In the opening weeks of Donald Trump’s second presidency, some of the fiercest expressions of defiance have come from the communities that Trump is threatening to attack. In Los Angeles, students have engaged in weeks of walkouts and other protests against the mass deportations Trump promised. In Cincinnati, the historically Black community Lincoln Heights responded to a neo-Nazi rally by chasing off the white supremacists, burning their swastika flags, and conducting an armed watch lest they attempt to return. Both of these communities draw on deep roots of resistance. The students in Los Angeles are walking out in the footsteps of previous student rebels, including those who participated in the historic protests of 2006 against the repression of the undocumented. People in Cincinnati rose in rebellion in 2001 against police violence, foreshadowing the movement that got underway in response to the murder of Oscar Grant in 2008 and arrived on the world stage in 2014 with the uprising in Ferguson. In continuing these legacies, today’s protesters show how difficult it will be for Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and other racist billionaires to control the population of this continent. They also point the way for others who are still trying to figure out how to defend themselves against the new regime. Here, participants in this month’s demonstrations in Los Angeles offer a short report from the streets. You can view many other photographs depicting the week’s events by the same photographer here. Report from Los Angeles The ongoing anti-ICE protests in downtown Los Angeles have been led by Latino and Latina youth, including striking high school students and fleets of teenagers on 29er BMXes, minibikes, and lowriders. The streets are significantly livelier, compared to the last year of demonstrations protesting the genocide in Gaza. The Los Angeles Police Department has reported several injuries to officers, as well as slashed tires on police vehicles. Unencumbered by formal speeches and megaphone-driven chants, the participants have instead spent their time setting off fireworks and smoke bombs, doing burnouts at intersections, and chanting “Culero!” at the cops. Anger, frustration, excitement, and joy have mingled in the streets as cumbias and corridos blast from car stereos and live bandas and the smell of burning rubber fills the air. The events of Sunday, February 2, began at the El Pueblo de Los Angeles historical monument, where thousands rallied with speeches, music, and performances organized by a loose coalition of political organizations and social media influencers. After the performances and speeches, the participants marched to City Hall, where hundreds of people occupied the steps and lawns. The rally formally ended at 11 AM, but the crowd continued to march from City Hall back to El Pueblo de Los Angeles where protesters remained until 11 PM. This protester’s ensemble succinctly conveys an entire political program. Credit. It was clear that although the rally was called by formal political organizations, the crowd’s energy quickly exceeded any control they may have had over people’s movement. Crowds took over the 101 freeway in downtown three separate times, leaving the walls painted with “Fuck ICE,” “Brown Pride,” and “Chinga tu Madre Trump!” An estimated three thousand people, including street vendors who flocked in to sustain the protest, held down the blocks between the 101 freeway and Olvera Street all evening, until LAPD eventually used tear gas to disperse the crowd. According to one participant, “A crowd of about 100 swarmed an LAPD vehicle, seemingly trapping it as they danced cumbia on all sides. Orders to disperse were met with empty cans of beer thrown in the vague direction of police cruisers.” The next day, on February 3, students across Southern California and in parts of the rest of the country skipped classes and crowds gathered to mark “A Day Without Immigrants,” echoing a 2017 call to protest and boycott in response to the first Trump administration’s rhetorical and material attacks on immigrants. Los Angeles Unified School District attendance was reported at 66%, and traffic on the 101 was temporarily stopped by hundreds of protesters again. Graffiti on Los Angeles City Hall. After the previous day’s disordered and timid response to protesters, the LAPD was actively looking for opportunities to escalate and perform arrests. At least one man was arrested on a felony vandalism charge during the demonstrations. Minor skirmishes between protesters and police on February 3, including the use of green-strap 40-millimeter less-than-lethal rounds, culminated in the police kettling a group of 200-250 protesters in a tunnel on Chavez Avenue. At this point, the LAPD faltered, failing to muster and coordinate the necessary resources to carry out mass arrests. The tenacity of the crowd and protesters outside the kettle effectively succeeded in de-escalating the police response; after several hours, the protesters were cited and released. The strength of these initial protests laid the groundwork for the following week of resistance across Los Angeles County. Student walkouts have happened nearly every day and continue still, with community and mutual aid organizations supporting them. This form of resistance follows in the legacy of the 1968 East Los Angeles Walkouts (also known as the Chicano Blowouts), during which 20,000 high schoolers walked out demanding anti-racist education. The March 2006 rally for immigration reform also saw tens of thousands of students walk out. The energy in the streets and the overall swagger of the protesters recalls the rowdy celebrations after the Dodgers won the World Series in October, which escalated to looting in downtown and the burning of a Metropolitan Transit Authority bus in Echo Park. You can view more work by this photographer here. The speed of response, scale, and sustained nature of the protests in Los Angeles were notable. However, marches in San Diego, Phoenix, Austin, and dozens of other cities showed that the draw to make resistance public is not isolated to Southern California. While people have taken to the streets less rapidly than eight years ago, this should not be understood as a public disillusionment with the tactic of mass protest. We don’t have a complete answer for what tactical role street protests should play in the current political moment, but this week in Los Angeles has reminded us that there is still an intoxicating joy to be found in the streets in these collective gatherings of resistance. And regardless of whether activists, organizations, and organizers call for them—they are going to happen. The demonstrators at City Hall on February 4, 2025. A video shared by People’s City Council, Los Angeles. Further Reading Eight Things You Can Do to Stop ICE No Wall They Can Build

In 2006, students around the United States engaged in spontaneous walkouts protesting the repression of undocumented people, culminating on May Day in the first great general strike to take place in the US in the 21st century. Today, as students are once again staging walkouts and people around the country are taking to the streets against the immigration policies of the second Trump administration, it is a good time to revisit this earlier high point of resistance. The following report originally appeared in issue three of Rolling Thunder, our Anarchist Journal of Dangerous Living. You can order these stickers here. May 1, 2006 May Day 2006 saw the first nationwide general strike in the United States in several decades. The immigrant rights movement had declared that fine spring day “A Day without Immigrants,” in response to right-wing rhetoric to the effect that “we don’t need immigrants.” They replied “Ok gringo, if you don’t need us, we’re not going to go to work or school, nor buy or sell anything on this day. Let’s see how well this country runs.” The strike was a stunning success, despite a number of spineless Latino “leaders” condemning the strike, saying that it would create a backlash and send the wrong message. As if the bill in Congress that would deport twelve million people and militarize the US-Mexico border wasn’t a backlash! Across the country, immigrants and their allies walked off the job, skipped school, shuttered the windows of their shops, and refused to spend any money. In Phoenix, thousands of workers took the day off and blockaded the entrances to various Walmart and Home Depot stores. Nearly all the chain restaurants in the city had to close or slash their hours due to the strike. Dozens of meatpacking plants, employing thousands of workers, were closed down nationwide due to that industry’s reliance on immigrant labor. Los Angeles was possibly hardest hit, with a good portion of the city completely shut down. The port of LA, one of the country’s largest, was ninety percent inactive thanks to the overwhelming majority of truckers refusing to haul goods that day. A small but rowdy portion of the more than one million people who marched for immigrant rights in LA chose to round off the day in running battles with the police, throwing rocks and bottles, dragging debris into the streets, and vandalizing outdoor advertisements. California’s state legislature was forced to close when janitors, cafeteria workers, and maintenance people did not show up to work at the capitol building. Meanwhile, across the country, the New York state legislature shut down mid-session when Black and Latino legislators walked out in solidarity with the protest. Back in California, the agricultural counties were hit particularly hard, with major corporate farms such as Gallo Wines being forced to halt production for the day. A riot broke out in Santa Ana, CA when police tried to disperse a crowd of fifteen hundred that had taken over a major boulevard. The crowd responded by raining bottles and rocks on the cops, who were forced to retreat until a riot squad was brought in to quell the revolt. In New York City, scuffles broke out with police when a crowd thousands strong attempted to take the Brooklyn Bridge. Nearly half a million people marched through the streets of Chicago, and another one hundred thousand marched in Denver, where it was reported that scuffles broke out between protestors and Minutemen counter-protestors. Several hundred cities and small towns across the country experienced demonstrations, many of them the largest those cities had ever seen. In a sign that the immigrant rights movement may be diversifying, the windows of a Department of Homeland Security office in Santa Cruz responsible for deporting immigrants were shattered overnight. According to a message posted on the internet, dozens of banks and “financial institutions” saw their locks glued and ATM machines sabotaged in western North Carolina, in an apparent move to support the general strike. South of the border, throughout Mexico, hundreds of thousands of people observed a sister day of protest labeled “A Day without a Gringo,” in which Mexicans boycotted all US business interests. Mexico City saw a crowd of several thousand gather to listen to Zapatista leader Marcos speak and to show their solidarity with their brothers and sisters struggling north of the border. Afterwards, several hundred demonstrators took a tour of the business district, smashing the windows of US-owned banks and restaurants. In Monterey, a group of women gave out free tacos in front of a McDonald’s in an effort to support the boycott. Meanwhile, every major border crossing from El Paso to San Diego was shut down by groups of angry Mexican citizens on their side of the border, preventing hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars worth of goods from crossing the border that day. All in all, May Day 2006 was one of the largest days of protest the United States had ever seen. Counting Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, and Washington, DC alone, there were nearly two million people in the streets, with an equal or greater number joining in smaller demonstrations elsewhere across the US. It was a day of protest based on the principles of direct action, the centerpiece of which was a general strike. In many places, demonstrators went further, blockading businesses that exploit immigrants and engaging the police in battles when push came to shove. It was fitting that it was immigrants who brought May Day back to its former splendor. It was here in the United States, in Chicago, that this international day of workers’ solidarity was born in the struggle for the eight-hour day. Radical immigrant workers, the majority of them anarchists, were at the front of the struggles that made May Day what it is, offering their tears, sweat, and blood in the fight for a better way of life. Appendix: How It Began This contemporary account by an outside sympathizer offers a snapshot of the momentum that led to the general strike of May Day 2006 and a glimpse of political discourse about immigrants’ struggles at that time. Early in 2006, I was riding my bike through downtown Tucson on my way to write a story about recent Indigenous uprisings on a faraway island in Indonesia. My mind was occupied by mundane worries: low air pressure on the rear tire, cars driving too close to me, wondering if I was getting skin cancer from so much sun. I had nearly completed my daily pilgrimage to the office when these trivial thoughts were interrupted by a sea of people moving steadily in my direction from several blocks away. There was joyful shouting, people carrying indistinguishable flags and banners. “Wasn’t Saint Patrick’s day last week?” I thought to myself. As I neared the energetic crowd, I soon realized this was no state-sanctioned holiday, and it sure as hell had nothing to do with the Irish. Instead, I saw two or three hundred mostly Latino youth marching defiantly down the street. Recalling the numerous record-breaking protests against racist anti-immigrant laws of the past week, I realized I had run into a student walkout. As I neared the next block, I was amazed to find a group of three hundred students already rallying in front of the federal building. Over the next half hour, the crowd swelled to over a thousand as more and more fugitive students arrived in groups of ten, fifty, a hundred. The energy and excitement of these youthful rebels nearly overwhelmed me as their chants of “¡Si se puede!” (“Yes, it can be done!”) rang through the air, at times drowned out by the constant honking of supportive passersby. Others chanted “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us!” in reference to the United States’ arbitrary heist of the northern portion of Mexico over a century ago. Still more carried signs reading “No human being is illegal.” The following day, I was again riding my bike through downtown, somewhat more prepared to run into a protest, because I had heard that students were planning another walkout. I was disappointed when I encountered a small crowd of fifty kids walking on the sidewalk. “I guess they let their steam out yesterday,” I thought pessimistically to myself. As I rounded the corner onto Congress Avenue, I was forced to eat my words. The crowd was nearly double the size of the previous day’s, overflowing the small plaza in front of the federal building into the streets. The initial fifty were just stragglers. Soon, the massive crowd surged towards the federal courthouse, where thousands of immigrants are deported every year, and proceeded to block the entrance to this institution of oppression for half an hour. Meanwhile, hundreds of other students cruised the streets of downtown in perilously overloaded vehicles, blasting the music of their home countries, waving Mexican flags, and carrying posters of Cesar Chavez. Whether or not it was intentional, these cruisers, in conjunction with the sea of protestors swarming downtown from all directions, brought Tucson’s business district to a standstill. The energy, defiance, and sheer power of these demonstrations stands in stark contrast to the dreary, well-behaved, state-approved parades put on by our country’s numerous leftist organizations. “These are no mere protests,” I thought to myself, “this is an uprising.” This initial speculation was confirmed when I got back home and looked at the news reports. Even the corporate media acknowledged that well over a thousand Tucson middle- and high-school students had dropped their pens and paper and taken to the streets to protest the government’s attempted crackdown on immigration. At one school, someone pulled a fire alarm after the principle attempted to direct students into the gymnasium, ensuring their escape to the streets. At another school, several dozen students scaled a barbed wire fence after administrators locked the only exit shut. Other students took their anger out on the Border Patrol, notorious for its rampant racism and sadistic abuse of detainees, by throwing rocks at its Tucson headquarters. What I saw in Tucson was no isolated incident. In Los Angeles, thirty-six thousand students walked out three days in a row, shut down four freeways, and repeatedly clashed with the LAPD when the latter attempted to break up this spontaneous outbreak of rebellion. In Fort Worth, Texas, not exactly a hotbed of radicalism, several hundred students walked out and proceeded to take over the city hall. Police responded by injuring several students, one of whom required hospitalization. There’s nothing like a group of grown-up armed men beating school children! In Pasadena, California, police opened up on a crowd of one hundred and fifty students with pepper balls in an attempt to disperse them. The students responded to this unprovoked attack by throwing rocks and bottles at the police. In San Diego, six thousand students took to the streets in five days of class disruptions. On the final day, they attempted to take over the Coronado bridge that spans San Diego Bay, but were stopped by a wall of California Highway Patrolmen. In Santa Ana, student occupations shut down several government offices, including the tax collector’s office. “No human being is illegal.” This massive wave of civil disobedience on the heels of the previous week’s pro-immigrant demonstrations is no doubt a sign of a healthy and rapidly growing national rebellion. Where do predominately white anti-authoritarian and anti-colonial movements in this country fit into the picture? First off, gringos need to understand that immigrants to the US are for the most part fleeing the poverty, hunger, and violent repression manufactured abroad by our country’s government in order to ensure the relative comfort of our lives here at home. It is no coincidence that the “flood” of illegal immigrants from Mexico skyrocketed after the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The human beings who are risking their lives (several hundred die every year) traversing the arid borderlands are not doing so to steal people’s jobs. They are trying to ensure the survival of their families by earning slightly more than the starvation wages they find, if they are lucky, south of the border.1 Radicals in the US should extend solidarity to the immigrant rights movement in every way possible. This is not the time for professional activists to step up and “show the masses the way.” The folks fueling the fire of this uprising seem to have a pretty clear analysis of the situation and an equally clear vision of how to win. The last thing they need is some know-it-all honkies to come in and tell them what to do. If you need further convincing of this fact, consider that the immigrant rights movement has managed in a matter of weeks to mobilize an enormous and militant movement that is already beginning to surpass what the anti-war movement, with the “help” of all those well-paid professional activists, has accomplished in the past three years. Sympathetic gringos can offer direct assistance by cooking food for demonstrators, hanging posters, organizing solidarity actions, offering rides to demonstrations and meetings, acting as legal observers, raising funds for legal expenses (hundreds have already been arrested for acts of civil disobedience), and showing up to demonstrations. One role I believe we have a particular responsibility to play is confronting racist boneheads such as the Minutemen who have spearheaded the massive anti-immigrant backlash. The sheer idiocy of anyone of European descent in North America complaining about illegal immigrants is maddening enough—but when these bigots start walking around with guns to “protect the borders of the US” as a code for promoting their racist ideals, and receive significant backing from prominent Republicans and the media in return, we have a duty to stop them. Wherever these racist thugs hold a rally, we should organize a larger counter-rally. Whenever they organize a meeting, we should be there to disrupt it. Those of us who live near the border can interfere with their “civilian border patrols” by warning would-be crossers of their presence. (A megaphone and a spotlight will help.) We can show our solidarity by continuing to fight the colonialist policies that have impoverished other countries and created this whole immigration “problem” in the first place. Shutting down the World Trade Organization in Seattle was a good start, but we totally dropped the ball on NAFTA and CAFTA (the equivalent agreement for Central America). However, it is not too late to defeat the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and resistance to it throughout the rest of the continent is still fierce. I reckon it’s never too late to get the other two repealed either. While welcoming economic and political refugees into our country is a good start, if we want to create a truly just world for everyone, we must destroy the policies that force people to make the trek in the first place. You can obtain these posters here. Radicals must address the anti-immigrant sentiment that sometimes boils up within our own ranks—for example, in certain sectors of the environmental movement. Groups such as the Sierra Club have flirted for years with the asinine notion that poor immigrants are somehow a major source of ecological destruction in the US. The line of logic proceeds thus: the increase in population is causing major sprawl, and by moving to the US—hold your breath for this one—immigrants start to consume at the rate that US citizens do. If I understand this right, it’s OK for us to continue consuming the world’s resources at a suicidal rate, but not for anyone else to? Talk about blaming the victim! Instead of scapegoating immigrants, we should be working first and foremost to reduce our own consumption of resources. It is equally ridiculous to allege that immigrants cause sprawl. They are not the ones building the second and third trophy homes that are eating up wilderness across the country. Come to think of it, they often are the ones building these homes—not for themselves, but for the exorbitant lifestyles of middle- and upper-class US citizens. Don’t even get me started on the devastation that the massive border wall that some are calling for would have on the ecological integrity of the Sonoran desert ecosystem. Radical immigrant groups that are fighting for better wages and work conditions in the US also deserve support. Groups such as the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) have both launched numerous protests, boycotts, and speaking tours to achieve better pay in the fields. During FLOC’s boycott of Mt. Olive pickles, anarchists in North Carolina helped by protesting at grocery stores (including trashing Mt. Olive products in the store), painting banners, and offering rides to FLOC organizers who did not have documentation or driver’s licenses. The CIW recently won in a boycott against Taco Bell demanding that they pay tomato pickers more per pound, and have just launched a fresh boycott against McDonalds hoping to achieve the same goal. I’m sure you can think of a number of ways to help compel McDonalds to meet their demands. Comida no Migra—“food, not border patrol”—is a new take on the Food Not Bombs model that is catching on in many communities across the US. Instead of serving lunch or dinner in the park, participants get up early in the morning to bring food to immigrant day laborers at the places where they wait for work. Not only does this provide folks with a little sustenance and good cheer, it also puts observers on site to make sure no one messes with them. This is important because the Minutemen, not knowing what else to do with their pathetic lives, have started protesting at day labor sites to intimidate immigrants. Similarly, it’s not unheard of for immigrants to get picked up by some asshole, work all day, and then not get paid; even worse, there have been incidents in which racists have picked up day laborers and beaten or killed them. There is a lot of work to be done in the fight for immigrant rights. Whether that means offering childcare to families so that they can attend meetings, translating information on workers’ rights into Spanish, or blockading immigration detention centers, there are many fronts in this battle and all of them are important. It would behoove radicals in the US to study the solidarity work people in Europe and Australia have done around immigration and asylum seeking. Check out the No Border network—a massive European immigrants’ rights coalition. In Australia, activists have repeatedly broken political asylum-seekers out of detention centers and provided them refuge. In Italy, several years ago, a group of activists actually dismantled an immigrant detention facility while police looked on helplessly! There is much we can offer. The fight for immigrant rights is not about us and how radical our politics are. It is about lending our solidarity to people in struggle. Click on the image to download the poster. Even if they were just “here for a free ride,” as the right wing asserts, I’d say good for them. After all we’ve stolen from them and the places they came from, it’s merely a matter of them coming and getting a little piece of the pie back—in other words, reparations. ↩

Faced with intensifying repression and state violence, there is an understandable inclination to seek safety by avoiding confrontation. But this is not always the most effective strategy. “Counterintuitive though it is, in a confusing situation, often the best, if not safest, place to be is the front lines, so you can get a clear visual grasp of what is going on around you.” -“How I Came to Be a Victim of Molotov Cocktail Friendly Fire and Lived to Tell the Tale,” an account from the demonstrations against the 2003 European Union summit in Thessaloniki, published in *Rolling Thunder #1.” My friend’s grandfather grew up in Germany in the 1920s. Being Jewish, he got involved in radical organizations and sometimes engaged in physical altercations with Nazis. In a memoir that he recorded for his family decades later, he describes the situation when the Nazis took power: “In January 1933, Hitler became chancellor. I thought we would now start a revolution, but actually nothing happened. The communists defected—often en masse—to the Nazis and the social democrats held out a little longer but ultimately dissolved their organizations.” In May 1933, when he was twenty years old, he learned that he was about to be prosecuted for having broken a Nazi’s nose in a street brawl. Rather than face trial in a judicial system controlled by Nazis, he immediately obtained a passport and boarded a train for Holland that same night at 8 pm. Some years later, the rest of his family died in the concentration camp in Auschwitz. This story succinctly illustrates a surprisingly common phenomenon. Had my friend’s grandfather not participated in open confrontations with Nazis from the very beginning, had he kept his head down and avoided trouble, he probably would have remained in Berlin and met the same fate as his relatives. By taking the offensive, he put himself in harm’s way—but paradoxically, in the long run, that worked out better than playing it safe. Likewise, participants in the guerrilla underground of the Jewish resistance were among the only ones to survive the Nazis’ annihilation of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. In organizing to meet the Nazi threat head on, they developed a robust relationship to their agency, and this served them well when the only way out was to organize a daring escape from the besieged and burning ghetto through the sewer system. For members of targeted groups, the initial impulse is often to withdraw, to go into hiding. Yet when it comes to both individual and collective self-preservation, it can be wiser to act assertively at the beginning, while it is still possible to influence the course of events. Even if this goes badly, it can be better to bring the conflict to a head immediately, before one’s adversary becomes more powerful. If nothing else, this strategy has the virtue of making it impossible to lull oneself into a false sense of security while the threat increases. It doesn’t always work out this way, but sometimes, it’s safer in the front. Anarchists marching on the so-called “Summit of the Americas” in Québec City, April 2001. It was noon on April 20, 2001. My comrades and I had assembled alongside hundreds of other anarchists and anti-capitalists at Laval University in Québec City to march on a transcontinental summit intended to establish a “Free Trade Area of the Americas.” In the center of town, behind miles of protective fencing and thousands of riot police, George W. Bush and his fellow heads of state were plotting to override labor laws and environmental protections to enrich their patrons at our expense. The sun was shining. More and more people were arriving at the departure point. One group even rolled up a catapult. The police were nowhere to be seen. Still, I was anxious. Most of my experience of violence was subcultural—fighting skinheads, hardcore shows. I’d never taken on an army of police before. At a meeting the preceding evening, a local organizer had told us that it would be impossible to reach the fence around the summit—there were just too many cops with too much armor and weaponry. As the crowd began to make its way out of the university towards the street, I consulted with a more experienced comrade. “Should we hang back and see what happens?” I asked. “If we want to be able to see what’s happening, we’ll have to be in the front,” he answered, matter-of-factly. We marched directly to the fence surrounding the summit and tore it down. The police could not stop us. The “Free Trade Area of the Americas” was never ratified. Washington, DC, January 20, 2005. My friend’s advice served me well four years later, on the day that George W. Bush began his second term. That night, following the daytime march against the inaugural ceremonies, a second march surged through the neighborhood of Adams Morgan, smashing banks and corporate businesses and attacking a police substation. Some participants dropped an enormous banner across a building façade reading “From DC to Iraq—with occupation comes resistance.” We were attempting to compel the Bush regime to end the occupation of Iraq, which inflicted countless civilian casualties and later contributed to the catastrophic rise of the Islamic State. As the march dispersed, a comrade and I found ourselves among a number of people walking through an alley. Ahead of us, police officers appeared at the exit. We could have turned around and run the other direction. But then we would have been at the back of the crowd, unable to see what we were running towards. “Run, run forward,” I said to my companion. We were already running. We dashed past the cops just as they closed their line across the mouth of the alley. “Don’t let any more of them out,” I heard one bark to another. We were the last ones to escape. The police had blocked the alley from the other side, as well. They forced the people behind us to kneel in the snow for hours. Years later, the detainees won a settlement from the city, but it was better to get away. Denver, August 25, 2008. On August 25, 2008, in Denver, during the demonstrations against the Democratic National Convention, a couple hundred people gathered for a march that had been announced but never organized. We were still protesting against the ongoing occupation of Iraq and against capitalism in general. Armored police were positioned in groups of a dozen each all around the park and the surrounding streets, outnumbering the young people sitting around with black sweatshirts in their laps. A vehicle was supposed to deliver banners, but a rumor reached us that police had detained the driver. Yet just when it seemed certain that nothing was going to happen, a few young folks pulled up their hoods and began chanting. Who are these people? I recall wondering. What are they thinking, masking up and linking arms with hundreds of riot police surrounding them and undercovers at their elbows? What can they hope to accomplish? Nonetheless, the other people who had gathered for the march regrouped with them and they began marching out of the park. They only made it as far as the road, where the nearest squadron of police formed a line blocking their path and showered them with pepper spray. No protest had occurred yet, I had heard no dispersal order, and already the police were using chemical weapons. A comrade and I watched all this with dismay. There were still about two hundred of us, but the police were closing in from all sides and the crowd was disoriented and uncoordinated. It was a recipe for disaster. We were at the back of the crowd. But the back can become the front—it’s just a question of initiative. My comrade began shouting out a countdown. Others joined in, instinctively. Counting together concentrated our attention, our expectations, our sense of ourselves as a collective force capable of concerted action. And then thirty of us were sprinting over the grass away from the police line. Seeing this, the rest of the crowd fell in behind. In a few seconds, hundreds of people were running across the park to the intersection at the far side of the lawn, where police had not gathered yet. Now the energy in the air was electric, in contrast to the malaise and uncertainty of a moment earlier. We passed through the intersection, into which some enterprising young people pulled a municipal sign reading “Road Closed”—and suddenly, we were approaching the business district. The same principle served us well later in the evening when we saw a line of riot police fanning out across an intersection a block ahead. Without pausing to confer, my comrade and I bolted towards them. We reached the line of police and dodged between them before they could block our path. They had orders to create a barrier, not to chase us. We were safe. Washington, DC, January 20, 2017. On the morning of January 20, 2017, another comrade and I joined the march in downtown Washington, DC opposing the inauguration of Donald Trump. In the decades that had passed since Bush’s second inauguration, police all around the country had militarized, receiving bigger and bigger budgets even as politicians claimed there was no money available for anything else. This time, the streets were crowded with 28,000 law enforcement personnel. There was open conflict with the police as soon as the march got underway. The wail of police sirens, the deafening explosions of flash-bang grenades at close quarters, the acrid scent of pepper spray, the roar of police motorcycles, the sizzle of adrenaline—it was a terrifying situation, but the demonstrators around us were giving as good as they were getting. The idea was to set a template for resistance on the first day of the Trump administration, sending the message to everyone that no one should passively accept the intensification of tyranny. The longer we were in the streets, the more dangerous it got. When we passed Franklin Square again, doubling back on our tracks, it was clear that it was only a matter of time before we were surrounded. In downtown DC, between the intersections, the streets are like long stretches of canyon between the cliff faces of the buildings. I knew the police wanted to box us in and kettle us. Every time we passed through an intersection, I glanced at the intersections a block away on either side to see if police were shadowing us on the parallel streets, preparing to cut off our exit routes. Every time we moved out of an intersection into another stretch of canyon, I watched the intersections ahead and behind for police. Whenever we were moving between intersections, we were vulnerable. As we approached 13th Street, police on motorcycles passed us on the sidewalk on our left, attempting to overtake us and seize the intersection ahead. We were still hundreds of feet from it. I urged my companion to run ahead with me, and we sprinted past front of the march, past the bike cops and motorcycle cops, who began ramming their vehicles into the people immediately behind us. When the cops saw that a few of us were already at their backs, they gave up trying to form a line and once again focused on racing ahead of us. Police hate to be outflanked—they can’t risk being surrounded themselves. The clash at the intersection showed that the march was no longer in control of the territory around it. It was time to make our exit. We ran down an alley on our right shortly before the next intersection. A hundred others did the same. Those who continued forward were blocked by a line of police at the next intersection, and turned around only to discover a much stronger police line blocking them from behind. For two long minutes, the crowd paused in confusion and dismay. Some people towards the back of the march had already taken off their gear and were hoping to pass as civilians in order to make their way out of the area, not realizing that they were already trapped from all sides. The participants at the front of the march kept their gear on and linked arms. Someone called out “We’re going to do a countdown!” They counted down quickly from ten to one and charged directly at the police line ahead of them. The person at the very front of the charge held open a flimsy umbrella as they all ran blindly forward. Somehow, the umbrella protected them from the answering stream of pepper spray. Fifty of them broke through the police line and escaped. The ones who lingered, waiting to see whether the charge would break through before joining it, remained trapped in the kettle. Someone later posted a humorous comment on social media to the effect that the cheat code for the J20 Protest Simulator was to be always running at the cops holding a hammer. But there was something to it. Afterwards, watching police footage released to defendants in the subsequent court case, we saw that even after the police and National Guardsmen had tightened up their line, one enterprising individual had escaped simply by sprinting as fast as possible directly at them and ducking between two of them. Everyone who was detained was charged with eight felonies apiece—up to eighty years in prison—for the crime of being mass-arrested in the vicinity of a rowdy march. A few took plea deals, but everyone else stuck together, establishing a collective defense plan and confronting the legal system head on. In the end, after two trials at which all the defendants were declared not guilty, all of the remaining defendants saw their charges dropped. Years later, all of them received payouts from the state to settle the resulting lawsuits. It sounds like a metaphor, but I mean it literally as well as figuratively. Whether it’s a march or a court case, sometimes it’s safer in the front. The Block Cop City. Several years later, I was in Atlanta for the Block Cop City mobilization. Protesters had been trying to stop the construction of a multi-million-dollar facility to further militarize the police. In retaliation, the police had murdered one person and arrested a large number of people at random, charging them with terrorism and indicting sixty-one of them on trumped-up racketeering charges. Before the action proper, there were two days of deliberations at a local Quaker community center. Everyone was on edge. The goal was to try to march into the forest and occupy the construction site. Would we all be arrested? Would we, too, be charged with terrorism and racketeering? The discussions went in circles as people fruitlessly attempted to predict what would happen and negotiated their own risk tolerance. It was decided that there would be three self-organized blocs within the march: essentially, the front, the middle, and the back. Officially, this distinction was not based on anticipated risk, because the organizers could make no promises about what the police would do. But no one was able to consider which bloc to join without panning back to larger questions. How much do I fear the violence of the police and the judicial system? What am I prepared to sacrifice for this movement? Only the bold few who had made peace with their fears and committed to taking the front of the march seemed at ease. Even with the “middle” bloc, there was a lot of agonizing and bargaining going on. “I’ll be in the middle, but not at the front of the middle…” That night, I explained to my family what to do if I didn’t come home from the demonstration. Both of my romantic partners, independently of each other, asked me whether it was really that important for me to participate in this particular march. Couldn’t I just leave it to the younger activists? It’s safer in the front. I remembered this saying from earlier mobilizations—but thinking it over, I wasn’t so sure. How could it be safer to charge directly into police lines? The slogan distilled lessons drawn on my own experience, but heading into yet another dangerous situation, I was dubious. On the morning of the mobilization, we assembled at the park. Despite a few festive flourishes, the atmosphere was somber: a few hundred people risking injury, arrest, and prison time for the honor of an embattled movement. Many people had decided to stay home at the last minute. We marched out of the park in a column, everyone assiduously sticking to their particular position in the risk tolerance spectrum. As long as we were marching down the narrow pedestrian walkway, this made sense, but it made less sense when we emerged onto the main road and advanced towards the construction site. We should have fanned out to present a broad front as we approached the lines of police and armored vehicles blocking the road, but no, the crowd stretched out into what was almost single-file line, like lambs lining up for slaughter. Nonetheless, the ones at the front picked up speed, forming a V-shaped wedge with their reinforced banners and pointing their umbrellas forward to block the cops’ view as they charged directly into the shields of the skirmish line. The rest of us dragged along behind, holding the positions we had committed to holding—no less, and no more. The people with the reinforced banners pushed the first line of cops back until it was reinforced by a second line. Even then, they didn’t relent; they kept on pushing forward against the police. The cops lashed out with their batons, but went on losing ground. The bloc at the front of the march stuck together, protecting each other, acting deliberately. Maybe they were afraid, but it wasn’t fear that was determining their actions. Looking on from behind them, I was terrified. I was grateful I wasn’t in the front, having to make decisions. Police batons are scary, jail time is scary, felony charges are scary, but the truly frightening thing is responsibility. People will accept a lot of negative consequences in their lives just to avoid responsibility. And unfortunately, it’s impossible: try as we might, there is no avoiding the fact that as long as we are able to make decisions and take action, we are responsible for ourselves. That is true whether you position yourself at the front or at the back, or even if you don’t show up at all. I watched the front-liners ahead of me push both lines of police back until they reached a third line comprised of futuristic stormtroopers. No sign of the stormtroopers’ humanity was discernible beneath their military gear; not even their eyes were visible. They had completely removed themselves from the human community. The stormtroopers pulled out tear gas canisters. I watched in disbelief as they tossed the canisters one after another over the heads of the ones at the front into the middle of the march—into the midst of those of us who had hoped that others would run risks on our behalf, who had intended simply to be an appendage of others’ agency. Perhaps it would have been safer in the front, after all? Then everything vanished in a poisonous white haze. We staggered blindly back in disarray, choking and coughing. But the stormtroopers had gassed the rest of the cops, as well, and the other cops were not wearing gas masks. They, too, had retreated. Against all odds, the battle concluded in a draw. In the end, the only person who was arrested that entire day was someone who had opted to play a support role far from the site of the action. They were detained in a vehicle near the park from which we had set out. No one was charged with terrorism or racketeering. In all our anxiety, we had forgotten the greatest risk of all: that we might do nothing, that we would let ourselves be cowed into abandoning the streets. With so many people already facing outlandish charges, marching on the construction site was a risky proposition, but permitting the state to crush the movement would have set a precedent that would threaten other movements, emboldening the authorities to use the same tactics elsewhere. Sometimes you can only find out what the risks are by taking a chance. This time, we had gotten lucky—but in a way, we had also passed a test. Anarchists at the May Day demonstration in Bandung, 2019. Photograph by Frans Ari Prasetyo. It’s not really safer in the front. Staying home is safer—at least, it’s safer until the long-term consequences of abandoning the streets set in. Then nowhere is safe, and it turns out it would have been better to take some smaller risks earlier on. The anti-fascists who went to Charlottesville in August 2017 to confront the “Unite the Right” rally were putting themselves in harm’s way. One of them was killed; several of them were severely injured. But if they had stayed home, if they had permitted fascists to establish control of the streets, the whole world would have become more dangerous. The likelihood that we may be forced to fight the same battle all over again today does not take away from the fact that they won us eight years of relative safety. Even when all really is hopelessly lost, it is generally better to act boldly, sending a signal flare of hope across the generations, the way the Communards and the Kronstadt rebels did. In so doing, you at least preserve the possibility that others will be inspired to continue attempting to build the world you desire, so that one day, your dream might be realized—even if without you, at least due in part to your efforts. But that’s not where we are today. We face powerful adversaries, but the majority of people, including many of their supporters, have good reason to oppose them, as well. If we bring people together, if we demonstrate effective ways to fight back, putting our own risk tolerance at the disposal of larger struggles, many more people will eventually join us. There’s no reason to hasten into glorifying martyrdom or accepting defeat when the future is unwritten. Not everyone can be in the front all the time, of course. It can be exhausting. But the front isn’t a spatial location. Understood properly, it doesn’t necessarily require a particular kind of physical ability or skillset. It’s a way of engaging with events, of remaining focused on our agency, taking the initiative wherever we can rather than just reacting to our opponents’ initiatives. Everyone can open up a new front of struggle by identifying a vulnerability in the ruling order and going on the offensive. The more fronts there are, the safer we all will be. Facing the second administration of Donald Trump, many anarchists and anti-fascists don’t know where to begin. During the previous Trump administration, we fought hard against an adversary that was much more powerful than us, and won—only to find victory snatched from our hands by cowardly Democrats, who eagerly took over where the Republicans left off, disappointing so many people that Trump was able to return to power. But that is not a reason to give up, this time around—it just shows that all along, we were right about the nature of power, and we owe it to the world to demonstrate a real alternative. In countries ruled by fascism or other forms of despotism, the majority of people do not necessarily support the authorities; they have simply become dispirited, accustomed to passivity. Much more so than liberals, anarchists are used to being outnumbered and outgunned, to fighting against incredible odds. While Democrats make excuses for the fascists or even embrace their agenda, we should demonstrate that it is possible to take ambitious, principled action to resist it. If you feel despair, if you feel defeated, if you catch yourself dissociating or focusing on what our oppressors are doing rather than on what you can do yourself—that is territory that the enemy has claimed within you. Give them nothing without a fight. Stay focused on your agency. Every hour, every day, wherever you are positioned, there is always something you can do. Take care of yourself and those around you. Keep your eyes out for opportunities and seize them. We are in a fight—but it is a fight that we can win. It’s safer in the front. The umbrella charge on January 20, 2017. Further Reading We Fight because We Like It: Maintaining Our Morale against Seemingly Insurmountable Odds

January 18 is the Day of the Forest Defender, honoring the life of Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, who was murdered by Georgia State Troopers two years ago while protesting the construction of Cop City in Atlanta, and everyone else who has given their lives in the fight against those who would render the earth uninhabitable in the course of their pursuit of profit. This year, a call circulated for people to organize festivals of resistance in their communities on the weekend of January 17-19. Here, we share reports from some of these events. The situation is grim. Despite acknowledging that Trump represents fascism, Democrats have nonetheless welcomed the arrival of despotism, dutifully voting for new legislation targeting immigrants and doing their best to keep protesters out of the streets. Tech CEOs have followed suit, pouring millions of dollars into his inauguration and crowding into St. John’s Church to worship at the feet of their new master. Elon Musk made the Nazi salute twice from the podium during the inauguration, leaving only just enough plausible deniability to confuse the most naïve. Musk has posted fascist dog whistles on Twitter before, even before he purchased it in order to reintroduce Nazis to the platform, ban anarchists, and promote the fascist agenda. From this point forward, nothing should surprise us. The incoming government has made it clear that they intend to inflict as much harm as possible on those who are vulnerable while concentrating as much money as possible in the hands of the ultra-rich. These are the central points of their agenda. Attempting to spread information about their misdeeds in order to provoke popular outrage is a waste of time. From here out, all that matters is developing the capacity to defend each other from their attacks while preparing to go on the offensive as soon as the opportunity presents itself. The faces of the oligarchy looked craven and servile as they lined up at the inauguration to toady to Trump. Capitalism concentrates power in the hands of the most rapacious, but they can only hold on to power by being completely subservient to its demands. Fortunately, not everyone is taking this sitting down. Anarchists around the country called for “festivals of resistance” the weekend before the inauguration in order to bring communities together prepare to resist. Here follow reports from a few of these. You can read the original call to organize festivals of resistance here, along with a list of dozens of events around the country. January 11 Sacramento, Chicago, and a few other locations hosted events a weekend early, building up momentum. Sacramento, California On Saturday, January 11, well over 600 people came together in downtown Sacramento for a community gathering at a local Methodist Church featuring workshops, skillshares, info-tables, and a key-note address from anarchist author and mutual aid organizer Dean Spade. The previous night, people had gathered to write letters to political prisoners. On the day of the event, hundreds streamed into the building, dramatically outnumbering the nearby Trump rally at the capitol, which brought out only a hundred people. The workshops included basic first aid, tenant organizing, food autonomy, anti-fascist organizing, community self-defense, and mutual aid. Dean Spade spoke for over an hour on mutual aid organizing with the recent fires in Los Angeles in mind, and also talked about how we need to change the broader culture in our movements, bringing in more people and creating a home for people to grow in through different cycles of struggle. The event featured a well-organized security team and several zine tables and distros. No major problems occurred. So much pizza was ordered from a local business that the owner told one organizer, “This is bigger than Dave Matthew’s Band.” Crash into this, Dave! January 17-19 Over two dozen cities hosted Festivals of Resistance this past weekend. Brooklyn, New York From noon until after 9 pm, Interference Archive had a packed house as people participated in a marathon of presentations and skillshares, concluding with a film screening. Elsewhere in Brooklyn, people courageously redecorated a billboard. Here follows their statement. Footage of the billboard in Brooklyn. Today, thousands of people across the world organized events and took collective action in honor of Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, who was murdered by Georgia State Troopers two years ago while protesting the construction of Cop City in Atlanta. Tortuguita died defending the Weelaunee Forest. January 18, the Day of the Forest Defender, commemorates their 26 years on this earth and their steadfast commitment to collective liberation. Their spirit is alive in our resistance. We, the writers of this message, took over a billboard on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, one of NYC’s largest highways, used by 130,000 vehicles daily. We covered a CopShot police billboard—that recruits informants with a $10,000 bribe—with a tribute to Tortuguita and all land defenders. In the context of a city that spends $29 million dollars a day on policing, off the side of a highway that displaced thousands of families with a stroke of a pen, we replace the state’s cowardly propaganda with a commemoration of land defenders’ sacrifice and struggle. Collective memory animates our will to destroy this empire that is killing us and our planet. As the US funnels billions into building Cop Cities across the country in its latest attempt to repress us, they concede what we already know—that rebellion is inevitable. Viva Tortuguita and all land defenders. We will destroy this empire, with Earth as our witness. The billboard before it was improved. Central North Carolina The weekend opened with a concert and dance party on Friday night. On Saturday, the Festival of Resistance in Durham, North Carolina drew 300 people for four hours of workshops running two or three at a time. Visitors could take their fill of free material from a dozen literature tables representing various mutual aid and community defense groups; some of those have been around for years or decades, while others emerged out of the assemblies that followed the election in November. Food Not Bombs provided a full hot meal, there was a busy childcare space. The events continued on Sunday with four more hours of workshops in Chapel Hill, followed by a screening of a film about Rojava that concluded with a discussion featuring the director. A projection at the entry to the Festival of Resistance in central North Carolina. Gary, Indiana Following up outreach events in Chicago, more than 75 people gathered outside the Gary/Chicago International Airport to demonstrate against the role that it plays in deportations, which Trump has been threatening to ramp up as part of his program of doing harm to undocumented people. You can read one report on the action in Gary here: The Gary/Chicago International Airport has been used since at least 2013 to fly deportees out of the region. GlobalX, an airline company based in Miami, FL, subcontracts with ICE to deport people every Friday from Gary/Chicago airport to Kansas City, MO before taking them out of the country. More than 19,000 people were deported out of Gary between 2013 and 2017 according to public records obtained through a Freedom of Information request by a local organizer. Demonstrators were leaving the airport on foot Saturday morning when around two dozen Gary police officers descended on them. Officers grabbed and arrested two protestors who were in the process of complying with police instructions. A photojournalist was also seized and arrested by the officers while documenting the other arrests, in what amounts to a violent attack on the freedom of the press. The march, held two days before Donald Trump takes power for a second time, represents the Gary community’s commitment to their immigrant neighbors in the face of state violence, but builds on the diligent work of community organizers over the years. Since 2017, interfaith groups, immigrant rights activists, and rank-and-file union workers from East Chicago and elsewhere in northwest Indiana regularly held prayer circles and other peaceful protests, but had not been met with significant repression. Minneapolis, Minnesota About thirty people attended a movie screening of Fell In Love with Fire, including many new faces. In the discussion following the film, many participants related their experience in the George Floyd Uprising to the uprising in Chile, reflecting on how to fight the new Trump regime. The evening concluded with writing letters to prisoners. People were very engaged and took a lot of zines and posters. Oakland, California About 150 people, mostly anarchists, marched to an abandoned OUSD [Oakland Unified School District] building, broke in, and held an assembly in a courtyard inside the premises. A dozen people spoke about various existing projects and how to get plugged in. Then, there were six breakout groups to discuss strategic horizons related to Antirepression 2, International Solidarity Housing Immigration Community resiliency/disaster relief, and Other. Afterwards, at 5 pm, a dance party got underway at the amphitheater at Lake Merritt, and people reconstructed the George Floyd memorial there. Olympia, Washington In Olympia, a coalition of local organizations and people from different political scenes organized a big-tent “People’s March.” The more anarchist contingent within the group advocated to attach a Festival of Resistance directly after the march. Dozens of organizations sponsored the events. The event was diverse, well-attended, and notably intergenerational. The rally before the march drew about 1000 people. There were several speakers, including a speaker for Palestinian liberation, a recorded speech from local incarcerated pan-Africanist Tomas Afeworki, and a speaker and translator from La Resistencia, the group dedicated to shutting down the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center. There was also a moment of silence for a beloved long-term organizer, a participant in the organizing group behind the event, who passed away a week earlier. The march began with a local Indigenous activist performing a drum song; in the back, a marching band kept time. Because of the ties between anarchists and other local activists, there was a lot of good faith participation. It appeared that the black bloc of about 20-30 people designed its splinter march with consideration for the family-friendly march, diverting police attention elsewhere. A little vandalism and graffiti occurred, to only a few people’s dismay; most in the march seemed unconcerned. The march ended at the capitol, where people promoted a brand-new announcements-only Signal thread modeled on Austin’s Sunbird. A couple more speakers closed out the march. The Festival of Resistance started immediately afterwards at a location only a few blocks away. The building was packed from the beginning. Probably 150-200 people circulated through it. This was the real aim of attaching the two events. Food and drinks were served. Several organizations set up tables—letters to prisoners, the Emma Goldman Youth and Homeless Outreach Project, zine distros, and the like—and people mingled and ate for an hour before the sessions. Then, there were announcements, a toast to our dearly departed, followed by two rounds of discussions and workshops. The workshops included direct action 101 (with a local history flipbook collecting printed communiqués), resisting repression, and the history and culture surrounding the local Artesian Well and the struggle against its enclosure. There were topic-based facilitated discussions, as well. Many people expressed the desire to keep the ball rolling and repeat this model in order to try to continue the conversations rather than having to begin again from scratch. In retrospect, it would have been ideal to have already planned a future event that people could put in their calendars, or an activity that could facilitate people generating something like that together. Providence, Rhode Island Following the Providence Festival of Resistance and words from Tortuguita’s friends and comrades, some people marched to the Atwells Avenue overpass and hung a banner over I-95 reading “Revenge for Tortuguita—No More Presidents.” Richmond, Virginia Up to 500 people attended the Richmond Festival of Resistance in the course of the day. Many contributed names, remembrances, or tokens of other martyrs to the altar honoring Tortuguita. In addition to celebrating grief together, Richmond’s “Festival of Resistance,” advertised locally as the inaugural “People’s Assembly,” included a full day of tabling, workshops, panels, and free food. The gathering launched a new initiative, the People’s Assembly, a recurring venue for citywide coordination and strategy building. The idea is to hold citywide assemblies in each season, building from the neighborhood assemblies that many people left this gathering inspired to begin. The altar to Tortuguita in Richmond, Virginia. Tucson, Arizona Less than a week in advance, a handful of friends decided to hold a humble “Parade of Resistance” on the Day of the Forest Defender. With only three days’ notice on a busy weekend, 30-40 people gathered in a park while members of a local brass band played a short set. The parade then took a one and a half mile route through the part of town with the most pedestrian traffic. The sound system was bumping a cumbia mix made by a comrade who recently passed away. The vibe was fun and playful, and generally very well received by bystanders, some of whom joined in, dancing in the street for a block or two. The cops arrived about halfway through, but people ignored their orders to vacate the street, and they resigned themselves to redirecting traffic for us. Their investment in a “progressive” image often complicates their efforts to assert control. The messaging was an experiment in vagueness. The only banner read “Towards a Free World”; it was accompanied by colorful butterfly puppets. A few paraders distributed pamphlets with accessible language calling for revolutionary action and transformation. On the back, a flier promoted an upcoming “Festival of Rebellion” on February 15. The march ended at sunset at a classic spot for punks and train kids. Across the tracks, there was graffiti honoring Tortuguita and our dear friend who has just passed away. The dance party continued into the night with a bonfire and more graffiti. Ultimately, it was a nice morale boost and very worthwhile, considering what a light lift the organizing was. It gave some of us a chance to get out in the streets without demanding a bunch of work from an already overloaded network. Definitely better than doing nothing. Hopefully, it created some momentum to carry forward.⁩