Despite the economic tsunami that we know is coming to working and middle-class communities, there are too many of us still on the sidelines critiquing who shouldn’t be leading what, who we can’t work with, what their motives are, what said organization did to them in 1979—and the list goes on. By the time we go through the cross-out activity, there’s nobody left but a couple of homies doing nothing but sitting on their butts and pontificating on how effed up everything is.

Last week, two important actions happened that need more analysis and unpacking. They were mainly led by white people. One was the Wisconsin voters’ rejection of the Elon Musk candidate for the state Supreme Court. The state is 80 percent white. Milwaukee has the biggest concentration of African Americans. Yet the voters united to achieve two goals that weren’t necessarily articulated. One was to maintain a liberal majority on the High Court, and two was to send a message to Musk that the voters aren’t for sale. The high stakes defeat for the MAGA oligarch was a political humiliation and a financial whupping.

The Hands Off mobilizations happened all over the country and tens of thousands participated. From the photos I checked out, the mobes seemed to have attracted a majority of white people, except for a few exceptions. This raised both criticisms and questions about the why.

I have written several “Dear White People” articles about the need for them to do their part in opposing the injustices that are happening in this country. I amused myself by saying maybe white people got the memo and now, finally, they are getting in gear.

In the weeks prior to the mobilization, memes and videos started appearing on social media to discourage Black people from attending. In this time of right-wing algorithm manipulations and AI distortions, it was difficult to tell if they were legit or not.

One defeat will not be enough to stop the chainsaw to the government or the looting of the public coffers. The People will have to confront the trump-musk oligarchy in big, bold, creative ways. We will have to hit them at the ballot box, in the streets, in the marketplace, in the courts, at the state houses—no tactic should be dismissed. No group or sector should be excluded. Our side just does not have that luxury in the current moment. Our united front must be broad and inclusive of those who understand the mission.

The woke people must continue to organize the disruption of capital and make the authoritarian government unworkable. This is what gets the corporate sector’s attention. Musk lost one third of his company’s value in the first quarter. According to the financial reports, this makes Tesla one of the worst performing stocks in the S&P 500 this year. It’s too early to assess how much Target Stores are losing due to the national boycott but we do know  stock prices fell shortly after its announcement that it was dumping DEI. Our impact is real.

We who believe in the concept of democracy don’t all have to do everything, but we all have to do something. We may not always do it together. We may not all rally behind the same issues at the same time. We may not always have the most organized plans. Our actions may not be the most highly coordinated. What we must do is stop the rise of fascism in this country by any means necessary.