Fighting for What We Need!

Join the Workers Strike Back February Conference and Fight the Rich!

January 28, 2025 by Patrick Gibson

Workers Strike Back members at Trump Inauguration Protest in Chicago

In November, disgust with the Democratic Party led to a crushing defeat for Harris, and the return of Donald Trump to the White House. Hundreds of thousands of working people cast their vote against both of the warmongering, anti-worker parties with over 775,000 people voting for Jill Stein for president. Others who previously voted Democratic refused to vote at all.

The responsibility for Trump’s election lies entirely at the doorstep of the Democrats. Rather than oppose the genocidal war or support popular issues like Medicare for All, the Democratic Party ran to the right, angering their base and handing the White House to Trump. Now it appears Democrats plan to run further to the right, as we saw in Biden’s final weeks in office. Working people who want to fight Trump’s reactionary policies should not expect Democratic Party to in any way offer an alternative or serious resistance to Trump. 

Working people need to fight back by building an organized movement independent of both these bankrupt parties. This is why Workers Strike Back is organizing a conference on February 22, 2025 in Seattle, called “Fight the Rich and Their Two Parties.” This will be a place where workers, young people and students, members of oppressed communities, anti-war organizations and others can come together and discuss the next steps in building our movements.

While we’ll be live-streaming the conference, our experience has shown us that in-person discussion and debate is far more productive than a meeting conducted online via Zoom. If you want to attend the conference this February, you should register online and begin making travel arrangements as soon as possible!

We need to build a working-class anti-war movement independent of the Democrats demanding an end to all funding for the Israeli state and for a permanent end to the genocide and occupation. This will include helping union members to fight for resolutions in their unions calling for an end to US military intervention in the Middle East, an end to the repression of student protests, and coordinated days of union action against the war. Students, meanwhile, should organize protests that bring their powerful movements off the narrow confines of college campuses—focusing their fire directly on the politicians responsible for funding the genocide in Gaza, rather than narrower issue of institutional divestment.

We cannot rely on the Democrats to defend against mass deportations. We should instead organize actions that disrupt business as usual and raise clear demands such as banning workplace raids, immediate legal status for all undocumented immigrants, while explaining how it’s crucial that immigrant and native-born workers stand together against the billionaire agenda. These actions could include mass civil disobedience such as when our movement shutdown SeaTac airport in response to Trump’s Muslim travel ban. Union members should be prepared to use the power of strike action against attacks on immigrants and other working people.

We also need to go on the offensive, with demands to fund free abortion access for out-of-state travelers and make their cities into abortion sanctuaries where anti-abortion laws won’t be enforced, like our movement and Kshama Sawant’s socialist council office did in Seattle.

And we should fight for every union contract won this year to have its expiration on May 1, 2028, to prepare the ground for UAW President Shawn Fain’s call for a general strike. A strike by many major unions at once could create a crisis for the capitalist class and both parties of big business. We should also fight for our unions to stop wasting millions of dollars donating to the Democratic Party.

In addition to the “Fight the Rich” conference on February 22, current members of Workers Strike Back will be meeting the following day to hold our first national convention. Workers Strike Back has been producing the On Strike broadcast for the past year and a half, and played an important role in the campaigns to defend the minimum wage in Seattle, to expand the Amazon Tax to fund affordable housing, to support union organizing at Amazon, and to get out the vote for Jill Stein. At this meeting, WSB members will elect a national steering committee and prepare the basis for more branches to be launched across the country.

The broad disgust with both the Republicans and Democrats in this election shows the huge opening that exists for a new, anti-war political party for working people. We need to build stronger movements to be able to launch a new working-class party that can provide an alternative to the two parties of big business.

That’s why this coming February, we’re getting organized so we can show what independent politics looks like in action. Attend the organizing conference in Seattle on February 22 and help lay the groundwork in 2025 for independent movements against both the Republicans and Democrats in the years to come.

Register for the February Organizing Conference