The United States is changing in ways that are leaving many people afraid. What could improve the chances of rebalancing power among the branches of government and advancing that to multiracial democracy? The answer is worker organizing, say Alex Han and Tarso Luís Ramos. When we look at the history of U-turns from democratic backsliding to democratic revival, the success rate generally is about 50 percent, says Ramos. Where there is active, vibrant union participation, the odds go up to over 80 percent. So what is holding labor back?
I sat down with Ramos and Han at a conference on working-class politics in an age of authoritarianism that was held at the City University of New York School of Labor and Urban Studies in New York City. Ramos is a leading expert on the US right and longtime former executive director of Political Research Associates. He now serves as senior adviser to Future Currents, a strategic planning group of social and economic justice leaders. Han has spent decades in the labor movement as an organizer and elected president of a large Chicago local. In 2023, he became executive director of In These Times, the long-running, Chicago-based progressive magazine.
Laura Flanders: How would you describe the situation in which we find ourselves right now?
Tarso Luís Ramos: Drawing on the work of a Hungarian sociologist who’s been popularized by M. Gessen [Balint Magyar], if we think of three stages of authoritarian acceleration—authoritarian attempt, breakthrough, and consolidation—we’ve experienced multiple attempts in the United States, most famously or notoriously on January 6. We are past attempt now; we’re in breakthrough. And my assessment is we probably have between 12 and 18 months at the most to try to stop and forestall authoritarian consolidations, the conditions under which any honest person would say that we are functioning under an authoritarian regime. We’re in the middle of two coups. The authoritarian block represented by MAGA with Christian nationalists and libertarians and sectors of the business community and the Christian right being its largest player, who galvanized around Project 2025. I think the coup that we did not prepare for was the force accelerator that most people experience as DOGE. It’s the Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen set of actors, who are not only lending their support to that but who have a different end game. They’re not so much interested in a strong state through which to advance authoritarian and pro-business policies or merely to enrich themselves, although they are enriching themselves. They are not interested in the nation-state system. They’re interested in wringing the profits out of the public sector, and they’re interested in accelerating the demise of civilian governance altogether.
LF: We’re talking about authoritarian consolidation, but I would also like the two of you to respond to the election results, which some at least interpreted as showing that there was a growing working-class base of multiracial people for the Trump agenda. Were they just wrong?
Alex Han: We do have a divided country where partisanship reflects a set of different cultural questions. There is no magic bullet that is going to shift it. It’s also that the changes in political coalition, electoral coalition, these things are not gigantic shifts. These are gradual changes that can be pushed back in different ways. As people who are very engaged in politics day to day, we are not normal everyday people. The kind of changes and shifts of mindset that regular everyday voters, especially those who show up every four years in a presidential election, are not deeply felt beliefs. There is this contestation for a chunk of the electorate. There’s contestation for a chunk of people who have dropped out of the electorate. There’s a contestation for people who have not come into the electorate yet. That’s what we have to think about.
TLR: Trump certainly benefits from the mass base. It’s probably a consolidated 40-million-person block in the United States that is pro authoritarian, believes that the exercise of political violence is totally legitimate to accomplish their goals. He benefited from a global phenomenon of the crisis of legitimacy of the economic and political order. Far right parties like the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party], the Hindu fascist party that governs India, to neoliberal parties like Macron in France sending that country into political crisis in terms of a governing coalition. There was a certain level of “throw the bums out” that really helped Trump in that period of time.
To Alex’s earlier point, a 40 percent approval rate and falling is nothing to build a lasting regime around. Those numbers are going to fall, because of the economic destabilization that the Trump regime is causing. We’re only beginning to really feel the ripple effects of the supply-chain issues and the mass firings and dislocations. Those are going to create tremendous organizing opportunities for us. They’re also going to create incredible incentives for repression. Both of those things are true. There are examples, like the United Democratic Front in South Africa. There were parts of the business community that joined that, not because they were interested in racial equality, because it came to the conclusion that apartheid was bad for business. You had the Freedom Charter in which 50,000 organizers fanned out across the country. They collected people’s ideas, and they produced a vision statement about how they were going to improve the lives of everybody in that country if apartheid was defeated. You had a positive vision, but then you had a mass coalition that brought together people who, in many cases, were antagonists.
LF: Is that why you’re here at a labor conference, looking for that kind of thinking and organizing?
TLR: I’ll tell you one of the reasons I’m at a labor conference is when we look at the history of U-turns from democratic backsliding to democratic revival, the success rate is about 50 percent. Now, that’s not terrible. That means there’s hope. But that’s a coin toss. Where there’s active, vibrant union participation, the odds go up to about 80. Without active central participation by working people in the organizations that represent them, we don’t win. Or it’s a coin toss whether we do. And so, I’m interested in winning.
LF: In These Times focuses heavily on labor. Is this why?
AH: I don’t think you can have democratic socialism without organized workers demanding more and creating democracy. Labor unions—with all of their faults—are the largest democratic organizations that almost anybody in this country has any experience with. Organizations where you elect your leaders, where you decide on those policies, where you have to work with, you don’t self-select who’s in the union. It’s whoever works in a given place. I’ve thought about the centrality of Kilmar Ábrego García’s union membership in kind of lifting up that story.
LF: A steel worker. The steel worker who was—
AH: Yeah, a sheet metal worker—
LF: Abducted.
AH: Right, who was abducted to El Salvador. I don’t think the kind of response would be that sustained were he not a union member. And so that tradition of mutual aid and solidarity, as much as in some places, those traditions have been a bit worn out, I think those are things that can be reenergized. It was so inspiring to me when I saw a video from the National Association of Building Trades Unions, saw the president say, “We have to bring our brother back,” and you saw everybody in the room stand up and cheer.
LF: Perhaps we’re thinking about where those moments might be in front of us or even visible today. I think of Grace Paley’s book, [Enormous] Changes at the Last Minute. When the explosion of organizing by Chicago teachers hit the national consciousness, it was like a surprise from no place. But obviously, for people who were in Chicago, this work had been going on for many years. So one of the questions I have for you, Alex, is what are you looking out for?
AH: You have all of these different union members who are bargaining contracts over the next several years. Some of the interesting places are going to be where workers are in motion and organizing, and where that can kind of sync up with some of the existing contract and potential strike activity over the next several years. You mentioned the Chicago Teachers Union. That’s a project that doesn’t happen without a democratic bottom-up movement inside that union, creating change, changing the leadership, and putting them on a fighting footing. We’ve seen over the last several years new leadership in the UAW really revitalize that union.
LF: How do each of you stop from getting numb?
AH: I think when it comes to Trumpism, it’s been with us for so long now, that one almost begins to just feel, “This again. This again.”