protest is the continuity from the first Trump presidency to the second. From the iconic Women’s March after Inauguration Day in 2017 to the historic uprisings in the summer of 2020, no other president in modern U.S. history has endured thousands of protests and demonstrations against almost every facet of his administration. During Trump’s first term, the Crowd Counting Consortium tracked upwards of 60,000 protests involving at least 21 million people, describing the outpouring as probably “the biggest sustained protest movement in U.S. history.” The mass movement of 2020 was instrumental in pushing Trump out of office and ushering in the Joe Biden presidency. But even as Biden began to betray his campaign promises, his administration met little resistance. That’s until the Palestine solidarity encampments broke through in the spring of 2024.

By: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Summer 2025

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