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Yves right here. Your humble blogger has discovered anti-Trump and different anti-oligarchic-oppression protests within the US to be pathetic to the purpose of embarrassment. Pink pussy hats? No calls for No Kings demonstrations?
The put up under incorporates some proof that over-the-top ICE abuses and exhibits of power are main activists and extraordinary residents to train badly-atrophied organizing muscle tissues. Whether or not this form of pushback will get far sufficient to make a distinction in the long term is anybody’s guess, however it’s important to begin from the place you might be.
Beneath is the video talked about early within the put up. Although it is a seemingly modest transfer, the clip went viral. And it exhibits not solely the girl taking a short and gutsy stand (recall Rachel Corrie in the event you assume in any other case) but additionally the overkill of an ICE raid deployment.
Nevertheless it ought to come as no shock that efficient motion, whether it is to occur in any respect, will come not from “progressives” however leftists who demand concessions to enhance their security and materials circumstances. Richard Kline, in an essential put up, Progressive Shedding, argued that progressives performing by themselves had been ineffective as a result of they’re involved solely with ethical correctness and profitable arguments (and brunch). They achieved outcomes solely after they discovered widespread trigger with what he known as “radicals,” usually immigrants or different “out” teams, who had concrete calls for. Key sections from his piece:
The primary key level is that the custom of progressive dissent is integrally a spiritual one. The aim isn’t normally energy however ‘reality;’ that these in the best arise for what is correct, and people within the fallacious repent. The Metropolis on the Hill and all that, however that’s the intrinsic worth. It is a custom of concepts, lots of them good, lots of them applied—by others, a degree to which I’ll return. Coming ahead to a latest after which current American context, take into account these insurance policies, all of which nonetheless maintain for many who would outline themselves as progressive:
Anti-colonialism
Anti-militarism
Abolition
Common, secular schooling
Finish to youngster labor
Common suffrage
Feminine authorized equality
Client protections
Civil rightsThink about as nicely notable progressives who’ve held govt and even energy positions in nationwide governance. I wrestle to call one….
A most related level is that these are value-driven insurance policies. Notably absent are financial insurance policies….
The important thing level is that the custom of radical activism is integrally an financial one, and secondarily one in all social justice. It was pursued by these each poor and ‘out castes,’ who usually had communal solidarity as their solely asset. It was resisted by power, and thus pursued by these inured to power who understood that energy was essential to victory, and that defeat entailed destitution, imprisonment, and being reduce down by dwell fireplace from these performing below shade of authority with impunity. This was a convention of calls for, lots of them fairly pragmatic. Few had been wholly applied, however the wrestle to achieve them pressured the door open for narrower reforms, usually applied by the powers that be to de-fuse as a lot as diffuse radical agitation. Think about these insurance policies, all of which nonetheless maintain for many who would outline themselves as radical:
Name off the cops (and thugs)
Eight hour day and work place security
Proper to prepare
Anti-discrimination in housing and hiring
Unemployment dole
Public pensions
Public instructional scholarships
Tax the wealthy
Anti-trust and anti-corporate
Anti-imperialismWhereas few radicals have made it into public govt positions both, they’re quite a few in politics, particularly on the native degree the place communal ties can predominate. Radicals have at all times labored in organized teams—‘societies,’ unions, and events—which have been a multiplier for his or her calls for.
Critically, these are grievance-driven insurance policies. One might say that the aim of radicals is to power an finish to exploitation, significantly financial exploitation since most radicals come from these on the bitter finish of such equations. As such, lots of them have particular cures.
Creator Sonali Kolhatkar has apparently led such a pampered life that she doesn’t know the prices and dangers of great protests. As an illustration, the large motive that Daniel Ellsberg selected to launch the Pentagon Papers is that he personally knew activists who had been sentenced to jail. He didn’t see how he might justify not making an identical sacrifice if it’d shorten the Vietnam Struggle. And he absolutely anticipated to serve time it was a procedural error that permit him go free and the federal government determined to not retry the case.
By Sonali Kolhatkar, an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and govt producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly subscriber-funded tv and radio present that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her books embrace Speaking About Abolition: A Police-Free World Is Doable (Seven Tales Press, 2025) and Rising Up: The Energy of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (Metropolis Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economic system for All challenge on the Impartial Media Institute and was a senior editor at Sure! Journal overlaying race and financial system. She serves because the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity group the Afghan Ladies’s Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan. She additionally sits on the board of administrators of Justice Motion Middle, an immigrant rights group. Produced by Economic system for All, a challenge of the Impartial Media Institute
A New York Metropolis lady carrying a navy blue polka-dot gown has gone viral for her defiant resistance to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brokers throughout a raid in decrease Manhattan on October 21, 2025.
Showing as if she was on her means from work—the girl wore a navy blue blazer and brown footwear and carried a big purse—the “polka-dot gown lady” as she’s being known as, took a robust stand in the midst of the road. With a army tank rolling towards her, she stopped and flipped off ICE brokers with each palms.
She appeared unafraid. She pushed again bodily as ICE brokers tried to bully her and others. Her face, palms, and physique exuded rage and resistance.
The aggressive noncompliance of the polka-dot gown lady and her fellow protesters is exactly what our harmful march towards fascism requires.
There are numerous incarnations of such resistance in New York Metropolis, Washington, D.C., Portland, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and elsewhere. These resisters are refusing to go gently into the evening of fascist dictatorship. They’re fearlessly dealing with off towards President Donald Trump’s deployments of immigration brokers, Nationwide Guard, and different federal regulation enforcement and army personnel, and are refusing to just accept the crushing of dissent, demographic range, and democracy itself.
One such activist is Leonardo Martinez, a volunteer and lead organizer with VC Defensa, an immigrant protection group and speedy response community primarily based in Ventura County, California, who discovered himself on the receiving finish of ICE violence on October 16, 2025.
Whereas within the midst of group patrols, Martinez, who’s a U.S. citizen, adopted ICE brokers in Oxnard driving an SUV. It was a routine motion for volunteers like him who’ve been nonviolently confronting and intimidating federal brokers away from their communities. However this time, the ICE brokers appeared to have had sufficient. Avenue-level and sprint cam movies present their SUV ramming violently into the facet of Martinez’s pickup truck on a comparatively empty road.
“I used to be positively shocked after they initially hit me as a result of the commercial space that we had been in didn’t have a number of visitors,” mentioned Martinez. His fast pondering doubtless stored him protected. “As soon as they aggressively hit me, I knew that if I pulled over within the second, that they had been going to tug me out and beat me up.”
As a substitute of getting out of his truck, he continued driving for a couple of minutes—with the SUV following him—towards downtown Oxnard, the place he knew there can be extra road and foot visitors. At first, the ICE brokers claimed Martinez hit them—not figuring out there was video footage. After being arrested, Martinez’s wrists and ankles had been handcuffed, however he demanded medical consideration to doc his accidents. After a cease at a hospital, he was finally taken to the Metropolitan Detention Middle in downtown Los Angeles and was later launched.
“We’ve type of already practiced a number of these eventualities in actual life and troubleshooted and figured issues out,” mentioned Martinez. His fellow VC Defensa activists shortly positioned him and posted the now-viral video footage of his truck being hit. The incident has drawn consideration and admiration for the work of a extremely efficient group that boasts 700 extremely skilled volunteers like Martinez.
Such subtle organizing is clear all around the nation. In Chicago, the place ICE brokers terrorized kids in a military-style raid involving rappelling down from a Black Hawk helicopter to arrest adults and kids in an house advanced, equally militant and arranged activism has taken root. Like Ventura County’s VC Defensa, Chicago’s Patrulla Common or Individuals’s Patrol consists of organized volunteers who warn group members when ICE brokers seem and assist doc ensuing abuses.
The Chicago activists use automobile horns or scream at brokers whereas recording them on their telephones. Now, brightly coloured plastic whistles have turn out to be a formidable weapon within the nonviolent anti-ICE arsenal. Neighborhood patrollers are inspired to whistle loudly when ICE brokers are current. The town’s anti-ICE resistance contains lecturers, supply drivers, and even kids.
In Portland, Oregon, activists have been protesting exterior the native ICE detention heart for months, carrying inflatable animal costumes—an efficient technique to encourage media consideration and spotlight the absurdity of Trump’s claims of town being “war-ravaged.” Even ICE officers have been pressured to deal with the costumes, with one Homeland Safety official calling the protest “a weird effort to hinder ICE regulation enforcement.”
In San Francisco, which Trump introduced can be the subsequent web site of a large army deployment, organizers braced themselves with coaching and speedy response plans. The decision for federal regulation enforcement seems to have come from one of many Bay Space’s Trump-supporting tech billionaires, Marc Benioff. It’s rich elites like him who’ve fueled skyrocketing inequality within the San Francisco space after which complain a few scourge of unhoused folks.
Finally Trump, making clear precisely who he works for, known as off the surge after conversing along with his billionaire buddies.
The president is dealing with militant and arranged opposition to his anti-immigrant warfare all over the place he turns. It’s a testomony to the mixed-status immigrant communities which have infused American cities with their wealthy cultures, cuisines, and traditions, changing into an integral a part of their functioning.
Ladies just like the polka-dot gown woman are on the frontlines of this battle. Based on VC Defensa’s Martinez, “It’s unbelievable what number of moms we now have on this group [who] take the lead on so most of the initiatives and are a few of the most devoted those who we now have.”
Simply days earlier than ICE brokers rammed his truck, they cornered a girl volunteer who was observing them. “All of them bought out with their weapons drawn,” mentioned Martinez, and “began banging on the window, boxed her in, after which after she didn’t open up for them, and didn’t do something, they ended up getting again of their automobile and leaving.”
A Los Angeles space tech employee calling herself Kim confirmed as much as the “No Kings” gathering on October 18 carrying an “ICE out of LA” T-shirt. She defined that as a “Chicana, second-generation American,” she was on the march “supporting immigrant communities throughout the board, not solely the Latino group, however all immigrants as a result of as we additionally know by historical past that’s what made this nation.”
Based on Kim, “we’re exhibiting [Trump] we’re not afraid to face up for our rights, arise and defend our nation.”
It’s clear that Trump just isn’t going after “criminals” on condition that the overwhelming majority of individuals arrested by ICE both don’t have any prison report or have pending expenses—in different phrases, they’re harmless till confirmed responsible. Additional, ICE has arrested and detained practically 200 U.S. residents in the course of the first 9 months of Trump’s second presidency.
It could be simple for folks to fold, to go about their enterprise, hold their heads down, and never get entangled. However, far too many are talking up, pushing again, placing their our bodies and lives on the road within the face of ICE deployment, as Trump enacts his agenda.
Such mass resistance is the reply to staving off full-blown fascist authoritarianism, particularly when taken along with mass exhibits of power at organized, coordinated gatherings similar to the most recent “No Kings” protests that drew an estimated 7 million folks. Anti-Trump protests are additionally spreading to components of the nation often called pro-Trump strongholds, and total protest exercise is at an all-time excessive, corresponding to the historic racial justice protests in summer time 2020.
The icons of the motion who’re attempting to wrest management of the nation from fascist forces are on a regular basis folks, typically anonymous, whose bravery and audacity are infectious. Might the polka-dot gown lady encourage legions as she goes down in historical past as a logo of crucial rage.
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