When the federal government declared war on Los Angeles a few days ago, it declared war on the American people. The war at this point is an attack on immigrants and the surrounding communities, and right now it’s focused on LA, but the ultimate aim is to impose a police-state dictatorship on the whole country. They are coming for the immigrants today, and they are coming for the rest of us next. The resistance in LA is justified. It’s time for all of us to stand up. The People’s Tribune and our sister bilingual publication, Tribuno del Pueblo, stand in solidarity with the people of LA and all those across the country who are fighting for democracy and human rights.
The Trump administration started its current attack on the people in January by going after immigrants, and this has steadily escalated. Armed and unidentified men are abducting day laborers at Home Depot, as well as workers at restaurants, factories and construction sites, students, shoppers, tourists, parents and even small children. People are abducted from schools, homes, courthouses and even hospitals. They are separating families, imprisoning and deporting people without due process (sometimes sending them to foreign prisons), and disrupting the lives of decent, hard-working people.
Communities are resisting these attacks all over the country, including in LA, with tactics like neighborhood patrols and people gathering at abduction sites to document and interfere with abductions. Sometimes they have driven ICE out of the area. As Ron Gochez of Union del Barrio in LA told a reporter recently, “If we organize ourselves, if we resist, we can defend our communities from ICE terror, from the Border Patrol or from any federal agency that wishes to separate our families.” He added: “We’re fighting for the right to live and to exist and to work and to feed our families. There’s nothing extreme about that.” Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said June 9 that school police will create “perimeters of safety” around high school graduation ceremonies to keep out ICE agents. A recent demonstration protesting the anti-immigrant assaults in LA drew 10,000 people. Solidarity protests have already occurred in San Francisco, Sacramento, Houston, San Antonio, Chicago and New York, and more are planned in at least 30 other cities.
The government has set out to crush the growing movement. In LA, they seriously escalated things by claiming LA is “out of control” and sending in 4,700 troops. LA is not out of control. There have been a handful of incidents, like setting fires, carried out by a handful of people. The “violent mob” in the streets of LA is the police, who have attacked peaceful protesters with clubs, rubber bullets, pepper balls, tear gas, and flash bang grenades. Journalists have been detained and shot with rubber bullets. Trump didn’t call in the army to contain the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in D.C., but he lied about events in LA to justify (illegally) federalizing the National Guard and sending in troops, and he recently said “there will be troops everywhere” in the country. Deploying troops to LA is a step toward martial law for the whole U.S.
Clearly the object is to further militarize the cities to suppress dissent of any kind, not just in relation to immigrant rights. The billionaires behind Trump want to keep us silent and afraid so they can impose their own agenda on the country. The goal is to subdue everyone who stands up for morality, decency and democracy. LA Mayor Karen Bass told reporters the city is being “used for an experiment” by the federal government, and is a “test case” for taking power away from local authorities.
The Trump administration consciously chose immigrants, and Latino immigrants in particular, as the first point of political attack to win a large section of the American people over to ending democracy (as we’ve known it) and accepting a dictatorship run by billionaires and their corporations. Using racism and xenophobia to isolate a group of people and pit others against them is a classic divide-and-conquer tactic of the rich and powerful. Germany in the 1930’s showed how it can be done, and it put the Nazis in power there.
The billionaires’ mouthpieces like Trump claim there is an emergency, so civil and human rights can be suspended, martial law imposed, and people can be arrested and imprisoned without charges. Arresting foreign students who have protested the Gaza genocide shows they are already targeting people simply for their political views. A key tactic, used against anti-ICE protesters and the students in relation to the genocide, is to paint the protesters as the enemy in an attempt to hide the morality of the cause they are fighting for.
The threat of police violence and the threat to arrest anyone who refuses to go along with the Trump program – including even elected officials – is intended to cow people into silence.
We dare not be silent. The key to stopping fascism is to not submit to it. As Chris Newman, legal director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network wrote recently in Truthout, “We’ve been given the opportunity to live out our ideals, to fight for our values, to be the community and the people we always said we were. There are Home Depots all over the country. There are many other appropriate places to protest. Army tanks will soon be parading in the Capital. Go there if you can, and say no. Our friends, neighbors, and coworkers are being targeted. Our communities and our country are under siege. It’s time for us to defend them.”
