Workers, speak out against Trump’s plan for dictatorship! Fill out the form below with your comments. All submissions will be kept anonymous.
Workers across America are furious about Trump’s ongoing bid to establish a dictatorship. Reporting teams from the World Socialist Web Site distributed copies of the Socialist Equality Party’s statement, “Trump’s fascist conspiracy and how to fight it: A socialist strategy,” which was received with great interest.
Below is a selection of recent discussions which workers have had with the WSWS. To tell us your thoughts, fill out the form below.
Stellantis Jeep, Toledo, Ohio: “Trump is acting more like a dictator than president,” one worker said. A younger Jeep worker added: “A lot of the people who voted for Trump are turning against him.” Others were angry at Trump’s attempts to silence critics. “It is not right, it is not fair. He has got to go” one worker concluded.
“He’s trying intimidate anybody that doesn’t agree with him because that’s what dictators do,” another worker said.
A young autoworker told the WSWS: “I think the American people need to wake up and stand their ground. Corporations have been running over us for far too long and the rich are just getting richer while we are maintaining the status quo of living paycheck to paycheck.”
Trump is “trying to establish his control over the people by fear and by oppression and by getting those on his side to rally against us,” he added. “He claimed he was for the people. He fooled a lot of people. I’m hoping they wake up and see that this is reality. This is not what we wanted. It’s never what I wanted. And those he tricked and fooled should wake up and see that this isn’t what they’re going to want either, when [he takes] over this country, isolate us from the rest of the world so he can do as he pleases.”
“If we wake up and we stand against them, if we shut down the nation for a day, a week, they would lose billions and trillions of dollars. But, you know, it takes people to be on the same side and united.” He concluded: “It’s showing that history is going to repeat itself if people don’t stand up. And that’s scary because I never thought I’d see this day, but here we are.”
Striking Libbey Glass worker in Toledo:
A striking worker at the Libbey Glass plant with more than two decades at the plant said, “Here the company is just circumventing our contract language to have us work longer days and force you to work your days off as long as they say they need you, even if they don’t need you. These things are happening everywhere. This isn’t the only place.
“The real issues are those people, the corporate powers, the people who are making all the money off this. The ones who are forcing workers to put in these long hours for the low wages.
“Everyone that’s working for these people that are treated bad should get together. We’re all in the same boat. Now they’re trying to take Social Security, and that is something that we’ve all worked our entire lives for. So, it’s not an add-on, it’s something that we paid into and should be available for everybody.”
Asked what he thought about how Trump has used the killing of Charlie Kirk to attack all those opposed to his policies, the worker said, “It’s all played into it. Trump held a giant rally to promote his cause, to what he’s doing and what he continues to do. If you’ve got something to say against those monied interests, they’re going to go after you. So, anything that would go against what they’re trying to do, they’re not going to allow you to keep saying that. And they’re twisting the Constitution and what we’re allowed to do.”
Asked what he thought workers should do to fight against dictatorship, he said, “These people in power take and spend their time having people that have a little more than the others pitted against people those who don’t have as much, or turning white people against people of color, or whatever. So, instead of pitting race against each other and how much money you’re making against each other, we need to understand everyone’s in the same boat.”
He said building rank-and-file committee in every workplace to transfer power from the union officials to workers on the shopfloor, was a “great idea.”
Asked what choice workers had, he said, “Either we are going to end up in a total oligarchy or like the fall of Rome, or we take that next step. Right down the road from here years ago they had Pinkertons killing people for unionizing. There is a memorial for the Auto-Lite strike not far from here,” he said, referring to the 1934 general strike in Toledo where workers, led by socialists and left-wing militants, battled the national guard and company thugs to organize the UAW.
Now, Trump was denouncing socialism and Marxism. “Yeah, he’s just throwing out hot words that people don’t know. He should throw the word fascist out there a little more often.”
A Dana Driveline worker in Toledo declared, “I can’t stand Trump.” Asked what she thought of the working class launching a general strike to drive him out of office, she said, “I agree with that. We should do something because he needs to be gone.” Asked who Trump spoke for, she said, “the rich,” as he headed to work.
A Michigan school bus driver: “I am livid about people being cancelled by so-called ‘free speech absolutists!’ It’s absolutely unconstitutional! We feel like they’re pushing us to our absolute breaking point—and that’s the purpose of it. To punish us all.”
She spoke on the chaos of Trump’s policies on American agriculture. “Meanwhile, the crops are coming in to harvest in a lot of these rural communities that supported Trump, but they have no adequate help to harvest [because of the deportation of immigrants], no place to sell to because of USAID closing and China not buying up any agriculture since May. It’s going to drive their selling prices lower and their cost to operate higher. There is a promise from Japan to buy agriculture and subsidies coming to farmers but the earliest relief is in 2026 harvest time. Even then, it’s only about a quarter of what China was buying from American farmers in their peak in 2022.
“Charlie Kirk is a bigot and a racist … I have never hated anyone, but Trump would be first on my list. He’s using all of this hell to his advantage. It’s BS! It feels like the world is on fire.
“To vote for a Charlie Kirk day of remembrance is outrageous,” she said referring to the Congressional Democrats. “It’s going to come down to us standing up for ourselves!”
Amazon Fulfillment Center, Dallas, Texas: “He’s crazy, a dictator,” one older worker said. “People weren’t thinking when they were voting for him, and now they regret it. He’s really for the rich.”
One immigrant worker from South America said, “What’s happening here is similar to my country, the way they attack news stations that they don’t agree with. In Venezuela, the government shut down a TV station, RCTV, which was one of the biggest in the country.” The cancellation of late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel for mild criticism of Trump’s response to the Charlie Kirk assassination, she said, “I never thought that could happen in this country.”
“They want to keep people living in fear, watching their backs, so that they don’t have time to think, because they are struggling day to day,” she said.
“Everybody’s scared. I have legal status but seeing [Kimmel being suspended] makes me nervous. If it happens here in America, where else will it happen? I have friends who have had problems getting drivers licenses, so they risk getting detained during a traffic stop.”
“Why is Trump getting away with this?” one young Amazon worker asked. “In 2016, JD Vance called him the modern-day Hitler. Now he’s Trump’s vice president.”
“It’s all connected to inequality,” the worker said. With the attack on immigrants, minorities and incitement against transpeople, “they want to make us feel like each other are the enemy, when really it’s the billionaires versus the workers.” The Democrats are equally corrupt.”
“ICE is the new secret police,” he added. “They’re attacking people on the basis of their skin color. Even Native Americans are being targeted because of that. And they have this prison in El Salvador where they are shipping people.
“I think the entire system needs to be burned down and rebuilt,” he concluded. “We need to get rid of the rich.”
Read more
- Trump’s fascist conspiracy and how to fight it: A socialist strategy
- “If the whole country has to strike, then that’s what we have to do”: Toledo, Ohio workers denounce Trump’s dictatorial moves
- “We are on the path toward an explosion”: Striking Genesys nurses in Michigan speak out against healthcare cuts, Trump dictatorship