Along with the anarchists, core organizers of the protests have included the ANSWER Coalition, a group with roots that trace back to supporting the Soviet invasion of Hungary in the 1950s, and the Socialist Alternative, a Trotskyist group on the other side of those forgotten Communist civil wars. Those groups’ organizing muscle has long made them important, if controversial, elements of the US left (they were central to protests against the Iraq War in 2003) and they now find themselves marching with Bernie Sanders supporters, civil rights advocates, and thousands of Democrats shocked at Trump’s election.
Mainstream organizations such as the NAACP and National Action Network said they are devising a legislative agenda around civil and voting rights and will organize a Washington DC march on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday just before the inauguration. Organizers around the country are also planning a women’s march on Washington the day after Trump is sworn into office.
As organizers plan, the city streets are full. In New York City, several separate Facebook events this week snowballed into a protest of thousands as groups from across the city coalesced. Demonstrations also took place in Los Angeles, Chicago, and elsewhere. The protests have also shown some signs of national organization, using public and private Facebook pages and, so far on a local level, encrypted methods of communication.
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