Yves here. Your humble blogger has found anti-Trump and other anti-oligarchic-oppression protests in the US to be pathetic to the point of embarrassment. Pink pussy hats? No demands No Kings demonstrations?
The post below contains some evidence that over-the-top ICE abuses and shows of force are leading activists and ordinary citizens to exercise badly-atrophied organizing muscles. Whether this sort of pushback gets far enough to make a difference in the long run is anyone’s guess, but you have to start from where you are.
Below is the video mentioned early in the post. Even though this is a seemingly modest move, the clip went viral. And it shows not only the woman taking a brief and gutsy stand (recall Rachel Corrie if you assume otherwise) but also the overkill of an ICE raid deployment.
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But it should come as no surprise that effective action, if it is to happen at all, will come not from “progressives” but leftists who demand concessions to improve their safety and material conditions. Richard Kline, in an important post, Progressive Losing, argued that progressives acting by themselves were ineffective because they are concerned only with moral correctness and winning arguments (and brunch). They achieved results only when they found common cause with what he called “radicals,” typically immigrants or other “out” groups, who had concrete demands. Key sections from his piece:
The first key point is that the tradition of progressive dissent is integrally a religious one. The goal isn’t usually power but ‘truth;’ that those in the right stand up for what is right, and those in the wrong repent. The City on the Hill and all that, but that is the intrinsic value. This is a tradition of ideas, many of them good, many of them implemented—by others, a point to which I’ll return. Coming forward to a recent and then present American context, consider these policies, all of which still hold for most who would define themselves as progressive:
Anti-colonialism
Anti-militarism
Abolition
Universal, secular education
End to child labor
Universal suffrage
Female legal equality
Consumer protections
Civil rightsConsider as well notable progressives who have held executive or even power positions in national governance. I struggle to name one….
A most relevant point is that these are value-driven policies. Notably absent are economic policies….
The key point is that the tradition of radical activism is integrally an economic one, and secondarily one of social justice. It was pursued by those both poor and ‘out castes,’ who often had communal solidarity as their only asset. It was resisted by force, and thus pursued by those inured to force who understood that power was necessary to victory, and that defeat entailed destitution, imprisonment, and being cut down by live fire from those acting under color of authority with impunity. This was a tradition of demands, many of them quite pragmatic. Few were wholly implemented, but the struggle to gain them forced the door open for narrower reforms, often implemented by the powers that be to de-fuse as much as diffuse radical agitation. Consider these policies, all of which still hold for most who would define themselves as radical:
Call off the cops (and thugs)
Eight hour day and work place safety
Right to organize
Anti-discrimination in housing and hiring
Unemployment dole
Public pensions
Public educational scholarships
Tax the rich
Anti-trust and anti-corporate
Anti-imperialismWhile few radicals have made it into public executive positions either, they are numerous in politics, especially at the local level where communal ties can predominate. Radicals have always worked in organized groups—‘societies,’ unions, and parties—which have been a multiplier for their demands.
Critically, these are grievance-driven policies. One could say that the goal of radicals is to force an end to exploitation, particularly economic exploitation since most radicals come from those on the bitter end of such equations. As such, many of them have specific remedies.
Author Sonali Kolhatkar has apparently led such a pampered life that she does not know the costs and risks of serious protests. For instance, the big reason that Daniel Ellsberg chose to release the Pentagon Papers is that he personally knew activists who had been sentenced to prison. He did not see how he could justify not making a similar sacrifice if it might shorten the Vietnam War. And he fully expected to serve time it was a procedural error that let him go free and the government decided not to retry the case.
By Sonali Kolhatkar, an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly subscriber-funded television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her books include Talking About Abolition: A Police-Free World Is Possible (Seven Stories Press, 2025) and Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and was a senior editor at Yes! Magazine covering race and economy. She serves as the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Women’s Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan. She also sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization. Produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute
A New York City woman wearing a navy blue polka-dot dress has gone viral for her defiant resistance to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents during a raid in lower Manhattan on October 21, 2025.
Appearing as though she was on her way from work—the woman wore a navy blue blazer and brown shoes and carried a large handbag—the “polka-dot dress woman” as she’s being called, took a powerful stand in the middle of the street. With a military tank rolling toward her, she stopped and flipped off ICE agents with both hands.
She appeared unafraid. She pushed back physically as ICE agents attempted to bully her and others. Her face, hands, and body exuded rage and resistance.
The aggressive noncompliance of the polka-dot dress woman and her fellow protesters is precisely what our dangerous march toward fascism calls for.
There are countless incarnations of such resistance in New York City, Washington, D.C., Portland, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and elsewhere. These resisters are refusing to go gently into the night of fascist dictatorship. They are fearlessly facing off against President Donald Trump’s deployments of immigration agents, National Guard, and other federal law enforcement and military personnel, and are refusing to accept the crushing of dissent, demographic diversity, and democracy itself.
One such activist is Leonardo Martinez, a volunteer and lead organizer with VC Defensa, an immigrant defense group and rapid response network based in Ventura County, California, who found himself on the receiving end of ICE violence on October 16, 2025.
While in the midst of community patrols, Martinez, who is a U.S. citizen, followed ICE agents in Oxnard driving an SUV. It was a routine action for volunteers like him who have been nonviolently confronting and intimidating federal agents away from their communities. But this time, the ICE agents seemed to have had enough. Street-level and dash cam videos show their SUV ramming violently into the side of Martinez’s pickup truck on a relatively empty street.
“I was definitely shocked when they initially hit me because the industrial area that we were in did not have a lot of traffic,” said Martinez. His quick thinking likely kept him safe. “Once they aggressively hit me, I knew that if I pulled over in the moment, that they were going to drag me out and beat me up.”
Instead of getting out of his truck, he continued driving for a few minutes—with the SUV following him—toward downtown Oxnard, where he knew there would be more street and foot traffic. At first, the ICE agents claimed Martinez hit them—not knowing there was video footage. After being arrested, Martinez’s wrists and ankles were handcuffed, but he demanded medical attention to document his injuries. After a stop at a hospital, he was eventually taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles and was later released.
“We’ve kind of already practiced a lot of these scenarios in real life and troubleshooted and figured things out,” said Martinez. His fellow VC Defensa activists quickly located him and posted the now-viral video footage of his truck being hit. The incident has drawn attention and admiration for the work of a highly effective organization that boasts 700 highly trained volunteers like Martinez.
Such sophisticated organizing is evident all over the nation. In Chicago, where ICE agents terrorized children in a military-style raid involving rappelling down from a Black Hawk helicopter to arrest adults and children in an apartment complex, similarly militant and organized activism has taken root. Like Ventura County’s VC Defensa, Chicago’s Patrulla Popular or People’s Patrol consists of organized volunteers who warn community members when ICE agents appear and help document ensuing abuses.
The Chicago activists use car horns or scream at agents while recording them on their phones. Now, brightly colored plastic whistles have become a formidable weapon in the nonviolent anti-ICE arsenal. Community patrollers are encouraged to whistle loudly when ICE agents are present. The city’s anti-ICE resistance includes teachers, delivery drivers, and even children.
In Portland, Oregon, activists have been protesting outside the local ICE detention center for months, wearing inflatable animal costumes—an effective way to inspire media attention and highlight the absurdity of Trump’s claims of the city being “war-ravaged.” Even ICE officials have been forced to address the costumes, with one Homeland Security official calling the protest “a bizarre effort to obstruct ICE law enforcement.”
In San Francisco, which Trump announced would be the next site of a massive military deployment, organizers braced themselves with training and rapid response plans. The call for federal law enforcement appears to have come from one of the Bay Area’s Trump-supporting tech billionaires, Marc Benioff. It’s wealthy elites like him who have fueled skyrocketing inequality in the San Francisco area and then complain about a scourge of unhoused people.
Eventually Trump, making clear exactly who he works for, called off the surge after conversing with his billionaire buddies.
The president is facing militant and organized opposition to his anti-immigrant war everywhere he turns. It’s a testament to the mixed-status immigrant communities that have infused American cities with their rich cultures, cuisines, and traditions, becoming an integral part of their functioning.
Women like the polka-dot dress lady are on the frontlines of this battle. According to VC Defensa’s Martinez, “It’s incredible how many mothers we have in this organization [who] take the lead on so many of the projects and are some of the most dedicated people that we have.”
Just days before ICE agents rammed his truck, they cornered a woman volunteer who was observing them. “They all got out with their guns drawn,” said Martinez, and “started banging on the window, boxed her in, and then after she didn’t open up for them, and didn’t do anything, they ended up getting back in their car and leaving.”
A Los Angeles area tech worker calling herself Kim showed up to the “No Kings” gathering on October 18 wearing an “ICE out of LA” T-shirt. She explained that as a “Chicana, second-generation American,” she was at the march “supporting immigrant communities across the board, not only the Latino community, but all immigrants because as we also know through history that’s what made this country.”
According to Kim, “we’re showing [Trump] we’re not afraid to stand up for our rights, stand up and defend our country.”
It’s clear that Trump is not going after “criminals” given that the vast majority of people arrested by ICE either have no criminal record or have pending charges—in other words, they’re innocent until proven guilty. Further, ICE has arrested and detained nearly 200 U.S. citizens during the first nine months of Trump’s second presidency.
It would be easy for people to fold, to go about their business, keep their heads down, and not get involved. But, far too many are speaking up, pushing back, putting their bodies and lives on the line in the face of ICE deployment, as Trump enacts his agenda.
Such mass resistance is the answer to staving off full-blown fascist authoritarianism, especially when taken together with mass shows of force at organized, coordinated gatherings such as the latest “No Kings” protests that drew an estimated 7 million people. Anti-Trump protests are also spreading to parts of the nation known as pro-Trump strongholds, and overall protest activity is at an all-time high, comparable to the historic racial justice protests in summer 2020.
The icons of the movement who are trying to wrest control of the nation from fascist forces are everyday people, sometimes nameless, whose bravery and audacity are infectious. May the polka-dot dress woman inspire legions as she goes down in history as a symbol of necessary rage.
One reason that could account for the “activism” of the MAGA rank and file, as opposed to the performative “activism” of the Liberal ‘activists’ is the lower-class backgrounds of many of the members of the MAGA “movement.” They have been directly exposed to the pain and suffering that the Neoliberal Dispensation wreaks upon the working population of the nation. So, paradoxically, the Trump socio-political movement is based on solidly equalitarian ideals even though Trump the individual exists firmly within the Oligarch class world view. As with all things Trump, this dichotomy results in maximum confusion and dysfunction.
“True” Leftists miss this opportunity to shift the focus of the popular rage from Figurehead Trump to the oligarch class. Of course, finding a True Leftist in American politics now is akin to solving a “Where’s Waldo” puzzle where the entire Left margin has been redacted.
One reason why I expect more “progress” from MAGA “activism” rather than from Liberal Progressives is that the rank and file MAGA members have already experienced oppression and violence at the hands of the neoliberal system. It has become a commonplace to observe that poorer people suffer disproportionately at the hands of the Ogans of State Security. I personally was working on a jobsite when the older fashioned Immigration forces raided. Even back then in the 1980s, the police acted like they were High and Mighty compared to those they were tasked with “chastising.” When was the last time you read of a DHS raid on a group of “Progressives” gathering for brunch?
The bottom line here, as mentioned by Our Esteemed Hostess above is that real demonstrations entail real physical risk for the demonstrators.
Paradoxically, it will be the very MAGA cohorts who bear the brunt of official obloquy who will understand and endorse the sentiments given voice by Thomas Jefferson in a letter back in 1787, to wit: ” The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”
The letter in full: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-12-02-0348
Stay safe. Stay strong.
My gods, I’d forgotten I’d even written that. So many millions of words written since . . . The full commentary accessible via the link in Yves’ post is more nuanced but essentially the same.
I am both more hopeful than the tenor of this post and less. Numbers matter, and getting timid liberals of good will up off their comfortable asses and into the streets matters. Effects scale with masses in motion. From that standpoint, I think the No Kings protests served a minimum purpose. Furthermore, it is not the case that there were no demands. “No ICE. No KKK. No fascist USA!” had the best response of any of the chants in the mile long column of which I was radical corpuscle. ICE blackshirts are deeply aggrieving a much more radical corps within the whole, whose convictions have potential to scale over the millions who simply want things to go back to 2023; or 2015; or 2007. You know, ‘when America worked [for them].’
That said, these protests have no real organizational backbone as a whole and are absurdly infrequent. Moreover, their lead instigators to the extent to which they have a goal seem to want to rile folks up to go out and vote in 2026 . . . . If words could fail me they would. Here’s a news flash: MAGA in Congress isn’t going to let themselves be ousted by no stinkin’ election. I wrote on that subject just this week elsewhere. Good thing folks are getting some protest reps before excreta gets real in the back part of next year.
The saving grace if you could call it that is the actually lunatic incompetence of the fascists in present office. And contra the comment above, MAGA cohorts are utter cowards and aren’t going to do jack, least of all stand up to a power structure they are far more eager to suck up to. And no, MAGA is NOT ‘based on equalitarian ideals’: it is open racism and nativist supremacy for the few self-elect. Economic grievance there may have the same roots as the agitation of other sectors but is simply the excuse for the social purges the nativist cohort has ever wanted and ever will want—it the rest and large majority of the rest of us let them have their way.
There’s so much more to say but it’s late and I’m 14 years older than the last screed. This is all going to end somewhat well—but that may take 30 years and quite a lot of main damage to the body politic first.
I think that people are going to have to adopt novel tactics against ICE. Violence is no good as that is what ICE agents want to justify their brutality. But videoing ICE brutality and then showing it in court never goes down well with them, especially if a lawsuit follows. So here we are talking about the use of burner mobiles, flash crowds and especially seeking inspiration in the tactics used by those Hong Kong protestors some years ago. All that information is all out there to those who would seek it. But out of the box ideas might prove effective. Like how about the mass adoption of Grouch Marx glasses-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_glasses
The ones that have plastic glasses, big eyebrows, a large nose and a mustache. It might mess with people having their images taken by the authorities and might get to the point that authorities will find themselves in the ridiculous position of banning Grouch glasses at protests and maybe arresting people for the high crime of possessing Grouch glasses. But that leads to endless alternatives if banned. Something to think about.