As Donald Trump and Elon Musk subordinate the United States government to their pursuit of totalitarian power, Democrats remain in a defensive posture, accusing them of lawlessness. But neither courts nor laws will suffice to halt the descent into autocracy. Massive numbers of people will have to take it upon themselves to organize concrete acts of resistance, to take direct action on a horizontal and participatory basis—in other words, to become anarchists. Tyranny Is the Opposite of Anarchism On February 8, the editorial board of the New York Times wrote that Elon Musk “is on a mission to rampage through the government’s confidential payment systems with an anarchist’s glee.” If you know any real-life anarchists, you know how absurd this is. Given access to the government’s payment systems, no anarchist would begin by cutting off resources to starving children or medical research. An anarchist would begin by cutting off funding to the police and the other instruments of state violence—precisely the institutions that Donald Trump and Elon Musk will expand at any cost. Anyone who tells you anarchism is about abolishing the social safety net for the sake of unbridled profit is lying to you outright. There are other words for that—for example, neoliberalism. Anarchism is something else entirely. Anarchists propose to abolish all institutional means of coercion, so that no one can dominate or oppress anyone else: Anarchism is the idea that everyone is entitled to complete self-determination. No law, government, or decision-making process is more important than the needs and desires of actual human beings. People should be free to shape their relations to their mutual satisfaction, and to stand up for themselves as they see fit. Anarchists oppose all forms of hierarchy—every currency that concentrates power into the hands of a few, every mechanism that puts us at a distance from our potential. -To Change Everything In other words, anarchists seek to bring about a situation in which no politician or billionaire, elected or not, could ever be in a position to cut off essential resources to millions of people with the flick of a pen. This is a profounder commitment to freedom, equality, and the well-being of the general public than one can find within the halls of any government. At this moment of peril, when aspiring autocrats have taken power and are attempting to consolidate permanent control of the state, why would the New York Times muddy the waters by taking a cheap shot at some of Donald Trump’s most determined enemies? Looking more closely at the quote above, it seems that the editorial board’s chief concern is not what will happen as a consequence of Elon Musk’s actions, but whether Musk and his cronies are following the rules properly. A Three-Sided Conflict As Trump and Musk carry out a hostile takeover of the United States government, outlets like the New York Times are narrating a story in which there are two sides: on one side, democracy and the rule of law, and on the other side, the criminal oligarchs that threaten to undermine them. But this is not the only way to understand the situation. It would be more precise to say that there are three camps—those who desire to return to the forms of governance that prevailed until January 20, 2025; those who are currently in the process of overturning that system in order to impose an even more oppressive system; and those who reject both of those options in favor of a more egalitarian alternative. In the first camp, we find people who believe that a certain amount of self-determination is acceptable, as long as it falls neatly within whatever laws happen to be on the books. They are also comfortable with a wide range of ruthless self-seeking destructive behavior, provided that it, too, complies with those same laws. When people in this camp talk about “equality,” they do not mean that all of us should have comparable leverage on the conditions that determine what we can do with our lives. They mean equal opportunity on the market and equality before the law—both of which are preposterous to speak about when some people start life with pennies while others start with billions. People in this camp are concerned about Elon Musk overhauling the federal government, but they had no objection to him amassing hundreds of billions of dollars while a hundred million Americans lived paycheck to paycheck. They are concerned about Trump’s plans for Gaza, but until a few weeks ago many of them were perfectly at ease with the United States government funding a genocide there. In the second camp, we find those who are determined to consolidate power in their own hands, regardless of what laws happen to be on the books. Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their various capitalist, nationalist, and fascist backers will preserve whatever laws assist them and overturn the rest. They have no allegiance to any particular legal system or protocol. They seek their own advantage by any means, mendaciously claiming that they are the only ones who can address the problems of our time (“I alone can fix it”). Such people have always existed, but only over the past few years have resources become so unevenly distributed that a handful of them could take over the United States government. Finally, in the third camp, we find anarchists and other rebels who also have no allegiance to the system of governance that has prevailed until now, but for entirely different reasons. Anarchists believe that everyone deserves the maximum amount of freedom, regardless of what laws happen to be on the books—and therefore, that no one deserves to be able to dominate anyone else, whether by hoarding access to resources or wielding the instruments of state repression. People in this camp hold that regardless of what any constitution proclaims, regardless of how an electorate votes in an election, none of us owe any allegiance to institutions that exist solely for the purpose of imposing disparities in power, whether we are talking about government departments, banks, or private military contractors. In contrast to those who are comfortable with oligarchy and ethnic cleansing as long as no one breaks the rules, there is no way to bribe or blackmail anarchists into making excuses for oppression. Whatever your politics, you are probably sympathetic to the anarchist analysis to some degree—perhaps more than you think. Try this thought experiment: How much do you buy into the idea that the democratic process should trump your own conscience and values? Imagine yourself in a democratic republic with slaves—say, ancient Athens, or ancient Rome, or the United States of America until the end of 1865. Would you obey the law and treat people as property while endeavoring to change the laws, knowing full well that whole generations might live and die in chains in the meantime? Or would you act according to your conscience in defiance of the law, like Harriet Tubman and John Brown? If you would follow in the footsteps of Harriet Tubman, then you, too, believe that there is something more important than the rule of law. This is a problem for anyone who wants to make conformity with the law or with the will of the majority into the final arbiter of legitimacy. -From Democracy to Freedom No Law Will Give You Freedom Staking the defense against Donald Trump on the principle that “no one is above the law” has failed for eight years now. Worse, with Trump back in control of the government, it’s a self-defeating narrative. What happens when his lackeys in Congress pass new laws and the judges he appoints rule in his favor? At that point, all this rhetoric legitimizing the law as a good in itself will only strengthen Trump’s hand. Many people spent several years of Trump’s first term waiting on former FBI director Robert Mueller to investigate and prosecute Donald Trump. As we argued back then, before Mueller’s investigation ended in a complete washout, this doomed strategy reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of the balance of power and the nature of law itself: Democrats still don’t understand how power works. Crime is not the violation of the rules, but the stigma attached to those who break rules without the power to make them. (As they say, steal $25, go to jail; steal $25 million, go to Congress.) At the height of Genghis Khan’s reign, it would have been pointless to accuse the famous tyrant of breaking the laws of the Mongol Empire; as long as Trump has enough of Washington behind him, the same goes for him. Laws don’t exist in some transcendent realm. They are simply the product of power struggles among the elite—not to mention the passivity of the governed—and they are enforced according to the prevailing balance of power. To fetishize the law is to accept that might makes right. It means abdicating the responsibility to do what is ethical regardless of what the laws happen to be. In the long run, the courts cannot constrain Donald Trump. He controls the executive branch, the part of the government that is supposed to enforce their rulings. Nor will the courts constrain Elon Musk. Even apart from Trump’s support, he has unlimited money for court cases. If the courts attempt to punish him by imposing fines, he can afford to pay for tens of billions of dollars’ worth of illegal activity. He already routinely refuses to pay rent and other bills that no ordinary person could ever get away with shrugging off. Nor will the police and other law-enforcement agencies constrain Trump or Musk. In theory, the police exist to enforce laws; in practice, the average cop knows very little about the law—they’re not lawyers, after all—but a great deal about obeying orders. Trump is the favorite politician of the mercenary caste, the ones who sell their capacity to inflict violence to the highest bidder (be that the state or private security contractors). Just as Trump has filled his government with disgraced public figures who depend on him, the police are his natural allies—the more so as a consequence of their compromised relationship with the general public. Continuing to emphasize the centrality of law in objections to Trump’s agenda can only hamstring future movements, discouraging the emergence of the only kind of resistance that could offer any hope once he has completed his takeover of the federal government. The truth is, neither the powerful nor the oppressed have ever had good cause to obey laws—the former because the same privileges that enable them to write the laws release them from the necessity of obeying them, the latter because the laws weren’t established for their benefit in the first place. -“Take Your Pick: Law or Freedom” Remember How We Got Here The binary narrative about criminal oligarchs undermining democracy and the rule of law is misleading in another way. The authoritarians who are overhauling the government do not represent the opposite of the preceding order, but the inevitable consequence of it. Their power grab is the result of several decades of democratically-managed capitalism, which enabled a coterie of billionaires to accumulate so much wealth and power that they no longer believe that they need the trappings of democracy to keep the populace appeased. It was the rules of the previous game that created this situation. Wanting to go back a single step in history, to the previous stage of the process, is foolish, because that was the stage that led us directly to this one. It is impossible to rewind the clock—and even if we could, that would only mean arriving once again at the same situation. The problem is not simply that Musk’s protégés have run rampant through the databases of the government, though that is already producing consequences that will likely be impossible to undo. The real problem is the emergence of a caste of billionaires who no longer require the services of democracy and have enough power to do away with it. These billionaires can buy up communication platforms, buy up both politicians and voters, use the global infrastructure under their control to determine the outcome of geopolitical struggles. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are the ones who are currently attracting the most attention, but behind them are Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and many more. The individual character flaws of these men are beside the point; the significant thing is that the mechanisms of neoliberal capitalism are systematically concentrating power in the hands of people who are completely disinterested in others’ agency or well-being. This is why milquetoast centrism cannot offer a convincing alternative to the despotism of the fascists and technocrats. Describing the Democrats’ unsuccessful strategy of chasing Republicans further and further to the right, one Democratic politician quipped that “voters who ordered a Coca-Cola don’t want a Diet Coke.” This doesn’t put things strongly enough. Considering that Trump won the election on an explicit platform of mass deportations and autocracy, Democrats imitating Republican talking points while promising to “defend democracy” is like offering Diet Coke to a cocaine addict. Today’s Republican voters are motivated in great part by the desire to see violence directed against those more vulnerable than themselves. It is autocracy itself they desire, not any particular policy. This bloodlust is the consequence of the avarice and narcissism that neoliberal capitalism fostered in so many people and then failed to fulfill. Those who have become accustomed to powerlessness and passivity, who urgently desire revenge but do not understand who is responsible for their situation, will elevate tyrants to power for the vicarious thrill of seeing someone made to suffer, even if the consequences make life worse for practically everyone. Doubtless some of them would change sides if they saw a real opportunity to improve their lives, but that would require much more than a promise to go back to the Biden era. If the defenders of democracy cannot offer anything more inspiring than a return to the previous state of affairs—the one that caused this catastrophe in the first place—they will lose, and they will deserve to lose. It will take a more ambitious and far-reaching vision to defeat oligarchy. Become an Anarchist or Forever Hold Your Peace In 2020, the most powerful uprising in living memory took place in the United States. Millions of people filled the streets. They were not galvanized by a timid electoral campaign, nor simply by the footage of police murdering George Floyd, but by the brave actions of ordinary people who stood up to injustice—above all, by the burning of the Third Precinct in Minneapolis. By driving the political discourse in the election year, this uprising not only turned voters away from Donald Trump—it also showed billionaires that Trump would not be able to preserve conditions suitable for business, forcing them to temper their ambitions. One poll showed Americans supporting the burning of the police precinct by a larger margin than any victorious presidential candidate this century. In response to the uprising, Joe Biden and other Democrats doubled down on supporting the police. This shows that the Democrats believe that it is impossible to maintain power under capitalism without channeling more and more resources towards repression, tasking the police with keeping an increasingly desperate population under control. Today, the Republicans are going even further, cultivating support for explicitly patriarchal, racist, xenophobic, and authoritarian politics—in short, for fascism. The implication is that as billionaires accumulate more and more power and the consequences of their rapaciousness trickle down to the rest of us, it will take more than police to keep the population under control: it will also take informal militias, and falsehoods about why some demographics deserve to have more power than everyone else, and probably, in the long run, ethnic cleansing and genocide on a larger scale than we have yet seen. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. invited us to trust that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But today it is clear that things are not slowly, steadily getting better, neither in the field of civil rights, nor in regards to the natural environment, nor justice, nor governance. “The function of government is to centralize power and impose domination: to enforce, to punish, to administer. Politicians preside over an economy more oppressive and invasive than any dictatorship could be by itself.” The state is not the solution to these problems. It is a protection racket that—until recently—purported to solve our problems in order to lull us into dependence (“I alone can fix it”!) while suppressing our ability to meet our needs without it. Now, under Trump and Musk in the United States and rulers like Javier Milei elsewhere, there is no longer any pretense that the state exists to do anything besides oppress people and defend the profits of the rich. All this time, the state has been accumulating the means—both technological and social—that are required to force this new reality on us, and now the tyrants are intent on using them. Yet in doing so, Elon Musk and Donald Trump are giving millions of people cause to reevaluate their priorities and dedicate their lives to profound social change. The 2020 uprising offered a glimpse of what it looks like for large numbers of people to act on their own initiative, creating a groundswell of resistance that is much greater than the sum of its parts. Our chief error, in 2020, was in imagining that we could simply return to business as usual afterwards, when in fact our only hope is to change the world. As Trump and Musk gut every aspect of the state that is not about profiteering and repression, the stakes of this moment are coming into focus. There is no more middle ground. If you care about public health, you have to become a revolutionary. If you care about medical research, you have to become a revolutionary. If you care about climate change, about labor conditions, about the well-being of children in warzones, there is nothing else for it—you have to become a revolutionary. In the movements to come, we must make space for the civil servants Elon Musk has fired, for the scientists and academics whose funding has dried up, for those who once sought social change through electoral politics. They should put all their skills to work in new contexts, experimenting with new forms of resistance and spreading whatever strategies work far and wide. But we should not simply try to rebuild the broken system that brought us to this dire situation. We must build a new vision together along with the means to bring it into being. Anarchists propose to build our collective capacity to act on a horizontal and decentralized basis, rather than entrusting our agency to leaders. We seek to create a lattice of overlapping participatory and voluntary associations that can meet people’s material and spiritual needs. Rather than hoarding resources for ourselves the way the billionaires do, we seek to abolish all of the mechanisms that impose artificial scarcity, to create commons that benefit everyone. We seek to generate abundance, not profit. To be an anarchist means to recognize that our freedom and well-being are inextricably bound up with the freedom and well-being of billions like us. It means discarding all the old excuses for remaining subservient to those who only endeavor to enrich themselves at others’ expense. It means becoming fiercely loyal to what is best in ourselves and each other, to our capacity for compassion and cooperation and courage. Across two centuries, anarchists have resisted under monarchies and persisted through dictatorships. Now that liberal democracy and neoliberal capitalism are concluding in a new form of tyranny, a new generation must draw on this long legacy of struggle. There is no going back to the way things were, to the future that we once anticipated. The old world is in flames around us. Become an anarchist, or forever hold your peace.

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

The Trump administration is paving the way for mass deportations by building new prison camps and invoking the Alien Enemies Act, which was used to justify the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Motivated by nativism and white nationalism, Steven Miller and other officials are attempting to ethnically cleanse the United States, while tech and prison companies profit on lucrative government contracts and corporations continue to exploit immigrant labor. Knowing that mass deportations will inflict devastating costs, Trump has chiefly been concentrating his efforts in cities like Chicago and Denver that are governed by his political adversaries. Nonetheless, people are getting organized. Communities across the US are mobilizing rapid response networks that can respond to raids and support those targeted by state violence. Students across the US are staging walkouts; people are holding mass demonstrations and fighting back against deportations. If we fail to stand in solidarity with those targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) today, the same infrastructure of repression will eventually be turned against others, as well. An injury to one is an injury to all! Do your part to melt the ICE. Eight Things You Can Do to Stop ICE Click on the image to download the PDF. Please print these out and distribute them in your community! Know Your Rights—Educate Your Community Learn your rights in interactions with ICE and law enforcement. Trump officials have complained that people knowing their rights makes it “very difficult” to carry out raids. Asserting our rights can disrupt their plans, delay their efforts, and shift the power dynamics in encounters with law enforcement. Distribute “Know Your Rights” cards and fliers in your community. Organize teams to get them into schools and workplaces. Host a training at your local community center, church, or union hall. Publicizing this information is an chance to get people together to strategize about how to accomplish the other tasks on this list. Vet Information—Stop Rumors Disinformation spreads quickly when people are afraid. Set up hotlines, Signal loops, and social media accounts that can vet information, verify reports of ICE activity, and circulate reliable updates. If your area already has a hotline, volunteer to help keep it running. Don’t amplify rumors; when you see them spreading, debunk them. Reports about ICE activity should include the exact time, date, and location of the sighting, the number of agents, and a visual description of their uniforms, vehicles, and badges—or better still, photographic evidence. For more information, continue reading here. Organize Rapid Response Networks Organize a rapid response network to mobilize against ICE raids by recording their activity, providing support to the targeted, and organizing an immediate response. Documenting ICE activity has proven useful for understanding how they behave; it has also helped people in court. Wherever possible, block or slow their actions. In the past, crowds mobilized by rapid response networks have blockaded ICE deportation vans and protested outside ICE facilities. You can read about some rapid response networks here and here. Organize Mutual Aid—Support Bail Funds ICE raids disrupt lives and break families apart. Many people are afraid to attend school or go to work for fear of being kidnapped by ICE. Organize mutual aid programs to provide support to those in hiding and to families whose breadwinners have been abducted. Start a free grocery program. Deliver meals. Connect with existing support networks and organizations to expand their efforts. Support bail funds to get arrestees out of the system as soon as possible. Fight Criminalization—Shut out the Police Ordinary interactions with police are one of the chief risks to those targeted by ICE. A single false criminal charge could ruin a person’s life, even if it would never hold up in court. Encourage neighbors and coworkers not to call the police. Organize neighborhood networks, conflict resolution projects, and other ways to address community needs without involving the criminal “justice” industry. Debunk false narratives about rising crime rates—these are just excuses to increase the scope of repression and the profits of those who invest in it. Explain what everyone has to gain by standing in solidarity with those who are on the receiving end of criminalization. Publicly shame police officers and other mercenaries who sell their capacity to inflict harm to the highest bidder. Stand In Solidarity with ICE Detainees—Fight to Abolish ICE Stand in solidarity with those locked inside ICE facilities. Support their efforts to organize. Prisoners in many ICE facilities organize hunger strikes and labor stoppages demanding better food, better conditions, access to healthcare, and legal representation. Organize to prevent the construction of new ICE facilities. Mobilize against contractors that work with ICE or supply technology to ICE. Connect the struggle against ICE to other organizing within and against prisons. Connect Communities These tactics will be most effective if you pursue them in community with those who are immediately at risk. For example, if you maintain a platform sharing verified sightings of ICE in your community, this will do little good unless it reaches those who need that information most. Strengthen the ties between those who are targeted by ICE and the rest of your community. Build a Culture of Resistance against ICE and State Repression Build a culture of resistance in your neighborhood, school, or workplace. Make the walls of your community speak with stickers and posters. Encourage non-cooperation with ICE. Strategize with others in your community about how to support those facing repression and take the offensive against those who are scapegoating the undocumented. Every time ICE wants to attack your community, they should know that their activity will be recorded and reported, that people will converge on them wherever they show up, that there will be consequences for their actions. Every operation should cost them more resources than the last. If all of us do what we can, the accumulation of our efforts will save lives and preserve communities. For More Information Immigrant Legal Resource Center When ICE Comes Calling, Rapid Community Responses Can Make a Difference ICE Watch Programs Can Protect Immigrants in Your Neighborhood A Guide for Employers: What to Do if Immigration Comes to Your Workplace Think There’s Nothing You Can Do to Stop ICE? Think Again. Willem van Spronsen’s Statement about Why He Took Action against ICE Know Your Rights: You have constitutional rights! DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR if an immigration agent is knocking on the door. DO NOT ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS from an immigration agent if they try to talk to you. You have the right to remain silent. DO NOT SIGN ANYTHING without speaking to a lawyer first. You have the right to speak with a lawyer. If you are outside of your home, ask the agent if you are free to leave. If they say yes, leave. GIVE THIS TEXT TO THE AGENT. If you are inside of your home, show the text through the window or slide it under the door: I do not wish to speak with you, answer your questions, or sign or hand you any documents based on my 5th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution. I do not give you permission to enter my home based on my 4th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution unless you have a warrant to enter, signed by a judge or magistrate with my name on it that you slide under the door. I do not give you permission to search any of my belongings based on my 4th Amendment rights. I choose to exercise my constitutional rights. ICE agents often carry administrative rather than judicial warrants. They would like you to think that these are the same, but they are not. If the agent does not have a judicial warrant with all the correct information for the specific person they are looking to detain, they do not have authority to enter private areas without consent, including private areas at a workplace. Talk with your coworkers so that everyone understands which areas are public and private; put up signs and keep doors closed. Create a policy on how to respond if ICE comes to your place of work. You can learn more about how to deal with workplace raids here.

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