Inform Your Resistance

In this episode, Hialy Gutierrez, PRA Deputy Research Director, and Claudia Espinel, discuss the connections and contradictions between prevailing economic systems, political infrastructure and ideology, and rising authoritarianism. We touch on the various ways that corporate power intersects with government, civil society, and media to prioritize profit accumulation and market dominance over human and environmental dignity and wellbeing. We also identify ways to sharpen movement strategy so that we can more effectively and more coherently fight back, not just against authoritarian leaders and governance, but also against the economic systems that keep enabling them. We highlight the urgent need to combine our narrative strategies to combat the spread of far right ideology with a clear, materialist strategy to build alternative economic systems. Hialy Gutierrez is the Deputy Research Director at Political Research Associates, where she supports researchers in grounding and testing their analyses in a political economy strategic framework. She is also a cooperator in the solidarity economy ecosystem in Chicago; a PhD candidate and Fellow at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she explores strategic relationships and possibilities across grassroots movements, state institutions, and alternative institutions; and a steering member of the NY-DSA political education academy where she helps to advance education on different expressions of socialism.  Claudia works as a consultant for the new Corporate Rights portfolio and political economy at PRA. After spending 15 years in organizational development for both for-profit and non-profit organizations, Claudia joined the PhD program in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago as a student. Her research focuses on the role of labor in neoliberalism and the forces and dynamics that create the conditions for labor exploitation. Claudia’s main research interests include non-extractive labor, cooperative governance, and democratic workplaces. She served as the research manager for the Community Wealth Building Project, a City of Chicago initiative that supports cooperative development. She also works on political education projects within Chicago’s worker cooperative ecosystem and has experience in building structures and processes to institutionalize democratized economic governance. Resources * Media Justice. https://mediajustice.org/ [https://mediajustice.org/]  * Rashid, Qasim, Esq. “Corporate Media Is Capitulating to Trump [https://www.qasimrashid.com/p/corporate-media-is-capitulating-to],” Let's Address This with Qasim Rashid, 2025.  * Torres-Spelliscy, Ciara. Corporatocracy: How to Protect Democracy from Dark Money and Corrupt Politicians. NYU Press, 2024. * Cooper, Cloee. “ What Is Movement Infrastructure? How Movements Sustain Us Amid Rising Authoritarianism [https://politicalresearch.org/2024/12/13/what-movement-infrastructure],” The Public Eye, 2024.

This episode is the second in PRA’s panel discussion series, The First 100 Days of Authoritarian Gains: Key Analysis to Inform Our Resistance. This second part discusses how MAGA weaponizes gender to entrench authoritarianism. Looking at the essential role that anti-LGBTQ, particularly anti-trans organizing and policy and anti-reproductive healthcare access and abortion restriction play in reinforcing authoritarian norms and politics. Research Analysts, Annie Wilkinson, Chancie Calliham, and Mary Reynolds are joined by reproductive justice movement leader Norbese Flint, for this focused discussion of the ways that gender and bodies are reified restricted and deployed by the U.S. Right to reinforce the cis-hetero Christian patriarchal norms that are essential to the authoritarian state making project both in the United States and abroad. They conclude their discussion with a clear call to action that defending reproductive and LGBTQ rights and flourishing are essential to the work of resistance and provide key insights into how to do this extraordinarily necessary work. The discussion is inspired by PRAs recent Winter Spring 2025, issue of the Public Eye on gender and authoritarianism. Resources * Gardiner, Steven. “Authoritarians Must Break Your Will to Resist — So What Can You Do About It? [https://religiondispatches.org/authoritarians-must-break-your-will-to-resist-so-what-can-you-do-about-it/]” Religion Dispatches, 2024. * Gardiner, Steven, and Tarso Luís Ramos. “Capitol Offenses: January 6th 2021 & The Ongoing Insurrection [https://politicalresearch.org/2022/01/12/capitol-offenses-january-6th-2021-ongoing-insurrection].” Political Research Associates. * Political Research Associates. “Trump 2.0’s First 100 Days: Authoritarian Gains and Consolidation. [https://politicalresearch.org/2025/06/12/trump-20s-first-100-days]” The Public Eye, 2025. * Ramos, Tarso Luís, and Kathryn Joyce. “One Year In: A Q&A with Tarso Luís Ramos on Trump’s First Year in Office [https://politicalresearch.org/2018/01/19/one-year-in-a-qa-with-tarso-luis-ramos].” The Public Eye, 2018. * Wilkinson, Annie, and Mary Reynolds, with Nourbese Flint. “Authoritarianism, Criminalization, and Reproductive Injustice: A Roundtable Discussion [http://politicalresearch.org/2025/03/12/authoritarianism-criminalization-and-reproductive-injustice].” The Public Eye, 2025.

Inform Your Resistance is coming to you this week in between regularly scheduled episodes to introduce you to a new podcast series, Lifting the Curtain on Antisemitism [https://politicalresearch.org/lifting-curtain-antisemitism]. This collaboration between Political Research Associates [https://politicalresearch.org/] and Diaspora Alliance [https://diasporaalliance.co/] explores how to understand antisemitism and its weaponization and to fight for collective liberation. Amidst rising authoritarianism and Israel’s genocide in Gaza, this series offers a rigorous analysis of how authoritarians uses antisemitism and its weaponization as a tool to repress progressive movements and to dismantle democracy itself. You can find all six episodes of Lifting the Curtain on Antisemitism on the PRA Presents feed wherever you get your podcasts or on politicalresearch.org [https://politicalresearch.org/lifting-curtain-antisemitism].

Our collective freedom is at stake. How do we prevent the most vulnerable from being excluded, targeted, or taken advantage of, while providing values, moral clarity, and the most strategic inputs possible? In this first of a two-part series, we share insights from PRA’s researchers about how to move beyond the work on blocking rising authoritarianism, to the work of building power, vision, and solidarity. Steven Gardiner, Ethan Fauré, and an unnamed PRA researcher in conversation with the Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart describe the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, and how to respond.  Our panelists provide an overview of the quality makeup and ideologies of the current Trump administration, the interplay between state repression, particularly of the Palestinian Liberation Movement, and Islamophobia and weaponized antisemitism, and the expansion of the deportation machine in direct alignment with the white nationalist anti-immigration movement. They provide deep insights into the White, Judeo-Christian authoritarianism demonstrated in extrajudicial violence, denial of humanity, further power disregard for congressional and judicial power, concentration of executive power, the “power of the purse,” and attacks on public speech, gathering, and due process. Our panelists offer insights to focus your organizing, stay in community, right size threats to understand them more accurately, create counternarratives, get into the field, enact noncompliance, and identify and grow the fissures between factions of the Right. Resources * Trump 2.0’s First 100 Days Authoritarian Gains and Consolidation [https://politicalresearch.org/2025/06/12/trump-20s-first-100-days] by Political Research Associates * The Antidote to Authoritarianism with Jiva Manske [https://politicalresearch.org/2025/07/10/antidote-authoritarianism-jiva-manske] by Political Research Associates (podcast) * What Is Movement Infrastructure? How Movements Sustain Us Amid Rising Authoritarianism [https://politicalresearch.org/2024/12/13/what-movement-infrastructure] by Cloee Cooper * Q&A: Harnessing Our Power to End Political Violence: An interview with Scot Nakagawa and Hardy Merriman [https://politicalresearch.org/2024/11/21/qa-harnessing-our-power-end-political-violence] by Naomi Washington Leapheart * Book Review: Commune or Nothing! Lessons for Building Grassroots Power Toward Liberation and Democracy [https://politicalresearch.org/2024/12/13/review-commune-or-nothing] by Hialy Gutierrez * Book Excerpt: Three Way Fight: Revolutionary Politics and Antifascism [https://politicalresearch.org/2024/12/04/three-way-fight] by Xtn Alexander and Matthew N. Lyons * Rising Against Authoritarianism: Amplifying Voices for Immigrant Justice [https://politicalresearch.org/2024/12/13/rising-against-authoritarianism] by Cloee Cooper * Religion Dispatches article: “Authoritarians Must Break Your Will to Resist — So What Can You Do About it?” [https://religiondispatches.org/authoritarians-must-break-your-will-to-resist-so-what-can-you-do-about-it/] by Steven Gardiner * Religion Dispatches article: “Trump’s Cabinet (and Other) Picks Paint Picture of a Christian Nationalist ‘Kakistocracy’” [https://religiondispatches.org/trumps-cabinet-and-other-picks-paint-picture-of-a-christian-nationalist-kakistocracy/] by Annika Brockschmidt and Thomas Lecaque * Religion Dispatches article: “Leading ‘Constitutional Sheriffs’ Org Announces ‘Full Support’ for Trump’s Mass Deportations” [https://religiondispatches.org/leading-constitutional-sheriffs-org-announces-full-support-for-trumps-mass-deportations/] by Ethan Fauré

Today’s episode welcomes The 22nd Century Initiative’s Director of Strategic Initiatives, Jiva Manske. Koki and Jiva lay out key ways that the Left can and must build a shared vision of democracy, all while the pro-democracy movement is in a moment of extreme crisis. They talk through the “what is to be done?” about this moment, drawing inspiration from key strategies such as mobilizing, non-compliance, non-violent direct action, and alternative institutions like mutual aid, collective care, and infrastructures of solidarity. In discussing a range of accessible, non-violent actions both historic and current—from the 1930 Salt March across India to the street theater of 1970s Chile to the recent veterans D-Day protest in D.C. in June 2025—Jiva describes why we need to look to our past to build up resilience for our present, and in turn, seed the global democratic future we need and desire. Jiva Manske is an organizer, strategist, partner, and dad who is connected to people around the world who are dedicated to building powerful, transformational movements. As Director of Strategic Initiatives for the 22nd Century Initiative, his work focuses on building a more resilient, innovative, and aligned pro-democracy field. His approach to change is grounded in a commitment to accountability through collective action, organizing led by those most impacted by injustice, and healing-centered practice. He has facilitated strategy, training, and change with youth, elders, activists, incarcerated people, educators, and government officials in Afghanistan, Australia, Austria, Canada, Costa Rica, England, Iran, Ireland, Mexico, Peru, Romania, and throughout the United States. RESOURCES: * The 22nd Century Initiative, www.22ci.org [https://www.22ci.org/] (2025) * Grace Lee Boggs, Living for Change: An Autobiography By Grace Lee Boggs, Minneapolis: UMN Press (2016) * Chancie Calliham, ”Calling In Author Q&A with Loretta Ross,” [https://politicalresearch.org/2025/02/04/calling] Political Research Associates (2025) * End Political Violence, endpoliticalviolence.org [https://www.endpoliticalviolence.org/] (2025) * Freedom Trainers, freedomtrainers.net [http://freedomtrainers.net] (2025) * Jean Hardisty, “The Resurgent Right Why Now?,” [https://politicalresearch.org/1995/09/01/resurgent-right] Political Research Associates (1995) * Lauren Jacobs, Worker Power in the Fight Against Authoritarianism, a conversation with PowerSwitch Action's Lauren Jacobs [https://politicalresearch.org/2023/12/11/worker-power-fight-against-authoritarianism-conversation-powerswitch-actions-lauren], Inform Your Resistance (podcast) (2023) * Political Research Associates, “Ground Rules and Tips for Challenging the Right [https://www.politicalresearch.org/ground-rules-and-tips-challenging-right],” Political Research Associates (2016) * Scot Nakagawa, The Anti-Authoritarian Playbook, antiauthoritarianplaybook.substack.com [http://antiauthoritarianplaybook.substack.com] (2025)  * Urvashi Vaid, with eds. Jyotsna Vaid and Amy Hoffman. The Dream of a Common Movement Selected Writings of Urvashi Vaid, Durham: Duke University Press (2025)