Bernie Sanders and AOC’s anti-oligarchy rallies show us how to defeat Trump | Eric Blanc

Thank goodness Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have ignored the advice of Democratic operatives to “roll over and play dead”. Their anti-oligarchy mass rallies have brought out record-breaking numbers, testifying to a widespread popular desire to fight back against Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

Filling the void left by Chuck Schumer and his ilk, AOC and Bernie are becoming leaders not just of leftist activists, but of the Democratic party’s mainstream liberal base. The hard question now is how to harness all this energy into a movement capable of actually defeating Musk, then Trump.

Team Bernie has already taken great steps in this direction. It’s not just that the “fighting oligarchy” tour has brilliantly succeeded in energizing ordinary Americans and in spreading a resonant anti-billionaire, pro-democracy message. It’s also the case that these events have a concrete strategic action focus, as one of Bernie’s advisers explained online:

For those asking, yes these [rallies] are tied to action. All have been in or near GOP-held swing districts and we are following up with specific actions to pressure their Member to vote NO on any Medicaid cuts or billionaire tax breaks – or else face electoral consequences.

This is all essential. But at risk of engaging in the left’s extremely annoying habit of sideline quarterbacking America’s two most influential Democratic socialists, here’s some unsolicited advice for Bernie and AOC: ask all rally attenders to become organizers. The fate of our country depends in part on channeling the excitement of these rallies into a sustained collective campaign.

To generate the scale of resistance necessary to win, we need attenders not only to take action like signing a petition or attending a rally, but to get dozens of their co-workers, friends, and neighbors to do the same, as part of a sustained and escalating collective effort armed with a plan to win. In other words, we need a lot more organizing – and we need to leverage high-attention moments like these rallies to directly onboard everybody looking to fight back.

To be fair, the fact that these rallies haven’t yet made such organizing asks isn’t the fault of its hosts – above all, it reflects the weakness of the US labor movement and the left. If we had already succeeded in galvanizing a mass-scale national campaign against the billionaire coup, I have no doubt that AOC and Bernie would be actively boosting it. But whether we like it or not, we desperately need our main tribunes to leverage their popularity and platform to supercharge our incipient bottom-up efforts.

Since Bernie and AOC have such a high profile, and since America’s crisis is so dire, any organized campaign that they choose to boost or launch would likely go viral. My two cents is that the best target is Musk – since he’s so unpopular – and the best message is one focused on saving widely loved services like the veteran affairs department, social security and the national parks. There’s a very good chance that sustained, mass backlash against Musk can force Trump to throw Doge to the wolves.

What concretely could Bernie and AOC ask people to do? Most immediately, I think the best bet would be to ask their followers to become organizers for the upcoming 5 April “Hands Off!” mass day of action called for by groups such as MoveOn, Indivisible and the Working Families Party. Given the breadth of the coalition calling for it, 5 April has the potential to be huge. Crucially, however, the ask can’t just be to show up on the 5th, but to spend the next two weeks actively reaching out to your co-workers, neighbors and beyond to persuade them to take part.

That way, we can help ensure that 5 April is just the start of an escalating campaign capable of forcing out Musk and saving our services.

• Eric Blanc is assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. He is the author of We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big