Over Thanksgiving weekend I was making the trek from northern Virginia to New York State’s Capital Region and back. I took two different routes, mainly to avoid tolls on the return trip. On the way back to Virginia, I came across a number of stickers and billboards featuring several unsettling far-right symbols. My investigation into each of them was disturbingly easy; a simple Google search resulted in pages of far-right online content. Although the movement is increasingly based online, the lived consequences are severe. Each of the symbols I witnessed is a tiny signal of the movement’s very serious threat to democracy. 

As the United States shifts to the Biden Administration, after four turbulent years of Donald Trump, the North Country Poor People’s Campaign offers its vision of a movement that can provide a viable alternative to Trumpism: a movement led by the poor and dispossessed.

As an inducement to defy its population’s strongly pro-Palestine beliefs and normalize relations with Israel, the U.S. government has announced it will reverse decades of respect for international law and recognize Morocco’s longtime claim to Western Sahara. However, the U.S. government should not be allowed to decide the identity of a people. What is needed is for businesses to step up to the plate and stop working with Morocco to profit off of Western Sahara’s natural resources.