Carlos Álvarez-Aranyos did not arrive at this moment because he suddenly lost faith in working inside the system. In fact, the opposite is true. What he helped do in 2020 at Protect Democracy was necessary, strategic, and effective. Trump 1.0 was a stress test of institutions, and that fight required people who understood the law, the courts, and the internal mechanics of democratic defense. Carlos lived that fight from the inside and watched it work.
What changed was not his belief in strategy. What changed was Trump.
By the time Trump 2.0 emerged, Carlos had already seen the evolution up close. He understood that the tactics that blunted the first version would not stop the second. Institutions that barely held once would not hold again under a more aggressive, more openly authoritarian administration. What had been sufficient before would now be overwhelmed. That realization didn’t come from impatience. It came from experience.
American Opposition was born out of that clarity. Not as a rejection of institutional work, but as an acknowledgment that the terrain had shifted. The next phase of democratic defense would require pressure outside the system, coordinated at scale, and translated back into political consequence. That is what Carlos built.
AMERICAN OPPOSITION AS INFRASTRUCTURE, NOT A MOOD
American Opposition was never intended to be inspirational wallpaper for people who enjoy the aesthetics of resistance. It was designed as infrastructure. A non-connected PAC built on the understanding that protest, narrative, and elections are not separate civic activities, but parts of a single, continuous system. Carlos understood that outrage left to burn on its own exhausts itself, and elections conducted without pressure calcify into ritual. American Opposition exists to keep those forces locked together.
This is not romanticism. It is mechanics.
The organization treats movements like systems that must be fed, sequenced, and sustained. It does not confuse volume with leverage or presence with power. It exists to make resistance operational.
PHASE ONE: NATIONAL PROTEST AS PROOF OF LIFE
Phase One was about national protest, and it was intentionally expansive. It included the first National Day of Protest on February 5 and the first No Kings protest on February 17, but it did not stop there. It extended through Fourth of July actions, the D-Day anniversary protests, and other moments that made clear this opposition was not episodic or reactive. It was durable.
This phase was about scale and visibility. It was about breaking the illusion that authoritarian drift was fringe, isolated, or tolerable. American Opposition treated these protests not as endpoints, but as force generation. The goal was not catharsis. The goal was pressure that could be carried forward.
PHASE TWO: TURNING PRESSURE INTO TARGETED ACTION
Phase Two began on September 2 with American Opposition’s support of the RTR rally and the congressional visit organized with Flare. This was the pivot from mass visibility to directed pressure, the point where energy stopped being diffuse and started being applied.
From there, Phase Two continued through the Disney boycott, Remove the Regime, the Mass Blackout, and into the present moment. This phase was about identifying leverage points and staying on them. It was about refusing the temptation to reset after each action and instead building continuity across them. Where many movements spike and disappear, American Opposition stayed in motion.
Carlos’ presence during this phase followed the same logic. When impeachment and removal were the demand, he was in Washington, D.C. on November 22 at the Remove the Regime rally, speaking plainly about accountability without softening the language. When ICE detention facilities became sites of normalized cruelty, he went to Broadview, Illinois, during the National Day of Protest Against ICE and stood outside the facility while others debated messaging. When Minneapolis became a national flashpoint with real consequences and real grief, he went there too, not to observe from a distance but to connect federal policy to local harm in real time.
Leadership here was not rhetorical. It was geographic.
THE WORK THAT KEEPS GETTING OVERLOOKED
American Opposition has been present at the moments that defined this cycle whether or not it received credit. It was there at the first national protests and the first No Kings actions. It was behind the Tesla boycott that prompted Elon Musk to publicly label Carlos “evil.” It was present during Fourth of July actions disrupted by Enrique Tarrio, at the D-Day anniversary protests that became the largest veterans protest in U.S. history, at Remove the Regime, during Mass Blackout, through Seven Days of Givemas, in Broadview, and in Minnesota when the situation broke wide open.
Carlos has been blunt about what this pattern exposes. The people who talk about building power often raise more money than the people who actually build it, and that imbalance costs movements dearly. Credit flows upward. Labor flows sideways. Exhaustion settles at the bottom. American Opposition was built to reverse that gravity and to make sustained work matter more than polished narration.
PHASE THREE: ELECTIONS WITHOUT ILLUSIONS
Phase Three is the election-season campaign launching in March, and it is where everything converges. Elections are not an escape from activism. They are its continuation. American Opposition is entering this phase with eyes open, fully aware that courage does not emerge spontaneously from institutions trained to avoid risk.
This phase is about backing candidates who will act, not merely survive. It is about accountability, replacement, and making impeachment a real constitutional tool rather than a whispered taboo. American Opposition does not exist to protect incumbents from consequences. It exists to protect democracy from cowardice, and that principle finally has an electoral expression.
WHY BACKING THIS MATTERS NOW
Phase Three requires infrastructure, and infrastructure requires oxygen. Money is not the soul of a movement, but it determines whether pressure survives contact with election season. Small contributions create independence. Independence creates courage. Courage changes behavior. Waiting changes nothing.
Carlos Álvarez-Aranyos did not build American Opposition to be admired from a distance. He built it to be used, stressed, relied upon, and tested. It exists because this moment does not reward decorum. It rewards pressure applied consistently and without apology.
Democracy does not collapse in a single dramatic act. It erodes while people argue about timing and tone. Carlos already lived one version of that fight and won it. He understood early that the next one would require more.
American Opposition was built for that reality.
If this movement is going to mean anything beyond catharsis, it will be because people backed the infrastructure that showed up every time it mattered. American Opposition has done that work. It is still doing it. And it is asking, plainly, for people to stop waiting for permission and start participating in the outcome.
History does not remember who sounded reasonable.
It remembers who acted.
This post has been syndicated from CLOSER TO THE EDGE, where it was published under this address.