From Righteous Indignation to Revolutionary Action
How the Working Class Can Stop the ICE Raids, Free the Detainees, Stop the Deportations and Smash ICE!
The Bi-Partisan War on immigrants a symptom of imperialist crisis:
Xenophobia, nativism, scapegoating and hatred of immigrants serves capitalism, just as racism and misogyny do, they divide the inherently diverse and internationally based working class. Capital alienates labor from itself. Division by ethnicity, race, religion and gender inhibits the working class consciousness needed to become a class for itself.
Adopting or at minimum tolerating nationalism, white supremacy, christian nationalism, the unjust legacy of slavery, genocide and imperialist conquest remains the political status quo; and for a share of imperialist super-profits, promised as the “American Dream,” the working class has remained divided and politically sidelined for decades. Despite a long history of upsurges and heroic resistance campaigns by labor and oppressed people, many factors including a bought off labor leadership bowing to anti-communist hysteria, bending to anti-labor laws, and not fighting capital for labor’s voice in media and education, has allowed a political backwardness among the working class to exist, blocking it from establishing political independence in the form of a fighting worker’s labor party.
But the terminal crisis of capitalism has turned the “American Dream” into what Malcolm X termed the “American Nightmare” and the crumbs from the bosses table are scant and harder to come by. The economic forces contained in the tendency of the rate of profit to fall are unrelenting, thus since the end of the post WWII economic boom in the late 1970’s, the task of politicians of both parties has been clawing back gains won by decades of labor struggles. You have fewer rights today and you stand to have even fewer without going on the offensive against the capitalist ruling class. We’re here today to begin to SMASH ICE! This will take class political independence and a maximum effort!
The capitalist ruling class approved the election of Trump to have him administer the terminal crisis and decline of the U.S. empire because they could count on him to pull out all the stops. Labor rights, so called wokism and DEI were chipping away at the ability of the ruling capitalist class and its government to implement the austerities the capitalists require to counter the falling rate of profit and to maintain world hegemony against the rising Chinese imperialist power. Democratic politicians did their part to both deliver on the promises of social justice by bringing “identity politics” and “inter-sectionality” into the mainstream politico/corporate world view and while they navigated the fallout from their abandonment of promises for “economic justice.” As much as today’s Democratic Party pundits talk up the Biden years, the reality is the working class quality of life at home and internationally, as well as the environment and prospects for world peace, were all losing ground. Unable to deliver on economic promises and mired in imperialist blood-letting, from Libya to Gaza their thin electoral margin was lost.
Democrats committed to dividing the working class:
The anti-immigrant scapegoating has gone on for decades and the Democratic Party, despite having built a base among generations of immigrant workers has upheld its commitment to the ruling capitalist class to divide the working class and keep it powerless. Despite the image of the grand coalition with labor, the Democrats have long been nativist and xenophobic even before FDR turned back thousands of Jewish refugees and Clinton turned back Haitian refugees, setting the stage for the Obama and Trump regimes to accelerate deportations. If the 4.5 million they jointly deported were the cause of our economic crisis we would be more than half way out of it by now, but figures show we are deeper in the mire after the deportations. You don’t overcome economic crisis by deporting the producers.
Having deported three million immigrants in eight years, Obama still holds the title of “Deporter in Chief.” He hoped to carry out his program on the ‘down low’ but could not escape scrutiny. This has not tainted his legacy among progressives who still swoon at mention of his name. Trump hates being second and hopes to outdo him, having deported one and a half million people so far, despite ordering unrelenting brutality to drive immigrants out. He initiated a highly visible terror campaign, both to satisfy the MAGA base and to claim the crown-regardless of results! Due to the visibility of his Gestapo, anti-ICE masses have taken to the streets under the slogan “Abolish ICE!” More than a few coalitions have emerged to organize regular protests and national days of action.
Democratic Party Consensus cracking:
Under the pressure of the mass movement “Abolish ICE” has become the default centrist Democratic Party position. Democratic politicians, seeking re-election, are running from their records of silence about Obama/Biden’s deportations, wars-for-oil and their funding of the Zionist occupation and genocide against Palestine with $38 billion. (Even after IDF’s Caste Lead operation killing 1400 in Gaza during two months of Obama’s pre-inauguration, his administration funded the IDF with $38 billion enabling the genocide.) Polls show Zionism has lost the youth and large portions of the Jewish members of the Democratic party. The Democratic Party establishment conducted a war against the Palestine Solidarity protesters, feeding immigrant and international student activists into the ICE gulag, thereby cementing links between the Palestine and Immigrant solidarity movements. Today these politicians scurry, like the rats they are, in order to shore up their left base and contain them in the electoral system lest they escape the illusions in electoralism the DSA perpetuates and instead go full communist.
The specter of a fighting worker’s party using class struggle methods to expropriate the capitalist class and establish a democratic Worker’s Government has the liberals, progressives and many self-identified “Marxists” back paddling to stem the tide. Even in the coalitions of activists mobilizing to “ABOLISH ICE” the ideas of fighting for working class political independence, labor led mass actions, class self-defense and the indefinite General Strikes are disparaged under the guise of separating what we are for from strategy and tactics. We are admonished to focus our demands on the state and not explain to the mobilized, the workers and our organizations how to win. Centrists, reformists, including self-identified socialists and anarchists do the bosses bidding by refusing to say or even consider: HOW TO ABOLISH ICE!
The Question of How to ABOLISH ICE! IS ON THE AGENDA!
Holding the movement back is an ideologically linked layer of political enforcers from the trade union leaderships embedded in the Democratic Party. In every social struggle they arrive just in time to divert and deflect the movement into electoralism. And so it is as we head into the mid-term elections. They stand as a bulwark against working class political independent action. This layer has to be swept out of the union leadership and replaced by militant workers committed to class struggle mobilizations of the labor movement to defend our class interests. Such is necessary for workers to take hold of the resources of labor to organize indefinite general strikes.
The General Strike is not simply a one day affair! The General Strike withdraws labor to wield workers power in shutting down significant sections of the economy until all our demands are won! Workers make the economy run, or not!
The Minneapolis anti-ICE “General Strike,” although it was not led by the labor federations and was limited in scope and duration, forced the administration to retreat and redeploy. We see that redeployment across the country. The resistance emerges in every locality in wack-a-mole confrontations against ICE terror. Neighbors respond in their thousands to immediately protest ICE murders! They need organization and labor leadership and resources! When workers are kidnapped and murdered, we have to see this as class struggle, and until we respond to this terror with our own superior organized might, we are taking a beating!
Due in large part to lack of revolutionary working class leadership, the logic of labor action and the indefinite General Strike built up by the unions and defended by battalions of labor self defense guards is not only missing from the discourse of activists but is derided and pushed off the agenda. The left and progressives are caught in an illusionary miasma, of their own making, that reform and the “rule of law” is possible and can be established. Blind to the dying of the empire and the terminal crisis of capitalism, they are left without effective means of struggle, placing faith in the courts and elections even as they have been undermined and subverted. Only class struggle methods can resolve the combination of the death agony of capitalism and the erasure of the Bill of Rights.
Reformism steps up to block class struggle!
Peaceful civil disobedience has long been promoted by pacifists and Democrats like Robert Reich. Yet, in discussing Trump’s pending theft of the midterms, on July 18th Reich promoted faith in the courts and warned against civil disobedience because it may give Stephen Miller and Trump the excuse they’re looking for to employ federal forces, the Army and Marines. This interview was about the elections, which to a large part are a referendum on ICE, genocide in Gaza, the illegal war on Iran the Epstein coverup, and the economy. So we have to look at Reich’s hedging on civil disobedience as consistent left of center but right of the DSA wing of the Democratic Party. This is the layer that filled the streets for “No Kings” rallies, it is the layer whose righteous indignation drives them into the streets and Reich tells them to hold their horses. Spontaneous whistle blowing actions, moral witnessing campaigns, legal counseling, electing “better” Democrats are the limits of the reformist left, liberal, progressive layers. Youth fighting the fascist ICE in the streets is an affront to their sensibilities, even mass actions like the Minneapolis “General Strike” are limited in duration as pressure relief valves, lest they get out of hand and actually shut down the economy.
National Days of Action against ICE are regularly planned such as on July 18 and August 8th supplementing the thousands of spontaneous protests breaking out in localities from Minneapolis to Huston, from Newark to Biddeford.
Trump’s pit bull and Goebbel’s doppelganger Stephen Miller directs ICE agents to terrorize the working class guns ablazing! Murder of immigrants, citizens and protesters is a daily affair. Disappearing entire families into for profit Geo Group and Core Civic gulag prisons funded by Citizens Bank, serves as both red meat for the MAGA base and a go-to distraction from the Epstein/Trump revelations and his failing war of distraction and imperialist hubris against Iran.
In the concentration camps fascist “guards” enforce slave labor, abuse detainees physically and sexually including pregnant women and children.
From inside the unkempt unsanitary detention facilities, fed under cooked and worm infested slop labor and hunger strikes are detainees only options. The strikers in detention at Delany Hall in New Jersey released this statement to the rallyers outside:
“We are not striking to demand better treatment and conditions,” “We are doing this to demand freedom.”
Strike leader Martin Soto has been isolated and re-located to the Elizabeth Detention center to break the strikers morale. His family continues to fight for his freedom and for all ICE detainees.
The first amendment to the constitution has been overturned in federal court where activists have been convicted and imprisoned for 20 years for producing and distributing Zines critical of the government. The Prairieland Defendants case is just the tip of an iceberg which has exposed constitutional democracy as purely a cover for the capitalist ruling class dictatorship. Trump, Rubio and Miller reasserted the anti-communist hysteria of the McCarthy era, labeling all who criticize the regime as terrorists. Homan promises increased ICE gunplay if protests continue.
Across the nation cries of righteous indignation welled up from everyone who read Anne Frank’s Diary in school, before the Christian nationalist politicians and fascist school boards started removing it from the curriculum and school libraries.
Victory to the Delaney Hall Strikers-Drop All Charges and Free Martin Soto and all ICE Strikers and Protesters!
ABOLISH ICE! Free Martin Soto and all ICE Detainees NOW!
No deportations! Full citizenship rights for all immigrants.
Build for Labor led political strikes to defend immigrants and win the immediate release of all ICE detainees. Build for the indefinite General Strike!
Build Labor, Black and Brown led community Self-Defense Guards to drive ICE and the fascists from our streets, communities and workplaces.
Abolish and ban the GEO Corporations & all privatized prisons. Expropriate Citizens Bank. No tolerating the prison industry! Kick prison guard unions out of the labor federations!
Down with all state and local officials who collaborate with ICE.
Justice for all victims of ICE violence and detention! No more martyrs!
Build international class struggle unions! For Same Work, Same Contract, both sides of the borders!
Unite immigrant and U.S-born workers in a fighting Worker’s/Labor Party! For a Workers Government! For Socialism! Workers of the World Unite!
For a new revolutionary workers International! The world party of Socialist Revolution.
Communist Workers Group/ International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency
July 20, 2026 Labor Donated
