This youth-led group wants to spark mass refusals to MAGA’s white supremacist agenda

This article This youth-led group wants to spark mass refusals to MAGA’s white supremacist agenda was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

On a cold Washington, D.C. morning earlier this month, two dozen members of Get Free — a youth-led group organizing to repair historic and ongoing inequalities — staged the first act of civil disobedience on White House grounds since the start of the second Trump administration. We disrupted traffic outside and sat in at the staff entrance to the Office of Management and Budget, one of the main agencies MAGA political appointees and Elon Musk’s white supremacist employees have seized to help implement their Project 2025 agenda. 

We took action because we are in a fight for our freedoms. We also know from our ancestors in this country and abroad that the only way to defeat authoritarians is by refusing to comply and getting more and more of our neighbors, institutions and leaders to do the same.

The threats posed by MAGA are not new, nor are the strategies to defend and deepen our freedoms. Taking up the baton from abolitionist and civil rights strategists, a group of organizers coming from different youth movements of the past decade (myself included) launched Get Free in the summer of 2023. We wanted to make our country finally reckon with its history and repair the harm of white supremacy from the foundation on up — so we can make freedom and equality real for all.

While we knew we had our work cut out for us in terms of building the people, narrative and political power necessary to overcome today’s white supremacist faction, after the election we had to make a hard pivot. Our work had mainly been focused on pressuring state and federal governments to enact commissions to account for historic and ongoing inequalities, as well as draft policies to repair the damage done. But with the far-right takeover of the federal government, we knew we had to shift toward building a base that could spark mass refusals to carrying out the white supremacist agenda of the MAGA regime. 

In the short term, that means experimenting with actions like the one earlier this month in D.C. to inspire more public defiance and expose MAGA’s laws, lies and violence as a plot to drag us back to the 1800s. Longer term, we are going to have to exert enough pressure on specific institutions, leaders and sectors of society to no longer capitulate and, therefore, deny the regime the support and resources it needs to hold onto power. 

As a first step, Get Free is leading a first 100 days campaign to mobilize young people across race and place to establish what we’re calling “freedom beacons” across the country. In January, we brought together Gen Z and Millennial leaders of our movement and developed a plan to demand that leaders of our campuses, cities and states refuse to bend the knee to MAGA’s white supremacist agenda. Instead we will call on them to commit to defending and deepening our freedoms to learn the truth, be our true selves, and speak truth to power in the places we call home.

Our theory of change is rooted in a belief in escalation — a sequence of nonviolent actions that move to increasing levels of disruption and/or participation. We believe we can grow a multiracial youth base able to carry out a sequence of direct actions that 1. expose MAGA’s agenda to re-entrench white supremacy and 2. move to increasing levels of disruption and/or participation. By doing this, we can successfully create a domino effect of local leaders and institutions not only defying the regime, but ultimately expanding our freedoms through repair. 

Beyond our national efforts to capture generational backlash to the regime’s attacks, we also launched our first fellowship program to resource new young activists and organizers. They’ll be experimenting with how to grow our movement from a handful of people staging a sit-in to hosting mass trainings that lead to large-scale walkouts or occupations pressuring city or university leaders. These fellows will be driving our campaign forward in New York City (at CUNY schools and NYU), Philadelphia (at Temple University) and Washington, D.C. (anchored at Howard and Georgetown universities).  

At the same time, we’ve just entered an even more urgent phase. The Trump administration recently announced that it will take away federal funding from any school — from pre-K to college — unless they re-segregate our schools by March 1. Among other things, the regime’s order calls for ripping scholarships from Black students, closing the doors of programs designed to recruit and support first-generation students, ending courses that tell the truth about racial, gender and economic inequalities, and banning clubs, community centers and student organizations for anyone other than wealthy, white men.

This illegal, authoritarian power grab flies in the face of decades of civil rights victories and threatens to return our education system to what it looked like during Jim Crow. But the audacity of this move — and the wide and immediate impacts it will have on millions of young people — also provides us with a major opportunity to expose MAGA’s attacks on DEI for what it is: a trojan horse sent to take away our hard-won freedoms. We can use that to activate the masses to fight back and get free. 

Our schools must refuse to comply with these segregationist orders. But that will only happen if we, the people, demand it. That’s why we’re now calling on the presidents of colleges, school boards and K-12 administrators across the country to stand up for students’ freedom and futures in a new nationwide petition drive. It’s also why we led a coalition of progressive groups and unions to demand Democratic opposition leaders like Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries use every tool at their disposal to block, delay and reject attacks on equality.

We’re the difference-makers, and there are little and big, online and in-person, actions that young people nationwide can take as part of this campaign. On every campus and at any town or city hall, we can take visible direct action — just like this banner drop at Temple University demanding our leaders refuse to capitulate to MAGA’s demands. If you’re ready to find your place in this fight, you can sign up here and join one of our upcoming virtual calls, online teams and local Get Free pods to help us escalate our efforts throughout the rest of the first 100 days and beyond.   

This is a dark moment, but our ancestors faced even greater odds and still reshaped our nation for the better. We need to fight for our freedoms and fortify the places where we have power now, while paving the way for a national reckoning that replaces this regime with a government committed to finally righting the wrongs of America from its foundation. 

We did. We can. We will. Let’s get free together. 

This article This youth-led group wants to spark mass refusals to MAGA’s white supremacist agenda was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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Source: https://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/02/youth-led-group-get-free-wants-to-spark-mass-refusals-maga-white-supremacy/