As much as the United States likes to promote itself as a champion of democracy, its dysfunctional political culture, and chaotic outcomes are now displayed for all the world to see. The domination of two right-leaning political parties controlled by corporate money and billionaires results in primary rigging, voter suppression, voter choice suppression, voter apathy, polarization, and mass public anger. Democracy in the United States has reached a crisis point where the public no longer feels represented by their so-called representatives. Corporate Democrats and Republicans both oppress labor with policies of low wages, for-profit healthcare, and defunded education while permitting market forces to promote sky-high prices for housing and essentials like food. Decades of wars costing billions of dollars and countless lives have done nothing to raise falling living standards in liberal globalized trade as corporate profits and CEO pay continue to rise. Workers are now organizing to strike back at the oligarchy.

In contrast to many other countries, especially those in Europe, the political process in the United States does not facilitate the growth of a labor party. Labor union leadership traditionally endorses the Democrats, a party funded by capital employers. Many in the Union, angry rank and file, endorse the populist Republicans, another party fueled by capital. Both parties function for corporate interests. With ballot access and debates controlled by Democrats and Republicans, legal challenges, propaganda, and massive outspending, the two major parties prevent the rise of third-political parties from occurring. There are no coalitions or proportional representation. Ranked choice voting struggles to get noticed and implemented.

The Green Party of the United States is the pro-labor party with the most ballot access that could win a Presidential Election. This party is more activist than the centrist Green Party counterparts in democracies from Canada to Europe, South America, and Australasia. Years of social stigma have plagued the Green Party of the United States for its role in a false “stolen vote” narrative, which is alleged to have put George W. Bush in the White House over Al Gore in the 2000 election. Democrats fuel this narrative while nobody seems to claim the Libertarian Party steals votes from Republicans. The fear narrative often holds voters hostage from making choices for progressive change.

Small leftward third parties exist in the United States to represent worker interests. However, parties with “socialist” or “socialism” in their names experience stigmatization in a US Cold War propaganda culture that still does not understand what a worker-owned direct democracy economy means. These parties struggle to differentiate themselves from the failed authoritarian experiments of China and the USSR in the minds of the public. They remain with ballot access restricted to a few scattered states while any unity among them often devolves into competition instead of solidarity.

During the 2024 election, the U.S. left was more disorganized than ever. Dr. Cornel West was to run as a candidate for the populist Peoples Party. He then defected to the Green Party. West then quit the Greens to form the Justice for All Party. Jill Stein then returned to become the Green Party candidate. Former Hillary Clinton cyber campaign advisor turned establishment resistance supporter Peter Daou started by working for the progressive campaign of Marianne Williamson. He then switched to work for Cornel West. Then Daou quit the West campaign and endorsed Jill Stein. In the end, Stein and West competed against each other as the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Peace and Freedom Party, and the Socialist Equality Party, among others, ran their separate candidates or had strategic agreements to vote for each other's candidates in selected states.

In the end, the rebuke against Democrats was enormous with losses in the House and Senate. Donald Trump won by such a large margin that if every Green Party voter had voted for Kamala Harris instead of Jill Stein, Trump would have still won. Acquiring Greenland and renaming the Gulf of Mexico won’t raise wages any more than when Democrats voted against raising wages during the Joe Biden administration. The big loser in the election of 2024 was the interests of workers. This may be about to change.

This year, 2025, something is different. Workers are now organizing independently in a pro-labor movement with more solidarity. Workers are striking back. They are building across political party networks, holding seminars, and planning direct actions to cultivate a new generation of grassroots resistors to oligarchy. Later, these same people can rise into a stronger third-party framework and take back the economy and democracy from the rich.

On February 22, 2025, in Seattle, a coalition movement called Workers Strike Back held a conference in Seattle, Washington. Its founder and opening speaker was Kshama Sawant. She is the former Bernie Sanders supporter famous for running and winning against a living wage obstructing Democrat in Seattle. Her victory through the Socialist Alternative Party and the Fight For $15 movement in 2014 sent shockwaves across the United States. It sparked a nationwide debate on the concept of a living wage. Today the minimum wage in Seattle is $20 per hour. With Sawant comes organizing, success, and leadership.

The second speaker at the Workers Strike Back conference was a journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, Chris Hedges. With Hedges, comes academia, credentials, philosophy, and theory. The third speaker was the frequent Green Party of the United States Presidential Candidate Jill Stein. With Stein comes experience, political party structure, and national ballot access.

The speakers at the conference did not focus on building a political party old or new. Instead, the strategy is to grow a labor movement of resistance against oligarchy through organizing and direct action. A target goal selected is the mass unionization of Amazon workers across the entire United States, a major employer. The focus is on social justice and labor policy. Through these efforts, they plan to cultivate a mass grassroots uprising against the social control held by the ultra-rich.

All three speakers warn of the battles to come. The smear campaigns, the name-calling, and the violence that will try to suppress the movement as has happened throughout the labor history of the United States. Sawant, Hedges, and Stein welcome these attacks because they know when they come, it means they are a threat to the ruling oligarchy controlling the political and economic structures of the United States.

Activists are also holding virtual learning sessions on what to do and not do during protests. Code Pink Women for Peace sponsored an event on March 4, 2025, called Know Your Rights, Community Safety Training for Direct Actions with the National Lawyers Guild Chicago. Code Pink has helped to lead the protest movements against the American-backed wars in Gaza, Ukraine, and around the world. In the past, Code Pink founder Madea Benjamin has run as a Green Party candidate in California and lent vocal support to the People’s Party. March 9, 2025, Workers Strike Back held virtual learning and national watch parties in Seattle, Chicago, Boston, and Kansas City for the 5 Do’s and Don’ts of Building Movements.

In the United States 2025, it’s time for the politically demoralized to organize.