ABSTRACT
The crisis of democracy worsened with the violent assault on the Capitol in January 2021 orchestrated by Donald Trump. Yet, this book has argued that democratic crisis was decades in the making as the working classes were organized out of influence in the workplace and electoral politics. The solution to this crisis is establishing representation of the new intersectional working class. Trump made himself the tribune of popular grievance, but Trump's record on labor issues in office shows he was a false representative. This chapter examines Trump's rise and the alternative social justice movements in states and cities across the country that have creatively increased workers’ influence on employment policy. It explains how pro-labor reformers regained strategic advantages by mobilizing resources that exist largely outside the ossified labor institutions; by articulating alternative narratives of equity for groups that were historically marginal; and by forming new relationships among social justice groups and between them and national liberal policy elites. The new social reform coalitions won state and local policies to benefit millions of workers. They cemented an electoral link with the 2020 Biden campaign that promised to rewrite the rules of work and politics to empower the working classes.
