Photo Zuri K Colbert and Carl Pinkston
Elections 2026: Struggling for Justice and Basic Needs
By SacCat
In the San Francisco Bay area, Bay Resistance and other organizations have called for defending the results of the elections by staying on course against the Trump regime and its billionaire backers. These calls to action reflect the political mandate of the 2026 elections as the presidential contest in 2028 comes into focus. The path ahead will continue the fight for justice and basic needs – as Sen. Bernie Sanders puts it, the struggle for “the basic elements of a decent life.” Medicare For All has been one centerpiece of the fight. Calls for housing as a human right and an end to police sweeps of encampments have been joined by newly elected Sacramento Board of Supervisors member Dr. Flo Cofer.
Our movements have proved that “electability” depends on candidates’ willingness to fight for such basic needs, not just for a party label. The bold positions of Angie Nixon, Abdul El-Sayed, Dr. Annie Andrews, James Talarico, among many others, all reflect this ability to fight. For the unhoused community and their advocates, this is a crucial time to take advantage of the momentum and push for government-supported social housing, where rent depends on income.
The movements are sometimes called populist, but this term must not ignore the principle – so clearly stated by Zohran Mamdani, Mayor of New York – that our government should make our lives better. That is what it is for. It should not work to increase the private property and private wealth of the corporations, while our interests and needs are attacked and neglected. As the Talarico campaign points out, this election was not about left and right. It was about bottom and top; about the interests of the broad working class, including the millions who face homelessness and dire poverty vs. the billionaires.
The very existence of what some call “end-stage capitalism” is now on trial. Predatory, war-driven and deadly, it is increasingly clear that this economic system does not meet the needs of the people. Indeed, this system no longer needs us as working people. Technological change is morphing into light-speed economic changes with the rise of artificial intelligence (A.I.). Increasingly, we are not going to have jobs. The system is lurching toward even deeper economic crisis as we do not earn enough to buy into the wealth of society and as the Trump regime’s cuts take hold. A tsunami of homelessness is predicted, and the establishment has mostly police and jail to offer us.
A FORWARD LEAP
The elections are evidence of a leap forward, building on the momentum of our movements of working-class people, including the Poor People’s Campaign and many other organizers. The process of widening awareness and protest has accelerated since Occupy in 2010 and the George Floyd Rebellion in 2020. In 2025, No Kings began to show us how millions of working-class and poor people can mobilize. Protesting gets us out into the streets, brings us together where we can see our numbers, power, and unity. These and future protests are key to the process of system change because they activate millions of people to join the struggle.
Evidence of the leap is everywhere. In Minneapolis, a massive mobilization, especially by young people, resisted the deadly fascist onslaught of ICE. Talarico’s campaign has been driven by the slogan, “Love Thy Neighbor.” These movements defend and protect the most vulnerable parts of the working class – unhoused people, people of color, immigrants, and LBGTQ folks. The defense and protection of these people, all targeted by the Trump regime, are central to both their messaging and their organizing.
This leap shifted the political narrative. It looks like it happened with lightning speed, but it came out of a lot of work and leadership at the grassroots. The Working Families Party, the Democratic Socialists of America and countless other groups, including the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, have all worked to shape the new narrative and bring about the mobilization.
THE MORAL OFFENSIVE
Fascist ideas, manifested as methods like police sweeps, mass deportations and attacks on democracy (many outlined by Project 2025), have been ramped up to stabilize and secure the domination of the billionaires and divide working-class and poor people. But millions are no longer listening to fascist messages.
Our movements have mobilized to counter fascism, by opposing, for example, ICE, Flock camera surveillance, data centers, police sweeps, criminalization and incarceration of poor people – and attacking war and militarism. El-Sayed has called out Israel’s Gaza genocide in very plain language, pointing out on MS Now’s Morning Joe, “I don’t know that we should be continuing to sell weapons to a country that is, again, using our weapons to do awful things.”
The narrative against genocidal violence today rests on the moral core developed in the struggle against indigenous genocide and in the abolitionist assault on the horror of slavery. That morality, and the values of common humanity that inspires the movements for basic needs, both challenge the narrative of white supremacy. White supremacy has been an effective method of political persuasion and control especially in the South and border states. It has been key to the fascist Southern Strategy, drawing on the legacy of slavery and peonage to control the Senate, the Electoral College and the presidency. The election of progressive candidates in Southern states was a defeat for that strategy. Now the focus is on the horror of this stage of capitalism and the American brand of fascism, which builds on white supremacy.
Even as the Trump regime ramps up attacks on the multi-ethnic working class, on Black Americans, on immigrants, on unhoused people, and on LBGTQ+ people, the hold of white supremacy is weakening. The elections show this especially in the mobilization of Southern workers to vote against the Trump regime.
Since the Southern Strategy depends on white supremacy, the fascists are losing their political base. This loss will diminish their power to control Washington and will interfere with their dominance in the Senate. We are seeing a historic political realignment of poor working-class people around their own interests. This is the significance of the blue electoral tsunami that just overwhelmed the Trump regime.
CLASS STRUGGLE AHEAD
In returning to historical Red Scare tactics, the billionaire ruling class is calling our movements communist. We are preparing for a vicious retrenchment after the elections. But the term lacks resonance today and perhaps is no longer even derogatory, in the face of the grotesque wealth gap. Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar wealth equals the wealth of 53% of households in the United States. Many have expressed interest in socialism.
Bernie Sanders has already put forward a political program, openly calling for dismantling the oligarchy, for imposing a wealth tax on billionaires, for partially nationalize housing by building millions of dwellings and for taking other steps to share the wealth of society on the basis of need.
Save the children! The opportunities for organizing systemic change are opening before us, as millions enter the political arena to fight for our common needs.
Published on November 11, 2026.
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