People’s Defense Committee – National salutes the masses of people around the country rising up to resist the State and its agents who are waging class war on the exploited and oppresses masses, in particular the immigrant masses in our country. In particular we look to the people of Los Angeles who have stood up in a way not seen since the George Floyd Uprising of 2020. The Imperialist US State has unleashed a wave of anti-immigrant terror throughout the country, and once again the masses have shown their strength in action. The spontaneous uprisings and mobilizations against the ICE attacks on migrants in Los Angeles and elsewhere are an inspiration to all members of the multinational working class and the oppressed peoples in the US.
These uprisings are heroic, but we cannot not stop with the spontaneous rebellion we see today, and must turn it into long term revolutionary momentum that will continue the struggle against ICE and state violence for as long as the Imperialist US State continues to exist. These attacks by the capitalist class against us will only continue and increase in scale, as will the state repression against those fighting back. We, the multinational US working class must organize ourselves to continue the fight to defend our neighborhoods, our communities, ourselves, and our loved ones. This fight is not going to end easily or so soon, we need to be ready to organize long term struggle. No worker is in this fight alone, no migrant is in this fight alone: we are one class fighting against our oppressive reactionary imperialist ruling class.
The heroic mobilizations aimed at fighting back against ICE attacks are not carried out by lone individuals, but by entire neighborhoods rising up in defiance and rage against the state and its pigs. The people of LA help point the way forward. Our class, when it learns to act as one, is the single most powerful force on the face of the earth. The imperialists know this, and it shakes them to their core. This is why they react with such swift brutality: they cannot risk us going far enough to see our own strength.
We must learn from the history of this country, and see that the Two-Party electoral system is a stinking, rotten corpse. We must oppose any and all submission to opportunists who seek to guide people back into the very State that is carrying out mass kidnappings of our neighbors friends and family, and the State that is repressing and disappearing fighters of our class who have stood up to its oppressive rule. Whether these groups Democrat or Republican, DSA or PSL, they are all different sides of the same capitalist class rule. Instead, we must build independent working class organizations in the neighborhoods. This is why we raise up the slogan of People’s Defense in the exploited and nationally oppressed neighborhoods and communities. History and reality set before us our tasks, and it is up to us as revolutionary workers, youth, and intellectuals to take them up and carry them to their end.
As we and other have already said, the current resistance against ICE is largely spontaneous, with different opportunists and capitalist political groups already trying to funnel the current mass energy into their own nefarious schemes. Only revolutionary organization guided by revolutionary theory will resolve this problem. How is this to be done?
Already People’s Defense Committee chapters have begun to sink deep roots in their communities and areas of responsibility. They have responded to heinous acts of police terror with righteous class struggle, and are doing patient day-to-day work in the apartment buildings, in the working-class neighborhoods, on the streets and among the people, that needs to be done for any of our work to succeed. The struggle against state repression and police murder in our communities is especially important in this regard, as exemplified in the ongoing campaign for Justice for Nate Fejerang. These are our homes, these are our families, and we must defend them at all costs.
ICE alert networks are a beginning but our organizations must move beyond them as the masses have already done. Knowing ICE is somewhere is not enough: there must be mass mobilization to stop them and halt their ability to carry out their campaign of kidnappings and terror. In the neighborhoods and communities we organize, we must train up and develop our contacts and mass activists into block captains, and eventually block committees, who are able to mobilize their neighbors at a moments notice to defend against ICE actions and presence in their neighborhoods. This powerful network of organization that will be built will not only defend us against ICE, but will also be key in the ongoing struggle against police brutality and the struggle against evictions, both the slumlords who order them and the pigs who carry them out.
We must raise up militant and powerful forms of mass protest against the hamster-wheel of city hall and downtown speak-outs. The Party for Socialism and Liberation, as well as Democratic Party organizations like 50501, are the most guilty in this regard and have developed an earned reputation for channeling local mass rage into choreographed street theater rather than mass protest. Despite such pacifist tactics, the US State is now taking concrete action to repress any and all organizations they can tie to the mass resistance, as seen in the Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism’s recent letter. The People’s Defense Committee chapters and their fraternal or sympathetic organizations must unite on solid class conscious principles with those local organizations that they can, so that they can work together to hold actual independent mass protests that mobilize the masses rather than just the activist scene and the students. It is in the neighborhoods and working-class communities themselves that these spontaneous rebellions against ICE actions are first sparking, and it is there that we must be holding our protest events and mass meetings.
All of this work should be done parallel to our ongoing work of conducting mass meetings, SICA, agitation/ propaganda, and launching campaigns based on acute local grievances and issues. In conducting such campaigns of organized ICE resistance, we go to the masses in their neighborhoods and mobilize, politicize, and organize them in rebellion against US Imperialism, which is the broader task of all our work as PDCs.
We must learn from our successes and failures, be vigilant against the State’s ever-growing repressive apparatus, and bring up and win over the best fighters of our class who emerge in these early battles on the long road to revolution. This is no easy task, but as they say: “The people and the people alone are the motive force in the making of world history”. If the workers and oppressed nations within the United States get organized and understand the path we must take, nothing will be able to stop us.
All of us must get with our neighbors, friends, and family, and start talking about the issues that we all face in the neighborhood, whether it is state violence like killer pigs or ICE raids, or the daily violence of high rents and decaying infrastructure, because the only way we can fight back against any of our collective problems is by fighting as one mighty fist. Whether the struggle is against the landlords or the pigs, if we fight together we can win together. It is not individual vigilantes who make history, but the great masses of people. We must unite as a class, in the workplaces, in the schools, and in the neighborhoods, to build our power everywhere we are.
A better world is possible, only if we fight for it!
DOWN WITH ICE!
DOWN WITH STATE TERROR!
DOWN WITH US IMPERIALISM!
“THE PEOPLE AND THE PEOPLE ALONE, ARE THE MOTIVE FORCE IN THE MAKING OF WORLD HISTORY”
People’s Defense Committee – National
The Masses 