The Masses

People’s Defense Committee
November 22, 2025

Since the deployment of federal troops to Los Angeles in June 2025, the second Trump administration has followed through on its promise to use the armed forces to support ongoing ICE operations. These operations, which have sparked significant unrest and anger in major cities around the country, show that the imperialist State is aiming to deepen the militarization of U.S. society. The current ICE escalation is a step further towards the development of growing fascism in the U.S., a process which did not start under the second Trump administration but has been ongoing for decades. American capitalists face a growing economic crisis, and to resolve this crisis attempt to transform the means and forces of production, increasing the exploitation and oppression of the deepest and most oppressed masses in society. Placing National Guard troops on street corners, launching extensive deportation operations, and expanding surveillance of the multinational working class, all of these are linked back to this drive by the U.S. capitalist class to resolve the various crises before them.

The militarization of U.S. society has been a process by which the ruling class has increasingly imposed military methods and tools on the general population. From the bombs used on West Philadelphia neighborhoods in 1985, to the surveillance drones used on protesters in Baltimore during the 2015 Freddie Gray Uprising, to the subsequent extrajudicial murders of Black Lives Matter activists after 2016, it becomes clear how the methods of repression used in unjust wars abroad are now weaponized against the domestic population. Additionally, through the development of “cop cities” in Atlanta and elsewhere since 2021, direct collaboration between law enforcement, the U.S. military, and the armies of its allied countries like Israel has become even more common. This all serves the capitalists as part of their aim of preparing society for permanent war and siege.

Militarization has been developing for some time, notably increasing during the “Cold War” period, as well as in response to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s–1960s, and especially over the last two decades in the aftermath of the Ferguson Uprising (and similar 2015–2016 uprisings around the U.S.). This militarization of the police and federal law enforcement agencies as a response to mass rebellion, combined with the passing of legislation such as the Patriot Act, has resulted in neighborhoods progressively being treated more as domestic “war zones” in the name of “national security,” “law and order,” or other similar justifications.

We see this manifest in examples such as current ICE policies, including the use of unmarked vehicles, plainclothes agents, and face masks/coverings, all of which generate an atmosphere of fear. For immigrants, any person they encounter could be an ICE agent. This practice is not unique to ICE, as virtually every federal or local law enforcement agency has now taken up such practices. Simultaneously, we see increased utilization of surveillance and spyware technology, growing “gang databases,” the establishment of police/ICE checkpoints around the country, which are all designed to make the repressive powers of the State more expansive and violent.

Whenever the masses are attacked, resistance is inevitable and expected. In response to ICE’s offensive on immigrants, people are spontaneously mobilizing to resist their campaign of terror. This rebellion grows by the day. New networks of resistance are established with every new city ICE and CBP enters, and existing networks grow with each additional day of occupation. Seeing this growth, the State attempts to disrupt, disperse, and pacify them in various forms. From outright brute violence and the use of live ammunition on protesters, to theinfiltration of unvetted signal groups, to the deployment of reformists to steer the initiative of the masses into pacifist electoralism, the State is determined to neutralize the current wave of rebellion. In order to march forward, we must make every effort to strengthen and politicize the current moment.

We call on all progressive, working class, oppressed, and rebellious people to take up the formation of Neighborhood Defense Units (NDUs) in every neighborhood and every block where the militarized forces of the State rear their ugly heads. These NDUs should work not only to collect and spread information regarding the actions and tactics of local and federal law enforcement, but also mobilize working and oppressed people in these neighborhoods to confront them. Through the use of rapid response teams and organized patrols, residents of these neighborhoods must defend their neighbors and themselves from abduction and terror by State forces. NDUs should be formed on a localized basis (a specific neighborhood, a complex, a block), and their membership should include the broadest set of people in the locality.

In understanding the connection between these struggles and the political and economic crisis of imperialism as the basis of militarization, NDUs should demarcate themselves from the liberal non-profit complex which seeks to pacify the rebellion and funnel support back into the electoral system. There can be no tolerance for those individuals who sell out the interests of the people struggling against militarization and imperialism in favor of their own individualist, careerist, or electoralist aspirations. NDUs must ensure they represent the will of community residents, and under no conditions shall they allow this work to be co-opted. Activists already organizing this work, either within the People’s Defense Committee or outside of it, must keep it going and growing. Uniting the masses to defend themselves is principal during this period of intensifying State terror.

Neighborhood Defense Units must struggle for nothing less than the following:

1. An End To All State Terror.
   • ICE out of our neighborhoods! End the deportation operations and detention camps.
   • Stop the deployment of federal troops against civilians! No National Guard or U.S. Marines in our
     neighborhoods.
   • No police foot pursuits.
   • No police checkpoints.
   • Stop the undermining of people’s legal democratic rights, such as Miranda rights and Habeas
     Corpus.
   • No more unmarked police cars. No more plain clothes officers. No masked ICE agents. Police must
     be readily identifiable.
   • No more lethal and chemical weapons. Police must not be allowed to kill at their own discretion.
   • No more police enforcement of evictions.
   • Abolish no-knock warrants.
   • End military training of police, whether by the IDF or through “cop cities.”
2. An End to Surveillance in our Neighborhoods
   • Stop biometric surveillance, including the use of fingerprints, DNA, facial recognition, etc.
   • End the usage of cell tower simulators/stingrays.
   • End law enforcement contracts with spyware firms.
   • End the deployment of privatized surveillance networks such as Flock, etc..
   • End contracts with all acoustic gunshot detection systems such as ShotSpotter, etc.
   • End law enforcement access to private security systems.
   • Stop the deployment of surveillance drones.
   • Abolish all “gang databases”.