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.
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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.
This! Masterfully recognized and succinctly put. Thank you.
It is ironic that the very forces that he consolidated have now unleashed their fury at his actions.
Of course the MAGA tend to be heavily armed which could give ICE bullies pause. When the MAGA did wander around like clueless tourists–1/6–then the Dems gave them the ICE treatment. Trump is terrible but not original.
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.
> Consideration 8: On Being the Slave Catchers
>> The North didn’t NEED slavery, it had huddled masses.
Succinct.
>> The powers that be WANT migration enforcement to be brutalist and unfair
Following Piven and Cloward, the creation of a pariah class, whom you Don’t want to be. While performative now (no arresting of employers), the entire infrastructure can be shifted toward the homeless. Camps holding up to 10k are in the pipeline, and the procedures to put them there are being field-tested at this moment. Monetizing the non-working anticonsumers becomes more profitable with the undercutting of medical responsibility for the incarcerated.
Plus liberals worried about their property values can accept the harsh vibes, since it’s no longer blatantly racist.
Thank you, Richard Kline, for your good work.
the radical maga cohort most invested in the racist, eliminationist stuff, remains a rather small cohort. near as i can tell.
during my big study of the right, i leaned that this cohort stays more or less steady over the last hundred years.
spiking at times…like post 911 and coincident w deliberate wall to wall incitement, like teabilly/obama years…but quickly reverting to mean.
and, as is my practice, i use the feedstore,etc in this tiny isolated place as a proxy specimen….all i see is FUD.
not prerevolutionary righty rage.
and the other policies(sic)aint helping,lol….tarriffs, suspension of ag subsidies and even snap(yes, maga get foodstamps)inflation, etc etc.
this was never a rabidly protrump area, of course…he was a middle finger, is all…but the gist is that he’s betrayed them.
cant get he tractor or pump fixed…no one to pick the grapes…hunting season looks anemic, etc.
and the argentine beef,lol.
and if ice ever shows up out here*, theyll find lotsa brown folks married to white folks…and sorting that is gonna get ugly….and further erode what support there is.
(* recent immigrant visiting familias grand opening of an eatery popped for dui, and cops called ice, and a single agent showed up 12 hours later to haul dude off)
Richard Kline: Thanks for your essay. I go back to it regularly. I think that you make quite clear the differences between liberals and progressives and between them and radicals (the left).
In your comment, you bring up tactics: “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”
In short, they are coming across as emanations of liberalism and the feckless progressive wing of the Democratic Party, populated by people who cannot get legislation passed by sure love war. I’m thinking of icons like Tammy Duckworth and CIA poster-gal Abigail Spanberger or Pete Buttigieg, candidate in waiting (for what?), or Hillary “Looking for Fifth Columnists” Clinton.
So the deficiency of the No Kings march is no radical demands. No indication of what happens if their demands are not met. And no plans to reconvene and raise the stakes.
Also: One comment on Chicago, where I lived for so many years. Chicago still benefits from many active neighborhood organizations. “Bowling Alone” hasn’t quite hit. So the anti-government activity has a base to grow from. What about other U.S. cities?
I believe that you are conflating the MAGA “elites,” such as the overtly racist and nativist elements, with the much greater mass of plain old “working class” citizens who at present align themselves with the MAGA movement. Given the collapse of the Union movement in America, where else are they supposed to go? The Democrat Party has shown itself to be solidly upper middle class in its preferences. The wants and needs of the working classes have been ignored by the Democrat Party elites since at least the days of Bill Clinton.
The so called MAGA ‘elites’ gain supposed primacy due in large part to their embrace of “performative politics.” Walking tall and speaking loudly is often substituted for solid political organizing. At best, the ‘No Kings’ demonstrations fits this description.
Any group will “suck up to” the status quo power structure. That is simple Terran human nature. The ‘crunch time’ comes when that status quo power structure begins to actively attack said group. That is when the true militants in the group will emerge. As I have said before, any mass movement needs both peaceful masses and a dedicated militant wing to press demands, even if at the end of a gun. In such cases, the overreaction on the part of the Organs of State Security is a given. Any competent militant cadre will plan ahead for that violent backlash.
Stay safe.
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.
If protests are going to succeeded, the milquetoast “No Kings” isn’t going to cut it. With a nod to Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine, there needs to be more of a Street Sweeper Social Club (a Morello/Boots Riley project) feel to it.
There’s a happy medium between 60 year old hey hey ho ho chants that scare nobody in power, and getting violent which gives an excuse to crack down hard. Hoping to see a lot more bananas in tailpipes .
Ermmm…. Ghandi, anyone?
Ghandi’s tactics depended upon there being an active and influential public reservoir of good thinkers. Alas, as those under the rule of the Austrian Corporal found out, when pure sociopaths rule, no amount of non-violent resistance does any good. It took an “outside intervention” to bring the sociopaths down.
What good is non-violent resistance when you and your fellow protesters are being summarily executed in an empty lot in downtown Chicago?
Stay safe. Prepare to resist, effectively.
> Ghandi’s [sic] tactics depended upon there being an active and influential
> public reservoir of good thinkers.
Indeed.
“In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience.”
— Stokely Carmichael
ICE is a paramilitary force that is loyal to Trump. It’s real purpose has not been revealed yet – that will come on election day I suspect.
Maybe some protesters out there at those spots where troops are stationed, should read them their oath to protect the constitution, and then read them the constitution. Over and over again.
My guess is that those fascists out there(think ice) are surrounded by other people who are ignorant of the facts of history and current events. They probably don’t read a lot in the gym, or the gun range, or the bar.
But they THINK they are not the bad guys. And reading the constitution, and explaining parts, words, history,etc; all might lead to cracks in the walls of ignorance. And really, all those stationed, and told not to leave their posts, are a captive audience… time for them to go to school.
Play the good podcasts… force them to listen/watch… the grayzone,neutrality studies,judge napolitano, dialogue works, micheal hudson, richard wolf, etc…. these people need an eduaction they are sorely lacking. After all a generation of kids have been propagandized 24/7/365 since 9/11. Their schools have pushed un truths.
Their churches and church leaders have led them astray.
It might not help with those who “want” to be bad guys… but for all those others.. they should learn they have a great responsibility to uphold their oaths, and what that means.
The problem with belittling the No Kings protestors for making no demands while upholding those actively resisting ICE is that there is a lot of overlap between the two groups, with ICE resistors involved in the lack of demands coming out of No Kings. There is a truism supposedly rooted in the courtroom: Don’t ask a question to which you don’t know the answer. There could easily be a protestors’ equivalent: Don’t make a demand that you lack any leverage to extract, and that your opponent would welcome the opportunity to refuse. Identifying a lack of demands as prima facie proof of failure, without proposing demands that could serve as more than clay pigeons for Trump is supposed to be helpful? Massed numbers count (and we know who that matters to most), but the No Kings numbers have no place in the on the ground resistance to ICE. That would be the insurrection Trump is looking for. No Kings denies the silence that can be claimed as consent. It gets under Trump’s skin, and opens the door to overreactions to peaceful assembly that continue to erode Trump’s support. Its gathering of future votes may lack immediate impact, but it is also a refusal to proactively give up on future elections. It’s a refusal to run away.
Indeed, No Kings did exactly what it set out to do. Mobilize and do something a bit more that “a strongly worded letter” that Dems love to send to Trump. I am organizing with one of the over 2000 local grass roots Indivisble groups. Plus we also work with many other groups from the ACLU, Good Trouble to small Mutual Aid Groups among many others. There is a lot of concern about being “performative” but the large demostrations are more. We started with ‘Hands-Off’ (3 million) then No Kings1 (5 million) and then No Kings 2 (7 million) so we are growing. And now we start targeted actions with an Ask. For example, we are doing continuing phone banks to ask politicians to pressure for the restoration of WIC, SNAP and ACA Subsides for the Epstien Shut Down. Also we are asking our members to target canceling Spotify subscriptions until they stop recuitment ads for ICE. If they don’t respond we will target another service (HBO anyone?) If we bring them to ending taking money from ICE, great. Just like the ABC response to cancelations after Jimmy Kimmel was suspended. There will be more and we will grow. That how organizing works. Start small and grow. Resistance doesn’t end with the march! Join us!
The problem here is the organizing is being done by the Democrat party – the one’s who were so feckless that a carnival barker like Trump could get elected in the first place. And then a second time.
People are not going to respond to unfunny comedians getting their multimillion dollar jobs back. They need concrete material benefits. Something the Democrat party has shown over and over it is not willing to grant.
Lucy ain’t never going to let you kick that football, Charlie Brown,
I must disagree. I’m organizing and I’m honestly not seeing dems in our meetings. Yes, politicians are often present or invited speakers, but they are not determining our agenda. In fact most of us are as dismisive of Dems and we are of Repugs.
‘
Just out of curiousity, why are you calling it the “Democrat party”?
It’s always been the “Democratic party”. Why not call the “Republican
party” the “Repubs”, as long as you’re dropping syllables?
Myself, because it’s not a democratic organization, and it calling itself that is both false propaganda and Orwellian.
Moreover, the DNC is a private corporation, as the lawsuit firmly established.
Words matter.
You sold your moral high ground for a shekel, and now are finding that it was a lousy deal.
Lay down with dogs, wake up with fleas.
The only stated goal to No Kings was that in a little over 3 years time, a standing President wouldn’t decide to claim he was royalty.
Thanks for the encourging comments. I’m sure my time spent trying to protect our brother and sister imagants at Home Depot will be appreciated as well.
…what’s a imagant?
What “r” you talking about? /s
I am somewhat sympathetic, I really am, but…
Had Kamala and democrats/no kings et al denounced the israeli police state we would not be here. And that same non denouncement leaves no moral high ground for those complaining. To my mind there is no question the duopoly is playing good cop bad cop here, but their both cops, literally in the case of kamala harris. The republocrats crack down on lets not forget, their own cheap labor, as well as all those nannys and gardeners in broadmoor and la jolla, as well as everywhere else. When I was in la jolla 90% and thats probably an under are/were biden obama true blue grifters who cannot conceive of a non brown people workforce. The almost obvious plan here is crackdown to get people mad, then open borders which is a wet dream for both parties. This supposedly will also reestablish the dems as not them because as you can see in my description there currently very little difference between the two other than good cop bad cop, and the next neoliberal dem is going to suck as much as the last one did. There will be no voting our way out of this. Needless to say, thanks obama for stuffing corporations and billionaires portfolios with filfthy lucre. Bernie drew massive crowds and was dispatched, so don’t give me no democracy crap. It’s kayfabe all the way down.
tegnost: Thanks. This has to be repeated thousands of times: “When I was in la jolla 90% and thats probably an under are/were biden obama true blue grifters who cannot conceive of a non brown people workforce”
Funny how many restaurante are staffed with people with dodgy papers. Funny how many middle- and upper-middle USanians think of waiters as rent-a-slave.
And Little Tiffany Hepzibah has to learn kitchen Spanish to direct the next generation of the help…
I have noticed that ICE is arresting people in Courthouses and Home Depots while avoiding rough neighborhoods.
If they were indeed looking for the “Worst of the Worst” they could start in the neighborhood where Marco Rubio’s BIL used to live…or those parts of LA County and Chicago that have been ruled by gangs for decades.
A leftist from the 1970s would have said that using violence to protect Palestinians or South American fishermen was justified. The Weathermen would have blown up Trump Tower. In contrast, modern liberals seem preoccupied with protesting as peacefully as possible.
Ahem, I am old enogh to remember the Weathermen. They were much more deplored than approved of. But forgive me for not hoisting the appropriate Frederick Douglass quote in which he says power concedes nothing without a demand, and suggests that that might necessitate violence.
aye, the weathermen were smoking their own stash…and disconnected from the reality around them….ie, they didnt understand just how desperate and rearguard they were being….and they had no reality based plan for what came after, if(!) their actions somehow worked to spur widespread uprising, etc.
IOW, fools, and part of the fecund and eyeless slime from which our current demparty emerged,imo.
a much better model, going forward,IMO, is the Zapatista’s in Chiapas.
i think its instructive that the current so called “far left” in amurka has never even heard of them.
Subcommandante Marcos is one of my heroes.
another is Ocalan(sp-2), of Rojalva(sp-2)…of Kurdistan(sic)…
both have studied Bookchin, notably…who is also almost totally ignored by amurkin “far left”, as far as i can tell.
(reading Marcos turned me on to both Ocalan(sp-2) and Bookchin.)
on a brighter note, my Youngest showed up from Lubbock with a herd of hotties last evening, out of the blue…his girlfriend, and 2 of her hometown chicks that are also at Texas Tech…to essentially show them Dear Old Dad, as if i were a zoo animal,lol.
the 2 new ones were all on board with my 30 minute explainin of what im doin out here…and my Future Doughterinlaw had already signed her name on the bar with “a billionaire is a policy failure”,lol. the new chicks seemed open to such things…they told Youngest that they wanted to make time on this trip to really hang out out here and listen to me talk.
so long as the Youth are corruptible…in the Socratic Sense, there is Hope.
and these 3 gals seem to be primed for such corruption…ie: they’re eager for an explanatory narrative about the world that comports with observable reality…or at least closer to it than historia officionales.
Strong agreement about Bookchin. From his Libertarian Municipalism to Social Ecology to his history of the CNT in pre-Civil War Spain, Bookchin was full of ideas that might be of help in our situation. For those unfamiliar with Bookchin, note that he called himself a “libertarian,” while he used propertarian for the Rand-lovers since what they really cared about were property rights for the rich, not human liberty.
Much love amfortas.
Grateful you got to witness to the youth and your son has good friends and cares about your need for company
Josef Koudelka: Prague 1968
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Only an anecdote tangentially related to questions of strategy and tactics, our neighbors across the street are from Central America. I have no idea what their immigration status is, but I do know how long and hard they work each day as roofers: out before dawn and back well after dark. Over the last two weeks, they have put a new roof and siding on the old house where they live, and last night, they had a big party to celebrate the project’s completion. There were more than a dozen cars parked along the street. They put up lights in the spare lot next to their propety because some of their activities–like the pinata–were conducted outside despite the chilly night. There was lots of laughter and revelry, but nothing that constituted a burden on their neighbors. It was nice to see for people who arrived a few years ago with next to nothing. Thankfully, no one in the neighborhood called ICE, so none of these folks were hustled into vans by masked men. Nevertheless, it was courageous of them to even gather for their celebration.