This past weekend in Los Angeles provocative ICE raids sparked fierce protest as community members turned out to disrupt the kidnapping and terrorizing of their neighbors and loved ones. As the situation in LA appears to be deepening with Trump’s mobilization of the National Guard and protests expanding to other cities, our California Bay Area local, along with members in Los Angeles and San Diego, have drafted this statement on what the moment calls for.
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By Black Rose / Rosa Negra – Bay Area Local
The Trump administration has made the violent defense of white supremacy through mass deportations its number one priority. Last Thursday, residents of Los Angeles stood up and confronted Trump’s racist schemes head-on when they mobilized to block ICE raids. Families, neighbors, and coworkers resisted kidnappings in their communities and challenged federal agents at ICE detention centers, offering an effective example for everyone who wants to know how to stand up to the increasingly authoritarian regime’s attacks.
California’s blue state bona fides and Los Angeles’s “Sanctuary City” status did not stop the Los Angeles Police Department and its SWAT units from supporting the raids and quelling dissent. In fact, ICE would not be able to operate in LA if the local police and sheriffs were not there beating down protestors and defending ICE property.
Now, instead of challenging Trump’s military invasion of their city, Democratic Party officials are following their standard playbook of rolling over and playing dead—calling for calm and declaring that their police forces can handle repressing protests without the help of the National Guard. Despite hand-wringing and feigned protestations about ICE activity, local, state, and national Democratic politicians have time and again expanded efforts to crack down on immigration and mass opposition to deportations. The use of military might does not happen in spite of Democratic Party officials’ opposition, but because they pave the way for its proliferation through border crackdowns, exploitative housing policies, anti-labor laws, and police collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security.
Fundamentally, both parties’ rule rests on a world of borders—ones that uphold the violence of rendition to indefinite detention and torture; the violence to declare some people deserving of basic means of life and others not; the violence to eradicate populations. From Los Angeles to Palestine, our fight is against Empire, its agents, and the borders created to maintain dominance.
A world built without borders, though, is one built on community, solidarity, and human flourishing. To achieve such a world would require a social revolution that supplants the current rule of government and capital. In the interim, we must bring into this fight the combined force of social movements and mass organizations. Only the popular power they hold can grind the deportation machine to a halt.
In the short term, our power is most visible when we turn out en masse to confront ICE activity in our communities. Although Trump and MAGA forces are itching for this confrontation because they think it will demonstrate the “chaos and disorder” of Democrat-ruled cities, the reality is that Trump’s deportation push is wildly unpopular. Seeing the National Guard beating and tear-gassing people in order to kidnap the workers and families who are the foundation of our cities will likely drive more people, not fewer, to revolt.
Much like how the burning of the 3rd Police Precinct in Minneapolis during the 2020 uprising sparked massive solidarity and support, seeing oppressed people effectively stand up for themselves can generate immense sympathy—much more than patiently following the law and playing it safe can. We need to take the opportunity to escalate and spread the confrontation to more cities by marching on ICE offices and detention centers and preparing neighborhood and workplace organizations that can respond to raids as they happen.
For those of us already in organizations like labor unions, we have more power than we think if we organize toward a more forceful, aligned response. For example, unions have significant resources like money, experienced organizers, and people power that could be harnessed to slow and stop the machine that threatens to roll over us. If you have struggled to push your unions toward more militant action and doubt the potential of these structures, the arrest of SEIU California President David Huerta may inspire more opportunity for change from within than we have seen in many decades. Let’s not miss the moment to demand our unions use our resources toward stopping ICE.
Small steps can build our recognition and capacity to fight ICE and other “non-work” institutions through our unions over time, such as:
- Writing then organizing to pass actionable resolutions with our union executive boards;
- Hosting union-sponsored anti-ICE educational events with fellow workers and unionists;
- Printing know-your-rights handouts for coworkers;
- Preemptively forcing our employers to protect us from ICE through workplace petitions and protests, and getting language to protect from workplace raids in your union contract; and
- Bringing coworkers to the next demonstration outside the workplace.
Tenant unions, student organizations, and activist formations can leverage these same principles and tactics. Organizing popular assemblies that develop gameplans for community-wide defense can help coordinate these efforts. This moment demands that we expand our understanding of how to collectively act with more militancy as groups of neighbors, workers, and students.
For the majority who are not yet in any organization, this moment calls us to seek ways to connect with the people around us. We have more power in mass movements than we have in small ones, or alone. We must take that power seriously if our aim is not just to fight—but also to win.
We may not erase the lines on maps and tear down the military might that enforces them tomorrow, the next day, or the one after that, but we must strive towards it today.
To defend ourselves from ICE right now requires action, to keep them out of our neighborhoods and workplaces requires organization.
This statement has been endorsed by the Boston and Durham Locals of Black Rose/Rosa Negra.
If you enjoyed this piece we recommend “How the Koreatown Popular Assembly Organized Neighborhood Power to Confront ICE” and the follow up primer guide in English and Spanish “How To: Organize a Neighborhood Popular Assembly.“
To learn more about our politics and organization, give a read to our program document “Turning the Tide: An Anarchist Program for Popular Power.“