By Michael Albert
We win almost any social demand only when some elite figure(s) succumb and implement the sought change. We demand a higher wage, a new stop sign at a dangerous intersection, abortion rights, affirmative action, a wealth tax, an end to a war—whatever. In each case. the demand is either met or unmet when some elite or elites accept or reject it.
What can cause the involved decision-makers, DMs, to make a decision we seek? It is almost never that we teach the DMs new morals. It is almost never that we get the DMs to substantially agree with us. It is almost always, instead, that the DMs conclude that to to do what we wish will cost the DMs less than to not do what we wish.
First, how can I be so sure of that? Second, what can we do that raises unbearable costs for a DM who doesn’t implement wharf we demand?
The DM’s mindset is typically “I am intellectually superior in this and all domains. My interests are paramount. My understanding is definitive. More, to maintain my dominance, I must always dominate. To accede to pressure would risk unleashing more demands, more pressure. To accede to pressure risks slipping all the way to no dominance or even to being dominated.”
This mindset, which takes various forms, rationalizes DM agendas. But where does this DM mindset come from? To become a DM instills it. A DM presides over decisions that constrain others. For self justification, DMs convince themselves others are fools. For self justification, DMs consider themselves eminently wise and competent. To navigate up a hierarchy of power, DMs dismiss and trample those below. Garbage deems itself god-like. Garbage rises.
Consider local bosses, owners of firms, government officials who determine societal laws, guys who preside over a family, or a dominant race that represses other races. We encounter associated DMs when we make significant demands. Such DMs have disproportionate and often near complete say over the lives and circumstances others endure. But when a person navigates to such a position, they have to answer: why do I have such authority? Did I steal it? Or do I deserve it? They typically decide they have innate brilliance and wisdom that merits it. Or sometimes they decide their having successfully climbed over others and amassed essential talents merits it. Trump and Co. are the archetype exemplars of garbage rising. Yes, there are less delusional exceptions to all this, but the higher you go the rarer non delusional DMs are. And, of course, in any event, the constraints of their domineering roles always channel them.
A question arises. What can we do to raise costs for a DM? Valid answers nearly always take a similar form. We join together collectively. We organize to reduce their revenues, comforts, or power. We convince the DM that to reject our demands will cause our efforts to grow and strengthen. To avoid threatened losses the DM must give in to our demands. The DM will always try to reduce the likelihood of more people learning the efficacy of resistance. Indeed, even giving in to pressure, the DM will claim to have implemented the change that movements sought despite movement efforts, not because of them.
We want to win higher wages. We undertake a strike or a boycott or a workplace occupation. We persist and the threatened losses for the owner mount up until to continue rejecting our demands is a worse DM option than to grant them. The DM then claims to have ignored us. We know better.
We want to win a new law or policy, or to block one, and the same dynamic applies. For example, to end a war, if the war was undertaken with real elite reasons and high stakes, or to end fossil fuel addiction if the profits of its continued use are high, resistance will have to raise very large costs for the national government or the fossil fuel industry to succumb. Other times, to get a new stoplight at a dangerous street corner, a higher wage in a workplace, or a new restraint on one firm’s polluting practices, we can raise middling costs to win. All the details of struggles are contextual. But the logic is universal.
So what now? And what of No Kings?
We are now in an existential fight to end current wars, to protect surrounding ecology, and to remove fascistic DMs. The stakes are enormous. So too, sadly, are the costs we must raise for the involved DMs to meet our demands.
To turn out over and over with unchanging support and unchanging militance will not win. In that case, the cost for the involved DMs is to clean up our demo areas after we leave them. If our threat to them doesn’t grow, we are at most a nuisance. We have to do better than that. So how can we act in ways that raise the costs to the DMs steadily higher?
We need to grow our numbers and commitment each time. We need to move from very sporadic to more frequent actions. We need for each new action to say to the DMs that their intransigence will keep increasing our numbers and our militance. We need for our resistance to impact tiny and then medium level and finally king-like DMs to fear that our growth is going to inspire their subordinated constituencies to challenge them on steadily more fronts. They have to fear that our actions, growing larger, more diverse, and more persistent are going to in time challenge the very structures that ensure their dominance. They have to fear that our growing actions will increasingly cost them, and if our sought change doesn’t come, our actions will eventually remove them as DMs. Our actions have to challenge, threaten, and if they don’t deliver our sought changes cut into and in time even take away their wealth and power.
All this is not rocket science. In our upside down society, it is self evident. So what does it say to us?
Consider No Kings.
If higher DMs—Trump and Co.—see No Kings every few months and each time it happens on one day. Each time it does the same things. Each time it has the same focus. Each time it doesn’t reach into new audiences. And each time it doesn’t escalate its non compliance. Then they won’t see a growing threat. Instead they will see that their ignoring our demands will only require cleaning up the venues on the scheduled day every few months. Likewise, somewhat lower DMs like Senators and corporate heads won’t get nervous that their constituencies are learning to resist. They won’t feel costs that force them to add their voices to our voices also demanding higher DMs succomb.
Viewed this way, No Kings, so far, has been a monumental achievement in creating a foundation to build on. Millions standing. But the building needs to grow. So what do we need? A broadening and diversification of demands. A growing base of support because the events themselves reach into new audiences with persistent face to face organizing and diversified demands. Plus a trajectory of growing non-compliance by way of associated marches, sit downs, strikes, and then occupations and encampments that display how new recruits become committed militants. We need all of it to say to DMs, look where this is going. You need to give in or you will endure still worse to come. Our threat is real. Our commitment is unequivocal.
In a couple of weeks No Kings returns with a hopefully larger and more militantly intense turnout even than last time. But then it needs to come back again in April. It needs to diversify its targets. It needs to march onto campuses to collect support and raise costs there. It needs to visit workplace entrances to collect support and raise costs there. It needs to go wherever there are potential allies. It needs to hear their concerns and add their demands.
It needs to challenge media at the doors of media monopolies. It needs to challenge ICE, complicit corporations, courts, churches, colleges, high schools and more, at their doors. It needs to threaten business as usual on every front. If we do that we can win and all continue on. If we do less, we may all lose.
The bottom line. Our words and actions need to convincingly convey what is ultimately a simple message. No more. We will not comply. We will not obey. We will raise costs for you DMs until you abide our demands. End military attacks. End Tariff attacks. End Police attacks. End sexist, racist, and classist attacks. End Trump and Co. It is all one big battle. Keep rejecting, and we will become one big movement of movements. Keep rejecting and we will move on to more fundamental change.
As we make our decisions about each new action of resistance, is that our mindset? Our agenda? It needs to be.
Michael Albert`s radicalization occurred during the 1960s. His political involvements, starting then and continuing to the present, have ranged from local, regional, and national organizing projects and campaigns to co-founding South End Press, Z Magazine, the Z Media Institute, and ZNet, and to working on all these projects, writing for various publications and publishers, giving public talks, etc.
15 March 2026
Source: countercurrents.org