Editor’s Note: This story by Luis J. Rodriguez was first published on his Substack Blog and is republished here with permission. Please visit his blog and subscribe.
“The fascists win when the people stop, become fractured, or lose sight of the overall vision and aims. Not just a few changes here and there, but a total and complete revolution for “justice and liberty for all,” again to make this real, not just for appearances.”
I have a 37-year-old son among my four children. I remember his birth, which took 48 hours after my wife Trini’s “water broke.” The little guy didn’t seem to want to come out; he hung on for dear life. Finally nurses induced labor and the yet-to-be-named Ruben weathered the labor trauma to be in this world. He was a rambunctious child. He loved life, curious about everything. He demanded attention (nothing wrong with that). Although as a teen he tried to avoid attention, hiding in his own imaginations and interests. A UCLA graduate, a tutor, writer, and copy editor, Ruben has turned out to be a wonderful young man. A most wonderful son. He’s 37-years-old.
When poet and mother Renee Nicole Macklin Good was killed in Minneapolis by ICE agents on January 7, she was 37 years old. When ICE agents killed VA nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti in the same city just two-and-a-half weeks later, he was 37.
A good age. Most of us become qualitatively matured by then. And there’s still much life to look forward to. Now Good and Pretti’s parents, other family members, friends, and millions of outraged Americans are shocked and in mourning.
I honor Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Despite the Administration’s lies and “justifications,” they were killed maliciously and unjustly by a fascist “army” unleashed to deport undocumented persons. Supposedly the “worst of the worst,” but mostly hardworking people on the job or on their way to work, street peddlers, asylum seekers, children, grandparents, and more. In Los Angeles a man left unsold flowers to avoid being detected by ICE. Others picked up the flowers and sold them, then sought the man so they could turn over the money.
Flowers, whistles, and cameras. They’ve become reasons to fear the government, reasons that may get you killed.
The Trump Administration aims to deport as many people as possible; Stephen Miller says it should be 3,000 people a day. But it’s always been about more than that. It’s about full authoritarian control of the government, our streets, our homes. ICE and other federal agencies have become Trump’s vendetta troops. All this while Trump and family enrich themselves and their social class at the same time: Trump has already amassed a minimum of $1.4 billion since his re-election. From using high-tech companies like Palantir, which “operationalizes data” to track Americans, to the cruel rise in violence by federal agents, Trump and his cabinet can’t and won’t back down. No matter how wrong they are! Remember Hitler and his top Third Reich officials such as Goebbels, Himmler, and Goering. They committed suicide rather then face the music (Goebbels had his wife and six children “suicided” as well).
Doubling and tripling down is the fascist way.
Killing U.S. citizens is also part of the plan. It always has been. You cannot institute the ultra-conservative Project 2025 power grab without force and violence. It can’t be done. Even with millions of people in the street, highly disciplined and largely peaceful, against the collapse of whatever we may hold dear, the government must escalate. It must take this to other levels. Fascism needs this. It’s built on the chaos they create.
In just over a year, Trump has dismantled whatever facades of Democracy remained in the U.S. I say “facades” because it’s been a charade for much of this country’s existence. Trump, if anything, has revealed how lame and fragile our so-called democracy has been.
Whatever democracy and freedom we did have in this country has taken 250 years of countless protests, strikes, takeovers, court cases, armed battles, and even a Civil War. It has taken much blood, sweat, and tears to try and extend what The Constitution had done for a rich white male elite, among them our so-called Founding Fathers. It was a flawed document, but generations now have sacrificed to try and make it work for everybody. Even as others in this country have done all they could to block this.
My heart is broken with the loss of these brave Americans. I think of my own son. I’m thinking of the countless sons and daughters out there protesting as loudly and heartily as they can against a “lawfully” constituted force breaking all manner of laws, so far without any real repercussions.
We’re presently living in a heated cauldron that used to be just disagreements and animosities over politics and economics. Now it’s war. We can’t go back: there is no great time in our past we can emulate. But we can move forward toward a real, effective and enveloping democracy.
The other choice is what’s happening now–to continue with authoritarian rule by one man and his enablers and cronies in the White House, Congress, Supreme Court, and among the richest CEOs.
I’m going with Good and Pretti. They’ve quickened our steps on the rocky road ahead. We can’t stop now! We can’t concede the arena of ideas or lose any city. We can’t give up one bit of political, economic, and cultural ground to the MAGA fascists. While Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, New York City, Washington D.C., Raleigh/Durham, and others have stood firm against ICE, many still carrying out protests, election wins, and rapid deployment teams, Minneapolis has taken all this to a new level.
Minneapolis is standing up for all of us.
I’m posting this blog on January 30, a day declared as a General Strike against the Trump regime in solidarity with Minneapolis. People were to refrain from work, school, and shopping. To do what they can from participating in the U.S. economy.
I’m using this time to write and speak out. We all are caught in a massive web of the capitalist system. We work for companies or for others just to survive. If we work for ourselves it’s generally connected to meeting some service or need of the system. If it’s just to feed our families, we still pay taxes, buy groceries and other items, pay rent or maintain a mortgage. Just about anything we do is part of this financial, consumerist, and working web. We are connected, which is why when this web is disrupted like with Trump, we feel deeper every provocation. This web under capitalism, however, is not “silken” but of steel chains. We are connected but without our consent, under duress. So a General Strike is a disruption from the rest of us. If we can continue to find more and greater means of not participating within the confines of this political/economic cage-web, we can force the crucial changes vastly needed.
A General Strike is not the end all, be all. It is, just the same, a powerful tool in our vast array of solidarity and rebellion tools to draw from, including history, our families, other countries, and our inventive minds.
Good and Pretti must not have died in vain. We too must escalate. Peacefully, strategically, and creatively, for the short and long haul. We must use every arena and institution at our disposal: Churches, schools, neighborhoods, homes, books, social and other media. We must mobilize at all levels, including elections, if need be, undergirded by organized study of social and historical development. For we are not just feet and voices, but minds and spirits.
We don’t have to be ugly and harsh in return. Fighting “fire with fire” doesn’t mean using the same fires. Our fires are passion, but also compassion. Love and healing with unbending devotion and drive. Poignant humor. Serious satire. Music, dance, poetry, theater, and speech. What we do has to benefit everyone and their progeny. Remember seven generations (three generations from the past, the present one, and three in the future). Our fires can include best-practice good-old fashion organizing. But also things nobody has done before. Imagine and reimagine.
The social transformations are practical and step-by-step, but there’s also an art to them. Feminine energy and masculine energy, properly aligned.
The fascists win when the people stop, become fractured, or lose sight of the overall vision and aims. Not just a few changes here and there, but a total and complete revolution for “justice and liberty for all,” again to make this real, not just for appearances.
As messy, energy draining, and heartbreaking as all this is, this is what history looks like. We should study history not just to pass tests or spout dates and names, but so we can learn how to make our own history. In my short life-time (almost 72 years), I’ve witnessed and taken part in a number of history-making events and moments. It’s not pretty. It’s exhausting. But I know when I’m in it. We must never give up!
Let’s make peace. Let’s make justice. Let’s make democracy. Let’s make history.
Renee Good and Alex Pretti–presente!
