This is Jackman Radio. I'm Micah Eutrich, associate editor at Jackman.

The horrors of the Trump administration have shown no signs of slowing in the month that he's been in office,

but so far neither have the incredible amount of pushback that we've seen in the streets.

The protests have reminded writer Ellie May O'Hagan of the anti-osterity protests in the United Kingdom, both in terms of the hope they represent and the potential dangers and pitfalls they face.

She wrote about both in a recent article for Jacobin, lessons from the anti-osterity movement.

Elie Meo-Hagen is a frequent contributor to the Guardian who lives in London.

So, Ellie, first can you just describe what your involvement in the anti austerity movement in the UK was?

Yeah, I mainly organized with a group called UK and Cup and what we did was we used to do sit-down protests in shops that had not paid their taxes.

So it was really a protest against tax avoidance and the argument that we used to make is that the

government wouldn't have to make spending cuts

if big businesses paid their taxes. It lasted from October 2010 and it lasted as a movement for about three years after that but it kind of dissipated as time went on.

So that was mainly how I organized in the anti-cuts movement but obviously we all everybody who was involved in it was

interlinked in some way so I would go to student occupations and hang out with the student

movement you know I'm still friends a few people from that movement now and I actually worked for the trade unions for a couple of years as well so I was sort of involved in that and I went to Occupy London a lot and did a few things there so

even though that was my section of the

anti-o austerity movement

you know we did we did all kind of come together as well how did it feel to be a part of that

movement you say in the piece that in many ways are some of the best times of your life

yeah it was it was amazing like you, you know, I just moved to London. I was young and I didn't really have any

commitments and I was working in a, like as a receptionist and it was just really exciting we'd go every weekend we'd go and

protest do something and we'd end up in the press and you know all of these really

important journalists wanted to interview us and talk to us and the government

...