Pride was originally rooted in protest against police brutality and nationwide discrimination against the LGBTQ community. This year’s Pride month and celebrations around the country will include urgent protests against Trump and the right.
The Trump administration is trying a divide and conquer strategy against working people by its vicious attacks on trans people, federal public sector unions, immigrants, and anti-ICE protestors. Cuts in Medicaid, SNAP, and other social benefits, already minimal, are in the works. Sections of the working class are already experiencing the Trump regime’s repression, racism, and assaults on our rights and living standards. The economic austerity, cuts in government services, and the crushing of civil liberties will soon hit everyone except the millionaires and billionaires.
As of June 6th, 2025 over 590 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in the US, with 5 in Massachusetts alone. Trump has signed executive orders that bar funding for gender-affirming schools, deny gender-affirming healthcare, and eliminate passport documentation that affirms gender.
The Trump regime has laid off tens of thousands of federal workers so far and declared it illegal for federal worker unions to negotiate contracts for 1 million union members. The administration is also on its way to give massive tax breaks to the rich while decimating services for working people, including SNAP benefits, gender-affirming care, and $600 billion in cuts to Medicaid, forcing an estimated 13.7 million to lose health insurance.
Anti-ICE, pro-immigrant protests have spread to 35 cities within the last week. In LA, Trump deployed 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines to crush the protests against ICE raids and deportations. David Huerta, president of one of the largest unions in the US, SEIU, was assaulted and arrested for protesting against ICE. Nationwide, ICE is terrorizing and abducting working people off the streets, in their neighborhoods, workplaces, and homes. They’re disappearing them into private and federal prisons, while sending some to other countries like the CECOT prison in El Salvador where they are cut off from any outside contact, with no end date to their incarceration.
The genocide by the Israeli state against the Palestinian people – funded and supported by the US government and its two corporate political parties – continues to rage on with no end in sight. Now they’re opening up another proxy war through support for Israel’s attack on Iran, inviting a wider war in the Middle East.
The Democratic Party is no solution for stopping Trump and the right. It’s been complicit in many of Trump’s attacks by providing local police to help protect ICE agents in raids and supporting a resolution praising ICE for “protecting the homeland.” The Democratic Party has initiated and promoted the militarization of police and increased funding for ICE. LA mayor Karen Bass and CA governor Gavin Newsom have implemented curfews and increased LAPD personnel, arresting almost 400 protestors in the last week. Newsom’s complaints about Trump not consulting him about using National Guard troops are not any sort of “resistance” since Newsom had no problem throwing 8,000 National Guard troops against Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
Democrats helped lay the groundwork for Trump by shifting to the right, campaigning in 2024 on increased military power and focusing on “border issues” and further limiting immigrant rights. Historically, the Democratic Party has strung along all major civil rights movements in an effort to gain votes and delay or prevent true change. Biden’s promises that weren’t delivered on or seriously attempted, even when the Democratic Party controlled Congress and the Presidency: the Equality Act that would have further protected workers from discrimination based on gender and sexuality, the codifying of Roe to protect abortion rights,the defense of LGBTQ asylum seekers, the Protect the Right to Organize Act which was campaigned for by Biden. The Democrats “fighting” Trump by way of lawsuits and denunciations offers no real alternative.
Working people can commemorate Pride, Juneteenth, and other struggles for civil and human rights by building mass protests against the Trump administration. Unions can help play a leading role in organizing strikes and occupations and by helping organize the foundations of a political party for working people that can stand up against both the corporate political parties, Democratic and Republican, who are leveling attacks on LGBTQ people, including workers, youth, and immigrants.
The Independent Socialist Group (ISG) stands for:
- Restore and extend trans and LGBTQ rights and benefits
- Universal healthcare, including gender-affirming care
- Rent control, and mass construction of quality affordable public housing
- Abolish ICE and stop the deportations. National Guard and Marines out of LA
- No one is “illegal”! Amnesty for all undocumented immigrants
- Unions to help defend and expand the right to protest and free speech
- Mass union drives to win improved wages, benefits, and working conditions for all
- Build a political party for working people, independent of the billionaires and the two corporate parties
- Free expression of gender and sexuality, full marriage equality, and disability rights
- Organize a mass socialist movement for equality and international working-class solidarity!
Independent Socialist Group 