Tempest Magazine

Tempest: For those tracking the housing issue during the election campaign, there were at least two notable moments pre-election which presaged Mayor Mamdani’s emerging housing policy. A “technocratic pivot” to a stated openness to working with private, for-profit developers, and, as your article details, the late endorsement of three ballot measures that had been proposed by Mayor Adams’ charter revision commission and which were meant to fast-track the construction of “affordable” housing. In backing the ballot measures, Mamdani lined up with significant forces within the mainstream of the Democratic Party, including Andrew Cuomo and Governor Kathy Hochul, as well as private developers and real estate industry advocacy groups. How do you assess these developments? Why the evolution within the campaign, including the very last minute endorsement of the ultimately successful ballot measures?

Ben Rosenfield and Holden Taylor: First, it’s important to note that the framing of ballot proposals 2-4 necessarily narrowed and abstracted the processes, dynamics, and relationships underlying the crisis tenants in New York City have been facing for years. The framing of the proposals was such that a ‘yes’ vote meant making changes to the status quo, whereas a ‘no’ vote meant a continuation of the status quo. In the context of an ongoing crisis, it’s easy to see why many may have thought or felt that some change is better than no change.

The problem is that this isn’t the case, and the aim of proposals 2-4, namely to build more and build faster, does nothing to empower tenants or create actual affordable housing. On the contrary, the proposals will not only give more power to the Mayor (Mamdani and future Mayors), but also a gift to developers and real estate more generally. Increased production (and the fast-tracking of said production) does nothing in and of itself to address the current crisis; the logic that it does is based in supply/demand economics.

It’s not particularly surprising that Mamdani ultimately came out in favor of these proposals. First, the proposals will facilitate the implementation and realization of his campaign goals. His campaign platform, released on February 3rd, 2025, mentions “creating 200,000 new units over the next 10 years, fast-tracking affordable developments, and increasing zoned capacity.” His goals and the aim of these ballot measures are entirely consistent with one another.

Secondly, a no vote would have pitted Mamdani against not only developers and real estate, who unsurprisingly were deeply in favor of these measures, but also, crucially, the right-wing of the socialist tenant movement in New York City, which is the pole that is most in line with Mamdani’s politics. Whereas in the past the socialist tenant movement would have been less likely to support these proposals, there is a growing ‘yimby socialist’ whose power and influence has been increasing. While the politics and ideology of this pole are not entirely hegemonic in the movement, they have taken advantage of the relative weakness of the autonomous and more radical wing of the movement. Accordingly, Mamdani had the backing of a not insignificant portion (in size and influence) of the socialist tenant movement in supporting the ballot measures.

Tempest: One of the targets of your article is what you describe as YIMBYism (“yes in my back yard”). It argues for an imperative on building more and more housing and that “obstacles to construction are problems to be solved, removed, or overcome…the target is “red tape”—a catchall term for any policy or state mediation that prevents construction.” You describe YIMBYism being adopted wholesale by social democrats and the right-wing of DSA whose theory of change rests on its belief that effectively administering the bourgeois state at various levels via governing coalitions and pressure campaigns will gradually improve material conditions for a broad sector of working people, thereby winning working class favor, thereby making more significant reforms possible. In the specific context of NYC’s housing crisis what is wrong with this approach?

BR & HT: A comrade puts it simply: “The fundamental division in the housing debate is not whether you support or oppose higher density, but if you view the market as the solution to the housing crisis or as the cause of it.” We’ve showed how the “affordable housing” that gets built through the market a) is not affordable and b) does not bolster our class power, our working-class organizations, whatsoever. Socialism is the double movement of improving our conditions and our class power.

Tempest: You clearly, if depressingly, chart the lines of continuity between the emergent housing policy of Mamdani and his two predecessors as Mayor (Adam and DeBlasio). You specifically point to: zoning and charter changes that further entrench market frameworks and “solutions”; a continuity of personnel (for example, Leila Bozorg the executive director of housing in the Mayor’s office under Eric Adam will serve as Mamdani’s deputy mayor for housing and planning); and a policy focus on the production of housing stock for middle-income and higher income New Yorkers resulting in less production or rental stock for more vulnerable, lower income NYers. Is it still possible for Mamdani to chart a different path? What do you see as the best ways to fight for an alternative housing policy?

BR & HT: The possibilities for Mamdani to chart a different path largely, if not entirely, depend on the ability of the autonomous/radical wing of the socialist tenant movement to put forth a clear and compelling alternative to that of the status quo generally and the YIMBY socialists more specifically. In order to accomplish this, we will need to (continue to) organize and build power in the movement so that those both inside and outside of the socialist tenant movement will have to engage and contend more seriously with our politics, ideas, and strategies.

In the article we spend only one paragraph (out of so many!) discussing where Zohran may mark a break from the past. This brevity is in part because those breaks–which are concerned more with the city government’s relationship to working-class and community organizations and the ‘masses’ than the capital-intensive world of real estate development–are still very much taking form. But the brevity is also because this was a point on which we disagreed most thoroughly.

Ben, for example, is much more skeptical regarding the possibilities of Zohran’s Office to Protect Tenants and his Office of Mass Engagement as it relates to the development of working-class tenant self-activity and the construction of independent working-class organizations. For Ben, demobilization and cooptation are not merely possibilities the socialist tenant movement will face as it navigates its relationship with the Mamdani administration–they are likely outcomes if the movement is not intentional regarding its strategy and politics and how it builds power. The movement is still relatively weak and lacks developed organizations and infrastructures; while there is exciting and meaningful organizing happening on these fronts, this reality increases the temptation of hitching our wagon to the Mamdani administration in a way that will undercut the very important work the movement is doing. This is not to say that we should not engage with these projects, but rather are an attempt to emphasize the importance of independence and autonomy as we navigate the contradictory terrain moving forward.

Holden thinks there are novel opportunities ahead, and that these offices–and the administration more broadly–might offer strategic tools. For example, the Office of Mass Engagement contacted thousands of Pinnacle tenants and gathered hundreds of them onto one call with the Mayor. While this obviously doesn’t equate to militant self-activity, it did give Union of Pinnacle Tenant organizers the opportunity to bring in dozens of tenant leaders into the union. It is a tricky balance, navigating these opportunities while maintaining class independence but it is, in Holden’s estimation, what must be done. But! As we say in the piece, there is the monumental risk (to take Ben’s view), of these offices to function as social justice veneers to a fundamental project of market entrenchment.

In short, we (Ben and Holden) agree that the Mamdani administration will present opportunities, obstacles, and dangers for the socialist tenant movement. We disagree, perhaps, on what exactly the balance sheet looks like and to what extent we should engage with the administration and its projects. We will have more substance to concretely engage with and struggle over as we move forward.

In the article, we outline four planks of a prospective program that the socialist tenant movement can and should cohere around; an immediate eviction moratorium, the expansion of rent stabilization, tenant-led, democratic expropriation, and the preservation and expansion of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). Some of these will be more difficult to win than others, and some will be more palatable to both Mamdani and the right-wing of the socialist tenant movement.

Tempest: You argue that on the housing question, most socialists agree that our end goal should be decommodified, publicly-owned, democratically-controlled housing for all. Is this a goal that is shared by the Mamdani administration? In other words, is it an issue of strategic differences among socialists, i.e. how we get there,  or is there a different goal being prepared by Mamdani?

BR & HT: This is not the goal of the Mamdani administration. It may be what he personally desires, but, as we know, he and his administration will have to navigate the limitations and contradictions of the capitalist city and state. Mamdani will advocate for and support reforms, some of which will have the ability to meaningfully materially improve the conditions that tenants in New York City face.  That said, their goal is not to completely transform the state of housing and tenancy, and even if it were they are not in a position to be able to do so.

I think the majority of the socialist tenant movement (both the left and right poles) embrace this goal in theory. In practice, however, we argue that embracing yimbyism is simply incompatible with the realization of these goals.

Accordingly, it is our task as the left-wing of the socialist tenant movement to organize with the aim of building power and popularizing our strategies and politics such that they become hegemonic within the movement. The development of independent organizations committed to class struggle will be both the means and the end to carrying out this task.

It is our task to recenter and redefine what is possible for our movement and what our north star should be (decommodified, publicly-owned, democratically-controlled housing for all); to create a compelling, genuine alternative around which the movement rallies and coheres.

Tempest: Especially for those outside the day-to-day activism and organizing of the tenants’ movement, your article provides a much appreciated deep-dive into the political dynamics, tensions, and developments within this movement in NYC, including its different organizational forms and competing strategic outlooks. How would you draw a balance sheet to assess the impact of the Mamdani campaign and his election on this movement?

BR & HT: There’s a double movement; on one hand, there’s this tidal wave of the tenant-as-political-actor–which is something to channel and cultivate. On the other hand, we have nonprofit directors celebrating the moment as the horizon has been reached–on a recent coalition call, one director declared outright that “mass governance is here.” Sobriety is the remedy.

I think, if anything, within the left flank of the tenant movement there’s been a maturation, both in orientation and politics. Zohran’s election has raised the stakes for what we do. There are more eyes watching but also more people dedicating their energies to these efforts. There is, in this movement, more clarity in what matters and what doesn’t–and I think there is also trust among the different factions that our future is shared. Though there are political differences–as there is in any formation of any consequence–I think they are subordinated to a shared structural analysis, at least on the Left. How this Left asserts itself, both amid the broader housing movement coalitions as well as independent actors on their own, is incredibly consequential. Because of the right of the movement’s submission to the administration, there are crucial openings for political leadership by the Left, by the rooted and grounded. This right-wing, the non-profit coalition, will hesitate to critique or clash with Zohran, and will be nervous to be seen undermining his agenda. But there are issues that necessitate this; particularly, the questions of the Fulton & Elliott-Chelsea Houses (their demolition, conversion from Section 9 to Section 8) and, as we articulate in our article, pushing for an eviction moratorium until ICE leaves the city. These issues expose the contradictions of municipal socialism.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: SnippyHolloW; modified by Tempest.

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Their End Is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition

by brian bean
Haymarket, 2025

Red Flags: A Reckoning with Communism and the Future of the Left

by David Camfield
Fernwood Publishing, 2025

 

Demetrius Noble: Good evening. Welcome to the Haymarket Books discussion of communism, abolition, and the Left featuring authors and comrades David Camfield and brian bean. I’m Demetrius Noble, and I will moderate tonight’s discussion on their respective books. I’m really excited to discuss David’s book Red Flags and brian’s book Their End is Our Beginning.

To open things up, a primary theme that is explored in both books is the leftist critique of the state. More specifically, it seems that you are both very much interested in having us, and by us I mean the Left broadly, assess our orientation to the state and how it informs how we struggle for change.

What should our orientation to the state be right now, as we currently assess where we are and what is needed to organize and struggle for the types of revolutionary projects and goals outlined in your respective books?

brian bean: I’ll start by talking about that big question about the state. And I think it’s funny to just talk about that because sometimes in doing the day-to-day work of building movements and engaging in social struggle, the question of the state can seem like an abstract one. At other times, it can be overwhelmingly crucial. Like right now, I’m thinking about what one does with elections, for example, Mamdani’s win in the New York City mayoral race. Or, for example, when you have ICE agents kidnapping people off the street, like they are in Chicago right now.

But to step back, what do we mean by conception of the state and what are the ramifications of that? I think the first thing to understand is that the state is not class-neutral. It’s not something that can just be transformed by working-class people or the oppressed. The state’s very existence is to create a good business climate in the interest of the system of capitalism. So, the state is the preferred model for capitalism as opposed to direct rule by individual capitalists.

This is unlike times in the past in pre-capitalist societies, where they were often ruled by one individual king, a dynasty, or the like. Under capitalism, the capitalist class, all the billionaires and so on, are in solid solidarity against our interests. But capitalists are also in competition with each other.

Individual capitalists are not good at administering what is best for the system as a whole because their individual profits always dictate their interest. So Jeff Bezos can’t really determine what is best for the system of capitalism because he’s really invested, and I use that word intentionally, in maximizing his own profit.

So capitalism needs a body that has a relative separateness from society. This is what Marx talks about as far as a committee of the general interests of the bourgeoisie. That’s what the state is. And that body that has this relative separateness has to be able to enact its will, administer taxes, and set and enforce laws.

And those things, of course, are almost always done against us–the working class, the oppressed, the dispossessed–but occasionally the state acts against individual capitalists. So it’s a capitalist state because it runs on tax revenues and then requires investment. The state administers political choices whose horizon is set by what is best for the general business climate of the system of capitalism. That is why it’s a capitalist state.

But what allows it to do these things is the police. So behind the force of every law, as innocuous as “pay your taxes” or “don’t sleep here” or “get off the street” or “don’t do this,” is the threat of violence.

It is the threat of the police officer’s baton and the gun that allows the system to continue to move as it does to churn out profit for the ultra-rich and the billionaires. This is why Lenin, the Russian revolutionary, described the state as a special body of armed men. That basic description still applies today, and I leave it gendered as men on purpose.

Before Trump’s administration, already 75 percent of all federal employees–be they Department of Defense, be they prisons, be they border patrol, be they the FBI or the CIA–75 percent of all federal employees constituted bodies of armed men. And these numbers have been shifted even more by Trump’s huge cuts to the administrative state, firing people in the Environmental Protection Agency,, the Department of Education, and so on. And he has overseen a hundred percent increase in the budget that is going to ICE and border patrol agents who are terrorizing our communities everyday.

So the state, at its core, is that of a special body of armed men that carries out the interests of the committee of the general capitalist class to keep the system going in all its violence and terror. And so what does this abstraction mean? In my book, I argue that it means that if we want to abolish the state, we need to get rid of the police.

We’re seeking to abolish the thing that is in many ways necessary for the state to keep functioning, to maintain its monopoly on legitimate violence. The consequences for strategy are that we will not abolish the state. We can’t abolish the police through the state as if we’re going to win electoral power and then dissolve them as an agency. But similarly, we can’t go around that state. We can’t just make up the alternatives on a community basis and assume the police will disappear or wither away.

The police will never be obsolete for the ruling class, even as much as we make them obsolete for us. So we may engage in struggle on the terrain of the state and government, trying to put the pressure on the government to do things like have mental health workers respond to mental health crises and engage even in running electoral struggles.

Similarly, we may engage in struggles on the terrain beyond the state in working to build communities that are organized to better handle conflict and work collectively to keep each other safe. But the state is not class-neutral, and the police are its main tool. This means that our task of abolishing the police has to come along with replacing the state with actual democracy, not having a body that floats above, acting against our interests, unaccountable, and with the constant and ever-present threat of police violence that secures state power.

I think this is what David gets at in his work. Any attempt to really win a society that’s democratic, in which we actually control our resources, our labor, and our destinies, will at some point come up against the police, the institution that is always used to thwart our dreams and strivings for a better world.

Practically, this means that our organizational tasks should not just be judged along the scale of whether they achieved the immediate win, the reform, or even elected office. We have to have the utmost clarity about the larger horizon of political change and see the state and the police as obstacles in building a movement powerful enough to overcome them in building a new world.

David Camfield: I really agree with everything that brian just said, and I would add that if we think about the state as part of the fabric of capitalism, it’s really part of how the dominant class rules, regardless of which political party forms a government at any particular time. It’s why it’s a capitalist state, and I think this is also important to understand.

The state has become ever more important to capitalism since the global crisis that began with the 2008-2009 recession. Capitalism has not extricated itself from the crisis that began at that time. The state is ever more involved in different kinds of ways in perpetuating the system, in trying to get it through the crisis that it still faces. And just also to pick up on something that brian said, even when you have a capitalist democracy at its best, which is not the United States today. Even if you find a historical example from another part of the world where you have capitalism with a broad welfare state and the best kind of capitalist democracy, it’s still a very undemocratic form of society because, at its best, you’re voting every four years or something like that for who is going to administer those state institutions. But you don’t vote for so many people, right?

You only elect people to the legislature and a few executive positions. You don’t elect the people who head the police. You don’t elect the people who head the central bank. You don’t elect people who are the top of all sorts of other state institutions. And we don’t vote for our employers. We don’t vote on anything connected to the places where so many of us spend so much of our time in the world of paid work.

Really, the state is about a small minority of people administering the vast majority. It’s not about the democratic self-government of the majority of people over the decisions that affect our lives. And so when it comes to strategy, I think we need to think above all about trying to build counter power: counter power to our employers and counter power to the state, whether that’s taking on Trump or taking on employers.

Of course, we need to defend what remains of the welfare state. We don’t want libraries privatized, we don’t want public transit to be privatized where it’s still public. But that doesn’t mean defending the capitalist state as it exists.

DN: As I think about what you state here, it seems like one thing that would flow from both of these types of conceptualizations is politics, socialism, abolition, and communism from below. Could you speak more about that as a kind of central and guiding framework in your respective works?

DC: Yes, it’s absolutely a politics from below. We could say socialism from below or communism from below. It’s not the words that matter, it’s the ideas. And that’s to distinguish it from a politics of change from above.

My book Red Flags looks at societies like the former USSR, China, Cuba, and others. And of course, these have been seen as the alternative to capitalism by most people around the world since they first came into existence. But we, in order to actually think about politics in the present, have to look at those societies and think about whether those are societies on the road to liberation toward the kind of society we want to create.

And what were these societies? We have to cut through the language and the rhetoric and see that these were societies where there was a central political bureaucracy of a one-party state that mobilized the labor power and the resources of society in order to carry out its project for economic and social development.

When we analyze this using the tools that Marxism gives us, we can see that in those societies, there was a ruling class that was exploiting the labor of the direct producers, in other words, workers and peasants. And these were not, therefore, societies where there was any transition going on from a society divided into classes towards communism in the proper sense of that idea of a classless and stateless society of freedom.

These were, are class societies. I think that’s the key thing. I would also argue that they were a distorted form of capitalism. But more important than that is just to recognize these were not societies that were in transition towards communism. And that means when we think about the politics that we need here and now, we need to look elsewhere than the tradition that’s associated with those societies. That’s the tradition of Marxism-Leninism. There are other traditions. I think we should look to those, because Marxism-Leninism is a form of change from above.

bb: In thinking about socialism from below, I go over a series of struggles that are not often seen as touchstones or examples in thinking about struggles against the police. And I think that it’s important to hold onto those for two reasons.

The first is because they’re international. There’s a lot of focus on the U.S., especially on the police, and the U.S. police are especially racist and especially violent. However, it is also a capitalist institution. You can get a cop to beat you up in every country in the world. And there’s a reason for that, and it has to do with the capitalist state.

In my book, I go over a series of instances in which people rose up from below and tried to carry out and enact a change on the level of society. I talk about Derry in Northern Ireland in the late sixties, early seventies, Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2006, the various uprisings of the Arab Spring in 2011, and South Africa in the late eighties. I’ll start with the Derry example. The people of Derry were suffering under British colonialism. That meant a lack of equal rights, and it also meant the stifling brutality of the police. In 1969, movements around housing and voting rights exploded with an uprising that literally pushed the police outside of the barriers of a certain area of town and created Free Derry.

And so for first a series of months and then in a second iteration for a year, the police were run off the streets, and people were able to mobilize and carry on their daily life without them. And in many ways, in better ways, people organized communal kitchens. The milk still got delivered. Conflict was managed by all types of different institutions. And so it shows that in a certain kind of struggling from below, people actively find ways to take charge of their lives in their communities.

Another iteration of this process was the Syrian revolution in 2011, part of the regional conflagration of uprisings against the kind of inequality of global capitalism, post-colonialism, and the uniquely undemocratic forms that were existing in the regimes of the region.

Many countries had these huge, massive uprisings. Syria was one of them. And in many places across Syria, people rose up and literally ran the police off the streets and began to run their communities on their own democratic basis. Local coordinating committees that organized the protests would take on various institutions of managing conflict, making sure the bread got delivered, and all those sorts of things.

Each of these instances shows how people struggle from below, not asking someone on high to do it for them, but taking charge and building movements that have a particularly antagonistic revolutionary quality. People make space to create alternatives, not by asking the government to create them, but literally by running the police off the streets and taking control of their communities, their states, and their worlds to experiment with real alternatives, to provide glimpses of what a liberated world may look like.

The capitalist states mistaken for “actually existing socialism” that David talks about are also repressive police states, just like the United States. Having an internationalist abolition approach is a “Yes, all cops” approach, which is to seek solidarity with people in China who are rising up against the police there and people in Hong Kong who are rising against the police there. We recognize our joint struggles against our various undemocratic and capitalist states. And that means rejecting the argument that we must support these despots. A true internationalist abolitionist struggle is our banner.

DN: This makes me want to pivot back to David’s argument for exploring other traditions. David, are there any other traditions that you would like to call to the fore here that we might put in conversation with some of the examples that Brian mentioned? What do you have in mind when you think of these other revolutionary traditions that we might think about in terms of models for how we move past the state as we know it?

DC: Let’s go back and say that, as long as there have been socialist or communist traditions, there have actually been contending ideas inside those traditions about how change happens and what the goal is. And one way of talking about that is to look at the “from below” and “from above” parts of the tradition.

There’s a classic essay by Hal Draper called “The Two Souls of Socialism.” It was written in the 1960s, but it’s definitely worth checking out today. It’s not the last word, but it’s an important essay. There’s a dominant version of communism or socialism that has always been about the idea that some minority can hand change down to the majority. In the 1800s, before Karl Marx broke with it, you had this idea that the masses, the working class, were not ready for freedom, not ready for communism.

And so you had to have an enlightened minority that would take power and educate them to the point where they would be ready for it. And in one version or another, that has persisted even among people who thought of themselves as Marxists, whether it was the idea that a party would take power and hand liberation down, build socialism with the support of the majority, or whether it was a guerrilla army or some other minority force that would take power.

It’s a substitute, right? And it’s always a substitute for the majority of people emancipating themselves through their own self-organized liberatory struggles. And so I think we need to go back in order to address the challenges of the present and reclaim in a critical way all that’s best in those traditions and the struggles from below.

Not all the answers to the questions of the present are going to be found in the past. But tradition is a very valuable source of ideas. And we can see in all sorts of different struggles how people are organizing themselves to fight for their own liberation. We can see insights that are generated, we can see experiences that are worth learning from, including the ones that brian mentioned, which are a great feature of his book.

DN: brian, you had mentioned that as we struggle, we have to keep in front of us the question, what is our larger horizon of political change? What is the expansive scope of our political imagination? And David, you described how some societies described as socialist were not, upon historical examination, on the road to liberation. The question I would like to posit for you to reflect on as we think about the types of struggles that are in front of us right now is, how do we engage in these struggles in a way that ensures that we’re keeping our political aspirations expansive beyond what’s immediately efficient or practical? And thatwe don’t cut off our larger kind of political vision.

bb: I think that the art of politics is about how to engage in the current moment but not lose sight of the larger horizon, while not also doing the vice versa of losing sight of the current moment and only talking about an abstraction of the horizon.

There’s a quote from Italian communist Antonio Gramsci that says that our goal is to link every demand. So every demand, from the smallest ones to the revolutionary objective. Make use of every partial struggle to teach the masses the need for general action against the reactionary rule of capital, and seek to ensure that every struggle of a limited character is prepared and led in such a way as to be able to lead to the mobilization of the proletariat and not to their dispersal.

And so I think that is our task. And I think it means speaking frankly and ensuring that we also build our organizations, not just around the immediate reforms, but around some of the political questions, and to make this maximally concrete. I think we’re seeing this contradiction a little bit with the current election of Mamdani in New York City, in which there’s a huge movement behind him that is really inspiring, really exciting.

And so I think the question is one, how do we win those things that he put forward, which are the reason for his popularity. Universal healthcare, rent caps, and free, fast buses. How do we actually win those things? We need to be a part of and fight for those demands and struggle in such a way that it is not just asking for someone to do it for us.

We can take the energy that people have for wanting those things and say, how do we build to win that? And that might mean building a force that may be critical of and maybe even antagonistic to Mamdani. We need to make sure that we are where people are at and that we’re trying to fight the best fight and arguing to do so from below.

I think that the Mamdani election is very exciting, but there are some political warning signs, particularly around the question of the police. He has endorsed some positive community safety plans that would have a lot of good for a lot of New Yorkers. This idea would take some of the activity of the police off the streets, put in mental health responders, put in special supports around transit, and other things. So that’s a positive thing.

But he also continually says, “Hey, we’re doing this to allow the police to do their job.” This reinforces the dominant ideological narrative that the police are here to keep us safe. During his campaign run, at a certain point, he had a press conference where he went on air to apologize for calling the institution of policing racist during the George Floyd uprising. And so the political task, I think, is how we fight around those things in a real non-sectarian way that has appeal to most people, but also pushes back against this kind of capitulation. Through fighting for fast and free buses, and so on, we also need to continually push back against the hegemony of propaganda that says, the police are going to keep us safe, they hold us back from chaos, and we’ll just do better policing. I think those ideas changed radically in the context of the George Floyd uprising. We shouldn’t roll that back, but figure out how to push that forward in a way that also connects with people where they are and patiently explains these problems in a clear way, pointing towards that final goal of abolition.

DC: I certainly agree with brian, and I’m also going to give a quote from the sixties, from a group of socialists in Britain who wrote that, in their words,

Meaningful action for revolutionaries is whatever increases the confidence, the autonomy, the initiative, the participation, the solidarity, the egalitarian tendencies, and the self activity of the masses, and whatever assists in their demystification. Sterile and harmful action is whatever reinforces the passivity of the masses, their apathy, their cynicism, their differentiation through hierarchy, their alienation, their reliance on others to do things for them, and the degree to which they can therefore be manipulated by others, even by those allegedly acting on their behalf.

And I think if we really take that to heart, we can apply that in really concrete ways, even when the level of social struggle is really low. The key is to avoid compartmentalizing. We don’t want to have, on the one hand, this part of our brain that says, and where maybe our heart is, which says we want a classless and stateless society of freedom, but I’m just gonna pull the lever for the Democrat over here.

There’s a disconnect. And so what we need to do is to try to apply these liberatory politics in practical ways. And I’m just going to give one example from my experience, which was 25 years ago. I was part of a strike. And at one point, we were told by the employer that if we didn’t move our picket lines off the employer’s property, they were going to call the police in against us.

A lot of union leaders would at that point have just capitulated. But the executive of our union did the right thing. They called a mass membership meeting. And in that meeting, we decided that we would call their bluff because we didn’t think that they actually wanted to have police wagons showing up and arresting strikers.

This was a university worker strike. We didn’t think they actually wanted to have all sorts of people just being peaceful picked up and carried and put in the back of vans and so on. We democratically made that decision in a mass meeting to defy what we had been told. And we kept the picket lines where they were, and we were right. They blinked.

That’s not revolutionary, but it’s applying that kind of from-below politics of democracy and self-organization that gives people the experience of actually being able to break boundaries. I think that’s the way we try to translate the long-term vision of liberation into the here and now, wherever we find ourselves, even if it’s sometimes very modest.

DN: Brian, you were talking about this kind of dance that we have to do on the Left, using the Mamdani moment as an example. He’s advancing a platform that we absolutely should rally around because these types of things will provide immediate relief to the working class. We need to champion those things, but also find ways to challenge him when he’s capitulating to the state. How do we challenge that in the most productive ways and not allow these reforms to impede our larger kind of political vision?

And for David, I want to ask about how anti-communism functions ideologically to stigmatize reform struggles like free public transportation and rent caps as dangerous communism for the masses.Could you speak more about anti-communism, how it functions ideologically in that way?

DC: Anti-communism, first of all, is not a new set of ideas. You can actually go back and see it in the 1800s when you find it used as a weapon against the Paris Commune, when the workers of Paris rose up in 1871 and took control of their city, for example. But the basic message of anti-communism is that any attempt to try to transform society, to replace capitalism with something else, is going to lead to some absolutely terrible, authoritarian, repressive nightmare.

All sorts of both real and fictitious examples from history are then brought forward to bolster this case. And I say both real and fictitious because there are all sorts of things in anti-communist literature and documentaries that are just outright lies, about conditions in Cuba or Venezuela or what have you.

But then there are sorts of actual experiences of oppression and exploitation and repression in those societies that I mentioned, and in many others. The USSR and other societies organized along those lines get wheeled out for anti-communism, but the whole discussion has become confused.

By the way, Trump and MAGA just accuse anyone they don’t agree with, any kind of Democrat, often of being communists. But then you have Kamala Harris saying that Trump was a communist dictator, right? Further confusing the whole discussion, and there’s just an incredible amount of confusion to cut through.

Communism just ends up being used as just a slur about bad things. “We think this is awful. We’re going to demonize it, call it communist.”  We have to try to cut through that to recognize that it’s an ideology of obfuscation. That it’s being wielded to defend capitalism, to defend the status quo, whether that’s defending the version of the status quo that Trump wants, or, the version of the status quo that his Democratic party opponents want.

Then there’s the question of how we oppose anti-communism. We absolutely have to challenge anti-communism. We need to actually learn some of the history so that we can do this most effectively and be able to see what’s being argued.

But I think the most common way when people figure out what’s going on with anti-communism is they just say, okay, this is an ideology that defends capitalism. And they reject it, but at the same time, they’re either sympathetic or sometimes actually more positive to societies like the former Soviet Union. And they just take where the anti-communist puts a minus sign, and they flip it and put a plus sign instead of thinking critically and actually analyzing those societies.

There’s a different approach, a different way of rejecting anti-communism. There’s a great slogan from the sixties in Britain that encapsulates this: “The ‘Communist’ world is not communist and the ’Free’ world’ is not free.”

And I think that’s the way that we should reject anti-communism. We’re rejecting the idea that we live in the best of all possible worlds, that we live in some wonderful land of freedom and democracy, but we also reject the idea that those societies, including, for example, Cuba and China today, that those societies would actually be communist or on the road to communism.

DN: When you think about anti-communism as an ideology of obfuscation. I really like that language. Brian, you remind us just how murderously and dangerously violent capitalism is, like right here, right now. I think you have a quote in your book about random murders. I think you said one in three is actually done by the police. Can you speak more about just this in terms of the monopoly on legitimate violence, how dangerous and deadly the police are, and how anti-communism works as an ideology of obfuscation?

bb: The quote you’re referring to is a statistic that I have in my book about the violence of the police that complicates the common thought of how murders are committed. A large majority of murders are committed by people who know the victim, but if you are killed by a stranger, there is a one in three chance it is a cop. I think there’s such a symmetry between some of the mythologies around anti-communism and around talking about the police.

And that symmetry is that, “Hey, if people try to take control of their world it is always going to turn into an authoritarian despotic state.” The assumption is that ordinary people actually can’t protect their communities themselves and be in control of their destinies.

And those same mythologies are the same ones that are trotted out around the police. If we don’t have the police, there’ll be chaos. If we don’t have the police, it’s going to be like that movie, The Purge, random violence happening around every corner. I think that’s a really pernicious obfuscatory myth. You can find many examples of uprisings in which people push back the police and try to reopen society. There was a police strike [in 1976] for weeks in Finland, and the society did not devolve into chaos.

In the U.S., police often go on slowdowns during which they only carry out “necessary arrests,” which is really funny if you break that down. I think they are very conscious that there are arrests that are unnecessary as part of their daily practice, but that’s another story.

So, during these slowdowns, they found that when the police were doing less, actual reports of crime dropped. So, fewer crimes were occurring. A couple of years ago, in the Bronzeville neighborhood in New York City, there was a five-day period during which they intentionally removed the police and put social service agencies on call as an experiment. This is a neighborhood that’s had a high incidence of police calls. And during that period of time, when the police were gone, and social supports were present. There was only one 9-1-1 call that was done accidentally by a truck driver or something like that.

In Chicago, we had a surveillance program called Shot Spotter that had sensors that would perceive gunfire and direct police to it. It was a horrible surveillance device, and it didn’t work.

“The politics of communism from below, of abolition, communist abolition, is actually that we actually can control our destinies. We can take power democratically and reorganize our society in a way that would be democratic, fair, and safe.”

And so they removed them. Gun violence went down. Contrary to the mythology that you remove the police and there’s chaos and violence, the converse is actually true when the police aren’t present, particularly when paired with alternatives. People can actually organize our communities. People can actually care for each other. People can actually control their own destinies. So there’s an important symmetry between all the arguments around anti-communism and all the arguments that are pro-police. At their base, these arguments are so condescending in denying people’s ability to control and change our world.

The politics of communism from below, of abolition, communist abolition, is actually that we actually can control our destinies. We can take power democratically and reorganize our society in a way that would be democratic, fair, and safe.

DN: One thing that both of your books do very well is speak to the different types of mythologies of the capitalist state. These mythologies don’t remain static and flat over time. The capitalist system needs to update them to current technologies for what they need them to do. I know you all already stepped into those waters, but I was curious if you had more to say about those types of mythologies. And a follow-up to that: What does this mean for the Left in terms of ideological struggle? It’s not enough to think that our theory and our practice are correct. We have to win people over to our side to build out the type of mass movements and people power that we need. And these mythologies hold a lot of sway. They have captured folks’ imaginations in really critical ways that we have to find a way to supplant and then move people over to our ideas and visions for what the world could be, should be. How do we win people over to our side, knowing that these types of mythologies are what we have to confront?

DC: Ideological struggle is really important, but I’m going to start in a different place and get there. And that is that I think the barrier we face is not primarily ideological. The most important challenge we face, whether we’re talking about abolition or communism or both, is that most people don’t have any experience in their own lives of collective action, which would give them the lived sense that this is actually possible.

I think this is the fundamental thing. And then the question is, how do we actually work with other people to try to build movements through which people gain these collective experiences of collective action, which actually give people a taste of the possibility that things could be so much?

People have to come to that on a mass scale, through their own experience, not because they read a great book or see a wonderful video or watch or listen to a great song or something. All of those things matter. But when we’re thinking about change on a large scale, it’s those kinds of experiences, especially of strikes and other forms of mass direct action.

It’s those experiences that change the conditions. And then that makes a huge difference when it comes to how people make sense of things and ideology. Think about how the terrain of discussion around policing is different now in the U.S. than it was in the summer of 2020. It has so much to do with what people experienced at that time in the Black Lives Matter movement.

I think yes, absolutely, we need to engage in ideological struggle, but crucially, we need to be where working people are to build the kinds of movements and struggles that will allow more people to get that experience of the possibility of changing the world through their own actions.

bb: I was inspired by what you’re saying about the fact that ideas change in struggle. I’ll share the experience of Chicago as instructive on that point. There are, in our city on any given day, dozens of masked, flak-jacketed armed thugs from ICE who are kidnapping our neighbors, disappearing them, hurling tear gas outside of elementary schools, and more. People could have fallen into hopelessness and drawn negative lessons from that.

But instead, at the same time, while the situation is quite horrific and terrible, the community and neighborhoods all across Chicago have stepped up in a really inspiring way. Every day, people are out with their orange whistles linked up through various social media and text messages, finding ways to be present and, at a minimum, to just bear witness to the actions of these kidnappers. At certain points, people have confronted the police to make it more difficult for them to do their jobs of kidnapping our neighbors. That sort of thing transforms how people think.

When the first wave of ICE raids started occurring in the neighborhood where I live, there was one instance when they grabbed a particular individual, and people called a demonstration in that neighborhood the next day. There was an impromptu rally, people chanting, “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here,” all along the streets for blocks.

And that transformed how people thought about the moment. Instead of it being one only of fear, it told us that we can actually protect each other, we can keep each other safe. So ideology does change in struggle. And our main task is how to get people activated to take those partial struggles and connect them up.

There is an ideological task. The goal of my book is to hammer on the concept that the police as a body, as an institution, cannot be reformed. There are reforms that can limit the violence of the police. But as an institution, they’re unreformable. To end their monopoly on force that they can use basically at their own discretion up to the point of killing you is to remove them as an institution.

DN: I have one more question that I would like to ask, and I think we have a couple of things from the chat. For both of you, how do we reclaim communism, and what is its connection to abolition?

brian bean: One of the things that’s important about David’s work is I think people get lost in terminology so much and have been put on the back foot because of historical contexts.

And so if you say “socialism” to many people, they’re going to think, “Oh, Sweden.” They think of social democracy in which there’s a strong state that perhaps gives certain kinds of welfare to meet some basic needs for individuals. You say “communism,” and people think of the more authoritarian countries that David talks about.

There is a visionary core exemplified by Marx and Engels, and others. There is a liberatory vision of what we’ve been describing, people taking charge of their worlds, of saying, “Hey, we can actually democratically control our resources, our labor, and our self-determination. We can do so in a way without a state lording over us.”

“We talk about abolition, we talk about communism, and they intertwine in a way around the question of how we take real actual control over our society. … If we control our society in that way, most likely we will not need anything resembling the police.”

I think David is trying to reclaim communism as a positive thing while methodically dismantling the various ways that terminology has been bastardized. This is something to claim today.

We talk about abolition, we talk about communism, and they intertwine in a way around the question of how we take real actual control over our society. … If we control our society in that way, most likely we will not need anything resembling the police.

DC:  brian’s book looks at abolition from the communist perspective. It’s a wonderful book, and I highly recommend people to check it out. It distills some of the best things that have come out of abolitionist organizing in recent years.

It puts human freedom at the center. It exposes the kinds of unnecessary violence that we take for granted and shows that we shouldn’t have to live that way, and we won’t have to live that way in the society that we want to live in. Its vision of freedom is vital to a communist or socialist project in our times because that project has been distorted, besmirched, and damaged by the historical experiences of both social democracy and authoritarian “Communism.”

I live in a province, Manitoba, in Canada, where the government is the New Democratic Party, which is the sort of social democratic party that is just administering a capitalist society. It’s administering mass incarceration. It’s not on the same scale as south of the border, but it’s very significant to administering settler colonial capitalism here.

And then on a much bigger scale, the whole historical experience of the USSR and China and similar societies, leads many people, understandably, to say they don’t want any part of socialism. The kind of society we want to create is classless and stateless. And that includes a world beyond the police. Abolition is a vital part of reclaiming this vision of human liberation against the increasingly dire conditions that capitalism is inflicting on people all over the world.

DN: We have a couple questions from the chat. The first is aimed at you David, and it asks, how exactly are anti-communists stopping momentum? Is there something specific they’re doing or are they more like these MAGA folks that are spreading lies and misinformation to gain power?

DC: Anti-communism is diffused across the media, and the effect of it in whatever form it takes is to send the message that there’s no alternative. It leads people to draw the conclusion that, even if they don’t think what we are living in now is good, there’s no possibility of it being fundamentally better and different.

It also cuts people off from the incredibly valuable history of people struggling for change. By suggesting that revolutions inevitably lead to something like the Gulag in the USSR and mass death and starvation, it’s turning people away from studying the historical experiences of revolutionary movements and the theories that have come out of them, like the ones that Karl Marx and Frederick Engels began.

Anti-communism makes people think that this vision somehow ended up in the dictatorship of Stalin or the dictatorship of Mao, as opposed to actually using the tools that we can get from that tradition to analyze precisely the defeats that happened in the 20th century.

DN: brian, the other question is about the Mamdani moment. How do we address folks who are excited and energized by the platform that he ran on? What does it take now that people are energized to get them plugged into organizations that can attempt to build and amass some sort of power to hold him accountable?

bb:  I am not in New York City, so I would be hesitant to give advice as to what to do. But I think some of the basics are some of the basics of organizing. What would it look like if  some of the organizations who carried out the canvassing were to call mass meetings to organize these fights? We can see this as the beginning of organizing that will go beyond whatever Mamdani does or does not do. And so for an individual I would say, “Hey, talk to your organizations.”

It’s important to think about what to do beyond getting someone elected, to build a fighting movement on the ground from below that builds the pressure to carry out the reforms that made him popular.

DN: We have another question: At what point did past socialist countries become not socialist? Did they divert away from the Marxist socialist path, and would you uphold the October revolution as one of those real socialist moments?

DC: Yes, the October revolution in Russia in 1917 was an incredibly important historical experience because the working class, supported by the peasantry, actually took power into its own hands and opened up the door to the beginning of a transition in the direction of communism.

But unfortunately, it was unable to actually proceed down that path because of the conditions in Russian society. Russia had a very low level of development of productive forces. Most of the population were peasants who took control of their land, which was, of course, totally legitimate.

People wanted to get the landlords off their backs but there wasn’t the actual material basis to go beyond that. But the revolutionaries who led that revolution understood this. The whole premise of their revolutionary gamble at the end of 1917 was that they could take power.

They hoped that would then be a detonator, if you like, for revolutions in Western Europe, in more advanced capitalist countries and elsewhere, and that could come to the relief of the isolated revolution in Russia. And the extraordinary tragedy was that they didn’t happen, that revolutions elsewhere were defeated or didn’t go very far.

The Bolshevik Party that led that revolution found themselves trying to square the circle. They were able to defend the revolution in the incredibly bloody civil war. But society catastrophically broke down in this period, even just before the Civil War broke out.

The state that emerged from the Civil War was not one through which the working class was ruling. It did not have institutions of working class self-government. That situation led to the conditions where eventually a new ruling class consolidated itself. And this led to a break under Stalin, the central leader by the late twenties, which was the shift to try to have the state use all of its power to carry out a process of incredibly forced hyper industrialization.

There was also the dispossession of the peasantry, which was called collectivization but was not creating democratic collectives. It was the forcible expropriation or dispossession of the peasants. The state in the USSR did succeed in this extraordinary project of industrialization and modernization, but it was not socialism but rather something else altogether.

That society provided the model taken up by revolutionaries in other places. The revolution that happened in China in 1949, for example, was a very important social revolution against the capitalists and landlords that ruled China. But that revolution did not lead to the working class and the peasantry taking power. Instead, the military political forces of the Chinese Communist Party took power and from the beginning made themselves a new ruling class. They then proceeded to reorganize Chinese society along the lines that had been established in the USSR for the first time.

So the whole idea of what socialism was, what a transition towards it would look like, was really reshaped for most of the Left by what had happened in the USSR, with really damaging consequences.

bb: I think just one other thing to add in relation to Russia and the 1917 October revolution is the aspect of the Revolution about the police.

In the early days of the Revolution, the February before October, the notion of abolishing the police was one of the demands that was actually non-controversial among the diversity of different socialist opinions. And then after the October revolution, in the first month, revolutionaries issued a decree that abolished the courts and the police. They let people out of prison. Rather than the paradigm of punishment by the state, there were popular courts and tribunals. There was a flourishing of reconfiguring these things in the early days of the Revolution.

And then for all the reasons that David outlined, the revolution degraded and counter-revolution reared its head. The state repressive apparatus was not only repaired but developed further. And that’s how we get into the apparatus that carried out Stalin’s purges and the Gulag.

The thing to note here is that the defeat of what I would call Bolshevik abolitionism must ultimately be understood as one part of the defeat of the Russian Revolution itself.

DN: We have another question: If imagining beyond something like the No Kings protest, what is the role of socialists when engaging liberals who often share sentiments of democracy, equality, and sometimes even have anti-capitalist sentiment and ideas? How do we engage them in terms of getting them to participate in more meaningful collective action? You both spoke about the importance of collective action and that being a fertile terrain for ideas to change and shift.

bb: I think that many of the liberals who’ve come out for the No Kings stuff are concerned rightly about the degradation of American democracy. The size of these demonstrations is really inspiring. And people are concerned about a police state.

And I think our task as socialists is to take concerns with the police state and actually talk about the police. We need to connect the legitimate and real concern, fear, and outrage, particularly around ICE and explain that ICE is just a federal police department.

It’s important to outline the Democrats’ various complicities. Illinois Governor, J.B. Pritzker has spoken out a lot criticizing ICE. He has taken up Trump in court. But his state police officers are there outside Chicago at the detention facility with huge batons pushing back and arresting protestors who are there to protest the kidnapping of our neighbors and block them from doing so.

He’s trying to keep a certain kind of order. They don’t want protests that get a little too loud. They’re not concerned about the disorder of all these ICE agents prowling our city streets, kidnapping people who have done nothing wrong and disappearing them.

Let’s talk about the role that his police have played as well. ICE agents shot a man on the northwest side. There’s body cam footage of that killing. And Brandon Johnson’s appointed head of police, Larry Snelling has said he’s not gonna release the video.

We can connect to people’s anger about that and patiently connect that up with the role that police play in general and society.

DC: I also think we would want to bring up the question of, okay, you’re concerned about the things that brought you out to the No Kings action, but what are the methods of action that are actually going to win? The protest was really important, but we need to think about disruption. We need to think about mass disruptive action that actually can block aspects of the MAGA agenda if people are gonna fight back.

We need to stress that kind of organizing in between those big days of action to get people involved in different kinds of mobilization to show that there’s an alternative to the ballot box. We may not be able to persuade people to abandon the Democratic party, but the point is we need to actually say that if we want to fight and win in the here and now.

We need to actually use more effective tactics than the ones that are being put forward. So Mayday Strong, for example, that network of labor organizations, has been building for some more effective kinds of actions. And we need to also be trying to help people to see the links between the attacks on political rights and the things that are being done by employers to working people every day and the need to build the labor movement as part of the forces of resistance.

DN: David and brian, please offer any closing remarks.

DC: The theme of abolition cuts to the core of what we’re talking about, whether we call it communism or socialism–the possibility in the 21st century of a break with capitalism that begins a transition towards the classless and stateless society of freedom.

Social democratic and Stalinist traditions of politics from above have really gotten in the way of, and sometimes distorted, the genuinely socialist or communist project as being one about liberation and self emancipation of the majority of people in the world.

There’s a powerful way in which people’s horizons get lowered in our times by how bad things are and how they’re getting worse. People will be prepared to settle for a lesser evil or settle for a regulated capitalism.

We haven’t talked about the ecological crisis. The only way to address that, ultimately is by breaking with capitalism. We need to be able to try to reclaim an emancipatory liberatory project in our times. And I think abolition is an important part of that reinventing of communism for the 21st century.

bb: Linking up abolition and communism is urgent because the right knows what they need to protect the system. Both Democrats and Republicans increase police budgets as police training facilities like Cop City in Atlanta proliferate. We’re seeing this in the moves towards more interoperability, different departments working together. We see this with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. There’s open collusion between the police and ICE. For the ruling class, the police are the answer to the crisis.

Grasping the liberatory potential and future of communism and abolition has urgency for our organizing in the context of political crisis–the rise of the far right, the crisis of the economy, and the ecological crisis that has apocalyptic ramifications. The surge of people who are fleeing across borders all over the world reflects this crisis. We can’t achieve a revolution right now; we need revolutionary patience to undertake the work of building movements.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: nigel viu; modified by Tempest.

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The murder of Alex Pretti—the day after workers shut down Minneapolis in protest of ICE’s invasion of their city–has raised the stakes for those resisting the war on immigrants. Masked government agents violently attacked Pretti moments after he helped a fellow protester who had been pushed down by ICE thugs. He was maced, beaten, and shot in the back.

All of this was captured on video from multiple angles by eyewitnesses, and the world watched in horror. Kristi Noem’s outlandish claims that the victim was a “domestic terrorist,” who “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement” stood in stark contrast to the video evidence watched by millions who learned that Pretti was an intensive care nurse for military veterans.

Coming just sixteen hours after a massive march in subzero temperatures—the culmination of a day of mass civil disobedience, work stoppages, school closures, and business closings—Pretti’s murder left many wondering if it was in revenge for the Minneapolis resistance, and what it would take to defeat this kind of occupying force. As the movement confronts an entrenched and dangerous enemy, it is increasingly clear that protests and demonstrations are essential, but the only thing that will stop Trump is the kind of action that seriously impacts the economy: mass strikes.

No work, no school, no shopping

The mass actions of January 23 put tens of thousands in the streets in response to a call for “no work, no school, no shopping.” Almost one thousand businesses closed their doors, even if only for a few hours, in solidarity. Workers called in sick or took a “mental health day.” Some workplaces were forced to close by the collective will of employees. Even while labor unions stopped short of officially declaring a strike, many endorsed the day of action.

The outpouring of protest and support for immigrants is a multiracial fightback based in the working class with anti-racist politics at its heart. It is a powerful antidote to Trump’s use of anti-immigrant scapegoating . . .

The protest was spurred by the murder of Minneapolis ICE resister Renee Good on January 7. The general strike, as it was widely referred to, was organized by a coalition of trade unions, faith organizations, and neighborhood rapid response networks. Some of these formations came together in 2011 around common bargaining demands. They also built on the long history of anti-racist mobilization in the wake of the George Floyd uprising. This organizational cross pollination combined with popular sentiment against ICE raids to produce a significant showing. One survey found that one in four voters in the state participated or had a loved one who did. This is all new territory for the movement.

When the administration sent 3,000 federal officials into Minneapolis—which, to put things in perspective, employs about 600 police officers—they declared war on the immigrant population. The Border Patrol officers who murdered Pretti were in pursuit of a delivery worker who was sheltering in a local business behind locked doors.

Immigrant unions and entire neighborhoods sprang into action to defend their community. Masked officers escalated their violent attacks, entering schools and confronting students and educators. The image of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, arrested on his way home from preschool in the Minneapolis suburb of Columbia Heights on January 20, became a symbol of the cruelty of ICE. This only added to the indignation many already felt and drove more to take action on the 23rd.

The people vs. the billionaires

Thirty-five people have died while in federal custody since President Donald Trump began this campaign in July 2025, and eight have been murdered in the field by ICE officials.

Almost all of the people killed and injured by these agents so far have been immigrants and people of color. These individuals include Keith Porter, an African American father of two in Los Angeles, and Silverio Villegas González, also a father of two elementary school children in Franklin Park, Illinois—a Chicago suburb. Renee Good and Alex Pretti were outliers in that they were both white.

The “domestic surge” has deployed thousands of heavily armed, armored and masked agents mostly to cities in blue states, regardless of the actual concentration of immigrants. ICE has been met with popular community resistance, from Los Angeles to Chicago to the Twin Cities. In each case the opposition has learned new lessons, which have been shared with protesters elsewhere. Minnesota is the latest link in the chain of learning how to resist.

Communities across the Twin Cities and beyond have stood up to these racist attacks on people who are just trying to live their lives and raise families. Their actions are inspiring as they show the depth of opposition to MAGA and the potential for an alternative.

The outpouring of protest and support for immigrants is a multiracial fightback based in the working class with anti-racist politics at its heart. It is a powerful antidote to Trump’s use of anti-immigrant scapegoating to divert attention from the billionaire class while it cuts SNAP benefits, health care, and funding for education.

National Nurses United, a health care union representing 225,000 workers, organized vigils across the country for Alex Pretti. At an event outside a Veteran Affairs hospital in Chicago, one speaker called on us to recognize the “state sanctioned violence” of unaffordable health care as well as targeted murder by government agents.

The administration attacks immigrants in the name of fighting crime. But the true criminals are the richest one percent and their hired help in Congress. They spend billions of our tax dollars terrorizing immigrants and billions more on regime change in Venezuela and Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine. They fund their imperial projects by cutting domestic services at home.

In order to get away with this blatant theft, the billionaire class suppresses individuals and organizations that defend our rights. They have decimated public unions, criminalized outspoken organizers like Mahmoud Khalil, and murdered people in the streets in an attempt to scare people away from protest.

The U.S. workforce does not currently have the organizational capacity to launch a mass strike. . . . But . . . we can plan and build campaigns in the here and now that will help build this organizational capacity and the infrastructure to nurture and sustain it.

They have not succeeded in stemming mass protest by students, neighborhood organizations and workers, but they are forcing us all to confront the daunting question of how we can stop these attacks.

The power of the mass strike

More people than ever are asking how we can stop the war on immigrants and also address the raft of economic problems known as the “affordability crisis.” The pledge by Democrats to reform ICE and Border Patrol to refocus on their mission only reveals their complicity. Some Democrats sense the political winds are shifting. One candidate for Senator from Illinois, Raja Krishnamoorthi, voted as a member of the House to express “gratitude” to ICE in June 2025, when they were arresting union leaders in Los Angeles. He is now calling for ICE to be abolished.

ICE should be abolished, and the priorities of our society should be thoroughly recalibrated. But as we argued in our January editorial, we cannot expect these changes to come from above. Our collective ability to redirect funding away from war and occupation (domestically and internationally), towards health, housing, and education should look instead to the lessons from Minneapolis.

Our greatest power is in our potential ability to organize mass strikes.

Recent years have seen political strikes globally, such as in South Korea when martial law was declared in December 2024, or in France in January 2023 when the retirement age was raised. While the U.S has seen strikes over contractual or safety issues, such as the tens of thousands of health care workers on strike in New York and against Kaiser Permanente, strikes over political issues are not common here.

When a call for a general strike on January 30 went out via social media following the murder of Alex Pretti, the Google search for the word “strike” increased dramatically, as people across the country attempted to educate themselves. In multiple cities, students demonstrated, small businesses shut down, and people gathered to rally and march in solidarity with the resisters in Minnesota. This shows tremendous potential, but until labor is far better organized, most workers cannot simply walk out without risking their jobs. Most unions are far from ready to launch the kind of coordinated, disciplined strike action that could really make a difference, and most workers lack a union, given that unionization rates are below 10 percent.

So the pressing question is how we can harness the collective strength on display in Minnesota, and everywhere that people are standing up against ICE, in order to make a significant economic impact.

What do we do next?

The U.S. workforce does not currently have the organizational capacity to launch a mass strike on the scale of those in South Korea. But with the vision of this goal, we can plan and build campaigns in the here and now that will help us build this organizational capacity and the infrastructure to nurture and sustain it. These campaigns will vary depending on the particular location and context, but there are many available options for both union and non-union workers.

We can hold strike schools that help unionized and non-unionized workers to become strike ready. We can build emergency response networks to move into action against ICE and CBP. We can form workplace-based emergency response networks, especially in schools, which are powerful sites at the intersection between the community and workplace and therefore of great strategic importance for a mass strike. We can agitate to make every workplace a Fourth Amendment zone which refuses access to ICE and CBP. We can push to force towns and cities to pledge non-compliance with ICE and CBP, even if that means defying federal law (even Minnesota, a so-called sanctuary state, does not have such measures).

In the upcoming months we should join local organizing efforts for the March 28th No Kings protest, with the explicit plan of projecting mass actions for May Day—which is on Friday, a work day—including strikes and sickouts against the Trump regime.

Finally, we should join May Day Strong. 3,500 people participated in a virtual call on February 1, entitled “How We Build a General Strike,” where union leaders, organizers, and even the mayor of Chicago Brandon Johnson addressed this question. The focus of that meeting was building towards coordinated actions across the country on May 1, 2026.

We can draw inspiration from the anti-ICE movement and commit to building the kind of sustained, ongoing organizing in workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods that will increase our capacity and power. A better world is waiting to be born, and it will take all of us to help make that happen.

 

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Laurie Schaull; modified by Tempest.

The post Lessons from Minneapolis appeared first on Tempest.

Ashley Smith: What precipitated the current uprising in Iran? What kinds of people, classes, and social groups have joined the movement? Has it extended to Iran’s national minorities, especially the Kurds? What kinds of actions have people organized? Is it mainly demonstrations? Have workers taken strike action?

Houshang Sepehr: To answer your question, one must take into consideration two distinct factors, conjunctural factors and structural ones.

I’ll begin with the conjunctural factors that sparked this movement: the sharp fall of Iran’s currency, the Rial against the dollar, which further fueled already runaway inflation. That affected broad sections of society and pushed the situation to a boiling point. It went so far as to drive the bazaar merchants— who for decades were a pillar of the Islamic Republic and loyal to the clergy and the state—to protest.

In response to the downturn in business and the instability that makes any economic activity unpredictable, a segment of Tehran’s merchants went on strike and marched through the bazaar. These protests quickly spread to students at universities in Tehran and other major cities, triggering the closure of these institutions. In these cities, the working class staged demonstrations. Significantly, barely a day after the bazaar merchants went on strike, the regime retreated and granted all of their demands.

With that, the merchants called off their participation in the struggle. But workers continued because their grievances were deeper. One of those was anger at the government’s decision to end subsidies for fuel and many basic goods as well as its abolition of the preferential currency exchange rate for imported goods. These triggered a sudden rise in food prices, making it hard for people to afford to put food on the table.

However, this uprising has much deeper roots than these immediate causes. Structural factors, which have made life unbearable for large segments of the population, have played a major role in the emergence of this movement. The regime’s neoliberal policies have produced unimaginable levels of social inequality. Paltry wages bear no relation to the skyrocketing prices of basic necessities. Workers face extreme job insecurity. There is widespread unemployment. Everyone is experiencing social insecurity. And, when anyone dares speak out or protest, they face brutal state repression.

The international Left must show absolute and unconditional solidarity and empathy with this uprising. Of course, such solidarity does not preclude criticism.

What was particularly striking at the outset of these protests was the prominent role played by people in smaller cities. They suffer greater economic deprivation. The protests gradually spread from these to the major cities. Given the geographic breadth of the protests across Iran, national minorities were also widely present. From Kurdistan to Baluchistan, people joined the nationwide protests. The protests were largely confined to demonstrations, which, prior to their bloody suppression, at times also led to clashes with the state’s forces of repression.

There were also strikes. These came out of a wave of job actions. Workers’ strikes and street demonstrations — along with those of other segments of the labor force — around trade-union and economic demands have been occurring on an almost daily basis across Iran. Just a few days before the bazaar merchants’ strike began, six thousand contract workers in the Assaluyeh oil and gas industries organized a major, historic action demanding the abolition of the contracting system.

Almost every sector of society has been in motion. For instance, in Tehran, while public demonstrations were taking place in several neighborhoods, retirees in other parts of the city continued to stage weekly street gatherings. As the movement grew, they joined the wider protests that engulfed the city.

AS: What are the main economic and political grievances that people express? Are there any unifying demands?

HS: This uprising was crushed with brutality before it could reach the stage of articulating “positive” demands. In this uprising, slogans rejecting the Islamic Republic and the existing order predominated from the outset. The people’s common and unifying demands were expressed in slogans such as “Death to the dictator,” “Death to Khamenei,” and “We do not want the Islamic Republic.”

Radio Zamaneh conducted a study of videos of demonstrations in the first six days of the uprising. They found that the above slogans accounted for 65 percent of the total. Economic demands, which had been the initial trigger of the protests, were limited to 14 percent. Slogans in support of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed monarch, such as “Long live the King” or “This is the final battle, the Pahlavi will return” made up 20 percent of the total.

Slogans calling for the monarchy cannot be considered demands. Many who chanted them did so out of the absence of a political alternative. They view the situation, in their own words, as a choice between the bad and the worse. This does not, of course, mean that there are no monarchist supporters among the protesters. There are. That said, we should also remember that various forces from the regime to elements of the opposition have used AI to doctor videos to advance their particular political aims.

But the most important point is that the slogans have been negative, not positive. People know what they’re against, not what they’re for. The uprising has therefore lacked a clear horizon and a concrete social and political alternative to the existing situation. It has remained confined to rejecting the status quo. Thus, the most common, unifying slogan was for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic with little sense of what to replace it with.

AS: What are the political groupings and class organizations trying to influence the direction of the struggle? Have any kinds of democratic formations developed to coordinate the protests and strikes? What are the main debates in the movement?

HS: The uprising was suppressed before it took organizational form with contending political alternatives. Of course, all existing political currents in the opposition have sought to influence the uprising, but not all of them have equal means to exert this influence. For example, mainstream Iranian social media abroad have sought to present the son of the deposed Shah as the instigator and leader of these protests and as the country’s future leader. Persian-language television channels such as Iran International and Manoto, which are largely funded by Israel, have highlighted his role. So have the BBC and other major international media outlets.

The Israeli-backed media and international broadcasters have enormous funds, operate around the clock, and can influence people. Other opposition political formations — from the Left to republicans, nationalists, the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK),and others — also attempt, through their more limited media platforms, to steer the protests in the direction they favor. But their reach remains very constrained.

Republican and nationalist organizations emphasize opposing the restoration of the monarchy, stress the necessity of national independence, and opposing imperialist intervention. Progressive forces in all their diversity oppose the monarchists, which are far-right, support the U.S. and Israel, and call for their intervention. Abroad, they challenge the influence of MEK, which collaborates with Western imperialists.

Left-wing organizations focus primarily on the nature of the future political system. Some insist on parliamentary democracy, while others advocate council (soviet) democracy. There are disagreements between them not only over the future form of Iranian society, but also over how to conduct the struggle itself. Some argue for peaceful methods, while others advocate confronting state repression with force up to and including armed struggle.

Iranian radicals must strive to lead these movements toward progressive alternatives and clarify how this can be done. Yet, due to the absence of organized leftist, class-based forces in the country, their efforts face significant obstacles and challenges.

Most of these debates are carried on outside the country. Inside, we (partly due to the internet blackout since January 8) have little sense of the debates. However, it is natural to assume that all these currents are vying for organizational and political influence, even if they are still in embryonic form.

AS: How does this uprising compare to the Woman, Life, Freedom movement? How does it compare to the Green Movement? Is there continuity between the current uprising and previous ones? What lessons, if any, have people drawn and put into action today?

HS: The continuity between the current uprising and previous uprisings (at least over the past eight years) lies primarily in the structural causes that led to all of them— the expansion of inequality, poverty, the difficulty of making a living, despotism, and the repression of individual and social freedom.

The main difference between the current uprising and “Woman, Life, Freedom” in 2022 and “Bread, Work, Freedom” in 2018 is the absence of positive slogans and demands. These two earlier uprisings had clear slogans and demands. The one in 2022 was focused on demands for women’s liberation, targeting the patriarchal, theocratic character of the government and agitating for individual freedom and lifestyle choices. The one in 2018 focused on economic demands. Today’s uprising is like the one in 2018, protesting against the deterioration of economic conditions.

In the 2022 uprising, although all social strata—except the large bourgeoisie—participated widely, including workers, wage earners, and the working masses, the leadership of the movement was primarily in the hands of the young urban middle class. In the current uprising, while all social classes are present (including parts of the bourgeoisie, such as the bazaar’s  merchants), the working class and laboring people are more prominent. The participation today of small towns and rural villages also distinguishes it from previous uprisings. Despite these differences, the common feature of all these uprisings is the demand to get rid of the Islamic Republic regime in its entirety.

These recent uprisings are different from the 2009 Green Movement. It began with the slogan “Where is my vote?” that challenged the regime’s totalitarian tendencies and sought reform, not the overthrow of the regime. Factions of the system’s establishment were present in and partially led the movement. By contrast, in the recent movement, no part of the establishment has broken with the regime.

AS: How has the regime responded? What is it likely to do in the face of such a widespread uprising? Does it still retain bases of support? What are the class and social bases of that support? Can the regime mobilize them in defense of its rule?

HS: This uprising has faced the harshest repression the regime has employed in its 47-year history, only comparable with the bloody repression of the Kurds in the early 1980s. The scale and forms of this violence and massacre are so extreme that they leave little room for any other action. Even after the slaughter of thousands of people, the regime continues to arrest people in large numbers.

Naturally, the government can rely on its institutional structures like the military forces such as Army, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the Basij, its paramilitary Islamist militia. It also has a base of support among social strata that depend on it economically. These include managers and bourgeois elements tied to the regime through foundations as well as the financial and commercial institutions of the Revolutionary Guards and religious centers. The military forces of repression (the Basij and the IRGC) were created to defend the regime and continue to serve this purpose. It is estimated that this support includes roughly ten percent of the population.

AS: What about the loyalty of sections of the regime? Are there any splits? Any divisions between the military brass and rank and file soldiers? Are there any establishment forces capable of tilting toward sympathy to co-opt and neutralize the struggle? Or is the regime united in repression of the protests?

HS: So far, no rift has been observed within the regime. Even within the military forces, there has been no defiance of orders among its lower ranks. It should be noted that in the recent repression, in addition to the Basij and the IRGC, regular law enforcement and police forces were also involved. There is no force within the ruling system that sympathizes with the protests. None are trying to absorb or channel the movement. The huge state apparatus remains intact, and the regime is united as a whole in suppressing the movement at any cost.

Imperialist powers seek to exploit the crises of their rivals or opponents for their own advantage. But this fact cannot serve as an excuse to deny the real material suffering and popular protest of people crushed under economic austerity, inflation, and repression.

AS: What impact have external players like the U.S., Israel, and monarchists grouped around the Shah’s son had on the movement? How do the various layers involved in the struggle view these states and especially the monarchists? What do activists think of Trump’s threats to intervene?

HS: With the internet cut off, it is not possible to answer this question precisely. However, it seems that the boasts of the former Shah’s son and Trump’s threats toward the regime have been believed to some extent by a portion of the protesters. The calls by the Pahlavi family and Trump’s encouragement to confront the forces of repression have had some effect, but the failure of Trump’s threats to materialize—especially after the brutal suppression—has left part of the population disillusioned. Given the horrific repression and the absence of any organized opposition within the country, it is not surprising that some pinned their hopes on Trump.

AS: What do you say to those on the international Left that dismiss this uprising as just another “color revolution” triggered and manipulated by U.S. imperialism and its allies like Israel?

HS:First, this is a completely mass-based, independent, and genuine uprising, arising from the accumulated anger and exhausted patience of the people in response to all the social and political injustices. It is also an expression of profound opposition to the Islamic Republic, which has repressed the popular classes for nearly 50 years.

Second, those international left factions you mentioned are the “campists.” They reduce all politics to geopolitics and explain the protests almost entirely based on the positions taken by states from the U.S. to Israel and Iran. Since the U.S.or Israel seek to exploit the situation, campists judge the movement to be reactionary or manipulated. They see protesters as the conscious or unconscious instruments of imperialism.

In this view, the starting point is no longer the real people’s lives and their hardships—not inflation, not economic insecurity, not austerity, not repression, not despotism, not class struggle—but rather the games of alliances and rivalries between states. This perspective erases internal social contradictions and, in doing so, renders any possibility of self-organization and class autonomy impossible.

It is natural that imperialist powers seek to exploit the crises of their rivals or opponents for their own advantage. But this fact cannot serve as an excuse to deny the real material suffering and popular protest of people crushed under economic austerity, inflation, and repression. By reducing everything to geopolitics class-based critique is sidelined. Ultimately this approach can end up defending the worst repression under the banner of anti-imperialism.

The perspective described above—“campism” or “the anti-imperialism of fools”—stands in contrast to another strand of the Left that uncritically praises and sanctifies everything that happens in the streets. In this view, any popular anger is automatically considered progressive. Criticism of slogans or the prevailing direction of the movement is deemed impermissible; any critique is either labeled anti-movement or dismissed as elitist. Yet the street is never a neutral space; it is always a field of struggle.

There is no guarantee that the orientation of any social movement will always be emancipatory. When the Left and class-based politics are properly absent, other forces fill the vacuum. In such a situation, simplistic, nationalist, or reactionary monarchist discourses can hijack entirely legitimate social anger and struggle.

Ultimately, these two opposing interpretations respond to the same underlying issue: the absence of an organized, class-based political alternative. One restricts politics to the states; the other leaves it to the spontaneity of the streets. In both cases, the possibility for popular anger to be transformed into a conscious, collective project is lost.

This sorrowful situation is the product of a deeper crisis within the Iranian Left—a Left that has become disconnected from workplaces and the concrete realities of people’s lives. As a result, geopolitics and media take the place of on-the-ground work, since they are less costly and less risky. In this way, class-based politics retreats, leaving the field open to dominant narratives, whether those of the regime or of its reactionary opponents.

AS: What position do you think the international Left should adopt toward this uprising?

HS:In line with what was answered in the previous question, there is not the slightest doubt that the international Left must show absolute and unconditional solidarity and empathy with this uprising. Of course, such solidarity does not preclude criticism.

AS: The Middle East and North Africa and indeed much of the world have experienced waves of uprisings without mass democratic organization and without rooted left-wing parties and organizations. This has meant that the uprisings found themselves prone to being co-opted by reactionary forces or crushed by the state. How are Iranian radicals wrestling with these challenges?

HS:This is a valid point. Popular movements and uprisings that emerge from deep-seated grievances all demand an end to the existing oppression and hardships. They are united in rejecting and negating the status quo. However, they naturally differ over alternatives they propose and the means of pursuing them. In other words, these movements themselves are a site of political struggle.

As I noted above, in the absence of progressive political and social alternatives from the Left, such uprisings are either vulnerable to co-optation by reactionary forces or subject to repression and defeat. Iranian radicals must strive to lead these movements toward progressive alternatives and clarify how this can be done. Yet, due to the absence of organized leftist, class-based forces in the country, their efforts face significant obstacles and challenges.

AS: Where is this revolt headed? What impact will it have on regional and international politics?

HS:This uprising is in a state of flux. Many possibilities lie ahead. It may quickly rise again, or it may sink into a prolonged period of dormancy—especially given the unprecedented massacre it has suffered. At present, it has subsided due to this heavy repression.

If it succeeds, that is, if the Islamic regime is pushed back and imperialist schemes are neutralized, it would have a profound impact on the balance of power in favor of workers and all progressive social strata in the region and internationally. And it would deal a serious blow to political Islam in the world.

Moreover, it would serve as an example for other liberation movements across the region and the world. Unfortunately, under current conditions, we are far from this scenario. On the contrary, in the event of the movement’s failure, whether the Islamic Republic remains in power or an imperialist scenario prevails, the consequences would be catastrophic for the entire region and the world.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Fars News Agency; modified by Tempest.

The post Iran on the brink? appeared first on Tempest.

This roundtable, organized as part of Tempest’s 2025 education series, brings together three veteran organizers to discuss the on-the-ground work of organizing against political repression, for Palestine solidarity, and in the workplace by putting the tradition of socialism from below to work. 

Tempest will continue to publish talks from this year’s education series, including primers on Marxism, socialism from below, Anti-racism and abolition, internationalism and anti-campism, the rank and file strategy, organizing, feminism and LGBTQ liberation, and others. These talks are intended to serve as an introduction to Tempest’s core political agreements.

Aileen: Hey, happy to be together with y’all. My name is Aileen. I’m a member of the Tempest Tucson branch. Thanks to the education committee for taking up the planning of this event. I’m really hoping to learn a lot from folks. Even after preparing for this talk, I feel like I still have five million questions.

As someone who considers themselves newer to organizing and to being a part of a political home, I’ve been wanting to have conversations about how socialism from below actually shows up in the nitty gritty of our everyday organizing, when we’re developing proposals, campaigns, talking to coworkers and community members. I want to really begin to understand how that’s showing up.

I was tasked with speaking on socialism from below in today’s anti-repression organizing specifically. Anti-repression organizing didn’t begin under the Trump administration. Political repression is the calling card of the ruling class, so nothing that I’m about to say is particularly new. But for the sake of time, I’m going to focus on the parts of anti-repression organizing that are coming up in this era of MAGA McCarthyism in the geographical context of the U.S. I’ll focus on Arizona, where I’m located, and on organizing and campaigns in which I’ve directly participated. For me, that’s mostly been in the realm of higher education, especially in relation to the attack on academic freedom, and the further criminalization of the Left in Tucson.

Before offering the reflection on that organizing, though, I wanted to establish some context and talk about the characteristics of our conditions: The political repression we are seeing is the violent consequence of capitalist catastrophe. As the quality of life decreases, the contradictions of capitalism become more and more clear. And as more people fight back, the state comes down harder on all who they deem a problem in this fantasy of neverending wealth. Academics, socialists, leftists, Palestinians, Muslims, labor organizers, trans people, queer folks, migrants, people of color, the disabled, the working class, and the poor are all under attack as the state attempts to stop all dissent and moves deeper into authoritarianism.

We must put forth a convincing vision of a liberated world in all of the spaces that we struggle in . . . so that the institutions that we’re a part of seem less and less inevitable and natural.

The effectiveness of this repression, however, which for me has felt shockingly swift and chaotic and characterized by preemptive compliance and capitulation, comes only after years of Democrats twiddling their thumbs and appeasing donors by refusing to provide any meaningful opposition to the right-wing establishment.

More specifically, it is Palestine, as Eman Abdelhadi says, that held “a mirror to every institution in our society and exposed the gaps in the rights that we are told that we have.” When universities violently shut down the encampments that shot up following Columbia’s action back in April of 2024, and they rejected the right of students, faculty, and staff to speak and protest on Palestine, they set the bar in literal Hell for defending DEI, critical race theory, and the right to protest, not to mention keeping ICE off campus and protecting international students.

So that’s the context we’re organizing in today. Organizers like Lelo Juarez and Mahmoud Khalil can be detained and, in the case of Lelo, deported by ICE. Professors like Tom Alter and countless others can be fired for speaking about critical race theory, Palestine, socialism and supporting trans people. The National Guard can be launched at the will of Trump to squash dissent in cities like LA and DC.

And yet—with virtually no support from the institutions that claim to defend our right to education, speech, life, and dignity—people continue to fight back under these dire conditions. Mahmoud Khalil was released only after months of public pressure, and protests that spoke to both the urgency of Palestinian liberation and the right to protest. The committee to defend professor Tom Alter, who was fired for his remarks at a socialism conference, has launched calls to action, a toolkit, and multiple forums for discussion about unjust dismissal. At the same time, rapid response and community defense networks have popped up all over the country to fight back against ICE and protect immigrant communities through observation, Know Your Rights trainings, and mass actions to stop deportations.

Here in Tucson, I’ve been a part of organizing at the University of Arizona with the group UA Resist, which arose as a direct response to the implementation anti-DEI policies that resulted in the firing of my comrades and coworkers, and has most recently taken up the fight against the higher education compact that Trump issued to nine universities, of which we were one of the lucky few.

Our strategy has been to try and mobilize campus by connecting with others—organizing one-on-ones and using classroom zaps, and direct actions in hopes of protecting the spaces and rights of students. We are one of the only wall-to-wall groups on campus that’s made up of students, faculty and staff, and we have a large contingency of Tempest members in the organization, many of whom are on this call.

Beyond the university campus, two of my comrades were subject to political targeting in relation to an anti-ICE protest that occurred this summer. They were arrested and initially held on charges of criminal damages, riot, and terrorism. A small group of Tucson community members have since put out statements, but we have not launched a larger campaign around this. Instead, we have prioritized a discussion around what this means for us, around risk and organizing in Tucson.

As I begin to reflect on all these projects, there’s one question that I keep coming back to: What is the task of revolutionary socialists who embrace the tradition of socialism from below and who are organizing against political repression?

This is my attempt at an answer.

One, we need to build solidarity on college campuses. We need wall-to-wall efforts. Faculty need to take seriously the role of providing mentorship and maintaining legacies of radicalism and militancy alongside staff and students.

Also, we need to understand and convince people that the university has always been this way, has always had these lukewarm takes on free speech. There isn’t going back to a time where due process existed and our constitutional rights or free speech were ever really defended.

We do this not in order to squash a vision of what the university could be, but to put forth a better one and to build solidarity amongst people who have been experiencing repression on college campuses since before this particular era of political repression. This also means that we need to build coalitions with organizations who are more liberal while providing critical intervention so that we don’t move right and deeper into institutional means of resistance.That’s something that’s been coming up a lot at the U of A, as students take different lessons from different people on campus, some liberal and others more radical.

Two, we can’t rely on institutions to save us. Socialism from below demands not that we wait for Trump to go away—which I have been told verbatim by my supervisors and others who have capitulated to the consolidation of the cultural center that I work at—but that we try and build the independent power needed to win concessions from the ruling class in organizing against political repression.

This means that we can’t wait for the courts to rule in our favor or our universities to grow a backbone and stop capitulating to donors and trustees. We must put forth a convincing vision of a liberated world in all of the spaces that we struggle in—our unions, organizing groups, community defense networks, etc., so that the institutions that we’re a part of seem less and less inevitable and natural. Anti-repression struggles are key to this. They expose the deep hypocrisy of this country’s so-called freedom and have the ability to mobilize a large swath of people under radical demands.

Three, we need to fight for full democracy in our organizing spaces. Anti-repression organizing is facing head-on the terrifying scale and power of the state. Under these conditions, it’s easy to fall into the trap of closing ranks, of keeping quiet and softening that radical edge in hopes that we don’t get put on some list somewhere.

But we’re probably already on a list. Of course, we want to prioritize people’s safety and to avoid infiltration, but what the hell does it mean to be safe right now? In the case of targeted political repression such as that of Tom Alter and my comrades, it is of course important to consider the consent of the individual targets. However, we have to be careful that the measures for safety and security are not countering the building of mass political power.

Otherwise, we’re doing exactly what the state wants us to do. Safety or the closest we can get to it is in numbers and in direct democracy. It is much harder for one person to infiltrate and take over a group if it’s impossible for one person to hold all the power to begin with. That means that revolutionary socialists need to be able to defend and argue for pro-democracy structures within organizing and to mitigate the power imbalances that almost always come up when you’re organizing in crisis.

Four, we must build confidence and agency. The fact that nobody is coming to save us is a devastating but important conclusion to arrive at, especially for those newly radicalized like the students and staff that we are working alongside at UA Resist. We Tempest members who are in that organization lead with the politics of socialism from below because we take seriously the fact that there is no substitution for the working class and that we are all capable of having agency.

To build someone’s confidence means pushing and mentoring people to do things. We are building trainings on organizing, facilitation, and media. We do most things in committees so that people can actually learn from each other. We have a low bar of entry but expect everyone to participate, vote, and put forth proposals. Of course, it’s not perfect, but confidence comes with practice and that’s what we’re trying to carve out—the space to practice.

Further, it is the role of socialists, radicals, everyone fighting against oppression, to convince and demonstrate to people that we must have confidence in each other, that together we can actually build the safety nets that will protect us against repression as it attempts to turn our lives upside down. It’s a lot easier to take big risks when you know people can confidently have your back. Leftists are being targeted, and that risk is real, but the safety net we can build in the face of that is more powerful than the protection anyone will get from facing charges alone, taking small meetings with university administration, or preemptively complying to authoritarianism.

I want to end by saying, these are scary times. I’m shaking in my boots. But all we have is each other. And we’re full of contradictions, fear, hope, and, most importantly, a hunger for a better world. I still have so many questions, and I’m excited to hear from people today in the discussion about how our politics are showing up in your organizing.

Sherry Wolf: Thanks Aileen for kicking us off so effectively.

I’ve been tasked to talk about organizing in the context of the Palestine movement in this country. But, first of all, I’ll introduce myself: I’m based out of Brooklyn and am a longtime revolutionary socialist. I helped found Tempest back in the summer of 2020 or whatever. I’m a union organizer by trade during the day, and too many evenings and sometimes on weekends, over at Rutgers. I’m also a longtime member of Jewish Voice for Peace and have been much more active with them, for obvious reasons, over the last couple of years.Palestine was my entry point to Marxism, to politics really, at the age of 18—entered a Zionist and left a revolutionary.

Two years into the genocide—and I think that we have to see this ceasefire as another phase of the genocide—the Palestine movement in the U.S. is definitely both bigger and broader than it’s ever been, but it’s also more diffuse and lacking, just like the rest of the Left in this country, spaces for strategic debate and organized collective planning.

I think we have to start by acknowledging what our movement has succeeded in doing, and that is mobilizing hundreds of thousands—probably, at this point, millions—of people into the streets and shifting the consciousness of tens of millions of people. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the automatic connection to the politics of default Zionism, which had been the politics of everybody in this country for generations, is dead for the current generation and future generations. That is a result of the genocide and also of the movement that was built globally and in this country to combat it, to expose it.

Our weaknesses also have to be acknowledged. The movement is really splintered without a common understanding or strategy to sever the U.S.-Israel bond that obviously has enabled the ongoing occupation of Palestine. And in New York City, where the movement has been largest and perhaps most dynamic nationally because of the demographics of the city, Mamdani’s victory raises new strategic questions for a movement that’s accustomed to full opposition from Democrats. And so this is new terrain in some ways for the movement.

I want to frame the conversation by saying that how we approach or how somebody approaches questions of why Israel occupies Palestine and is committing genocide and why Western as well as regional powers collaborate with the occupation and the genocide deeply influences the strategy and the tactics that we choose to take within our movements. We can’t disconnect our bigger framing of the problem and the resistance from what strategy and tactics look like on the ground.

In broad strokes, I think understanding the conflict overall, some in the U.S. on the far right, but also many on the broad Left, share an understanding of U.S. support for Israel, and it’s being given more expression lately, especially through the replaying of the conversation between Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson.  But, unfortunately, this has echoes on the Left. The argument runs that U.S. support for Israel is a result of the Israel lobby and powerful Jews with influence in the media, government, and business.

There certainly is a powerful Israel lobby that spends lavishly and has been doing so for decades. But they do so as an extra-governmental body reinforcing U.S. geopolitical interests and power. We understand in Tempest, and I understand as a Marxist, that a focus on the Zionist lobby, and through that the power of Jewish capital, not only reinforces antisemitic tropes, but it flies in the face of the evidence to the contrary. Israel has historically not been a drain on the U.S. empire but a gift to it. It serves as a watchdog, a mercenary nation run by a what is effectively a religious junta, carrying out vast experiments in social control, torture, and ethnic cleansing that are exported around the world, including to the U.S. via police departments in major U.S. cities.

It was Biden back 40 years ago who said that if Israel didn’t exist, we would have to create it. What was he talking about when he said that? Earlier in that decade, the Secretary of State Alexander Haig described Israel as an aircraft carrier for U.S. imperialism.

How we view this occupation does influence what your tactics are. As Marxists, Tempest members understand that there’s a mutually beneficial relationship between Israel and the U.S., and that support for Israel is a means of controlling the world’s oil spigot and thus a significant part of the global economy.

How we understand the resistance also frames what kind of movement politics, tactics, and strategies we try and play out. As socialists, we believe that any population under occupation has the right to resist in any way it sees fit, and that the violence of the oppressor and the violence of the oppressed can never be equated. However, support for the right of armed resistance does not mean support for the political perspectives and the orientations of any particular group or party that is carrying out those tactics.

This is not a perspective that is necessarily shared on the movement Left in this country. But the support for the right to resist should never be confused with support for the political perspectives and orientations of the various Palestinian political parties, including Hamas. None of these parties—Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine—offers a political strategy that has thus far over these decades been capable of winning the liberation of Palestine. And many on the Left, along with mainstream political parties, don’t view the Palestinian masses themselves and the regional working classes and oppressed peoples as the forces capable of winning the liberation of Palestine. Instead, they’re looking to alliances with the region’s political elites and the ruling classes who have accommodated imperialism, most recently codified through the Abraham Accords, with UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and others.

In the largest Left group that many of us are familiar with in this country, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), they do seek political alliances with regional powers. But it’s not necessarily that you pick one or the other. Groups like PSL frame the dispute in this way, and they also see street actions and protests as means of amplifying some of the political leaders’ perspectives in that fight. They view the governments in Iran and Syria and, before that, in Libya as allies in the struggle for Palestinian liberation, even if these same regimes have oppressed Palestinian populations and pursued policies hostile to the interests of the oppressed and working classes, it’s their hostility to the U.S. government that, for some organizations on the Left, supposedly places them in proximity to the Left.

For our movement to win, it has to start with the demands of Palestinians—that is, from below—and not with the demands that will be okay with the most moderate . . .

Even if you look further at pushes in our movement to reject calls to globalize the intifada or slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” that are emerging from circles on the Left, including coming from Mamdani, they’re in essence rejecting the historical perspective of the Palestinian liberation movement that has long called for dismantling the state of Israel and fighting for the establishment of a democratic secular state, from the river to the sea.

A rejection of these slogans is usually the forerunner to accommodation with Zionists and the Zionist state. When the movement starts policing its own slogans for being too radical and not appealing to liberals or endangering a politician’s standing, then we have to pause and ask if perhaps the movement is getting things backwards. Mamdani, for example, would have had zero chance of winning the mayoralty without the Palestinian movement that preceded and helped give birth to his rise.

For our movement to win, it has to start with the demands of Palestinians—that is, from below—and not with the demands that will be okay with the most moderate members of the New York City Council or various business roundtables that advise a mayor.

In terms of what is to be done, I think the main task for the Left globally remains the same, and that is developing a strategy based on regional solidarity from below, opposing Western states and Israel on one side while also opposing regional authoritarian states like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, the UAE, etc. and the political forces that are linked to them. We need a strategy based on class struggle from below as the only means for liberating the people of the Middle East. Inside of the U.S., that means the continuation of exposure campaigns, like BDS, within our unions and schools and on our campuses and in our neighborhoods. It means engaging in campaigns like Break the Bonds, which is trying to get cities like New York and elsewhere to divest pension funds and other holdings from Israel and is a way of organizing within our unions, workplaces, and neighborhoods. It means organizing within Block the Bombs to go after legislation that allows for continued U.S. support for Israel.

These are means of building infrastructures of dissent and going beyond mobilizing people for a one-off protest for Palestine. We use these campaigns and networks to activate and work with people who are going to be organizing on a deeper level within schools, unions, and neighborhoods to move these demands forward. Organizing on the ground is so crucial right now because we have to create bridges into movement, into organizing for all. So many people have hit the streets over the last two years. But people can’t be hitting the streets in perpetuity every weekend for their entire lives.

There also need to be vehicles and means for people to continue to deepen their politics. Educational events like what we are doing or what JVP is doing, educational events and other spaces where there are actually human beings coming together, hopefully in person but sometimes on Zoom, to strategize and discuss what are we going to do about this problem now that we understand it in this way.

If people are simply being summoned to act, we are not talking about a movement with any potential to build leadership, to build street cred, and to develop really serious tentacles that will be able to ultimately topple and sever this relationship that we’ve been protesting for so long.

Finally, at this moment in time, with rising fascism and the very real likelihood of troops on more and more American streets, it’s the responsibility of leftists within the Palestine movement to make the very clear connections between the organizing that we do around Palestine and the organizing we do to push back on attacks against our immigrant siblings on the streets of our own cities. Integrating within rapid response networks is part of the responsibility of our movement. These networks, after all, are going out there to oppose the police and ICE who were trained where? In Israel.

When we say that Palestine exposes so many of the threads of U.S. empire and everything that is wrong with it and capitalism, it’s not rhetorical. It’s quite real. And so, the linking of our movements and struggles in real time as we face fascism is something that we have a political responsibility to help manifest.

A New York City teacher: Thank you. I’ll try my best to follow up those two excellent presentations.

I’m a member of the Tempest NYC branch, and before that, I was a member of the International Socialist Organization (ISO) for a number of years. I’m a veteran NYC teacher and union activist. . I’m also a member of the Movement of Rank and File Educators, a caucus within the United Federation of Teachers (UFT).

I’m going to focus this talk on building within the workplace in particular. I think there could be a separate talk about building a caucus of organized activists across workplaces, but my talk is going to focus more on how we relate to coworkers in our own workplaces.

Our Marxist tradition has always understood trade unions to be important schools of struggle for the working class. They do play a dual role in that they provide the structure for workers to fight back, but they require a union bureaucracy, which inherently plays a conservatizing role, seeking to mediate between workers and their bosses. However, as rank and file activists, we don’t face the same limitations. We have a unique ability to use union structures in a way that raises the consciousness of all of our coworkers, while also aiming to convince the most conscious and active members of the necessity of revolutionary socialist politics.

Within our workplaces, we aim to be the most consistent, strategic, and effective fighters around immediate issues that affect every single one of our members. Our role as socialists is often to build our members’ confidence, encouraging them to take a step in the direction of collective action. As part of this process, we build democratic spaces in which all voices are heard and collective strategy can be hashed out.

Our coworkers will see this as a sharp contrast to the bureaucratic way in which the larger union as a whole operates. For the UFT, when we have meetings of our most democratic body, the Delegate Assembly, it’s the president speaking for 40 minutes, and there’s ten minutes of discussion. But when I run my chapter meetings, I’m not giving any big presentation.Instead, I’m opening up the space for collective discussion and providing minutes and notes. It’s just a totally different model. And the way the UFT often trains chapter leaders is just to provide information to their members and not open up the space for discussion.

At this moment within the UFT, and probably within many other unions, most workers, including those that hold left-wing and progressive ideas, feel that the best way to improve their working conditions and to preserve their job is to simply keep their head down and essentially kiss up to their bosses. The majority of workers do see the union as an ally. However, they tend to hope that someone in the union can hold the bosses to account on their behalf. They don’t see the collective role of themselves and their coworkers as essential in the process, and in fact, the very source that gives or can give unions hold their power.

Therefore, in this context, one of our most important roles as union activists is to start to organize our coworkers to take small steps and struggle. Whether we officially act as a shop steward or chapter leader or not, we should aim to find allies among the most conscious and active union members to strategically discuss the next collective action that could be taken. And we should train those allies to listen and to respond to our coworkers. It’s a magic thing. When coworkers see some collective action lead to success, their confidence starts to build, and they’re more likely to get involved in future actions.

Recently, the school where I teach tried to push something that we were getting paid for as an afterschool activity into our school day. And by having a collective response, we had a consultation committee meeting and raised the issue in several different ways, we actually got the school to concede. For us, that was an example of a concrete victory, but it could be small things like pushing back against excessive paperwork or too-large class sizes.

The next action we take could be small, like wearing a color in solidarity with a strike happening elsewhere, organizing several members to speak out about an issue at a faculty meeting, or convincing a coworker to take on a new organizing role or even just to come to the union meeting. Or it could be bigger like staging a before-work picket and a collective walk-in. It could be signing a statement in direct opposition to a supervisor or organizing a contract campaign that leads to a strike. As socialists, we all know the most effective action would be a strike. Unfortunately that is not always possible because we have to convince our coworkers to take that action.

So, our job as workplace organizers is to learn to find the next link in the chain that will move our coworkers to take action around a broadly felt idea. And it’s in our commitment to the process of building the muscles to struggle that we differ from other union activists. As we do this work, we don’t withhold our political ideas. We raise them throughout the process, and we try to build political relationships, especially with our most conscious coworkers.

Being involved in collective action provides opportunities to draw political lessons. One that I’m looking at in particular, which is very broadly felt right now in New York City, is the attempt to push a mandated curriculum on a lot of teachers. It’s a big issue in the elementary schools, and I think there’s an expectation among some of our coworkers that once Mamdani gets elected, it’s just going to go away. I don’t think that’s going to happen. It’s going to require collective action. I’ve already started that conversation with some of my coworkers.

Within our workplaces, we aim to be the most consistent, strategic, and effective fighters around immediate issues that affect every single one of our members. Our role as socialists is . . .  to build our members’ confidence, encouraging them to take a step in the direction of collective action.

Within the reform movement of the UFT, we’ve been part of an ongoing debate about whether union activists should focus more or less solely on workplace issues or also fight around issues of racism and those issues that affect our students and our community as a whole. Usually the forces that make the first argument have the goal of accumulating the most votes in union elections and holding their positions. But we believe that our ability to take collective action is more important than who holds union office.

The lesson of the 1968 racist teacher strike in New York City that pitted teachers against the black community’s demand for more control is that we cannot be effective in winning bread and butter demands unless we ally with parents and the community. We will not be able to win our demands without linking them to what our students and our community need, whether it’s smaller classes, protection from ICE, the end of over-testing and the scripted curriculum, which also hurts our students, protection from attacks on our own professionalism.

The supposed dichotomy between workplace and larger political issues is a false one, and in my experience in multiple schools, being an open socialist has never limited my role or my ability to play a leadership role within union chapters. People who may disagree with me on many issues see that our strategy is actually the most effective in winning demands in the workplace. They also understand that I don’t impose upon the chapter my own views. I open up the democratic floor for discussion, but I don’t withhold my politics.

In sum, we should see our role as union activists as trying to pull more and more people, more and more of our coworkers, into collective action that builds power and confidence while simultaneously convincing our coworkers of the need to broaden our struggle to defend other exploited and oppressed peoples. Without these concrete acts, we can’t ultimately convince others of the need for revolutionary socialist politics.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Adam Pomerinke; modified by Tempest.

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President Donald Trump implemented his National Security Strategy’s Donroe Doctrine by carrying out a coup in Venezuela. His aim is to carve out an exclusive sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere, impose imperial rule over its countries, and push out rivals, especially China. In the first move of this strategy, Trump concocted false allegations of drug trafficking against Nicolás Maduro’s regime, used those to justify a wave of state terrorist attacks on boats off Venezuela’s coast, then sent his special forces in to kidnap Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and imprisoned them in New York to stand trial. In their press briefing about the coup, Trump and his cabinet members openly declared their real imperial aims—seizing control of Venezuela’s oil.

But, instead of installing the right wing opposition led by María Corina Machado in office, the administration left Maduro’s regime intact. It is now led by Delcy Rodríguez. Despite her anti-imperialist rhetoric, she is collaborating with the Trump administration. Now Trump has his sights set on further interventions and regime changes from Colombia to Nicaragua, Cuba, and Greenland to bring the Western Hemisphere under Washington’s thumb.

In this interview, Tempest’s Ashley Smith speaks with Federico Fuentes about the coup, Maduro’s regime, and the urgency of building anti-imperialist resistance against Trump’s vicious new imperialism. Fuentes is a longtime Venezuela solidarity activist who lived in Caracas for several years during the Hugo Chávez government as a correspondent for Green Left and investigator at the Centro Internacional Miranda. He is editor of LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

 

Ashley Smith:Trump’s coup in Venezuela shocked the world. It is clearly the first shot of his New Monroe Doctrine to declare the Western Hemisphere as Washington’s exclusive sphere of influence, something that puts a target on all governments opposed to the U.S. or resisting its dictates. But it’s also surprising. Before the coup Maduro was offering the U.S. all sorts of concessions and deals, but Trump opted to kidnap him anyway. Why?

Federico Fuentes: Negotiations between the Donald Trump and Nicolás Maduro governments trace back to the start of Trump’s second term, when he sent his special envoy, Richard Grenell, to meet with Maduro in Caracas. It seems that, at least for a period of time, Trump was open to the idea of reframing relations with Maduro’s Venezuela.

This was based on an acknowledgement that while Washington’s traditional allies in the right-wing opposition were too weak to dislodge Maduro from power or provide stable governance, the Maduro government could meet Trump’s needs, particularly with regards to deportations and access to oil. And Trump was proven right: the Maduro government accepted deportation flights, released several U.S. citizens in its custody, and publicly offered the U.S. access to its oil. The only thing it was not willing to offer up was one of its own.

Trump warned several times that if Maduro did not step down and leave the country, some kind of military action would be taken. Maduro thought he could call Trump’s bluff. In the end, we got the dramatic military assault on Venezuelan territory, that not only led to the kidnapping of Maduro and former National Assembly president Cilia Flores, but the deaths of a still untold number of Venezuelan citizens and 32 Cubans. An imperialist intervention that must be denounced.

Some … have argued that as the government is still largely intact, nothing has fundamentally changed. But … the balance of forces on which this government rests has fundamentally changed.

The reason for this is that Trump realized it was untenable to simultaneously launch his new “Trump corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine—which, as his National Security Strategy states, seeks “to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere”—while allowing Maduro to stay in power and negotiate with his government. So, we got an operation that removed Maduro but kept his government. The dramatic military assault acted as the official start of the enacting of the “Trump corollary”.

Having achieved this, Trump’s government is now dealing with the new government, headed by Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, on a fundamentally different footing: one in which all the cards are in Trump’s hands. He plans to use this to humiliate the government and essentially convert Venezuela into a twenty-first century protectorate.

AS:Trump’s coup was not a regime change. He left the regime in place, minus Maduro and his wife. Why? Why did he not install Machado and the right wing opposition?

FF: For the two reasons. First, the understanding that Machado and the right-wing opposition could not stably govern the country, primarily because it has no influence in the military and security forces. Moreover, while those who support the government are a minority, they represent an important section of society and would have mobilized against the imposition of such a government. The most likely scenarios would have been street mobilization and maybe even civil war.

Second, the Trump government assessed that any new government sans Maduro would maintain Maduro’s policy of seeking accommodation with the United States. It recognized that the Maduro government had already been dramatically weakened by the loss of support and legitimacy inflicted in the 2024 presidential elections—where the government refused to publish verifiable results, strongly indicating fraud was committed.

Any new government would therefore be highly dependent on the U.S. for maintaining power. Given the Maduro government’s control over the military, and the role it had played in dismantling the radical process of change led by Chávez—commonly referred to as the Bolivarian revolution—Trump officials assessed a new dependent “Madurismo without Maduro” government would best provide stability while securing its interests.

There are two other points worth making. First, my belief had always been that successive U.S. administrations preferred to replace the Chávez and then Maduro governments with an undemocratic transitional authority. For a long time, this was  essentially a necessity, as the opposition was unable to win popular support at elections.

More importantly, such an authority would be best placed to completely wind back the remaining gains of the Bolivarian revolution. An unelected authority would not be encumbered with concerns about popularity or electorate mandate and would therefore be less beholden to pressure from below. Instead, it could swiftly implement what the U.S. sought (and apply the repression required), so that by the time any elections came about, all the main decisions had been made.

Today, the government’s main base of support is the U.S. government.

What I failed to foresee was that such an authority could ultimately be best run by figures that maintained the rhetoric of the Bolivarian revolution (even if they had presided over its destruction), and not the opposition. Ironically, the Rodríguez government has an advantage over a Machado government in that the latter would almost certainly be subject to more popular pressure, given the large vote that her preferred candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, seemingly obtained in the last presidential election, as indicated by voting tally sheets collected by the opposition.

The other point is that we should focus on content and not form. Some on the Right (and Left) have argued that as the government is still largely intact, nothing has fundamentally changed. But that misses a crucial element: the balance of forces on which this government rests has fundamentally changed.

When Chávez was elected in 1998, he came to power on a progressive platform but found it difficult to implement many of his proposed reforms. The old capitalist class, spearheaded by the main big business chamber of commerce, Fedecamaras, still had the upper hand in terms of the balance of forces, particularly through its control of the military and the state oil company, PDVSA.

These crucial levers of power were used to try and overthrow Chávez in 2002-03. However, the defeat of the April 2002 military coup attempt and December 2002-January 2003 oil bosses’ lockout—both through the mass mobilization of the poor majority, the working class (particularly oil workers) and patriotic sectors of the military—fundamentally altered the balance of power. In form, the Chávez government was the same before and after these events, but in content it was fundamentally different.

The same is true now, though somewhat in reverse. The balance of forces has not shifted away from the working class and poor, whom the Maduro government pushed aside and repressed. Instead, it has shifted away from the new base it relied on to government; namely the military and security forces, the new capitalist class it nurtured through access to state funds, and, in more recent years, the old capitalist class (with even Fedecamaras making its peace with the government).

Today, the government’s main base of support is the U.S. government. The dramatic loss of popular support exposed in the 2024 presidential elections revealed the regime’s fragility. The January 3 U.S. military assault completely pulled the rug from under the government.

The result is a transitional authority with no popular mandate and whose hold on power ultimately depends on Washington: a tremendously dangerous situation for the Venezuelan people and their sovereignty.

AS:Many have pointed out the obvious collaboration between the regime under Rodríguez and the U.S. after the coup. Some have argued that she made a deal with Trump to give up Maduro and offer oil concessions to preserve the regime. Is this true? How does Rodríguez’s deal-making square with her anti-imperialist posturing? What will she try to do now?

FF: While a deal cannot be ruled out, no definitive evidence has been provided, Moreover, there are two strong arguments against such a deal being made.

First, it is more likely that those in the government thought they could call Trump’s bluff, believing he would not go so far or ultimately accept a deal that kept Maduro in power. This helps explain why the Venezuelan armed forces were so ill-prepared for the January 3 assault, despite months of warnings.

More importantly, a key factor in the Maduro (and now Rodríguez) government’s hold on power has been the ability to keep the quite diverse factions within it united. A deal to hand over one leader would have caused great concerns among all factions, worried about who might be next, potentially fracturing this unity that was so vital for them until now—and will be moving forward.

That said, whether a deal was or was not made, it does not change much in terms of the Rodríguez government’s policies or discourse.

For starters, the Maduro government, for a while now but particularly since Trump’s re-election, had been downplaying its anti-imperialist discourse. He might have used anti-imperialist rhetoric when addressing foreign leftists at forums hosted by the government in Caracas, or rallies of his support base for whom such rhetoric is an important glue that binds them together. But even as the U.S. ramped up its military deployment in the Caribbean, Maduro went to great lengths to play down the situation and avoid directly speaking out against Trump and his actions.

First he claimed the videos of boats being bombed in the Caribbean were simply AI. Then he sought to blame Secretary of State Marco Rubio for leading Trump astray. Then he sent Trump a private letter explaining how he had “publicly acknowledged the significant efforts [Trump is] making to bring an end to the war [sic] [he] inherited in other regions” and hoped that “together we can defeat the falsehoods that have sullied our relationship”. And just days before his kidnapping, Maduro once again publicly offered to grant U.S. access to Venezuela’s oil.

The lack of response to … [U.S.] intervention is a direct result of the Maduro government’s anti-worker and anti-democratic policies, which have alienated the precise base required to resist imperialism.

This discourse has essentially continued under Rodríguez who, less than two weeks after Maduro’s kidnapping, met with the CIA director and posted on her social media about “a long and courteous” phone call with Trump regarding “a bilateral work agenda for the benefit of our peoples.” She has justified the reestablishment of diplomatic ties and the reopening of embassies in both countries as the means by which the government will pursue Maduro and Flores’ freedom.

Regarding the last part of your question, it is not so much an issue of what Rodríguez wants to do as what she will be allowed to do. Again, Washington is now calling all the shots.

Take the oil industry: Trump has seized large stores of Venezuelan oil, sold it via foreign intermediaries, placed the proceeds in Qatari bank accounts and told Venezuela how its share must be used, namely as funds to private banks to sell as foreign currency.

In response, the Rodríguez government has sought to portray this as some kind of victory, rather than an act of international piracy and extreme violation of sovereignty. At the same time, the National Assembly has just held its first vote to partially reform Chávez’s hydrocarbon law, which will legalize Trump’s plans for the sector, including essentially handing over control of oil extraction, production and sales to foreign companies.

Ultimately, Rodríguez has little choice in the matter, though a case can be made that she (and Maduro) would have been happy to proceed in this manner—though clearly not under these conditions of extreme duress.

AS: How have Venezuela’s various classes, social groups, and political forces both within the country and in the diaspora responded to the coup?

The main response across the board has been one of shock, mourning and a mix of uncertainty and expectation.

Right-wing leaders, such as Machado, spoke out in support of the military assault and kidnapping, and among the diaspora there were rallies celebrating the January 3 intervention. But these rallies should be put in context: Millions of Venezuelans have been forced, in one way or another, to leave the country—in contrast, the rallies were quite small.

These rallies largely reflect the more right-wing elements of the diaspora, removed from the daily realities of their country (particularly the bombings). Much like their leadership, they had placed all their hopes in some kind of U.S. intervention to remove the government, believing this would allow them to return. But those protests were short-lived, particularly after they realized the same government was still in place and their preferred leader, Machado, was being sidelined by Trump.

Within the country, the government has made sure that no similar mobilizations could occur. Moderate right-wing politicians have spoken out against the attack. But there have also not been signs of spontaneous mobilizations against it.

It took several days for the government to recover from the shock and start organizing protests. Participation at these rallies have been largely limited to the governing party’s support base and been relatively small—in the thousands or, at most, several tens of thousands.

There are hundreds of trade unionists in jail for protesting, new trade unions cannot be registered, strikes are illegal, and collective bargaining is essentially banned.

This is because, for many years now, most Venezuelans have withdrawn from politics and turned their back on the entire political class, both the section in government and the opposition. Many may have voted for the opposition in 2024, but primarily with the determination to vote out the government rather than to support the opposition, much less its political program.

One thing worth pointing out is how this is a clear example of the fallacy of the argument, put forward by some leftists, that we should politically support any government in conflict with imperialism. Of course, we need to continue to oppose imperialist interventions that seek to undermine foreign governments.

But we cannot turn a blind eye to the actions of those governments, which fundamentally weaken anti-imperialist sentiment in their own country. The lack of response to the January 3 imperialist intervention is a direct result of the Maduro government’s anti-worker and anti-democratic policies, which have alienated the precise base required to resist imperialism.

Today, most Venezuelans believe things cannot continue as they were. That explains both the lack of mobilization and a sense of anxious hope among a significant section of the population that things might get better, as they seemingly could not get worse—even though imperialist intervention will only ultimately make matters worse.

AS: The lack of response by the people of Venezuela is in stark contrast to the previous attempted coup against Chávez. Then the people rose up and restored him to office. Why the different response this time?

FF: The difference reflects how the working class and poor viewed the Chávez government in 2002, compared with the Maduro government in 2026. When Chávez was overthrown, there was a real sense that it was their government and their rights that were being taken away, sparking widespread organized and spontaneous mobilizations.

Fast forward to 2026, the majority views the Maduro government, rightly or wrongly, as the main problem. This does not mean they all supported the military attack; many felt a deep opposition or profound sense of complete demoralization in the face of this imperialist attack. Yet they did not mobilize against it. Instead, they largely preferred to sit on the sidelines—as they have for most of the past decade—and see what happens next, hoping something good might come out of this tragedy.

AS: Clearly the regime has transformed from the days of Chávez, when it seemed to offer a great deal of hope for not only Venezuelans but also Latin America and more broadly the international Left. What has changed and why? How much of this is the result of the collapse in oil prices? How much is the result of U.S. sanctions? And how much is the result of the regime itself?

FF: Regarding the last part of the question, it is a result of all these, to which I would add an important fourth factor: the undemocratic and violent actions of the right-wing opposition, above all figures such as Machado, which contributed to the political crisis and profound depoliticization. How much weight should be given to each factor, and the order in which they began to affect the situation, are a big part of the debate among the left inside (and outside) Venezuela in terms of drawing up a balance sheet of the Maduro government. But any assessment that ignores any of these factors inevitably leads to faulty conclusions.

Importantly, these factors explain the most important change: that of the character of the Maduro government. As I mentioned before, sometime during the Maduro government, between 2015-17, it became clear that the section of society for whom it governed was shifting. A combination of circumstances and choices led it to break with the poor majority and working class base that had supported the Chávez government and formed the backbone of the Bolivarian revolution. Instead, it consolidated a new base among the military, security forces and the new capitalist class, and started a process of counter-revolution.

That is why I argue that although the sanctions may not have succeeded in terms of regime change—if we understand this as a change in the personnel running the state—they did succeed in helping to change the class basis and political project of the existing regime.

AS: What was the nature of Maduro’s regime before he was abducted? What class interests did it represent? How repressive and dictatorial had it become?

FF: Unlike the Chávez government, the Maduro government was undeniably a pro-capitalist government. It represented both the interests of the new capitalist class, which had enriched itself through its connections to the “Bolivarian” state (the so-called Bolivarian bourgeoisie that Chávez denounced), but also the traditional capitalist class. The Maduro government ultimately won over the support of Fedecamaras, while the head of the Caracas Stock Exchange said after the 2024 presidential elections that the government, not the opposition, best represented economic stability.

The Maduro government was also decidedly anti-worker. Often sections of the Left excuse the government, saying its policy decisions were due to the sanctions. But this ignores that government policies led to a dramatic upward redistribution of wealth even before the sanctions, Moreover, even under the sanctions, it is not the case that the Maduro government had no other options. From 2018 onwards, it deliberately chose to shift the burden of the crisis onto the working class.

The pro-Maduro Left counters this with claims that the government has not privatized public services, provides subsidies, and supports the building of communes, therefore meaning it is still progressive. This ignores the privatizations (full and partial) that have occurred in various sectors, most importantly agriculture, but even in the strategic oil industry, where privatization-by-stealth has been enacted under the guise of the Anti-Blockade Law.

At the same time, while  state companies have been established under Maduro, particularly in the minerals sector, these were set up as vehicles for incorporating the military into circuits of capital accumulation, and have been responsible for environmental destruction and dispossession of indigenous lands, not wealth redistribution. History is replete with examples of state companies benefitting capitalists—starting with PDVSA, which was state-owned right through the neoliberal period that preceded Chavez.

The same is true for policies such as food, transport and fuel subsidies, which even reactionary governments such as those in Egypt and Indonesia maintain. More often than not they serve as clientilistic means for maintaining some level of social support (as the Maduro government has done with its food packages distributed by local governing party officials). In other cases, they are too difficult to roll back without facing substantive resistance. Overall, the impact of these subsidies have been far outweighed by the deliberate policy of pulverising workers’ wages as a means for dealing with hyperinflation.

As for the promotion of communal councils and communes as evidence of the Maduro government’s progressive nature, these leftists ignore the government’s own data, which show that far from having promoted “thousands of communes” as vehicles for self-government, the government presided over their cooptation and decline. The Minister of Communes’ figures shows a sharp, consistent decline over the past four years in the number of communal councils re-electing their authorities (down from about 19,000 in 2022 to just over 2000 last year). Meanwhile, of the almost 4000 communes that have been registered over the past more than a decade, less than 20 percent have been able to maintain at least one functioning body, such as a communal government or communal bank. A big factor for this has been government attempts to subordinate them by placing them under the control of local party officials.

Unlike the Chávez government, the Maduro government was undeniably a pro-capitalist government.

The reality is that the policies the pro-Maduro Left point to are largely legacies of the Chavez era, which have since been transformed into channels for corruption, clientelism, and capital accumulation; been completely nullified by the depression of workers’ wages; or remain in place because the political cost of reversing would be too high—though, as the proposed oil industry reform indicates, even measures considered taboos yesterday may no longer be considered sacred tomorrow.

Of course, such a turn in economic policy had to be accompanied by a ramping up of repression. Outside Venezuela, we hear about repression against the right-wing opposition—though never about their anti-democratic, violent and illegal actions. But the Left and working class forces in Venezuela have arguably faced greater repression.

In terms of workers’ rights, there are hundreds of trade unionists in jail for protesting, new trade unions cannot be registered, strikes are illegal, and collective bargaining is essentially banned. As for the left, every single left-wing party in the country has either been stripped of its electoral registration or denied the right to register for elections. The last presidential election was the first since the fall of the military dictatorship in 1958 in which the left was completely barred from standing a candidate.

When we add to this that the Venezuelan people were denied their right to have their votes counted and verified (arguably one of the most basic democratic right, but which some on the Left seem to want to deny to the Venezuelan people, claiming nothing untoward happened in those elections), we get a sense of just how far democracy had been wound back. Not just in terms of the Chávez era (when the left rightly pointed to Venezuela as a world leader in transparent elections) but even in terms of minimum bourgeois democratic rights.

There is a further component that needs to be considered; namely the use of security forces to terrorize working class and poor communities. As discontent with the government rose among traditional Chávez-voting sectors, the Maduro government stepped up its policing of these neighborhoods through its “Operation Liberate the People” and creation of the elite death squad, FAES (Special Action Forces).

The result was a dramatic rise in police killings of predominately young Black men in those neighborhoods: from about 1500-2500 a year in 2014-15 to 5000-5500 a year between 2016-18, making Venezuela’s security forces the deadliest in the region on a per capita basis. Though not strictly a political operation, this repressive policing had the effect of terrorizing communities which had begun to step out of line.

Given all this, it is hardly surprising that even strong Chávez voting areas eventually turned against Maduro and did not rush onto the streets to defend him after his kidnapping.

AS: Trump clearly is not done imposing the New Monroe Doctrine on the region. What will he try and do in Colombia, Cuba, and especially Greenland? How will targeted countries respond? How will China, which has massive investments and trade relations throughout the Western Hemisphere respond? How will Russia respond? Europe? Does this augur new inter-imperial rivalries over division of global capitalism, despite its deep integration, into new spheres of influence?

FF: It is difficult to give a comprehensive answer to such a big question. But, in simple terms, the impact will likely be two-fold.

On one hand, a clear message has been sent to smaller countries that if you dare step out of line, you will be next. Therefore, the most likely response from countries such as Colombia and Mexico will be to seek to negotiate the best terms possible from the U.S. in order to avoid a worse fate. The likelihood of U.S. imperialist interventions against small countries has dramatically increased.

On the other hand, Trump’s actions in Venezuela have sent a message to great powers, such as China and Russia, that this is how the world will operate from now on. This will only encourage them to act accordingly in their own spheres of influence. Of course, Russia was already doing this, particularly in Ukraine. But China may look to do the same with Taiwan.

AS: Last question is about the international Left. Far too much of the Left has put on, to put it generously, rose-tinted glasses about Maduro and his regime. They defend it as ant-imperialist and even socialist, despite its repressive anti-working class nature. Such a position, if adopted as a point of unity, for an anti-war movement will alienate not only regular working class people in various countries but also Venezuelan workers and refugees who are victims of the regime. So, what position should the international Left take on Maduro and Rodríguez’s regime? And what position should we advocate as the central rallying cry for the anti-war movement?

FF: There are two dangers here. The first is to lose sight of the bigger picture and simply believe that because Maduro was bad and many Venezuelans were happy to see him go, that we should hold a neutral position towards his (and Flores) kidnapping.

Anti-imperialists need to recognize that Trump’s actions have made the world a much more dangerous place, and pose a serious threat to human rights, international law, democracy, and sovereignty everywhere. Furthermore, these actions have done nothing to restore democratic rights in Venezuela (Trump has said any elections will be postponed until the “third” phase of his recolonization project, at some undefined time in the future).

Therefore, we must continue to condemn the January 3 military assault and demand Maduro and Flores’ immediate release. If they have committed a crime (such as stealing the last elections), then it should be the Venezuelan people who judge them.

A movement solely focused on this demand, however, is unlikely to mobilize the kind of broad movement we need to push Trump back. Few working class people (inside and outside Venezuela) see a simple return to the status quo as a great step forward. So, there are some other important elements we can campaign on.

We must continue to condemn the … military assault and demand Maduro and Flores’ immediate release. If they have committed a crime … then it should be the Venezuelan people who judge them.

For example, it is self-evident that Venezuela is rapidly losing sovereignty over its natural resources. We need to speak out against this violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty and open theft of its natural resources.

Campaigning against the ongoing U.S. sanctions and naval blockade is part of that, as these tools are being used to further coerce the Rodríguez government into complete submission. We should also demand an end to the U.S. military deployment in the Caribbean, which has been used to pressure various other governments, not just the Venezuelan one.

The Left as a whole should be able to unite behind such demands, irrespective of their position on the Maduro and Rodríguez governments. But the movement does need to separate out this defense of Venezuela’s national sovereignty from political support for the Rodríguez government. Failing to do so is the second danger the Left can fall into.

When it comes to basic democratic rights in Venezuela, we cannot be neutral, ignore that they have been greatly undermined, or pretend the government’s actions are solely the fault of U.S. actions. This is obviously untrue and workers in our country will rightly not believe it—making it all the harder for us to win them over to an anti-imperialist position.

Just as importantly, as I explained before, the government’s anti-worker and anti-democratic policies have undermined anti-imperialism in Venezuela. Defending such rights in Venezuela not only helps us build the broadest possible response at home; it also helps create space for genuine anti-imperialist working class mobilization in Venezuela.

Finally, an important part of our solidarity has to be linking up with Venezuelan workers and the Left and seeing how we can coordinate our joint struggles. Far too often, discussions center exclusively on the government and the right-wing opposition. Squeezed out are Left and working class voices—or the voices of the majority, for that matter, who support neither Maduro/Rodríguez nor Machado. While some leftists prefer to deny their existence or denounce them, we should instead help their voices be heard, so that workers in our countries can know about their struggles and act in solidarity with them.

If we seriously believe that only Venezuelans can decide their fate, then that has to involve supporting Venezuelans in their struggles for the rights needed to make that a reality; namely, the same rights we fight for at home. That includes the right to choose their own government—free of foreign interference and fraud.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”

Featured Image credit: Prensa Presidencial de Venezuela; modified by Tempest.

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Donald Trump’s recent threat to impose 100 percent tariffs on Canada if it “makes a deal with China” is making more people in the Canadian state1This term coined decades ago by socialists in Quebec makes the point that “Canada” is a multinational state composed of Indigenous nations, Quebec, and the dominant Canadian nation. worry about his “America First” administration’s bullying. Some also fear that in the future, Trump might try to act on his past talk about Canada becoming part of the U.S.

This fear can easily lead people to support the “elbows up” Liberal Party federal government headed by Mark Carney in spite of its commitment to austerity targeting public services and the workers who deliver them, expanding fossil fuel extraction and mining, implementing anti-migrant policies, and dramatically boosting spending on the military. To help us navigate these increasingly stormy political waters, the Left needs a compass.

While Trump is unlikely to follow through on his latest tariff threat, we can expect that this won’t be the last time that his administration or a more coherent future MAGA government in Washington uses economic pressure to try to get Ottawa to comply with its desires. So, how should the Left respond to “trade war” or other forms of economic friction between the two countries?

John Clarke lays out the basic approach:

The working class has to operate in a context that is dominated by its class enemies. We didn’t generate the rivalries among them or draw the borders between states, but we have to advance our interests under the conditions imposed upon us. Our class has nothing to gain from the trade war and no responsibility to find solutions for Canadian capitalism. Our viewpoint should be shaped by hostility to ‘our’ capitalists and robust solidarity with workers in the U.S. and Mexico.

People in the U.S. and Mexico should adopt the same viewpoint: hostility to their employers and working-class solidarity across borders. International solidarity, not competition!

Our viewpoint should be shaped by hostility to “our” capitalists and robust solidarity with workers in the U.S. and Mexico.

Helping “our” bosses and governments compete with their rivals in other countries is a road to lower wages, worse jobs, weaker workplace rights, social programs, and environmental protections, and attacks on the rights of Indigenous nations. Once we accept that capitalist goal, anything seen as a barrier to higher profits becomes a problem. Nationalist fervor also leads to more hostility–often racist–against anyone who’s “unpatriotic” or who “doesn’t belong.”

The federal Liberals’ approach to the Trump administration, “despite being represented as the alternative to U.S. dominance… in fact mirrors core elements of Trumpism. It proposes a militarized economy that will require the gutting of social, education and health services,” as James Cairns and Alan Sears point out. Any meaningful left politics must oppose and organize against this, “refus[ing] to reproduce Trump’s agenda of militarization, resource extraction and attacks on working-class people.” 

It can’t be said too often that it’s not the Left’s job to help Canadian business owners or whoever governs in Ottawa. Our task is to foster the power of unions and social movements to defend people against them and fight for a better world, with the ultimate aim of revolutionizing the society they rule. We shouldn’t propose policies to help them manage capitalism. Instead, “The left must develop and fight for an alternative political and economic vision,” as Todd Gordon argues.

When economic turbulence hits, we should fight for better income support measures for laid-off workers. We should challenge workplace closures, inspired by the example of Ex-GKN workers in Italy: Faced with layoffs, they occupied their car parts plant and have been campaigning for its conversion into a workers’ cooperative that would recycle solar panels and make cargo bikes.

We should demand the creation of well-paying secure public sector jobs as part of a radical Green New Deal, along with other reforms that chip away at social and ecological injustice. In Gordon’s words, “Such an agenda… can be realized only if we develop a strategy centred on mass struggle, and only if we refuse to limit our collective vista to the defence of Canada.”

That’s how the Left should respond to economic bullying by the U.S. But what about any future U.S. moves to alter the political relationship between the U.S. and Canadian states?

The first thing that needs to be said is that despite Trump’s bluster, it’s very unlikely that the U.S. will try to annex Canada. There would be a lot of downsides to annexation for a MAGA government even if the new arrangement gave Canada a status similar to Puerto Rico’s, in which citizens wouldn’t have the right to vote in U.S. elections. MAGA leaders definitely wouldn’t want nearly 30 million new eligible voters, most of whom would support public health care, same-gender marriage, abortion rights, trans rights, and other rights that the far right hates. Fearmongering about a U.S. invasion and annexation has bad effects: it stokes Canadian nationalism and makes people more likely to accept whatever the government in Ottawa says it needs to do for the good of Canada.

Less unlikely than annexation but still improbable is a future U.S. move to impose some kind of political arrangement short of annexation that formally ties the hands of the government in Ottawa in some ways, rather than just relying on economic pressure to get what it wants.

Even if they’re improbable, the Left needs to have an orientation to such possibilities because of how many people in the Canadian state are talking about them.

In the U.S., it’s obvious: The Left should oppose any and all such moves by Washington. They’d be imperialist aggression against a junior partner.

In the Canadian state, the starting point should be recognizing that the Canadian state is a settler-colonial capitalist society built on and sustaining the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. In addition, it is a state built through the conquest of what is now Quebec, which still does not have the right as a nation to freely determine its relationship to the multinational federation. Although most Canadian nationalists deny it, so-called Canada is also an imperialist power within the global capitalist order. The record of what Canadian companies and governments do in relation to countries of the Global South is damning.

Happily, more people on the Left at least partially grasp that the country we live in is a predator in relation to most of the people of the world than was the case during 1960s through the 1980s, the heyday of Canadian left-nationalism. It’s when people consider Canada in relation to the much more powerful country to its south that they often lose perspective.

The first socialist principle that’s relevant here is that in conflicts between imperialist powers like the U.S. and the Canadian state, the Left shouldn’t back either side. What’s true about conflicts between the U.S. and China or Russia over resources for their capitalists and the political influence of their governments is also true about conflicts between the U.S. and the Canadian state (or another country that’s weaker than the U.S. but still in the imperialist tier of the global system).

From the standpoint of the working class and oppressed people globally, such conflicts can only be harmful. Aligning with Canada’s rulers in their disputes with the U.S. is always to the detriment of working-class people here. “When elephants fight it’s the grass that gets trampled,” as the saying goes.

The first socialist principle that’s relevant here is that in conflicts between imperialist powers like the U.S. and the Canadian state the Left shouldn’t back either side.

This means that the Left shouldn’t champion “Canadian sovereignty.” Everyday people don’t rule the Canadian state – the owners of corporations and top state officials make up the dominant class in this capitalist society. “Canadian sovereignty” is their rule, not ours. It’s exercised at the expense of Indigenous nations, Quebec, and workers of every nation it touches.

Opposing annexation–incorporating one country into another by force–is also a socialist principle. It’s not that we’re in favor of defending nation-states, their borders, their flags, or their myths. Everyone who’s against the power of capital should be an internationalist who aims to build solidarity between  working-class people of every nation. Opposition to annexation is a basic question of democracy: the merger of countries should only happen when the people who live in them democratically decide to merge.

Opposition to annexation is a basic question of democracy: the merger of countries should only happen when the people who live in them democratically decide to merge.

Any future move by the U.S. to directly dominate the Canadian state–changing the relationship between what are now two independent states, one much more powerful than the other, with jurisdiction over societies that are extensively economically interconnected–or even annex it should be opposed by the Left. Why? Because its practical effects would include more attacks on social programs, union rights, equality rights, and other gains won by the past struggles of workers and oppressed people. In spite of being utterly inadequate from a socialist perspective, for the most part these are stronger north of the Canada-U.S. border than south of it.

Many workers, women, queer, trans, and racialized people who live north of the border know that conditions for people like them are worse in the U.S. They don’t want to live in a country run by the hard-right Conservative Party of Canada who like a lot about MAGA politics even if they think it goes too far. They really don’t want to live in a country much more subordinated to the U.S., let alone in an expanded U.S.A. Fear of their lives getting worse can easily lead them to buy into maple leaf nationalism and support the Liberals as a lesser evil than the Conservatives.

The Left should respond to that fear by organizing against what the Liberals are doing today to manage capitalism and by popularizing a radical alternative agenda. Mostafa Henaway is right: “The strategic question now is how to build a mass, multiracial, working-class resistance to Carney at the scale required, capable of sustained confrontation.” 

We should also oppose, in an internationalist way, any future move by a far-right U.S. government for direct domination or annexation. If the U.S. ever makes such a move, people north of the border should rise up against the aggression with mass protests, strikes, and occupations and fight for a better society–not to defend the status quo–and call on everyone in the U.S. who’s against the far right to do the same. Such opposition mustn’t involve allying with any of Canada’s rulers. Instead, we would argue for it to be conducted in an internationalist spirit, fighting for a world in which ordinary people can flourish, a world of freedom and ecological rationality. Our allies are everyday people in the U.S. and elsewhere who are fighting the far right and the liberal capitalist decline that fuels it.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: heblo and Jude Joshua; modified by Tempest.

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Socialists shouldn’t force reality to fit our theory. If some new development casts doubt on an element of political analysis that served us for many years, then we should reconsider the analysis—both its continued strengths and relevance and the weaknesses that require new thinking.

The election of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani and his inauguration as New York City mayor present the left with just such a challenge: to think imaginatively about how to understand this political moment and how to better contribute to a stronger left and working class movement. This article first takes issue with Ashley Smith’s formulations and statements in a recent Tempest article about Mamdani and DSA and his subsequent response to Todd Chretien’s reply. I’ll then consider some strategic assumptions that Smith and I shared ten years ago about socialists, the Democratic Party, and organizing to win reforms under capitalism.

In his articles, Smith repeatedly labels Mamdani as a “conciliationist.” Is that accurate? I’m betting most of you reading this started paying serious attention to Mamdani (as I did) when he was smeared as an antisemite for opposing Israel’s genocide and defending Palestine. This was supposed to destroy his campaign, but Mamdani not only refused to retreat, he became a national voice defending opposition to genocide. A good stance on one issue doesn’t prove that Mamdani won’t conciliate on others. But I think it shows the actual political figure is more complicated than Smith’s repeated generalization. (I’m finishing this article just after Mamdani’s inauguration, a day of remarkable actions and statements that are the opposite of conciliatory.)

In similar fashion, Smith tells us that “most of [the 100,000 campaign volunteers] are very new to politics, follow Mamdani’s lead, and in the absence of an alternative, will accept the compromises he has already made and, given his unfavorable balance of class power in the city, the many more he will be forced to make.” This is condescending and ill-informed. Are the young activists against genocide in Gaza who worked for Zohran “new to politics”? Did their support for the campaign turn them into dupes? Should we assume the immigrant community organizers from Desis Rising Up & Moving will just “follow Mamdani’s lead,” no matter what?

And what about the initial core of the campaign: NYC-DSA, of which Mamdani has been a member for nearly a decade? It doesn’t seem fair to describe the organization as “very new to politics.” According to Smith, DSA has a “reformist strategy” (his hyperlink for that phrase, which supposedly defines DSA, goes to a 32-year-old article) that “advocates running candidates on the Democrats’ ballot line, winning elected office, using that position to transform the Democratic Party, and attempting to enact social change from within the capitalist state.” As a member of DSA, I’d take issue, to some degree, with every part of this statement. Smith has created a caricature that no one in today’s DSA would recognize.

It’s perhaps telling that the only DSA members or Mamdani supporters whom Smith quoted in his response were Todd Chretien and Bhaskar Sunkara (and their writings are, on any fair reading, at odds with Smith’s depiction of DSA politics). When I followed many of the links in Smith’s reply, I found they went to the New York Times, USA Today, Politico, and, yes, even Fox News. Fortunately, a number of left publications (see this, this, this, this, and this, for starters) can give us a better understanding of the campaign.

What I took from these articles and interviews and from discussions with comrades is that the people who volunteered for Mamdani are not a faceless army with few political ideas of their own who will just follow the leader. If you listen to the cadre of the campaign, you learn that some had disagreements with Mamdani or DSA and found ways to raise them while still working together. When they saw weaknesses in the campaign’s strategy and organizing, they took the initiative to do things differently. One of the most hopeful things for me was learning how individuals and groups were preparing for the fight after the election (see this, this, this, and this).

Like any movement, it’s better if socialists are involved organically, not setting themselves apart from it.

My point is that winning any part of the agenda Mamdani articulated depends not only on him but on these individuals and organizations, connected in the first instance by their participation in the campaign. Do these ties—to each other and to the new Mamdani administration—need to be cut for the left to fight for a reform agenda? Smith believes this is a necessary condition for exerting pressure on Mamdani through “independent” mass struggle. I disagree. I think the left will be more effective in building the movement we all agree is necessary by starting with the connections and alliances made during the campaign. There will be debates about priorities and how to organize, about whether Mamdani should be criticized or whether he took the best course he could under the circumstances. That’s to be expected in any living movement. And also like any movement, it’s better if socialists are involved organically, not setting themselves apart from it.

The origin of Smith and Chretien’s exchange was Mamdani’s White House meeting with Trump, and I wholeheartedly agree with both that it was “surreal.” I think this was one time when Zohran’s unflappable good nature didn’t serve him as well—when it would have been nice to see a little fire (which he’s certainly capable of).

Still, I don’t agree with Smith’s characterization that the Oval Office visit was aimed at “conciliating” Trump. Mamdani didn’t reverse any position that I’m aware of. As Chretien wrote, “If sidestepping verbal fireworks in the Oval Office wins a couple months’ respite for his new administration to get down to work, it’s a reasonable gambit.” On balance, this seems to have worked so far. More importantly, when the war on New York City does escalate, Trump’s bizarre admiration for Mamdani a few months earlier will help undercut whatever unhinged hate he spews.

But let’s consider what Smith thinks Mamdani should have done. He approvingly quotes liberal Boston Mayor Michelle Lu rejecting a “bromance” with Trump and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson calling for a “general strike.” Smith’s preferred script for the meeting shows the limitations of what he thinks could be accomplished. For him, electoral campaigns are predominantly propagandistic, useful in raising socialist politics in a hostile arena and contributing to further class organization. As he puts it, “We support running socialist candidates on our own ballot lines. But we argue that such campaigns must not be viewed as the vehicle to win social reform, but as a means to raise mass consciousness, increase the combativity of workers and the oppressed, strengthen existing mass organizations, and forge new ones.”

First, does Smith’s use of “we” mean he is speaking for the Tempest Collective? I was under the impression that Tempest members were debating some of these questions—in the case of Brandon Johnson’s CTU-backed campaign, for example. Also, is Tempest currently committed to any campaigns run on independent ballot lines? Or is this an aspiration?

I think Mamdani, DSA, and others on the left have a different approach that deserves to be understood as more than “conciliationism.” In sum, running socialist candidates can do other things Smith advocates and be a vehicle to win social reform—not the vehicle, not even the most important vehicle (depending on the individual), but a vehicle nonetheless.

If running for an elected office and holding one can be more than a platform for propaganda and party-building, then questions of strategy need to come into play. To start with, someone like Mamdani has to think about how to win over a wider audience. That means articulating an agenda in ways that engage and activate people who may be attracted to some socialist ideas but not the full program. As Ramsin Canon wrote in the Socialist Call, “The worst mistake you can make when you’re facing down the forces standing in the way of your agenda is to misunderstand the nature and strength of the forces backing you up.…[D]o not make the mistake of confusing people who voted against your opponent for the people who voted for your vision. The latter group you should be able to rely on; the former group you still need to win over.”

Despite being elected to the most powerful office any US socialist has ever held, the constraints on Mamdani are massive: the hostility of the capitalists; an inevitable conflict with a slumping-toward-fascism federal government; a Democratic Party establishment, in control of the state government, hoping to undercut him; and, above all, a working class that may have elected Mamdani but isn’t yet prepared and mobilized for the fight that it will take to win his program. Accomplishing something in these circumstances requires not just good politics but strategy: deciding when to make a compromise; when and on what issues to advance and when to retreat; when to pick a fight and when to avoid one until your side is strong enough to win it, etc.

On this latter point, Mamdani’s decision to reappoint Eric Adams’ police commissioner, the billionaire Jessica Tisch, may come back to haunt him. But is it really just “curry[ing] favor with those who hold the real levers of political and economic power” as part of a strategy “that inevitably leads to conciliation with our class enemies”? Or can it be understood as a strategic decision not to pick a difficult fight for now (one not likely to do more in the near term than install a different figurehead without changing anything about the NYPD)? Maybe Mamdani should have fired Tisch anyway. But the debate about that should acknowledge that Mamdani is facing many battles at once, and his other actions—his first-day executive orders, his cabinet appointees, his inauguration speech—point in a different direction than “conciliation.”

It is now ten years since Bernie Sanders’ first campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, followed by the election of AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and many more socialists and leftists at the local, state, and federal level—running mostly, but not always, on a Democratic Party ballot line. Meanwhile, DSA has become the largest socialist organization in the US in many years. Smith is at pains to insist that they are merely beneficiaries of an “underlying radicalization and waves of struggle” since the Great Recession. But after ten years, I think it’s fair to say that the electeds and DSA have contributed to that radicalization—especially some of its organizational form and the socialist and class language it wouldn’t have otherwise.

My question is this: Is it now necessary to reconsider any part of the analysis that Smith and I shared a decade ago? In 2016, that analysis would have warned that campaigns within the Democratic Party would fail; that left candidates and their supporters would be co-opted into a subservient relationship to the party apparatus; and that DSA would be drawn to the right by the Democrats’ “gravitational pull,” becoming a tame junior partner.

Smith’s articles about Mamdani contain all these same warnings in nearly unchanged form. But do they provide an accurate assessment upon which to build a strategy? I don’t think so.

Left campaigns using the Democratic ballot line haven’t all failed. They haven’t all won either, but the win-loss percentage isn’t bad, and Mamdani’s victory is the most impressive yet.

First, left campaigns using the Democratic ballot line haven’t all failed. They haven’t all won either, but the win-loss percentage isn’t bad, and Mamdani’s victory is the most impressive yet. This doesn’t mean the end of the Democrats or the two-party system, but it does mean there are fissures at the top on a different scale from ten years ago.

Second, left candidates and their supporters haven’t become universally co-opted and subservient within the Democratic Party. AOC may have gone the furthest down this road, although her importance as an oppositional figure in national politics can’t be dismissed. But it’s hard to see why “co-opted” should be applied to other electeds like Rashida Tlaib.

I think Smith is on pretty weak ground in trying to show Mamdani’s co-optation in the making. Was “[opposing] a primary challenge to Hakeem Jeffries” a show of deference to the party establishment? Mamdani attended an NYC-DSA forum in mid-November to oppose the chapter endorsing a primary campaign against Jeffries by City Council member Chi Ossé. This intervention was part of an intense debate in the chapter, and while the final vote went against endorsement, the margin was close. I know of comrades on both sides. I think I probably would have voted “yes” if I was in the chapter, but I also think Mamdani and his supporters made a case I can defend: that NYC-DSA shouldn’t devote a significant part of its limited resources to an unlikely campaign by someone who had just joined DSA, when it could work on other efforts that were strategically more likely to help win the reforms he campaigned on.

As for the supporters of these candidates, from Bernie to Zohran, I don’t see the evidence that they have been, on the whole, co-opted and made more subservient to the Democratic Party. On the contrary, I think the people drawn to these campaigns are more likely, not less so, to see themselves as opposed to the Democratic Party and in favor of an alternative. That alternative isn’t universally understood as an independent working class party, though it is for more people than Smith would acknowledge. But to put the immediate question starkly: Does anyone seriously believe that Mamdani supporters have become more susceptible to Chuck Schumer as a result of the campaign?

Lastly, I likewise don’t believe that DSA has been pulled to the right, at least in general terms. It’s telling that Smith has to reach back to the Jamaal Bowman controversy—specifically the disbanding of a national working group four years ago—as evidence of the organization’s “allegiance to electeds” over socialist principles. Whatever you think about that conflict, it doesn’t, by itself, define DSA four years later. To consider a more prominent question of “allegiance to electeds”: both Sanders and AOC urged a vote for Biden in 2020 and Harris in 2024. DSA notably did not. I certainly have disagreements with my DSA comrades, but Smith’s one-sided generalizations don’t do justice to the organization.

None of us would have expected questions like these ten years ago. I must have written a hundred times over the years about how the “gravitational pull” of the Democratic Party inevitably sucks in leftists who get too close. That may have been true in the past, but I think the force at work now and since 2016 is centrifugal, not gravitational. The socialist and left campaigns using the Democratic ballot line have had a polarizing effect, drawing a wide layer of what could be considered the Democratic base further to the left. And not just temporarily. Whatever criticisms you have of it, the 90,000-strong DSA is evidence that participation in or sympathy with left electoral campaigns—not only those, of course, but electoral questions are the focus of this discussion—has won significant numbers of people to an organization explicitly opposed to the Democrats and committed to the goal of an independent working class party.

I agree with Chretien that Smith’s case for “independence and mass struggle” puts too many restrictions on how to build a movement to fight for the Mamdani agenda. “Restrictions” aren’t the same thing as “prohibitions.” I’m confident that comrades in New York City Tempest and around the country will engage, individually and as a collective, with all the struggles for change they can. But as a small organization, Tempest’s profile is mainly defined by the politics expressed on its website. In my opinion, the website’s articles on Mamdani and DSA seek primarily to set apart and differentiate, rather than to engage, with common struggle as the aim. The unfortunate result of articles like Ashley’s is that the organization as a whole has gotten a reputation for being one-sided critics on these questions.

I agree in general terms with a lot of what Smith writes about the Democratic Party, the state under capitalism, the pressures on elected officials, the threat of the far right today, etc. That is common ground for us—and also, to a greater extent than Smith acknowledges, for most members of DSA and many supporters of the Mamdani campaign (even Mamdani himself to a great extent). I think Smith and other Tempest comrades have a lot to offer in the fights to come, including socialist electoral campaigns—all the more so if they are able to see themselves as organic participants in the movement, and not set apart from it. But I will also say, based on my own experiences and conclusions, that the last ten years of left electoral work and the rise of DSA have offered me something in return: the opportunity to reconsider the strengths and weaknesses of previous ideas and approaches by learning from a living movement.

The post Organizing for reform and socialism in the Mamdani era appeared first on Tempest.

On New Year’s Day, Zohran Mamdani took office as New York’s 112th mayor, promising a “new era.” But while working-class New Yorkers celebrated Mamdani’s enthusiastic promise to use his power to implement a pro-worker agenda, Mamdani backtracked on a key promise on his education platform.

In a major reversal of his own long held views, Mamdani announced that he would support mayoral control of the city’s schools. While most school districts are governed by elected school boards, in New York City school policy is determined almost exclusively by the mayor. This undemocratic system was implemented and used by previous mayor Michael Bloomberg to enact neoliberal anti-student education reforms including closing schools, increasing the number of charter schools in the city, and ratcheting up high-stakes testing. Eric Adams used his power over city schools to create curriculum mandates that limit teacher creativity and autonomy in the classroom.

Ending mayoral control and giving parents and teachers more of a voice in NYC education has been a longstanding goal of progressive education activists. Mamdani’s turnabout marks a breach of trust with his own base, including the thousands of NYC educators whose doorknocking, phonebanking, and flyering helped get him elected, especially considering that ending mayoral control was the clearest plank of his limited education platform.  His only other major promise was to retain the racist Specialized High School Admissions test, which has blocked Black and Latinx admission to prized high schools like Stuyevsant and Bronx Science.  Even more troubling, the flip-flop indicates that voices of neoliberal education reform, like Gates-funded and anti-union Educators for Excellence, have the mayor’s ear in the transition process.

When it comes to education, the signals Mamdani is sending are contradictory, but they’re not all negative. Mamdani’s promotion of Kamar Samuel, a local superintendent who implemented diversity efforts in his Upper West Side district, to the position of chancellor suggests that desegregation will be a priority for the new administration. This is a welcome and crucial development, as previous Mayors have ignored the issue, at best leaving it to blue-ribbon commissions. However, it seems that the mayor may have been convinced that retaining mayoral control is a necessary tradeoff, required to maintain executive authority to help de-segregate the most segregated school district in the country. While a return to the previous system of decentralized neighborhood school boards would allow local pro-segregation parents to block policy proposals, a post-mayoral control school system (like the proposed People’s Board of Education) could both maintain centralized policy while allowing democratic input.

A positive outcome will only be possible with continuous organizing to build an independent base in our union locals, school union chapters, and parent and community organizations.

But retaining mayoral control is a priority for the city’s ruling class, and for good reason. The neoliberal Bloomberg reforms were crucial for weakening educator unions and centralizing power in an undemocratic NYC Department of Education. DOE policies show a clear and consistent ambition: to control labor costs; undermine the autonomy of teachers, parents, and students; and replace authentic learning with a scripted, sanitized caricature of real education.

We might imagine that, with a leftist mayor in charge, things will be different this time. Mamdani could use his control of the school system to implement reforms that will indeed empower families and educators. But large institutions like the DOE are resistant to change, and losing this opportunity to eliminate mayoral control means future mayors could easily reverse any reforms. Furthermore, creation of democratic institutions for teacher and community input should not be counterposed to implementing left education policy.

And Mamdani’s reversal, along with most of his staffing decisions since winning the election (particularly skipping over former DSA congressman and Bronx principal Jamaal Bowman for the top schools spot), suggests a deep reluctance to rock the boat in a way that will frighten the city’s elite.

Mamdani’s flip-flop points towards a major strategic challenge for rank and file educators facing the incoming progressive administration. Mamdani’s agenda—from taxing the rich to universal childcare, free buses and freezing the rent—is pro-worker, pro-public schools, and popular. We should loudly promote it.  But the very nature of governing a city like New York, the epicentre of global capitalism, means there will be immense pressure to maintain the neoliberal status quo.

[Our] movement will need the workplace power and self-confidence to stand up to the media, the city’s capitalist elite, and perhaps at times the mayor himself.

Only one thing can win the mayor’s agenda, and hopefully broaden it: independent, democratic organization of the city’s working class, perhaps most crucially the city’s school workers and their parent and student allies. This movement will need the workplace power and self-confidence to stand up to the media, the city’s capitalist elite, and perhaps at times the mayor himself. We will need to prepare to both work with the Mamdani administration to fight for the reforms he has promised and also maintain independent pressure on it to go beyond his current promises, and prevent backsliding.

For progressive educators, key questions include:

• Will Mamdani pursue a significant desegregation agenda? Or will he stick to minor reforms that are more cosmetic? The admissions changes pushed by Samuels made only minor changes in class diversity of the Upper West Side schools under his purview, and didn’t have an effect on racial segregation.
• Will Mamdani be willing to touch even more serious segregation issues like curtailing the gifted and talented programs—which middle class public school parents cherish but which also maintain racial division? Will he be willing to change his position by modifying admissions to coveted (and segregated) specialized high schools?
• Beyond desegregation, will he tackle other widely-felt education issues like scripted, mandated curriculum that limit educator professional autonomy to make instruction relevant, engaging and successful for students? Or will neoliberal voices maintain their influence in his administration?

Ultimately, the answer is up to us.  A positive outcome will only be possible with continuous organizing to build an independent base in our union locals, school union chapters, and parent and community organizations.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Jakub Hałun; modified by Tempest.

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With so many of us watching the tremendous mobilizations in Minneapolis, culminating in the call to action against ICE today [January 23], I wanted to share some of what I have gathered from talking to comrades in Minneapolis over the past few weeks. A few things stood out:

1. The general strike came from organizing for a general strike. Not from social media posting about going on a general strike, but organizing in neighborhoods, organizing power in unions, and organizations drawing out members and networks.

This is critical because the past two years have seen a lot of viral calls for general strikes on a range of vital issues, but these have rarely materialized into the organizing power and logistical coordination necessary for an actual general strike.

2. Movement history and infrastructure: Every comrade I know is deeply rooted in that city’s movement history and infrastructure—whether networks emerging from the American Indian Movement to labor organizing against Amazon to the George Floyd uprising.This has meant: a grounding in the long arc of struggle, helping people avoid repeating some of the same mistakes over and over again; learning across generations; not getting either easily overconfident or easily jaded; and relying on (while sharpening) existing movement infrastructure and informal networks, especially around care, movement dynamics, and conflict resolution.

This is totally subjective but I have long felt that the most significant part of movement infrastructure is ensuring that people who are newly politicized to and joining the struggle are: able to keep learning and have their political consciousness expand, able to find political homes to keep organizing, don’t burn out when things get long and hard, and people are brought into the absolute longevity of struggle with no false promises or false solutions (to avoid the cycles of fizzling out that we constantly see repeat).

3. The neighborhood as central to political, social, and civic life: It’s not a coincidence that we are seeing some of the strongest and most effective rapid response networks in cities like Minneapolis precisely because the ethic of being a good neighbor—despite political differences—still rings true. What many may call mutual aid is basically people looking out for their community members, their neighbors, their teachers, their coworker, their local street vendor, etc.

This is precisely why any kind of organizing that reaches for relationality is central, not secondary—it breaks the capitalist idea of us as atomized, individual consumers and compels us to act in service to and in solidarity with others. And, perhaps more than anything, it’s a politics more rooted in cultivating belonging than ideology.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: SusanLesch; modified by Tempest.

The post The long arc of struggle  appeared first on Tempest.

The Spanish Civil War, 1936-39, was a pivotal moment in the 20th century history of revolutionary hope, failure and betrayal. It is also the story of fascism’s rise and ultimately the beginning of World War II. Join us for a book talk and discussion with the author of The POUM: Republic, Revolution and Counterrevolution (2025).

When: Sunday, January 25, 2026 at 1:00 pm Eastern Standard Time

Where: Online, Zoom

How: Register for the event here.

Speakers

Andy Durgan, author of a newly translated book on the Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), will outline the development of this distinctive revolutionary movement and the role it played in the Spanish revolution.

Following Durgan’s presentation there will be time for discussion.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Resistance Books; modified by Tempest.

The post The POUM, republic, revolution and counterrevolution appeared first on Tempest.

The ICE invasion of Chicago – code name Operation Midway Blitz – began in early September 2025 and officially lasted two months. During that time federal agents carried out mass arrests, snatched people off the streets, terrorized neighborhoods and tear gassed communities and even the Chicago Police. They also generated mass resistance from ordinary people – turns out, most people don’t like it when their neighbors are disappeared.

Resistance took many forms – know your rights trainings, formation of neighborhood rapid response committees, protests at a notorious immigration detention center and immigration court, door knocking to educate and recruit, protecting schools and school-children, protesting at hotels and rental car companies used by ICE, community alert whistles and direct confrontation. 

Immigrants rights activists in Chicago knew that this was coming and organized an education blitz in immigrant neighborhoods months before ICE’s invasion. As Midway Blitz progressed, lessons were learned and tactics were refined. As ICE kidnapped, shot, gassed and brutalized, more and more people questioned why ICE could get away with this kind of terror in a sanctuary city and state. 

Of the many thousands of ordinary Chicagoans who joined ICE watch groups, many of them had never been active in social movements before and learned as they organized. Entire neighborhoods mobilized for street protests when alerted that ICE was harassing neighbors. Unionized school workers stood up to federal agents and refused to let their students or their parents be kidnapped. Chicago was warned by Trump to expect a deployment of National Guard troops to protect ICE from the citizens of the city. This threat didn’t materialize and was blocked in the courts.

Although immigration raids have never ended in Chicago, Homeland Security is expected to return in force in the spring. As ICE continues to recruit, uses ever-more aggressive tactics, and raids expand in other cities, these lessons feel urgent. Here we gather a few of the voices of activists from this resistance, both new and veteran. Tempest Collective members in Chicago believe that compiling these compelling oral histories of ICE resistance in our city will serve our movement everywhere as we reflect, learn, and grow together.

Eric Ruder interviews Hongmin

Hongmin has been a volunteer at the Chinatown/Bridgeport rapid response team since September, 2025. Eric Ruder is a longtime socialist in Chicago.

ER: So you’ve been out monitoring ICE activity around Chinatown and Pilsen. What are some of your observations?

H: I can summarize the work I do. I canvas every weekend in the Bridgeport and Chinatown area to residents. And this week we’re doing business canvassing. And other than that, I am also trained for rapid response, but because I don’t have a car, I’m never rapid enough to get on the scene where ICE is detaining people. I have also helped out in the Southwest area with their canvassing once—a few weeks ago when things were particularly bad. And then other than that, I monitor the city-wide chat for ICE activities every Saturday for my team. So basically there’s a big chat that all the leaders in Rapid Response Teams (RRT) are in, and then they will send texts about ICE activities that others have reported to the hotline or on social media to the chat. And then, if it’s within the designated area for my team, I will send it to the activity chat. So that’s the kind of work I’ve been doing so far.

ER: And it sounds like you went canvassing to businesses, but you’ve just also reached out to just regular people?

H: Yes. Mainly to Cantonese-speaking and Spanish-speaking people. Those are two main languages.

ER: Do you speak both Cantonese and Spanish?

 

H: No, I speak Mandarin and Cantonese, and Cantonese has been pretty useful.

ER: What has that been like? I’m really curious to know: Are people appreciative? Have they heard about ICE activity at all? Would you say people are fearful or something else? What kinds of interactions have you had?

H: It really varies. It ranges from people who have no idea what ICE is to people who have heard about all the raids. People we’ve reached through canvassing learn about their rights, and they have the materials. There was one time we went canvassing in Chinatown where there are a lot of older Cantonese-speaking people, like grandfathers and grandmothers, and a lot of them don’t know what ICE is, and so we gave them the background they needed. And for people who know a bit about ICE, a lot of them think that if they have legal status, they are fine. I think that speaks to the misconceptions people have about ICE and their default trust in government agencies, even though these are federal agencies deployed by Trump.

So we have to explain that first, ICE is doing racial profiling, so if you are non-white, you can and will be targeted. And secondly, the more people they detain, the more money they make. So they literally make money by detaining more people. And people are shocked when they hear that they want to detain as many people as they can because they’re like, “What’s the use of detaining people who are ‘legal’?” Many people think ICE is here to only target and detain so-called “illegal” immigrants. And when they find out that they’re trying to detain as many people as possible, they’re really shocked.

ER: And there’s also the idea that ICE is simply going after “the worst of the worst,” only the “criminals.” But just yesterday there was a national news story that reported that something like 83 percent of the people that have been detained so far have no criminal history whatsoever. In some areas, the number is even higher.

ICE is doing racial profiling, so if you are non-white, you can and will be targeted. And secondly, the more people they detain, the more money they make. So they literally make money by detaining more people.

H: Yes, they are even very active in Evanston. Evanston is not even that diverse, it’s like more of a middle-class suburb. I think this partly shows that we haven’t been able to tell our stories very effectively. I think a lot of the things we do aren’t proactive enough. And telling the story of what is happening here is a big part of it.

I think there are a lot of opportunities to make this like a Black Lives Matter movement. Obviously it’s a very different moment. Immigrants, especially so-called “illegal” immigrants, are not conceived of as American. This also extends to Black people at times—but in a different way—because this is a racist country. This question of “American-ness” will make it harder for this to become a national movement, but I think there is still potential, if for no other reason because ICE has shot and killed people.

Because we haven’t been able to tell our story very well, we have missed some opportunities. And because all the neighborhood responses operate individually in different areas, there have been some missed opportunities. But you could argue this is also a strength. Decentralization makes it easier to respond quickly on a local basis. But I think down the line, if ICE is here for a long time and we want to make it a movement, we should think about how to have more coordinated efforts and how to tell our own stories. I see more and more people joining in this effort, so I see a lot of potential honestly.

Geoff Guy interviews Rosemary

Rosemary is a Rogers Park community defense organizer. Rosemary is a pseudonym. Geoff Guy is a labor and tenants’ rights activist in Chicago.

GG: How has the ICE invasion impacted you and your community?

 

R: Reading through 200 messages, trying to figure out where they took my friend, trying to do my job—what are the things we could be building if not constantly reacting to crises? We’re organizing and resisting, building something beautiful here, but it’s terrifying—a military invasion in my neighborhood. The fact that an average person can’t leave their house if they’re at risk of being deported, or any brown person without threat of being detained.

We’re scared, but we’re in the streets. Chicago is organized and responding, and responding by catalyzing fear into solidarity. … We’re turning helplessness and hopelessness into action.

But also, I want to be clear about how we’re fighting back; I hate all the articles about how everyone’s afraid to leave their homes and scared. Yes, we’re scared, but we’re in the streets. Chicago is organized and responding, and responding by catalyzing fear into solidarity. In Rogers Park on the first day, ICE really hit our neighborhood—there were hundreds on the streets with their orange whistles as a visible reminder that we’re going to protect our neighbors, and people are waking up to it. It’s not just something people are seeing on the news or social media; it’s happening on their street. Our group of rapid response people is 1000 now. We have so many people trained now. Protect Rogers Park is training hundreds every week. We’re turning helplessness and hopelessness into action.

Newer folks are getting activated by just seeing this, talking to random people in the street who are following ICE. That’s what it takes – we don’t have SWAT teams, we need regular everyday people. New people coming in say they’re feeling hopeless and want to be in community with people doing something. And we’re giving constant education about why we’re doing this – not just ICE, but all forms of oppression: Palestine, policing. The number of people seeing undercover cops in our neighborhood that were never seen before, because they weren’t looking. They’re starting to see the number of cameras and the surveillance, and once they start looking, they start seeing it everywhere.

GG: Tell us about the work you’ve been doing. From the Immigration Court earlier this year to the Broadview ICE Facility to rapid response. How did these come together and form an infrastructure for the movement?

R: In June, they were kidnapping people at 55 E. Monroe (Immigration Court) for a couple weeks, then protests started. Once there was enough mobilization there and there was an embarrassing situation where they kidnapped a US citizen (protestor) in an unorthodox way. The protest worked. They effectively stopped kidnapping at court, at least for a long time. That moment where people were blocking cars from entering, that was a wakeup call that resistance works. Doesn’t work every time, and unpredictable about when it will work and when not, but in this case ICE made a calculus that this wasn’t easy picking any more. This inspired Broadview and rapid response. The more we can slow them down and waste their time, the more we can save one person.

That moment where people were blocking cars from entering, that was a wakeup call that resistance works….Just demonstrating that we do not consent to this invasion is powerful.

I think neighborhood organizing is the most powerful form of organizing—working with people you live by and know. A lot of this is a proactive vs. reactive strategy. Neighborhood rapid response is in many ways a last line of defense; this all has to work together. We have eyes on the immigration court (site of many kidnappings by ICE agents and protests) and Broadview (a processing center turned illegal detention center) and hotels housing ICE and all these nodes of ICE’s operations—we’re able to share info and warn people in much quicker and more helpful ways. Just demonstrating that we do not consent to this invasion is powerful.

Having people constantly at Broadview saying, “This is wrong,” going to the source of their operations is important. For a long time, nobody paid attention to it. There are groups who have prayed rosary there for the last twelve years but didn’t see mass mobilization until someone sat in front of the car there, and that became the focal point of demonstrations. In many ways, that site is a bottleneck for ICE. It’s a horrible facility that’s supposed to just be for processing, but now it is used for detention. It was only supposed to be twelve hours, but people are now there for days on end, sleeping there with cold food, little water. We don’t allow detention centers in Illinois. They rely on them before transferring people to detention in other states. It’s a funnel, with horrible conditions. As they ramp up operations, elected officials can’t even tour and inspect.

When JB Pritzker (Illinois Governor) sent in the Illinois State Police, we saw the true basis of police repression, which is that police exist to repress dissent and not to protect people. They are clearly facilitating ICE operations by dispersing crowds. They have beaten and arrested protestors. We have yet to see local or state police arrest ICE, even though there is a recent ruling from a judge that if ICE tries to arrest people in federal court, police in Chicago could arrest ICE. Tensions between federal and local police are getting to civil war level, and everyone is so afraid of that. They want to deny these forces work together. They prefer state repression to interstate conflict.

GG: What have you seen that’s inspired you in this work? What are your ambitions for what you would like to build? What have you learned, or what would you share with other cities? What difficulties or barriers have you encountered?

R: Build now! Don’t wait. The relationships are the thing. It can feel like patrol is a time-suck: Are we spinning our gears just flyering and maybe ICE never comes? Twofold: every action you take should build community—e.g. flyering businesses is meeting people, sharing info. Not just sitting on a corner watching people, but a chance to talk to people about why we’re here. Get to know your community, get to know organizations, try to get on the same page about what’s coming. Localize everything. Don’t wait for a citywide system, don’t wait for everybody to agree on what to do—organize your building, organize your block, then organize the city.

Build now! Don’t wait. The relationships are the thing. It can feel like patrol is a time-suck: Are we spinning our gears just flyering and maybe ICE never comes? … Every action you take should build community.

What’s possible in autonomous organizing vs nonprofits is different. Not-for-profits (NFP) can provide material resources, but maybe can’t do riskier stuff. We need an analysis of what NFPs can and cannot do. Autonomous organizing also needs principles around accountability. For example, Broadview organizing is autonomous, while NFPs are there in advocacy roles.

GG: What do you think it will take for us to win? What are the sides? What is winning?

R: Success looks like moving people from where they’re at to understand the roots of our current crisis in the true sense of radical, to uproot those roots–pushing people to understand that this is not just a fight against ICE or against Trump, but against the broader police state that we are living under. I think a lot of people believe that if we elect a new person or if we train cops better or if we change what ICE is allowed to do, that we will win. But my goal is to stop deportations, to stop all deportations. My goal is to abolish the police, not just abolish ICE. I’m a futurist—thinking about what kind of world we’re creating, not what we’re destroying.

Success looks like moving people from where they’re at to understand the roots of our current crisis in the true sense of radical, to uproot those roots–pushing people to understand that this is not just a fight against ICE or against Trump, but against the broader police state that we are living under.

We have a thousand-person chat of people ready to respond on a moment’s notice. Building popular understanding of what’s happening in our world and educating about where we go is the challenge right now. As we’re building new relationships in this crisis, we should be thinking about where this is going. That is what I hope this crisis pushes us to understand: When we get a new president we keep fighting to stop deportation and keep housing our neighbors.

GG: What can we do as organizations now to secure post-crisis?

 

R: Of primary use is political analysis. Some groups aren’t organized enough to do what larger organizations are doing in mobilizing. We can carry the political education for average people out here and be voices—not in a scolding/patronizing way—but trying to normalize. So many people are baffled in terms of what to do about this. Many people, including liberals, now have to do things they’re not accustomed to, like organizing against the police. More radical organizations have a responsibility and experience to share an analysis at this moment.

We’re not entirely sure how to incorporate lots of new people and mixed consciousness–not necessarily “we should welcome in as many people as possible,” but we should let people know they’re organizers and they should take initiative and autonomy. There is no perfect organization. I’m relatively new to this, and having a political space to lean on made a difference.

GG: What would you like to see on the other side of this?

 

R: I want to see a thousand experiments of what kind of new future we want to build and to see these communications networks and infrastructures be applied to liberatory ends, so that whatever happens, we’re not waiting for an organization or a leader to take care of us, but that we actually have what we need, that we’re self-sufficient as much as possible and having joy and community in that self-sufficiency. We can’t just fight all the time. We have to build, and building is a restorative act. It’s not just hard work, it’s lifegiving. Do a community garden! But if you’re going to do anything, do it with a political analysis. If you’re going to be a NFP, do it with an understanding that all this comes from capitalism. NFPs don’t name those things, and don’t work through that political analysis—even progressive NFPs don’t come out and say “we need to abolish capitalism.”

We can’t just fight all the time. We have to build, and building is a restorative act. It’s not just hard work, it’s lifegiving. Dennis Kosuth interviews anonymous CPS teacher ‘T’

The following interview was conducted with a Chicago Teacher’s Union member and activist ‘ T.‘ They are involved in creating a Sanctuary School in their workplace and in community defense against ICE raids as part of a rapid response network on the Southwest side of Chicago. Due to harassment and doxxing of CTU members by rightwing activists, they chose to remain anonymous for this interview. Dennis Kosuth is a Chicago Teachers Union member and activist in the Palestine solidarity, labor, and socialist movements in Chicago.

DK: How has this operation with ICE in Chicago impacted you and the communities that you are a part of?

T: Multiple neighborhoods have been tear gassed. There are literally hundreds of people who were picked up in illegal arrests, arrests that ICE is not authorized to make. Citizens have been picked up. We’ve got kids who have missed six days in a row of school. When a teacher calls the mom, she says, “I’m afraid to take him. I’m afraid to go out and travel all the way to school.”

There was a helicopter over our school last week, and the kids were asking, “Is it ICE?”

Our school’s after school programming was just cut by two thirds. I can’t help thinking that the budget was cut by two thirds and ICE agents are getting $50,000 signed bonuses.

DK: Tell us about the work you’ve been doing.

 

T: We’ve got a sanctuary team and we’re making sure our staff know what’s going on because everybody lives in different places and ICE has not hit the city evenly. We let families know that ICE is not allowed in the building without a warrant. We did see some students who had not been coming to school very regularly have their attendance picked back up right after we sent that information home.

We made sure we sent them resources from the Chicago Public School website, from the mayor’s office, from trusted organizations. We let them know how you get good information, and what their rights are. I’m really grateful that the CTU has made multilingual materials so we could distribute them school wide.

We’ve also connected with our neighborhood rapid response team and folks in the community who support the work that we’re doing. We have community members helping us do morning and afternoon school patrols. These make sure that students and parents are safe during the busiest times at drop off and pick up.

When I’m not at school, then I’m on my rapid response team and in my neighborhood, and that’s a trip because we’ve been hit really hard.

It’s affecting the kids at school; it’s affecting my neighborhood. There are other CPS employees I know who also have ICE in their neighborhood. So many people know somebody whose family member was detained or witnessed them being detained. It’s just happening so often in so many places and is increasingly violent.

DK: What have you seen that’s inspired you? Are there any experiences that give you some kind of hope?

T: This stuff definitely shows the worst of people in these ICE agents. They teargas civilians who are literally just living their lives. We also see the best of people. I’ve been surprised how some of my colleagues were willing to sign up for actions when we asked, or even folks who proactively reached out and said, “How can I help?”

It’s activated people who maybe thought that this wouldn’t happen here, and folks are willing to move to action. We see the way that people defend their own communities, how they’re willing to get to work early and patrol.

The way community members have joined in this work is also impressive. People are willing to pick up students for parents who are afraid to go out. Oftentimes this is for people that they’ve never met before and who they might not meet again after this.

We are seeing the way people are showing up to witness these kidnappings, calling for help and letting people know what’s going on. Interesting bridges and coalitions are being built because we’re focused on what matters and what matters is keeping our city safe.

DK: What are some lessons for people in other cities who are also experiencing similar things?

T: A top line, not necessarily a lesson, but more like an orientation, is how little the Feds care about anything. They don’t know who they’re detaining. They don’t care about your private property. They don’t care about your actual citizenship status. They don’t care about running red lights and causing accidents in the streets. They have no regard for the people of the cities that they’re in.

A lesson is: Be open to building partnerships that maybe in other times you would not have, with people you might not have reached out to in another time.

The power of good documentation and good communication is also important. What we’re seeing here is things moving really fast. What we organize doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be a massive network from, you know, one end of your city to the other end of your city. Start a group chat with your neighbors so you can ask them, “What’s that weird car sitting out there?”

If you can catch ICE when they’re scoping out, it’s possible that you can stop that detention, and there’s a family who won’t get separated

DK: What do you think it’s going to take to push back Trump and the anti-immigrant forces in this country?

T: I think we need to build towards a general strike. If moral pleas were going to work, I think we would have already seen a response from ICE. What I’ve noticed is when they realize that they’ll be unsuccessful is when they stop. When the cost of whatever they want to do is too high. That’s the only time they back off.

I think we need to build towards a general strike. If moral pleas were going to work, I think we would have already seen a response from ICE.

I think we need to hit capitalists in their pocket books. I would like to see what a mass work stoppage could do, and break their banks.

DK: What do you think are some of the steps that we can take now, as union or non-union workers, towards that kind of action?

T: I think workers need to keep talking to workers. Whether you’re in a union or not, or a formal union or a budding union or whatever it is, like, anybody can pressure their own workplace to establish an ICE protocol because there are only two ways that ICE can enter a building: with your consent or with a warrant.

Don’t give consent. Demand a warrant. We’re not asking anybody to, or I don’t even think you necessarily have to, be so radical as to defy a warrant. That’s not what I’m advocating at this moment. At least demand that your employer who makes money off of your back and your labor say: We’re not opening the door without a warrant.

Set up your own security teams. We’ve seen some factories here that are doing it, and really any business can decide that they’re gonna do this. We probably need some small actions before we get to a general strike.

Kirstin Roberts interview with Jorge Mujica (October 2025)

Kirstin Roberts is a Chicago Teachers Union member and longtime activist in the socialist and labor movements in Chicago. Jorge Mujica is an organizer with Arise Chicago.

KR: Can you tell Tempest readers about yourself?

JM: I’m Jorge Mujica, organizer with Arise Chicago. Arise Chicago is a worker center so basically we are focusing workplace problems from stolen wages to discrimination. Most of our members are immigrants, so therefore we have to talk about immigrant issues, although that’s not our main focus. I live now in Little Village, but I lived in Pilsen for many years as well.

KR: We are trying to let a national audience understand what is happening in Chicago from the perspective of people on the ground, ordinary people like yourself— organizers, activists, and impacted community members. Can you just paint a brief picture about what Trump is doing right now to our city?

JM: Well, I would say in general terms that Trump is terrorizing the community in Chicago. It is a psychological war, you know, because he needs to give the impression to his base that he’s keeping his promise of deporting 12 and a half or 13 million immigrants. Of course he’s not going to be able to do it. So far, in one month immigration has only detained 800 people (as of early October) that gives us an average of like 25 people every day and that’s nothing in terms of the numbers Trump wants. Of course, each deportation is a personal tragedy, a family tragedy, you know fathers without their sons, our sons without their mothers, etc. But it’s nothing in terms of real numbers. Eight hundred people every month for a full year would be 9000 people. So it’s a lot more terror, a lot more circus than anything else.

KR: I think that’s a really really good way of describing it for people. Talk a little bit about how this is impacting the community that you work in.

JM: There are a good number of day laborers in Chicago, although we are not a hub for construction like Atlanta. Many, many people look for jobs closely related to construction in the Chicago area, mostly in the suburbs, but they look for work at the Home Depot where immigration has been concentrating some of their actions. Mostly immigration has been coming after people individually, what they call “targeted operations,” but they have also conducted raids. The big difference between a targeted operation is they go after someone they’ve identified; they have an address for that person. Then they have the raids. Let’s go to Home Depot and catch everyone we find in the parking lot. These are the most incredibly vulnerable workers, to be looking for a job every single day with a different employer to do just one day’s work or maybe a bit more. But then after two weeks you’re unemployed again and you have to go back to the Home Depot and start trying to find someone to hire you. So this is despicable, going after these people just looking for work.

KR: One of the things you said is that this is a campaign of terror. What you’re describing certainly qualifies. Terrify people to get them to self-deport or just push them farther and farther underground. But there’s also something happening here in Chicago that doesn’t show up enough in the mainstream press and that is how communities are stepping up for each other. Is there anything you think people should be aware of and maybe even learn from in other cities?

JM: Well, the most inspiring thing we have had this year was hearing Tom Homan, the so-called “border czar” live on CNN saying that Chicago was a very difficult place to arrest immigrant workers because they were very well educated on their rights. So that’s like receiving the Nobel Prize for grassroots education because that’s exactly what we needed to do since Trump’s election. You know there was a lot of discussion. What do we do? Rapid response brigades or the position I took—popular education? Rapid response, maybe it’s already too late, basically coming after immigration detains somebody. Instead of that we focused on training people, educating people, preparing people for the event and for the possibility of facing immigration. We gave so many workshops. I really lost count. Immigration workshops about what to do: Keep your mouth shut and then don’t open your door. Learn your rights and have your rights card. We trained them to face the aggressiveness of immigration police.

KR: Looking forward, what is it gonna take? What kind of awareness and what kind of strategy do you think we’re gonna need in order to turn back the tide on what Trump is doing? Clearly right now people are resisting in so many ways. But every day, it’s a new outrage. Can you talk about what we need to move towards?

JM: Well, of course we need to change the regime. In order to gain that I think it’s a lot of conversation. On a daily basis people ask me, you know, what do I do? “What do I do” is not what you individually do, it is what we do as communities, what we do as groups. A community facing this thing together. We need leadership in that sense. What we need is to mobilize 200 people on that corner, and on every corner; what we need is creative participation. Like in the Little Village (neighborhood), we are distributing whistles. We are blowing the whistle and everybody starts doing it so it gets noticed. Don’t depend on an organization printing posters–if you can do it on a piece of paper or on a piece of cardboard, write down the number to the hotline and post it at the entrance of your building. We need to talk to thousands and thousands of people, telling them to be doing this kind of resistance.

You know it is natural to be fearful, to be afraid, but the more you learn, the less fear you’re gonna have and that’s what we need.

KR: Is there anything else you think would be important to let people know?

JM: You know it is natural to be fearful, to be afraid, but the more you learn, the less fear you’re gonna have and that’s what we need. I began this conversation by saying it was a psychological war so how do you get rid of that? That’s what we need you know the community to lose their fear of immigration and to start fighting because as long as you’re in panic you’re going to be frozen in place or you gonna need to try to escape. What we need, instead of running away, is facing the danger and overcoming the danger, and that only happens when you overcome the fear.

Kirstin Roberts interviews Raul Islas (October 2025)

Kirstin Roberts is a Chicago Teachers Union member and longtime activist in the socialist labor movement in Chicago. Raul Islas is a Chicago Teachers Union teacher.

KR: Can you tell Tempest readers about yourself?

 

RI: My name is Raul Islas. As a CTU (Chicago Teachers Union) teacher, I have answered the call of the teachers’ union to build a sanctuary community in my school. Basically what it is, is building a group of watchful staff, but also, if possible, bringing parents and community into it. So that’s something that I’ve been doing, connecting the staff that wants to protect students and families from ICE. Connecting them with parents and the community so that we build a strong watch community and are ready for whatever they bring at us. And today, it’s very much escalating.

KR: Can you say what happened today in Chicago? You said it’s escalating?

RI: Well, yeah, so my understanding is the National Guard has been called into Chicago by President Trump. They’re coming from the state of Texas. We’re talking hundreds. I’m not sure what the total number is, but it’s definitely hundreds. And it is specifically to aid ICE enforcement and to protect ICE agents to detain, arrest, deport people. So, yeah, that’s what I mean by escalating.

KR: Chicago has been in the national news a lot. But as people in the community, as teachers in Chicago, how do you describe this moment? What’s happening here?

RI: I interact a lot with parents, especially newcomer parents or parents who may not have legal status, and families are very scared. They’re scared to leave the house. They are scared to bring their children to school. They are scared to go and provide for their basic goods, like grocery shopping, or even going to the doctor, right? A lot of members of the community and staff, we’re trying to respond to that, and to provide them support. That could mean accompanying people to school. It could mean helping families with certain needs like grocery runs or even economic support for families. It’s becoming riskier and riskier to intervene on behalf of people who are being illegally detained. An activist was shot. ICE claimed that she attacked them, but the body cam footage is proving that to be a lie. They shot her five times. We also have a father who was shot and killed in the suburbs in Franklin Park (a Chicago suburb). Rapid response community members have also been teargassed repeatedly. Those of us who are in a rapid response community have to think more about our safety as we’re also thinking about the risk and the safety of people that we might be supporting.

KR: Is there anything that has given you hope or inspired you over the last couple of months of this work?

RI: I think there’s been a feeling of a lot of support. Whether it’s people signing up on lists to watch or to provide mutual aid for people or random neighbors, who are not a part of any groups, coming out on their own and standing up for people’s rights and taking risks, that is hope for me–just seeing where things are going and fears that people have about this administration and the boundaries that it’s pushing, fears of a dictatorship, fears of fascism. I feel rather overwhelmed by the amount of support coming in. They know more needs to be done and they’re very hungry for that opportunity to take action. I’m seeing language barriers where some volunteers are having a tough time communicating with the people, but they’re lining up to support. But when it’s an active solidarity, when there’s solidarity being felt, language becomes less of a barrier and people, they just feel the solidarity. It’s beautiful.

Whether it’s people signing up on lists to watch or to provide mutual aid for people or random neighbors, who are not a part of any groups, coming out on their own and standing up for people’s rights and taking risks, that is hope for me.

KR: You said something earlier and I want you to maybe just quickly talk about what you meant. Before we started recording you said there’s a place for everybody in this movement. Can you explain what you mean?

RI: We have some very active ICE watch. We have community activists who are definitely willing to engage ICE and to intervene when they’re seeing an arrest happening, willing to take those risks. And then we have people who may not see themselves doing that, but who want to be helping families; they want to play a role and they don’t necessarily envision themselves as activists going up against ICE per se. And then, of course, we have families who are affected, who are scared, but who are connecting us to other families that they know, organizing in their own community and putting themselves at risk. They’re affected, they’re scared, but they want to help others. There’s a role for everyone and that’s what I’m seeing more and more of, with all the layers of people that are coming out. There’s a role for everybody. It could be economic mutual aid, it could be providing a safe ride or a safe accompaniment to people to get to school, even to their jobs. It could be helping to spread posts to be viral to the public. So there’s definitely a role for everybody.

KR: How are you feeling about the political leadership in Chicago and in Illinois at this moment?

RI: I like hearing our elected leaders stand up to Trump. I think they mainly see their role as trying to stop some of what the administration is doing through the courts. Okay, I think it definitely has a role as well, but it also has major limitations. We have not been able to rely on the courts that much to stop this kind of encroachment on the people’s rights. Other elected leaders are going further, and especially more local elected leaders, where they are showing up in communities where ICE is present and they themselves are also challenging ICE on the spot, showing up to neighborhoods where ICE is, showing up to the places that people are being detained, and questioning ICE as to the legality of what they’re doing. So I think at the local level, more than the state level, more elected officials come out and be vocal. But, you know, some elected officials express that there’s only so much they can do. Their hands are tied. They’re seeing us fight back and I think they know they have to be looking like they’re fighting too. I was at the most recent No Kings rally. We had a prominent senator go up and speak, and the reception was not very good for that senator. That’s because people felt that the senator wasn’t really standing up to Trump so much. So now we’re starting to see some of these elected officials stand up a little more and you know want to make themselves look more like someone that is standing up and fighting against Trump. So I think these protests and mobilizations and organizing that are happening are making some elected officials, who normally have not been as vocal or strong, step up as well, because that’s what their constituents are demanding from them.

I think these protests and mobilizations and organizing that are happening are making some elected officials, who normally have not been as vocal or strong, step up as well, because that’s what their constituents are demanding from them.

KR: Is there anything that we want people in other cities to know that we’ve learned? Negative lessons and positive lessons?

RI: Maybe we can start with negative, okay? I think it’s important for those in the activist community that are getting involved with stopping ICE, that they’re communicating with immigrant rights groups and the groups that are working with the people affected. We hace got to make sure that the actions that are being done are working in cohesion with people who are advocating for the affected. For instance, right now, we’re definitely hearing how hard it is for lawyers or immigrant rights advocates or families to get to their loved ones at Broadview (ICE processing and detention center and site of daily protests.) That means getting things to them that they might need. Broadview is a center run by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. It’s a processing center that should not be used as the detention center. They don’t have beds for everybody. So people are made to sleep standing up! It’s been a scene of a lot of intense protests and calls for shutting it down. And for some affected families, that’s worrisome because it means that their family members will be shipped further away to states where they do have “legal” detention centers. I’m wondering how much activists are talking to immigrant rights organizations or the affected families.

KR: So we need more movement spaces where people can communicate and coordinate?

RI: The question that needs to be asked is, how is this affecting the families? Is it making it harder for families to get to their loved ones, to get support for their loved ones? Well, what are some alternatives, right? We’ve got to have more spaces where people can talk to each other from different impacted communities. We’re all impacted communities. How do we get together and talk to each other?

They’re realizing that this is beyond elections, so to speak. We have to take action beyond just voting or beyond just waiting for lawyers or the courts to do something. It’s becoming more and more clear that the people have to take action.

I do think it is positive that people are using words like fascism, like authoritarian governments, like dictatorship. Before this we were only hearing that from groups on the Left. Now that sentiment is more widespread. What if this really is a dictatorship or a fascist takeover, and what are we willing to do to stop that? It’s very regular everyday people who are saying, look at this, look at what we’re seeing. I have family on the South side, Hispanic working class, and they are sharing things and saying things that makes me feel they understand. They’re realizing that this is beyond elections, so to speak. We have to take action beyond just voting or beyond just waiting for lawyers or the courts to do something. It’s becoming more and more clear that the people have to take action. I think this is setting the foundations for what will be a strong grassroots resistance to whatever this administration tries to do.

KR: Is there anything else you would want people to know, anything else you want to share?

RI: You know, I think this is a harder conversation to have for people, but I think we need to start thinking about not only movements and protests but completely alternative organizations that really are going to authentically and consistently fight for the issues that we care about. The Democratic Party that presents itself as an opposition party has failed to act like an opposition party in very critical and crucial moments. I mean not just recently, but throughout history. So we want to be careful to be practicing the same thing; we organize, we protest, we resist, we create the momentum, and the movement to make change, but then we just hand power over to the Democratic Party, which has some very strong members and elected officials. But overall, as an apparatus, it often feels like they are part of the problem, not part of the solution. During the election, I was not hearing from Democrats or their leaders warning about what immigration actions could turn into. If anything, I would often hear them present themselves as tough on immigration, or as tough on the border as, let’s say, Trump, right? And so I think that’s very problematic, because if you don’t present yourself as an opposition party, then people are going to go for who they see as being stronger.

We need to start thinking about not only movements and protests but completely alternative organizations that really are going to authentically and consistently fight for the issues that we care about. The Democratic Party that presents itself as an opposition party has failed to act like an opposition party.

I think the Democratic Party has some very strong voices. We have some local elected members who are very strong on this issue, like Congresswoman Delia Ramirez, who’s been very strong on immigration and very vocal against Trump. But when you look at figures like that and you see the rest of the Party, you realize the good ones are the exception. The rest of the Democratic Party doesn’t look like this, doesn’t sound like this.

I think that there’s definitely an interest from those in power to have a lower paid sector of workers with less rights that they could use, for instance, to break up unionized industries. Native workers against immigrant workers, Black against Brown, which they’ve been doing as well. I mean, we’ve definitely seen attempts by Republican governors to bus migrants into specific cities to create friction in the cities. And so there’s a lot of using the immigrant community as political weapons. It certainly feels like in this city, Chicago, that people are not putting up with it. They are standing up, they’re coming out of their homes, they’re coming out on the streets, they are keeping an eye out, they’re being watchful. And it just feels like more and more people are on guard. Like, they’re kind of ready.

You know, some people have compared us to the underground railroad. They’ve talked about how there was a time in this country where there was a Fugitive Slave Act and the federal government was forcing states to hand people over who had escaped slavery and were looking for freedom. You have a federal government now that wants to force sanctuary states to hand people over, imprison them, detain them, deport them. And so there are definitely people looking back at history and saying, we know that it’s taken people working at an underground or clandestine level to support people. I’m seeing a lot of that in Chicago and I’m inspired by it. And like I said, on a daily basis, I am overwhelmed and unable to even manage and handle the number of volunteers who are contacting me and saying, I want to help. When I met with activists from L.A. in D.C. who are facing the same thing, one of the things they warned about was fatigue and people experiencing burnout, not just physical, but emotional as well. That’s one thing that they kind of told us here in Chicago to be aware that that will happen quickly. The number of people wanting to get involved could help keep this going, because by the way it looks like now, we’re gonna have to keep this going for years because so much damage is being done and so much of it is being institutionalized like a sort of superstructure being built right before our very eyes.

Kyle Gilbertson interviews Bridget Murphy

Bridget Murphy is a longtime community organizer on the northwest side of Chicago with Palenque/Logan Square Neighborhood Association. She is a founding member of 39th Ward Neighbors United. At her children’s neighborhood public school in Albany Park she helped to build a group of neighbors that walks students safely to and from school and supports impacted families in the context of hostile ICE raids. Kyle Gilbertson is a musician and educator as well as a longtime socialist and Palestinian rights activist.

KG: How has the ICE invasion impacted you and your community?

BM: It has been very intense. The closest thing I have to describing that feeling is like COVID. You know, when all of a sudden, overnight, everything is different. Everybody has to rethink their actions. Even the smallest action, like going to the grocery store, taking your kids to school. Everybody has to rethink what is the safest possible way to go about what they do every day. In addition to the fear and anxiety, every individual person is handling it very differently.

KF: Could you tell me about the work you’ve been doing?

BM: At my own kids’ school, we have a group of neighbors that has been organizing since around Labor Day weekend. We came together very loosely on a Signal thread to think about how we could potentially organize and to find out if any families needed help getting to school. We didn’t immediately know of any families who needed that. So we started just doing morning safety walks. We met with the school administration to introduce ourselves and discuss what kinds of stuff we might want to work on together. But mostly the first few weeks we were just doing safety patrols and trying to get people plugged into community defense trainings. Then about two weeks ago, things really heated up in our neighborhood. There were multiple ICE arrests at an intersection very near our school. In one case, it was a mom from our school. She dropped her kids off at school, and walked two blocks to the bus stop to go to work. ICE swooped in and took her. I hear that her husband was with her, and he just happened to go to a corner store for a minute to get something when she was arrested. So, if he hadn’t done that, their kids would have lost both parents. When that happened, word traveled among all the parents in the school. The principal called me that day and said, “Are there a few volunteers you could have come to the main office and help us walk kids home after school?” We said sure. So about six to ten people came to the office within an hour from our group and that day we ended up helping to walk home close to 40 students. Parents possibly knew the mom who had been taken in and were scared to pick up their kids. That was a Friday. The following Monday, there were many absent students. The school really came to us at that point to say, we need your help.

Right now, it’s about 65 kids every day we are walking to school. We have ten different routes with different colors and numbers. We try to have two adults on every route. So on a daily basis, to get everyone both to and from school, we need at least 40 people to raise their hands for this kind of solidarity. And people have been doing it. It’s been amazing. Every day we’re like, okay, can we make it through? Can we do it tomorrow? But so far, the outpouring of people who have shown an interest has exceeded the number of families seeking this support.

KG: What is your vision for what you would like to build beyond what exists right now in terms of movement infrastructure?

BM: I want to acknowledge that none of this started on Labor Day weekend. I and many others have been organizing in our neighborhood as part of an independent political organization since 2020. Through that, we have built a precinct captain program. We’ve connected with people in the neighborhood dozens of times, whether it was for the Bring Chicago Home referendum (which aimed to alleviate homelessness), or for candidates, or for helping people prepare for the current attacks. So I think that’s part of what made it possible to even just get started. There was already a group of people who knew each other, and knew that there were some shared values. We’ve also organized together to plan block parties. As a parent at the school, I’ve also worked with the school over the years, organizing to help stop school closings, for safety on the playground, and as a member of the Local School Council. So, there have been lots of different pieces of organizing work that happened over the years.

Now there are so many more people joining in and looking for ways to do something concrete. And there is an interest in doing something beyond a walking school bus. We have a traditional Democratic machine alderman representing our neighborhood (Ald. Samantha Nugent). So a neighbor put out a call for her to vote a certain way in city council. And some people were asking, who can run against her? At the next neighborhood school over, they have a similar Signal thread that started overnight. It’s related to mutual aid and community defense, and now has over a hundred people. A lot of elected officials on the north side are leading the charge in all this.

KG: Are there any challenges or difficulties that you’ve encountered, or lessons you’ve learned in this work that you’d like to share with people in other cities?

BM: At this moment, most of the walking school bus volunteers are white. I think it’s an important way for people to show up and use the privilege they have. But that’s not a long-term foundation for a political organization. For the real and present need right now, I think it works. I also think that people of color in the neighborhood have shared that they’re glad to see all the white people standing up for them.

I also want to acknowledge that, though we have this new walking school bus thing, a lot of families have been doing this forever–helping each other walk their kids to school. Now some families are coordinating together to figure out how to walk in bigger groups to get to school. It’s a walking school class, an organized effort with a spreadsheet. It always has been happening. Our role is to fill the gaps now, where people feel like they don’t have access to that support.

Kyle Gilbertson’s interview with anonymous activist

The following interview was conducted with a longtime social justice activist based in Chicago. They are involved in community defense against ICE raids as part of a local rapid response network. They are also involved in the Palestine Solidarity movement in Chicago. For this interview they chose to remain anonymous. Kyle Gilberston is a musician and educator as well as a long time socialist and Palestinian rights activist.

KG: Tell me a little about how the ICE invasion has affected you and your community.

A: I live in a neighborhood that has been pretty hard hit. We’re building a lot of the organization from the ground up. There is a lot of fear. One thing that we have a lot of is like false sightings, and we’ve had that for months. Every day we continue to have sightings that are people mistaking suspicious looking cars for ICE. That really shows how people are on edge. It’s also been an opportunity for people to come together. I organized, on my own, a very small scale block watch – for just a two block by two block area around my house – after somebody was abducted directly in front of my building. We had a meeting for that, and an ICE watch training. Fifty people showed up. Sadly, that might not have happened if not for this crisis. I wish we had had that kind of organization and connection beforehand. But it is becoming a big catalyst for people to connect with their neighbors.

KG: Tell me a little more about the work you’ve been doing in this moment.

A: There are various places to get involved, and one of them is on a very local neighborhood level. I am in the rapid response group in my neighborhood. I do regular patrols around a certain area near my house. I keep up with sightings in my neighborhood. That’s rapid response. The patrols are a little bit more proactive. There is the “adopt a hiring corner” initiative with Latino Union. These hiring corners and Home Depots where the day laborers are have been such a huge target. There’s a Home Depot by my house. There’s a raid at that Home Depot almost every single day. One thing people have found is that, if they are volunteers tabling and keeping watch at a hiring corner or a Home Depot, that will significantly deter ICE raids. We think that they have scout cars in the Home Depot parking lots, such that when the volunteers leave, the ICE raid will happen about 30 minutes later. People have said, why do the day laborers go out if it’s so dangerous? The fact is, their livelihood depends on their accessibility to employers. So the fact that these people are making themselves accessible to sell their labor means that they are also the most accessible people to ICE.

So people are trying to be proactive, instead of just responding when there’s a raid. It’s the same idea with the school drop off and pick up patrols, where people try to proactively have presence around schools, because they’ve been targeting parents dropping off and picking up their kids. Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez was killed right after dropping off his kid. So you’re trying to guess where they would go and then be there in advance. The third way that I’ve been plugging in is by going to Broadview and protesting there. Everyone who gets kidnapped in Chicago gets trafficked through Broadview. And the conditions–It’s not that the conditions are the only problem. To be clear, the existence of the facility is the problem. But on top of it being a trafficking center, the conditions are also terrible there. People will be taken there and within hours feel like it is so unbearable that they will sign up for voluntary removal. We have to get Broadview shut down.

There are also people who are trying to gather data on ICE operations to try to better predict their tactics. There’s a lot of different levels.

KG: What is your vision for what you’d like to build, or what you would like to see happen in the future, within the movement?

A: In the Northwest Side Rapid Response Network, when we get calls from a certain location, sometimes no one is near that location, and we have to drive. It may take 15 minutes, and that could make a life or death difference for people. What I would really like to see is for rapid response to become obsolete, because whenever they come to a block, every single person on the block will just walk out of their house. I want to see everyone who is not undocumented, or who feels that they have the privilege to step outside and take that risk, that everyone who can somewhat safely do that, is empowered to do so and is trained to do so and can respond to it in the moment. I think it just happened in Albany Park.

What I would really like to see is for rapid response to become obsolete, because whenever [ICE] comes to a block, every single person on the block will just walk out of their house.

KG: Yeah, my friend Gabe was a part of that.

A: There have been instances when people have literally come out of their houses to stop a raid. The thing about ICE is that they work so quickly because they know that we are on to them. The person who was kidnapped in front of my apartment, was walking down the street, and they ran up to him, zip tied his hands, and threw him in the back of a van, and it was over in 10 seconds. We didn’t even get a video of it. So one thing I would like to see is that everybody is empowered to do something in that situation, and that everyone feels confident that they will be supported by their neighbors in going out and taking some sort of action, whether that’s interference or not, whether it’s just recording, or whether it’s trying to offer support to the person. Just the presence of people on the street is important, because ICE is afraid of people.

I really feel like there is a utility to be a “protective presence,” which is a word people use in Palestine to describe when, for example, American Jewish activists go to Palestine and try to impede the occupation by just being there. They’re so afraid that they’ll teargas us, even though we aren’t doing anything to them. We don’t have guns, but they seem to be afraid. I don’t know what it is inside their minds, but they seem to be very sensitive to community response. So that’s my vision for how this could be.

KG: Are there any lessons you’d like to share for people in other cities?

A: Definitely. I’ve been telling friends who live in other cities, this could come to you later, and you want to get to know your neighbors beforehand. When you’re trying to build community amid this invasion, some people are not comfortable leaving their homes. Some people are going to be understandably very wary of meeting new people right now. Trying to build relationships now, while also being sensitive to people’s very legitimate fears, is way more difficult to do. If we had done this over the summer–I wish we could have had potlucks and block parties out on the boulevard, and met every single person on our block. Before this person got abducted in front of my building, I had just happened to create a WhatsApp group for my building. It wasn’t that organized, but we had about 40 people in it. Somebody posted the video there first. Then I said, can we meet in front of the building and ask people what happened? That small WhatsApp group provided a level of organization that was really valuable in that moment. I implore people: We are socially conditioned to think that it’s rude to even say hi to our neighbors. I’ve always felt kind of awkward in my neighborhood. I feel like I am living in a place where people were displaced from due to gentrification. All of that awkwardness is completely understandable and fine. But don’t wait until there’s an emergency, and somebody has just been snatched off your block and thrown into a van to think, maybe I should meet my neighbors.

We are socially conditioned to think that it’s rude to even say hi to our neighbors. … But don’t wait until there’s an emergency, and somebody has just been snatched off your block and thrown into a van to think, maybe I should meet my neighbors.

KG: Another person I interviewed for this article made a similar point. She’s involved with United Working Families. She has done tons of door knocking around the neighborhood. She also organizes block parties. She said all of that helped in making connections with neighbors, and laying the groundwork for what’s happening now.

A: That’s the other thing: You can’t do door knocking anymore, because we just told everybody not to open their door. That’s one of the biggest problems we had. We’re trying to canvas to get people to join our block watch group, but we can’t knock on people’s doors because we don’t want to scare them. But if we had done this before–three months ago, six months ago–we could have knocked on people’s doors, and it wouldn’t have been scary. I feel a lot of regret over the missed opportunity.

KG: What do you think it would take to actually win in this struggle?

A: I think it’s a combination of two things. One thing is the organization that I talked about with everybody knowing their neighbors. Presence on the street, feeling empowered, having information networks, so we can respond immediately. The second thing is that I do believe escalated tactics are necessary. I know organizations that are 501c3s cannot recommend that people intervene in operations. I get that, and I’m respectful of that. When I volunteer with organizations, I do make that commitment.

But I don’t believe in pure pacifism. I define violence as violence towards people, not towards property. I don’t even think that we need to go as far as violence towards people like agents. It’s kind of hilarious because they have already painted us as being violent rioters at Broadview. If they’re going to call us violent rioters for just standing there, then you might as well do something that is actually effective. I do think there are ways to actually slow them down.

One issue we’re dealing with at Broadview right now is Pritzker and the Illinois State Police (ISP). Weeks ago, there was all that tear gas and stuff. I wasn’t there on those days. But on those days, about half of the agents that are present in the Chicago area were tied up with protesters at Broadview and not kidnapping people. However much I do not want me and my comrades to be teargassed at Broadview, it’s absolutely preferable to go out and take whatever they want to give us if that means they are busy and can’t be kidnapping my neighbors. Since Pritzker’s police took over the security at the Broadview facility, it has enabled the border patrol and other federal agents to be freed up. That’s because of Pritzker’s policy, the ISP’s policy, as well as the Broadview mayor’s policy is to institute these “free speech zones,” which are like kettling areas because they have these concrete barriers that trap you in. It’s unfortunate, because we never wanted our fight to be against Pritzker or the ISP, but they brought it to us. Now the movement is dealing with a lot of tension about how to respond to this. Police violence against us is obviously an issue, but it is not the core issue. Yet, you can’t separate it from the core issue, because why are they beating us up?

If they’re going to call us violent rioters for just standing there, then you might as well do something that is actually effective.

To win, if we’re talking about Broadview, we need to get the ISP out. I think probably the most viable way to do it is by threatening Pritzker’s chances at a presidential run. Then we need to make it too difficult for them to traffic people through there, and that could require a lot of different tactics. So, if we can get Pritzker’s police out of there, then we might have a chance at actually being face to face with ICE again and making their operations more difficult.

KG: A number of people in Tempest are involved with the May Day Strong Coalition. It’s a nationwide coalition that involves a lot of unions and community organizations. Part of their vision is to help lay the groundwork for a general political strike to stop ICE. Do you have any thoughts about using the power of labor to defeat ICE?

A: In this country, I think the labor movement has been co-opted and legalized to the point that labor leaders will not take this on. The rank and file is not empowered to do it without the consent of the union leaders. My general impression is that we are not treating this like the emergency that it is. I think schools should be closed, most businesses should be closed, like when everything shut down for COVID. That’s the level of disruption that I feel like this deserves. Don’t go to work. There’s a reason why that doesn’t happen. It’s because everybody would get fired. But it is very worrying the way we continue to just go to work. Things are open and things are functioning. And every few minutes, somebody just gets grabbed off the street, and we’re just going to keep working. The one example that I think is a really good one is Home Depot. Home Depot’s management, they have these off duty cops that work as security guards. They are very corrupt and colluding with ICE. There was a lawsuit filed against these people because they actually killed a migrant day laborer about a year ago. So, one thing is that the Home Depot management and these off-duty cops are extremely aggressive towards rapid response volunteers who try to talk to the employees. The employees have in general seemed to be sympathetic and don’t want raids happening in their parking lot every day. However, they have also said that if they try to do anything other than just look away, they will be fired. If Home Depot workers were to strike, that would be so impactful because that’s literally ground zero for ICE operations. They feel that their employer has the power over them, but I would hope that organizing could be done. There are more of them, and they’re the ones whose labor is powering this whole corporation. So I hope that they could at some point, organize and harness that power.

KG: Is there anything else you’d like to say that I didn’t ask you about?

A: I think too many people are falling for the Pritzker propaganda. He spoke at No Kings, and mere hours later his cops beat so many people up in Broadview. There was an ambulance called for a protester and 11 people were arrested just for being there after the curfew at 6 p.m. It created an incredibly unsafe and chaotic situation and pushed all of the protesters into Maywood, into a residential neighborhood. They were literally beating people up in residents’ front yards. If that’s what his police are doing, I just don’t care about what he’s saying in the media. Pritzker’s messaging on this is starting to be challenged. I don’t like the idea of being a punching bag for him to prove that there’s no need for the National Guard to be sent in. I want the Chicago and Illinois Left to split from Pritzker. I think that’s a really important shift that needs to happen as soon as possible. Pritzker sacrificed all of us, and Pritzker is not on our side. Pritzker is on his own side.

Glenn Allen interviews Mandy Medley

MM: My name is Mandy Medley, a worker-owner at Pilsen Community Books (PCB) and also a member of PUNO (Pilsen Unidos Por Nuestro Orgullo) here in Pilsen.

GA: How has the ICE invasion impacted you and your community?

 

MM: Mostly we are just really scared for our neighbors. There has not been as much activity in Pilsen as elsewhere on the southwest side and in the suburbs, but we did have a neighbor who was taken at the restaurant across the street from the bookstore in the morning before we were open. Actually two neighbors were, and that was a real eye-opening moment for us. So ever since then we’ve been organizing with neighbors trying to find ways to help try to get educated and pass what we learn along to people and just be as present as possible in the neighborhood.

GA: So tell us about the work you’ve been doing.

 

MM:  So I joined a coalition called PUNO. It’s a coalition of different immigrant rights organizations and neighborhood groups and also just random neighbors who are committed to advocating for the protection of immigrant rights. PUNO does legal support, education, community engagement, and then they also do migra watch, which is the thing I’ve been most involved in. PUNO puts on public migra watch training to help folks learn how to identify ICE activity happening in their neighborhood and give them some tools for ways to react, encourage them to record any interactions that they have with ICE, or record any activity they see and also to collect license plates. The first training I went to was super empowering. I think we all know in the abstract ways that we could be a community defense, but to have someone go through it step-by-step was very empowering. I got involved in migra watch along with everyone else at Pilsen Community Books, and a bunch of our neighbors. We sign up for shifts to be on watch in the neighborhood and respond to reports of activity that are called in through the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights hotline.

GA: How many people have you trained?

 

MM: I don’t have exact numbers, but I bet PUNO has trained over a thousand folks. As far as I know, PUNO is the only migra watch group that holds in-person open, public trainings.

GA: So how has that changed the group? Are those people taking part and signing up for work? Are they becoming part of a larger network that is starting to form?

MM: PUNO trains lots of people. You don’t have to live in Pilsen to go to a migra watch training. If you do go to a training and you want to get plugged into PUNO, we help you get on-boarded and into our network. But because we also are connected to all different rapid response networks throughout the city through ICIRR we can help folks get plugged into their neighborhood if they’re not Pilsen based. PUNO has grown exponentially and it’s been really great to see and to meet new neighbors, but we’ve also directed countless people to other networks throughout the city.

GA: How did you decide to do in-person mass training?

 

MM: You know, I don’t know. I wasn’t a part of that early decision. But when something like this happens, when there’s a crisis, everyone’s like, “I wanna help but I don’t know how.” There have been a bunch of organizers in Pilsen and in the Little Village neighborhood and beyond who have been planning for this for a long time. They’ve been organizing around this for years and years, so this crisis wasn’t new for them. It’s my understanding that they understand the power of community engagement and they wanted to help folks get involved and you know be as informed as they could be. PUNO had the capacity to put these on in conjunction with ICIRR and it just kind of grew from there.

GA: What have you seen that’s inspired you in this work?

 

MM: I have seen so many folks who would have never dreamed of doing this kind of on-the-street work. Just get out there, even though sometimes it’s scary. It’s unpredictable. It’s just average people. It’s like dorky middle-aged people like me. It’s young people. It’s older people. Out there together, you know, across race and class barriers all in defense of their neighbors and it’s just honestly one of the most moving organizing experiences of my life.

It is like an unexpected silver lining to this. I know I’ve lived in Pilsen for quite some time and I thought I knew a lot of folks already and I did. But I mean so many folks are coming out of the woodwork and wanting to get involved because I think everyone recognizes that this is fascism here on our street.

It’s just average people. It’s like dorky middle-aged people like me. It’s young people. It’s older people. Out there together, you know, across race and class barriers all in defense of their neighbors and it’s just honestly one of the most moving organizing experiences of my life.

GA: What have you learned or what would you like to share with other cities that haven’t done this yet?

MM: I’ve learned that the more you can share information with others the better. I think having trainings open to the public is really important. It allows people to become involved in an informed and more safe way. So I encourage other cities to start thinking about what to do now and start putting that framework in place. We had talks with organizers from L.A. before all this happened in Chicago. In our PUNO meetings, we’ve talked about what we’ve learned from them and that’s been very useful. Not only for the information but also to feel like you’re not alone. Like we’re all working in solidarity fighting fascism together.

GA: What do you think it’s going to take for us to win, and what do you think the next steps are right now?

MM: You know our mayor Brandon Johnson called for a general strike. In my wildest dreams, yeah, sure I would love a general strike. I think building the power that we need to get to a general strike is the next step.

It’s been really illuminating to see how a group of people who aren’t connected in any way except geographically can come together and learn how to organize. It’s not impossible, like you don’t need organization already in place, you don’t need cadres, you don’t even need a workplace to unite if the threat is strong enough. That has been really eye-opening for me. So I think if we can continue to build power, continue to stay connected even if the threat abates, if we don’t lose these connections and don’t lose the organizing we’ve got. Then maybe in the future a general strike might actually be something that could be possible.

I was even thinking at the No Kings protest that a lot of the Left just kind of turned their nose up at it: “It’s just a bunch of libs.” And you know there is a part of that. It’s like people who don’t ever come out for anything else that come in from the suburbs. But what would’ve happened if everyone from every rapid response group had shown up with literature? Showed up with information about when you can come to the next training? I feel like people just don’t know how. If we actually had a place where they could plug in. I would have liked to have seen more of that.

GA: I thought that this rally was much broader than the previous one. I mean it was much bigger than the last No Kings too. But it was also much younger, and it was more interracial. It was much more integrated.

MM: That’s good. That’s been another silver lining of this whole thing. It’s like every kind of Chicagoan is represented out in the streets against ICE right now. It’s not just the people who are always out.

GA: I’ve noticed an attitude expressed by more conservative parts of the opposition to ICE, an opposition to the excess violence and brutality, against picking up random people on the street. But it’s fine to go after the ‘“right” people, people without papers or with criminal records. I’m wondering if you’ve seen that get any traction, and what do you say about that?

MM: You know I have heard that and surprisingly I’ve heard it more in Pilsen than I thought I would. The rise of the Latino right has not escaped Pilsen. Sometimes you hear people say ‘well they should’ve had their papers’ or whatever. There are Latino residents here in Pilsen, who feel like they immigrated the “right way.”

And obviously all the migrants that Chicago absorbed a few years back has increased tensions, because people perceive that there aren’t enough resources for everyone. So it pits people against people. But I do think there’s a real opportunity to try and take a more abolitionist perspective in our messaging when we’re talking about this. Silky Shah has this great book called Unbuild Walls, which talks about how police and prison evolution is tied to the abolition of borders. I think it’s a real opportunity for the Left to get some more expansive messaging out there. I also think the videos of what ICE is doing in the streets with tear gas and even the videos from the way Illinois State police and ICE have brutalized protesters in Broadview. People aren’t going to forget that.

There’s a real opportunity to try and take a more abolitionist perspective in our messaging when we’re talking about this.

And I think it’s up to the Left to get out there and then push this message forward. A lot of people would be open to that.  It’s just, you know, we have to do it.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: paul goyette; modified by Tempest.

The post Resistance to ICE’s war on Chicago appeared first on Tempest.

Minneapolis has become the frontline in the emerging soft civil war between the U.S. government and large sections of its population. The city is now building toward a mass strike this Friday. While the exact scope of the strike is still to be determined, the talk of a “general strike” for the first time in a very long time is grounded in reality.

The significance of this step, of an entire city withholding its labor to win a set of demands, should not be underestimated. In his attempt to terrorize a section of workers and divide the working class, Trump has instead helped create the conditions for workers to recognize their own power. While the tactic of the mass strike is a part of working-class consciousness in many other countries, that has not been the case in the United States for many decades. A year after Trump’s inauguration, a section of the working class is embracing a tactic rooted in the system’s dependence upon our labor. In our own cities, we must use the example of Minneapolis to build the type of movements that can defeat the attacks of the Trump administration.

The stakes for building this type of movement are dire. As his regime goes into crisis internationally and domestically, the more Trump will turn to war abroad and attacks on migrants at home to divide the resistance. The only effective way to pull the brakes on this project is through mass coordinated working class action throughout the country.

The situation in Minneapolis

The state’s naked use of terror in the Twin Cities is tantamount to a military occupation, with the Trump administration declaring ICE agents to have “immunity” from prosecution while executing their duties. The result has been weeks of mindless, lawless violence from 3,000 members of a state institution with a larger budget than all but two militaries on earth.

The “Day of Truth and Freedom,” initially called by faith leaders, union representatives and community members, called for no work, no school, and no shopping in order to, in the words of Auxiliary Minister JaNaé Bates Imari, “leverage our economic power, our labor, and our prayer for one another.” The call has been endorsed by major unions, including SEIU Local 26, UNITE HERE Local 17, CWA Local 7250, St. Paul Federation of Educators Local 28, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005, and even the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO. The demands they put forward are:

1. ICE must leave Minnesota now.
2. Renee Good’s killer, Jonathan Ross, must be held legally accountable.
3. No additional federal funding for ICE in the upcoming budget.

The situation on the ground in the Twin Cities is a complicated one, with activity largely driven from below. While the unions mentioned above have endorsed the actions, they have also made it clear that they are not calling for their members to strike. A Facebook post from the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005 clarified:

The ATU IS NOT participating in the general strike. While we support the purpose of the rally, we encourage members to engage in alternative forms of protest, such as refraining from shopping or other lawful actions that do not conflict with their work obligations.

This hesitation reflects a complicated dynamic within the bureaucracies of the unions, which have recognized the existential threat that Trump has posed, yet remain tied to the habits of an age of docile unionism that have long ceased being appropriate. According to one activist in Minneapolis that the present authors spoke to, the result is that the unions are at least not getting in the way of the organizing that is taking in more or less a wildcat basis, from person to person and from workplace to workplace. According to one report, it is quite possible that many of the workplaces represented by these unions will still experience mass walkouts.

Minneapolis has a proud radical history. It is the city that gave us the general strike of 1934 and also the place where the Black Lives Matter uprising of 2020 began after the police murder of George Floyd. The whole city went through that experience together, and the solidarity that emerged from it is still very much a part of its fabric. Minneapolis is also an oasis in a sea of red states, and many young, queer, and radical people flock to the city as a refuge. This has given the city a more sharply radical character.

While the rallying demands are incredibly important, the role of radicals in this movement must be to widen their scope and targets. The movement must place demands upon the local and state Democrats to take strong action to protect the people of the Twin Cities. It must raise demands about not just stopping additional ICE funding, but abolishing ICE altogether, something that Democrats have no interest in doing. It must also include a demand against the Democratic state government sending the national guard to squash effective direct action against ICE. It must be remembered that the Democrats have consistently voted to fund ICE, often breaking funding records under their administrations, and they have every intention to continue doing this in the future. In a context where 57 percent of people in the U.S. disapprove of how ICE is enforcing immigration laws, and 46 percent support abolishing ICE outright (with only 43 percent opposed), raising these demands at this moment is both popular and important.

Organize now for mass strikes

There is national momentum building around mass political labor action, but this momentum will not result in mass strikes on its own. It will require militants to continue pushing it along. We must work towards building for a May Day this spring that will illustrate the power of our re-awakened class.

To start building capacity for this kind of militant action locally, there are a number of steps that we can take.

• Establishing May Day Strong coalitions with unions and pushing for mass political action within them
• Pass resolutions in support of the Minneapolis strike and their demands within our unions
• Build democratic community defense organizations and encourage everyone to establish ICE watches to alert people to ICE’s gestapo activities
• Seek to force cities and towns to declare themselves to be sanctuaries and not cooperate with ICE in any way
• Form rank and file committees in unions to push for resolutions and action against ICE.

These are the building blocks of concrete activity in the present that can unite our forces to push for more mass strikes against Trump.

The exact extent of the refusal to work in Minneapolis will be revealed on Friday. This may very well be, to re-purpose a famous phrase, “one small step for the people of Minneapolis, one giant leap for the U.S. working class.”

Featured Image credit: Chad Davis; modified by Tempest.

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