Are mass protests and elections enough to block the slide toward authoritarianism? Labor scholar and organizer Eric Blanc argues that neither will suffice without exerting leverage on the key pillars of Trump’s support. He discusses how a multi-level campaign against the corporations and other entities that back the administration could be organized, as well as the state of the labor movement and the Supreme Court, the victory of Zohran Mamdani, and what it might take to build to a general strike.
Jon Nelson hosts this interview with Blanc by Sasha Lilley, originally broadcast in November 2025 on KPFA, from Against the Grain, an award-winning radio and web media project that provides in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters—political, economic, social, and cultural—important to progressive and radical thinking and activism.
Image: Cover of Eric Blanc, We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big. Fair Use. & Logo of Old Mole Variety Hour, KBOO Community Radio, Portland, Oregon.
More Resources
Oregon Rising: alliance of base-building community organizations and labor unions
GeneralStrikeUS-Oregon Chapter Linktree
We Can Fight This: Minnesota’s General Strike Shows How (N Lennard in The Intercept, 24 January 26)
Maybe a General Strike Isn’t So Impossible Now (A Han in Labor Notes, December 2025)
What would a general strike in the US actually look like? (J Brecher in Waging Nonviolence, April 2025)
Social Strikes as a defense against ICE and authoritarianism (16 Jan 2026)