Will Los Angeles turn into Trumpism’s final stand? If the rising and deepening motion resisting town’s occupation is any indication, si se puede!
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Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass Speaks at A Candlelight Vigil Calling For Peace On June 10, 2025. (Isaac Ceja / La Opinion)
Huntington Park, California—The jackboot has lastly landed in Los Angeles.
On June 10 Donald Trump ordered 700 Marines deployed to the Metropolis of Angels, including to the two,000 Nationwide Guard troops he had beforehand despatched in to attempt to quell the protests towards the brutal mass deportation marketing campaign being carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brokers. That marketing campaign landed laborious in LA over the previous weekend as ICE launched a sequence of raids centered at workplaces within the downtown space and arresting dozens of staff.
In response, a whole bunch of individuals protested on the web site of the raids or at Guard deployment areas and at one such motion at an ICE staging space, ICE officers injured and arrested David Huertapresident of SEIU Service Staff West, which has 750,000 members. Huerta was launched from custody on June 9 and appeared at a rally of greater than 10,000 folks in a downtown park close to the federal detention middle. Huerta advised the assembled crowd that the wrestle should proceed and increase and that this motion shouldn’t be about him however in regards to the lives and security of the a whole bunch of 1000’s of immigrant staff that energy the LA financial system.
Huerta’s arrest impressed a powerful response from the Los Angeles and California labor motion and plenty of political leaders. The deployment of the Nation Guard and Marines has been opposed by each California US Senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla in addition to by Governor Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass—all of whom have demanded that federal troops be instantly faraway from town.
The overwhelmingly peaceable protests will proceed and develop as a result of many individuals in LA—particularly from the communities most immediately impacted by the deportation marketing campaign—refuse to permit the separation of households. Younger kids in LA faculties have gotten fearful that their mother and father is not going to be house after they return as a result of they’ve been picked up by ICE, or that migrants making courtroom appearances to get a inexperienced card or to course of their citizenship requests will probably be picked up by masked ICE brokers and be disappeared with out due course of to prisons in El Salvador or Sudan. They’re offended as a result of this marketing campaign represents an assault on total immigrant communities—whether or not a person is documented or not.
Not surprisingly, Trump’s ethnic cleaning marketing campaign has many individuals fearful and unsure of what to do. Fortuitously, there are lots of immigrant rights, civil rights and religion organizations offering “know your rights” coaching for folks and offering as a lot authorized assist as they’ll, whereas rapid-response networks are increasing to mobilize folks to return to the websites of ICE raids to supply witness and assist for these underneath assault. However this racist marketing campaign has sparked the expansion of a broad and numerous resistance motion working to finish the navy assault on their communities by armored personnel automobiles, helicopters, and masked ICE brokers, Nationwide Guard troops and Marines wielding assault rifles. And it’s a motion that may solely develop stronger now that the labor motion has joined in.
Present Concern
Past the quick demand to get the troops out of LA, the motion is demanding an finish to the MAGA mass deportation marketing campaign and the militarization of the US-Mexico border, and the adoption of a really simply immigration coverage—primarily based on respect for the work and dignity of the thousands and thousands of migrants who’ve been largely compelled emigrate to the US by horrendous financial insurance policies like NAFTA, by US assist for brutal dictators in Latin America and elsewhere, by US navy interventions within the Center East, and by the impacts of a local weather disaster pushed largely by the US.
Not surprisingly, Trump has slandered the LA protests as an “rebellion” led by criminals —this after he pardoned 1500 convicted criminals who launched a real rebellion on January 6, 2021, carrying Accomplice flags, beating and killing regulation enforcement officers and threatening the lives of US Congress members after which–Vice President Mike Pence whereas looking for to overturn the outcomes of the US presidential election
Whereas the present scenario is undeniably troubling and fraught with challenges, it additionally creates a chance to construct and broaden the anti-fascist united entrance towards Trump and MAGA, to not solely cease the mass deportations and obtain a humane immigration coverage but in addition to advance a program for a society that’s really simply, equitable, and democratic. However first we should construct and consolidate our unity, develop a method that embraces a broad and inventive vary of ways, and that permits us to leverage our strengths towards our enemy’s weaknesses.
The Trump/MAGA ethnic cleaning marketing campaign is the entrance line of their general assault on the remnants of US democracy—an assault that won’t finish with deportations. With this marketing campaign Trump appears to be testing how far he can go in difficult the US judiciary and the rule of regulation, looking for to intimidate the mainstream media into even larger acquiescence, whereas pushing the Democratic Social gathering management into a very defensive posture. It additionally provides the president an opportunity to see whether or not the US navy is keen to hold out any order that he points. And now there may be the added issue that his invasion of Los Angeles helps deflect consideration from the unfavorable influence of his detructive tariff coverage on the US and international financial system, and his latest feud with narcissistic billionaire (and wanna-be Machiavelli) Elon Musk.
Trump and far of the media have known as Los Angeles a battle zoneand certainly it that’s what it’s changing into. This can be a battle launched by a racist despot appearing within the pursuits of billionaires. Nevertheless it faces a doubtlessly broad and numerous motion of peaceable, artistic, and militant resistance led largely by staff of colour who’re principally girls—the colourful coronary heart of LA’s financial system and its rising labor motion. ¡Si Se Puede!
Invoice Gallegos
Invoice Gallegos is the previous government director of Communities for a Higher Atmosphere (a California environmental justice group), a longtime Chicano activist, and a member of the editorial board of The Nation.
