In the last week and a half, we have seen an important beginning upsurge of mass outrage and defiance in the streets, from decent people in this country who had been all too quiet and silent in the first days of the Trump fascist regime. As we covered last week, on the weekend of February 1-2, rowdy protests overwhelmingly of young people took over a freeway in Los Angeles, confronted tear-gassing police in West Phoenix, marched on a busy highway outside Atlanta, and manifested in many other places across the U.S. (see here and here). 

The protests continued this past week, with people acting against the ICE roundups and other attacks on immigrants and also speaking out against other aspects of the Trump-MAGA assaults—with more people starting to call the Trump regime “fascist.” 

On Monday, hundreds protested at NYU Langone Hospital, which shamefully is obeying Trump’s order denying health care for trans youth. An AMNY news report noted the protesters “stressed that the decision to deny such care to trans youth is a matter of life and death, and their fury hinged on the fear that struggling children could lose their lives to self-harm.” A few days earlier, Dr. Jeffrey Birnbaum, a pediatrician who treats young trans patients at state-run University Hospital in Brooklyn, was quoted in the New York Times as saying that he has been telling his patients, “I’m willing to go to jail to continue to provide your care.” This righteous stand should inspire other healthcare providers—who take care of trans patients, women needing abortion, and others harmed by the fascist assaults on the health and welfare of millions—to defy Trump and his gang.

Also on Monday, some restaurants and shops in cities across the country closed for the day, and parents kept children from school, for “A Day Without Immigrants”—to put a spotlight on the essential role that immigrants play in the economy and daily life of this country. 

On Tuesday, a thousand people protested at the Treasury Department building in Washington, D.C., against the takeover of major parts of the government by Trump’s right-hand man Elon Musk and the shutting down of various programs in this country and around the world, putting millions of lives at risk. On the same day in D.C., hundreds of protesters denounced Trump and Israel’s Netanyahu (aka Netan-nazi), the first official foreign visitor to the Trump White House. One banner said “Prime Minister of Genocide” with a picture of Netan-nazi with a bloody hand. And in Atlanta, protesters outside the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters, including Emory University students, called out Trump’s choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, the vaccine-denying Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

On Wednesday, protests sprung up at state capitals and other cities around the country, targeting in particular Project 2025, the fascist manifesto that a lot of Trump’s horrific moves are based on, as well as other aspects of Trump’s onslaught. These actions began from social media word-of-mouth, growing in size in just a few days and including many people who are new to protests. One news report gave a sense of the range of issues people raised: “In Philadelphia, protesters gathered outside of a federal courthouse holding signs that said ‘TRUMP + MUSK ARE NOT KINGS’ and ‘RESIST.’ In Madison, Wisconsin, demonstrators at the state capitol held signs objecting to fascism, Elon Musk, and the conservative manifesto Project 2025. In Lansing, Michigan, about 500 people demonstrated outside the state capitol denouncing Trump’s plans for Gaza, the rollback of transgender rights, and the federal government’s mass deportation efforts under Trump.” In Des Moines, Iowa, protesters went into the state capitol building to disrupt an event by the fascist “parents’ rights” group Moms for Liberty, with some getting arrested. One protester said, “I will not let fascism wash over Iowa without a fight." In Salem, Oregon, a protester said that Project 2025 “targets our immigrants, our Native Americans, our Indigenous people, women and children, and it's unsafe, and we're here to stop it.” 

A notable development in the past week were walkouts by high school students across the country. Hundreds of students from different high schools walked out and converged every day in downtown Los Angeles. This is the “birthright generation”—youths with U.S. citizenship whose immigrant parents were or still are undocumented. There were student actions in other schools across Southern California. On Thursday, hundreds walked out of Apple Valley High School 90 miles northeast of LA and did a 10-mile march. On Friday, a hundred students from Buena Park High School in Orange County, along with parents, protested outside the school, angry over a reactionary school staff member's anti-Mexican social media post.

Some of the other student walkouts across the country: Rockford, IL—East High School students walked out against attacks on immigrants; San Antonio, TX—"At least a hundred people gathered at San Antonio City Hall Wednesday for a student-led protest against the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant and anti-trans policies.”; Denver, CO—"Hundreds of Denver Public Schools students, some carrying handmade signs and others with Mexican flags draped over their shoulders, left school Wednesday and walked to the Colorado capitol to join a massive protest against President Donald Trump.”; Redwood City, CA—Over 600 students, parents, and faculty from several schools in the area marched to the Civic Center against attacks on immigrants; Tulsa, OK—Hundreds walked out from Will Rogers Middle and High School. One young woman had a sign saying, "The Holocaust started with deportations."

Where THE REVCOM CORPS For The Emancipation Of Humanity and other revcoms and revcom supporters were able to be among the protesters in different areas through the week, people were very receptive and drawn to the message they brought, concentrated in the slogans “NO! In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America!” and “The Whole System Is Rotten and Illegitimate—We Need and We Demand: A Whole New Way to Live, A Fundamentally Different System!”

Protests continued through the weekend, including a thousand people marching through the streets of Fruitvale District in Oakland, California, against attacks on immigrants. A member of THE REVCOM CORPS For The Emancipation Of Humanity, SF Bay Area, was quoted in a local news reports saying, “The whole Trump agenda has to be resisted and defeated with protests like this.”

BREAKING NEWS: Thousands of protesters rallied in Union Square in Manhattan on Saturday afternoon to condemn Trump's executive order that targets transgender children and teens by stopping all federal funds to hospitals for the provision of gender-affirming care. Parents and children spoke at the rally about their fear of the harm in will bring to transgender children if they aren't stopped. One mother said the care probably saved her child's life. 

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These protests across the country are extremely important, and could be—and need to be—the beginning of many more all over this country really rising up against the fascist Trump regime. But what has gone on so far is still not nearly enough in light of what we are facing. As Sunsara Taylor and Andy Zee said in their recent statement, “Our aim must be nothing less than calling forward the millions in this country who hate and fear what this Trump/MAGA fascism represents to rise up in sustained resistance on such a level that we create the kind of profound political crisis that prevents Trump from being able to govern the country and implement his fascist program.” 

And there is a need for people broadly to get a deeper—scientific—understanding of what this fascism is, how it arose from the system of capitalism-imperialism that rules over us, and what is needed to get to “a whole new way to live, a fundamentally different system.” That points to the urgency of getting into the hands of millions revolutionary leader Bob Avakian’s message 2025: A New Year—Profound New Challenges—And a Profoundly Positive Way Forward in the Face of Very Real Horror that powerfully gives people that understanding.