Audrey S, Los Angeles, CA
Last night, I went to an anti-ICE protest after I got off work. By that point, there was an extremely tense scene at LA City Hall as a few hundred people faced down police in riot gear and on horseback. The crowd had constructed a barricade out of park benches and chairs.
When the crowd tried to advance, the police unleashed a stream of rubber bullets for more than 45 minutes. Then attacked with tear gas and flash grenades, storming the barricade. Most of the protesters had been in the streets for five or six hours. Everywhere you looked people were nursing injuries.
One girl—no older than 14—grabbed a megaphone and shouted that there were children here, young people here with their families getting injured by rubber bullets and torn apart by ICE. “Don’t you have families?” she screamed.
A reactionary entered the crowd trying to cause a scene. Instantly the people drowned him out—not with chaos or insults, but by shouting, “We have the same enemy” while peacefully escorting him away.
It is clear the protest lacked organization and ideological clarity, but it was also undeniable that the workers of Los Angeles have more than enough courage and righteous anger to transform society—if there were a revolutionary leadership. We must build the revolutionary party that will serve as an organized vehicle for the boundless creativity, passion, and heroism of the workers of LA—and around the globe. Only by smashing the imperialist order that pillages the world, draws and redraws borders, and displaces millions of people for profit can we end ICE for good!