The Resistance is Alive
By TMP 43rd Editorial Board
We hope you had a wonderful 2025. The countless small emotional, professional, and physical triumphs of a year can easily fall by the wayside in a fast-paced culture like ours, but we implore you to look back on them, hopefully with joy, pride, and gratitude. Nonetheless, The Milton Paper can observe with clarity that 2025 was a veritably horrible year for human society overall.
Starting in January, billionaire henchmen’s dismantling of the world’s largest foreign aid agency precipitated 671,000 preventable deaths, mostly from malaria, pneumonia, HIV/AIDS, and malnutrition, per estimates from Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols. The midyear Global Peace Index displayed a dismaying trend toward more armed conflict, and the Bank of International Settlements believes global debt accumulation is holding back developing economies, while the global poor face their highest cost of living ever.
At the risk of oversimplification, we can lay blame for many of these abominations at the feet of authoritarian politicians who, despite professing manifold ideologies, have coalesced around brutalizing the most vulnerable humans. Some of these kakistocrats have overtaken ostensible democracies (Modi, Netanyahu, Trump), while others continue to abnegate popular rule altogether (Putin, bin Salman, Díaz-Canel), but they have collectively gained ground: “The world has fewer democracies than autocracies for the first time in over 20 years,” reads the 2025 V-Dem Democracy Report.
All of this is to say that, as you read this, there is much in the headlines to lament. However, we do not want your main takeaway from this editorial to be that the world’s suffering and oppression are insoluble in their magnitude. On the contrary, far from a year characterized by people’s accepting injustice, 2025 has featured a parade of inspiring instances of popular resistance.
As Trump weaponized law enforcement to torment immigrants, community organizations have stepped up to disrupt ICE operations on a level previously unseen. Meanwhile, some seven million protesters marched in “No Kings” protests denouncing Trump’s authoritarian policies, marking the largest protests in US history. In Nepal, Madagascar, Timor Leste, and Mongolia, similar movements from outraged youths brought down corrupt governments. Young people showed up at the American polls as well, affirming their preference for politicians unwilling to capitulate to the White House: Zohran Mamdani, Katie Wilson, Michelle Wu, and more. Popular pressure has also compelled those in power to positive policy change, from California’s enactment of retaliatory redistricting to Microsoft’s development of sustainable AI models due to consumer pressure. Overall, the power of collective action has proved overwhelming in 2025, despite the depraved circumstances from which that action emerged.
Such resistance should inspire students to seek change at the group-level, even as contemporary culture exalts the individual. Even within Milton, whose walls shut out the worst of the world’s violence, smaller examples of collaborative reform blossomed this year. From the new FAM Affinity group, founded by Pati Pogorzelska ’26 to break a long-held silence on financial aid, to DEIJ-facilitated Power in Participation (PiP) blocks, wherein student organizations engaged in legislative advocacy, standing alone has begun to fall out of fashion…finally. In 2026, we urge you to further take the reins in initiatives like these; change cannot always come from above.
As it stands, we lack proximity to the bravest characters in this year’s story, but we still must not forget that those heroes, those on the frontlines of the resistance, go on fighting, whether or not we choose to emulate their cooperation or marinate in apathy. The people of the world will not go quietly into a future that opposes their most fundamental values. The least we can do in preparation to one day pick up the torch is to intentionally practice collective action and reject the individualistic siloing behind the present crisis.