Image by Kayla Velasquez.
Journalists attacked, discredited, and labeled “enemies of the people.” Loyalty tests. Court rulings ignored. Judges harassed. Whistleblowers discredited. Protesters rebranded as “extremists” by people who actually are. Books banned. Curricula rewritten to serve a political agenda so thinly veiled it might as well be written in all caps. A sitting president refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. A violent attempt to overturn an election. Open calls for mass deportations. Billionaire oligarchs handed sweeping control over federal agencies while Congress pretends not to notice.
If any of this feels familiar, it should (and if it doesn’t, go crack open a history book—seriously). These aren’t policy disagreements. They’re not growing pains or partisan squabbles. They’re part of a pattern—a playbook used by dictators and strongmen for centuries to consolidate power and unravel democracy from the inside. Usually while insisting they’re the last hope of the nation.
If there’s one principle that should’ve been baked into this country’s DNA from the start, it’s this: opposition to authoritarianism is essential to a free society.
That principle, of course, was never universally applied. Enslaved people, Indigenous nations, women, and everyone else excluded from the so-called freedom project could tell you that. But the idea—the principle itself—is still worth defending. Preferably while it still has a pulse.
And it’s on every American who still gives a damn—not just about what this country is, but about what it claims to be—to push back. To resist authoritarianism wherever it shows up, no matter what party it hides behind. We weren’t built to obey power. We weren’t built to be ruled by kings. The American tradition, at its best, is rooted in resistance to unchecked authority—and in the faint, annoying belief that human dignity might still matter more than institutional control.
Strongmen like Trump don’t protect liberty—they suffocate it. They strip rights, hollow out institutions, and hoard power at the top—usually while reminding you how much they love the Constitution, even as they’re using it as a coaster. And when we stop speaking up and speaking out—whether out of fear, burnout, or just the understandable urge to log off—we hand over one of the most essential tools any democracy has: dissent.
The First Amendment protects your right to yell at the government—to speak truth to power. But it’s not just that we’re allowed to speak—we’re obligated to. And sometimes that means being loud enough to make people uncomfortable. Protest. Pushback. Call bullshit when the state overreaches or flirts openly with fascism. These aren’t luxuries. They’re the bare minimum. The foundation of freedom.
Several of the founding fathers said some version of “dissent is patriotic.” But I’d argue it goes further than patriotism. Dissent is a civic responsibility. The founders didn’t fear tyranny as an abstract theory, but as a real and recurring danger. They built imperfect mechanisms—checks, balances, the right to refuse—to guard against it. And they expected us to use them. They expected us to stand up and fight when the ideals were under threat. Preferably with our words first—but emphatically, and out loud.
This isn’t a call for violence. Violence is the tool of the tyrant. Our tools are different. Our weapons are our voices, our bodies, our presence—our shared refusal to pretend this is normal. History offers examples—Dr. King, Gandhi—of how moral resistance can shift the trajectory of a nation. Usually not quickly. And never quietly.
And now, after months of stunned silence following the election, maybe that resistance is starting to wake up again. On April 5th, more than a million people took to the streets in over 1,200 cities and towns as part of the Hands Off! protests—rallying against Trump, Musk, and the billionaire power grab currently elbowing democratic institutions out of the way. It wasn’t scattered or symbolic. It was massive, coordinated, loud—and peaceful. And there’s reason to think it was just the start.
One of the groups helping push that momentum is 50501—short for “50 protests, 50 states, one movement” (originally: one day). The project started on Reddit, grew legs, and is now a broader grassroots coalition aimed at resisting authoritarian overreach. They weren’t the sole organizers of April 5th, but they played a key role in amplifying it—and they’re already organizing another national protest for April 19th. The message isn’t vague, and it’s not performative. It’s a direct response to Trump’s second-term agenda and the ongoing normalization of executive power unchecked by law, ethics, or precedent.
In the brief and occasionally aspirational history of this country, we’ve hit a few moments like this before—times when things could’ve turned toward something much darker, and only didn’t because enough people refused to shrug and look away. I think we’re in another one of those moments now.
We can rise to meet it. We can raise our voices and insist on the democratic principles buried inside the Constitution. Or we can sit down, lower our voices to a polite whisper, and watch as this nation joins the long list of societies that quietly surrendered to authoritarian rule.
The choice is ours—and history will remember what we did with it.
After April 5th, I’m cautiously hopeful for the first time in a long while. Not because anything’s been fixed—but because enough people finally made it impossible to pretend they aren’t paying attention. And with another wave of protests planned for April 19th, there’s a chance to show that the Hands Off! protests weren’t just a flash in the pan—they were a wake-up call. And maybe the beginning of something bigger.
© Counter Punch
