Projecting 2025
As we begin 2025, I see a lot of hand-ringing. “How bad is it going to get?” It’s a valid question. It was a valid question before the election and remains a valid question after Trump’s re-election. That being said, amongst liberals and progressives, especially those who live in urban bubbles or are college-educated/professional class, I am hearing a lot of sweeping fear and despair. This essay is addressed to that fear and despair. I’d like to share my analysis about bad outcomes that I believe are realistic, or perhaps more importantly, who will suffer most. I would also like to offer some perspective on strategy in the face of despair.Let’s begin with the question: Who has the most to fear? Especially right away? I believe the most vulnerable people within the United States in 2025 are the invisible and exploited migrant labor force that our economy relies on, incarcerated people, homeless people, and all people in poverty. In a country of roughly 340 million people, here’s the population breakdown of the groups I just mentioned:* It’s hard to know exactly how many undocumented people should be considered “invisible and exploited migrant labor” but the total population of undocumented people in the U.S. is estimated around 13 million, or 4% of the population (Homeland Security, 2024).* Incarcerated people - the population fluctuates some but is currently around 1.9 million (Prison Policy Initiative, 2024)* Homeless people - the official tally is 770,000 people in 2024 but official tallies of homelessness are almost always an undercount (USA Today, 2024). However, the official 2024 tally is still an 18% increase over the 2023 tally.* Poverty - roughly 38 million people (11.3% of the population) live at or below the official federal poverty line. However, the federal poverty line is a severely outdated tool, and it is estimated that 140 million people in America (43% of the population) cannot afford the basic necessities of life where they live (Fuhrer, 2024).I believe that the right-wing agenda will hurt these groups of people first and most. In fact, a variety of governmental and corporate powers have already been expanding the infrastructure to target these groups of most vulnerable people even further.The Trump campaign had pledged to deport all 13 million undocumented people. This is implausible if not impossible, with an estimated cost of $315 billion (Wall Street Journal, 2024). So, as JD Vance chipperly suggested, they’ll just “start with 1 million” (ABC News, 2024). But I don’t think most of them actually believe they are going to deport all undocumented people, I think that’s a circus performance for the voter base. I really do believe they are fine with the economy still relying on migrant labor so long as they feel like they are in control of it. I don’t think they mind illegal, exploitative labor practices whatsoever. I think they mind the idea that people (especially non-white people) could come here without papers and actually have a decent life. And then have children who become successful (non-white) American citizens.I think their deportation scheme is more about a show of power over an exploited labor base - “we control you, in case you forgot” - rather than a genuine attempt at getting rid of that workforce entirely. A landmark federal court case in 2001 attempted to prosecute managers at a Tyson plant for straight up asking human traffickers to supply them with 500 workers over four months. The court ended up siding with Tyson and essentially rubber-stamped the practice for corporations during the last two decades (Reding, 2010, pg. 153). Trafficking workers and paying illegally low wages to them is not the issue. The issue is that some of those undocumented worker’s kids are integrated into society and have permanently altered the demographics of the country. I think they are completely comfortable with illegal migration so long as those migrants remain tightly in the chains of exploitation that they control and profit from. What they can’t stand is the idea that undocumented people could come here and plant the seeds of generations to come who will be free.While they work on deporting one million people this year, probably making as much of a spectacle of it as possible, they are also quietly expanding other sources of exploitable labor:* Rolling back legislation against child labor (1A Podcast, 2023)* Making it easier for corporations to use prison labor (Marshall Project, 2024)* Criminalizing homelessness, like the June 2024 Supreme Court decision paving the way for more aggressive local laws…which may swell the prison population even more (Berg, 2024)Perhaps they have some ideas about how to replace the workers they may realistically be able to deport. And even though I don’t think they are going to deport and replace all 13 million undocumented people, I think it also suits them just fine to diversify the portfolio of the exploitable workforce, so to speak, with their increasing appetite for child labor, prison labor, and putting more homeless people in prison (labor). They are just paving the way for more widespread and entrenched exploitation in whatever direction they please. They are ensuring they get to do what they want to who they want.And it remains true that the people who suffer the most indignities with the most impunity are people in poverty. Defining socioeconomic status is hard. What is poverty? What is low-income? What is working class? But no matter the label, economic hardship causes people to be even more systematically vulnerable to everything, always, all at once. Poor people are always the most disposable. According to a study from the University of California that was published in 2023, poverty is the fourth leading cause of death in America, more deadly than gun violence, obesity, or diabetes (Brady, 2023).While defining precisely who lives in “poverty” is difficult, economic hardship is undeniably prevalent in the U.S. The official statistic of the federal government is that 11.3% of Americans live in poverty. In and of itself, this ranks the U.S. as the country with the highest rate of poverty in the Global North (Alston, 2018). However, there are some serious problems with how the federal government calculates its official poverty measure (OPM). The current OPM is an outdated metric that has not been updated since it was first developed in the 1960s to determine eligibility for anti-poverty programs. Back then, the federal government estimated that what a family needs to survive is roughly three times what they spend on food, a measure that was fairly accurate at the time (Barber, 2024). However, since the 1960s, food prices have risen fourfold, but median rent in the U.S. has risen more than sixteen-fold (Barber, 2024). Defining the poverty line by multiplying a family’s food budget by three will no longer predict whether a family is going to be homeless next month.Researchers have suggested an alternative OPM, although federal policy has not yet changed. This new proposed OPM asks the question: what is the budget required to cover basic necessities, broken down for every type of family structure (single adult, two parents with two children, etc.), and for every U.S. county (to account for huge variations in housing costs, in particular), and how many individuals and families are unable to afford basic necessities where they live? (Fuhrer, 2024). This massive and complex effort was spearheaded by the Economic Policy Institute and recently released its findings. Using this measure, 140 million Americans would qualify as poor or low-income, which is 43% of the population (Fuhrer, 2024).This is nothing new in 2025. As Reverend William J. Barber II, one of the organizers with The Poor People’s campaign, recently commented: “Our general lament was a cry against our nation’s addiction to unnecessary death. The heirs of genocide, displacement, enslavement, and lynching, we, as a people, had never repented of the violence that was laid out as a foundation of our shared life. Instead, we’d accustomed ourselves to an economy that functions by damning some people to die before their time” (Barber, 2024, pg. 169). Our nation’s addiction to unnecessary death is hardly new. But I believe that people who are economically struggling will be hardest hit by everything: by any and all further tears to our social safety nets, by climate change disasters, by increasing mass incarceration, by assaults to public schools, by neglect for public health, by police aggression, by worsening housing crises, by community violence, by lack of access to reproductive healthcare and early childhood supports, by eroding care for the disabled and elderly, and many other outcomes that may get worse under the Trump administration.That is my sincere prediction about who has the most to fear from 2025. I want to point something out, particularly to readers who may be living within certain liberal bubbles. The migrant labor force, incarcerated people, homeless people, the impoverished - this includes all skin colors, all gender identities, all sexual orientations, all religions, all ethnicities, all ages, all worldviews. It also includes so many children. This is easy to miss out on when we are so separated from one another. Who are the majority of child laborers? Kids from Central America (Dreier, 2023). Who is the single largest demographic of people living in poverty? White people (Fuhrer, 2024). Who is the most over-represented in mass incarceration? Black people (Prison Policy Initiative, 2024). The people at the bottom, “the voice from below,” includes everyone.The people at the top, the people in power, the people in the 1%, remain overwhelmingly white and male; they are not so diverse (Murray & Jenkins, 2024). But it turns out the people at the bottom truly are. There is no majority identity in the lowest castes, it is a plurality. It really is everyone.And while we sit with that complicated reality, The Powers That Be are diligently working on:* Criminalizing dissent and resistance (like RICO charges against Cop City protestors in Atlanta, increasing use of terrorism charges against climate change activists and men named Luigi, trying to classify certain non-profit activities as support for terrorism, increasing penalties for protest tactics like encampments or taking over streets)* Fighting labor organizing (like threatening to call the National Guard on the dock worker union strike earlier this year)* Consolidating power over public institutions and destabilizing “democracy” (such as the efforts to remove anyone from state office who was willing to certify Biden’s victory in 2020)* Denying climate change, barrelling ahead to control and exploit natural resources (like Trump probably cutting Biden’s climate adaptation program)* Paving the way for even more extreme wealth/resource hoarding (like further tax cuts to the rich)* All of the wickedness the U.S. government and corporations do in other countries (where to even begin)We are barreling off of the cliff of climate disaster with no way back.We are headed into an era of global destabilization.We are facing increasing wealth inequality that a U.N. representative recently called a “God-sized problem” (Barber, 2024).Now, a note about pointing fingers.The people in the lowest castes are not responsible for Trump. You cannot blame undocumented people, homeless people, incarcerated people, and poor people for Trump. And you can’t blame children whatsoever. Many liberals/progressives are understandably bitter about what appears to have been a strong rightward shift in the electorate. But the keyword here is the electorate - the people who actually showed up to vote. Only about 55% of the 18+ population ends up voting in federal elections on average anyway, and adults who vote are disproportionately wealthier, older, and more educated (Pew Research Center, 2020). In total, 156 million people voted in the 2024 election, with 77 million voting for Trump (Council on Foreign Relations, 2024).Remember, any statistics that you’re seeing about “such and such percentage of such and such demographic voted for Trump” - that’s only the percentage of the pool who actually voted. The 56% of white voters who supported Trump is 33% of the total white population. Meanwhile, 37% of the white population (66 million) can’t afford basic necessities. The 43% of Latino voters who supported Trump is 9% of the total Latino population. Meanwhile, 66% of the Latino population (42 million) can’t afford basic necessities. The 16% of Black voters who supported Trump is 5% of the total Black population. Meanwhile, 59% of the Black population (24 million) can’t afford basic necessities. (PBS, CFR, USA Facts, Furher). Don’t forget to listen to those whose voices are quieter. And the lowest castes of America either can’t or largely don’t vote.That doesn’t mean struggling people all have “good” politics. That’s not the point. The point is they really don’t have any power over you. They really don’t have any power over the system. And their lack of systemic power, rather than anything they may think or believe, is what makes them so vulnerable to be first in line for exploitation and doom. The man from El Salvador who slaughtered the chicken in your lunch while under the control of human traffickers is not your enemy. The white woman living out of her car in a Walmart parking lot with her two kids somewhere in a methed-out ghost town in rural Kentucky is not your enemy. No matter how mean, unpleasant, prejudiced, ignorant, abusive, or otherwise flawed they hypothetically could be as individuals.But also, it is true that some of the people who voted for Trump may end up suffering intensely under his administration. I would like to challenge the reader, here, to consider that ideological impurity and systemic power are two different things. Put bluntly - you can be wrong about a lot of things AND be pretty powerless.Centering the people who are truly most vulnerable and who truly have the least systemic power means centering the poor, the homeless, the incarcerated, the exploited migrant. Centering these people may mean discomfort. It may mean valuing the lives of people who don’t share all of your values or who may have done bad things. It might mean figuring out how to respond when people who have the least systemic power are still capable of interpersonal harm. Towards each other, towards you. It may mean grappling with the fact that there are no perfect victims, and the most severely victimized shouldn’t have to live up to sainthood for society to pay attention to their suffering. And it means grappling with the fact that some people who are severely victimized are genuinely unsafe to be around. Everything can be true at once and the need to survive continues the day after, and the day after, and the day after.I recently had a conversation with a friend who is a union organizer for Amazon workers in the Chicago area. As he reflected on his experiences with organizing, he said, “You have to be able to hold each other and fight each other at the same time.” We were discussing the fact that all of the ways that people are capable of hurting each other interpersonally still exist when you are fighting the billionaire class. People hurt each other racially, sexually, emotionally, physically, personally, humanly. That can’t be swept under the rug. We have to take ALL of that up, all of that harm that ordinary people can do to one another, when we organize ourselves against The Behemoth that is hurting everyone. Most people don’t have a lot of skill doing that. But if you want to learn from the people who are diving in and trying their damndest, look to labor organizing. Look to their successes and their mistakes. It is just one example, just one struggle, but in many ways could be a very wise example of what we are facing in the bigger picture. The people working for Amazon includes everyone.I would like to challenge the reader - if you are feeling fear and despair, what are you doing to mobilize with all the people who have less systemic power than you do? How are you showing up for the migrant, the prisoner, the unhoused, the truly broke? To quote Reverend Barber II of The Poor People’s campaign again, “Those who profit from preventing moral fusion movements do everything in their power to make division seem inevitable. In times like these, it’s critical to remember the movements that have enabled every stride toward freedom in our nation’s history. Poor and hurting people have been at the heart of every one of these movements” (Barber, 2024, pg. 106-107). Are you willing to look into the eyes of poverty and feel the humanity looking back? Are you capable of showing up for everyone “at the bottom?” The whole plurality of America that finds itself in the lowest of the low? If people like you can’t or won’t show up for the most vulnerable, what on earth do you suggest as the alternative? Who is coming to save any of us?When our collective survival depends on it, really take some time to consider who you are willing to dispose of, who you can actually survive without, and who your life actually depends on. Be careful who you write off as being beyond saving, beyond solidarity, beyond having value. Be careful who you dehumanize. Be careful of the excuses you make as to why YOU shouldn’t have to show up for the difficult work of solidarity, which inherently involves interacting with people you may fear, loathe, mistrust, or in any way view as “other.” Be careful of the struggles you think you should get to sit out. And be careful of nihilism. Particularly if you are a college-educated professional, a middle-class urbanite, or any other person who is not in the lowest castes of people who are first in the line of fire. Don’t voluntarily ignore (or worse, give up) the power you do have. You are so, so needed. We all are.There is a storm coming. Goddamnit, we need each other.“I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars,I am the red man driven from the land,I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek -And finding only the same old stupid planOf dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.”* Langston Hughes, “Let America be America Again,” 1936“God of grace and God of glory,On thy people pour thy power…Cure thy children’s warring madness,Bend our pride to thy control,Shame our wanton selfish gladness,Rich in things and poor in soul.Save us from weak resignationTo the evils we deplore…Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,For the facing of this hour,For the facing of this hour.”* Harry Emerson Fosdick, during the Great Depression“Which side are you on?Which side are you on?Don’t scab for the bossesDon’t listen to their liesUs poor folk haven’t got a chanceUnless we organizeWhich side are you on?Which side are you on?”* Florence Reece, labor organizer and coal miner’s wife, 1931 This is a public episode. 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