Our neighbors in Los Angeles are being terrorized by ICE. This regime is trying to make an example of California for what it represents: the American dream of diverse people getting along and thriving.
Christian extremists and white nationalists, the most dangerous1 terrorist groups in our country, have seized the levers of power because a racist conman and serial rapist let them take a hatchet to our country, because he need crazy allies to avoid jail time.
Eventually, there won’t be a Congress anymore. Right now, we actually still have a government in place, but Christian extremists will make sure that no one can make their voices heard, because what they are doing is shameful, cowardly, depraved, immoral, and wildly unpopular. Their ideas about life cannot survive outside of coercion.
Your governor isn’t going to save you, nor is your mayor. It is down to you.
The essential thing is that you cannot let them pull you into anything that could be misconstrued as a “violent” response. You have to steal the optics from them.
If you block the streets with your cars, the kidnapping apparatus can’t get to you and no one gets shot, teargassed, or kidnapped. There aren’t enough tow trucks in the city to stop an LA gridlock. Park your cars in the streets and walk away. Go on a work strike. White people, you need to make sure your BIPOC immigrant neighbors and your transgender neighbors are safe. Use the domestic partner violence networks, who are skilled in getting people to safe houses mentor you in this. Help them disappear from Palantir. Strike. Wait them out. Feed your sheltered neighbors. Focus on helping them, not showing up in the streets to square off with ICE. That is what they want. It’s a waste of energy that could be spent by blocking the regime’s kidnapping machine. Instead, turn your attention to demonstrating relentless solidarity with the regime’s targets. Keep them safe.
Don’t think these people will eventually settle down into some kind of miserable homeostasis. Fascists always escalate unless someone stops them. You have the agency and the resources to stop them. It’s time to fight like Ukraine.
To recap, when ICE invades your communities this is the strategy:
block the streets with your cars
take the keys and walk away
remove house and apartment numbers
remove or obscure street names and highway exit signs2
disappear the regime’s targets to safe secondary locations using DV networks
engage in a general strike, which will be easy to do because: roads blocked
refuse to give this regime the kind of engagement they are demanding from you, and rely on disciplined civil resistance
refuse to give the regime the negative attention it wants and, instead, turn all of your attention to your targeted neighbors, which will be easy to do when on strike
remember that this is a coup and these individuals have suspended constitutional law and are making shit up as they go— you have a constitutional right to engage in civil disobedience when a tyrant is trying to terrorize us and steal our right to self-govern
if you are an artist or musician in the city, now is the time for you to host free concerts outside and give your neighbors courage— these pro-democracy performances are also an excellent place to recruit your neighbors and mobilize them into mutual aid and community defense, because this is a war.
This is per our own fucking national intelligence agencies— until, that is, Christian extremists and white nationalists took them over.
Duct tape worsts in a pinch, and so does paint, but honestly taking down signs is best because it’ll take forever to get replaced. These people are relying on GPS. Don’t sleep on this like it won’t work. It will. Our neighbors in Ukraine are using this strategy now. We have used this method on loop when fascist invade— stop thinking you’re too modern for an analog method of resistance. We will win this by going local and going analog; these chronically online people think they can control the world because they control the screens, but life is not lived on a screen. We can beat them, but you have to at least try. If I’m wrong, you are welcome to dump a pile of mismatched dirty socks on my doorstep.
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