Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
On Saturday, June 7, the depravity of the capitalist state became too much for the people of California to bear. Months of masked and armored government thugs kidnapping people off the streets, locking children in cells, and leaving babies wailing for parents they’ll never see again have led to an explosion of popular rage that’s still burning in the streets of Los Angeles. The fundamental decency of working people will not allow them to stand passively by while their government attacks neighbors, friends, and loved ones, all supposedly in the name of democracy and representative institutions. The same government has issued laughable threats of retaliation in response: 2,000 national guards under the insurrection act; U.S, marines. For what? To crack skulls and enforce “order.” And why not? The national guard was created to brutalize the people! (See Daniel Shays).
On Friday, ICE made widespread raids across Los Angeles, arresting 44 people with the express purpose of deporting them without offering even the fig leaf of liberal “due process.” By Saturday afternoon, the people of Paramount had had enough. When rumors started circulating that ICE was planning a raid on a local Home Depot, the people of Paramount gathered in force to protect their community.
The revolt began at the Home Depot at 6400 Alondra Boulevard — and was provoked by the police forces themselves. Federal agents threw flash-bangs at peaceful demonstrators to try to scare them off and complete their quota of kidnappings. The demonstrators fought back. Over the course of the day, righteous anger escalated to throwing rocks and bricks, burning cars, and establishing vehicle barricades to stop ICE deportation buses.
As has become typical, the consciousness of the masses is racing ahead of any pretension of an organized revolutionary movement. Our “Marxists” are too busy calling their senators and organizing police-approved parades to get involved, except perhaps to raise their hands in surrender and loudly proclaim a policy of treasonous social peace.
But the “Marxists” who are afraid of the spontaneous wrath of the people are exposing themselves more and more to be nothing more than toothless opportunists of the old regime. Let them show their true colors! The flags they fly look red at first glance, but look at them closely — you’ll see they’re the white flags of surrender; the white flags of reaction.
This spontaneous wrath must be organized, or it will dissolve into disillusionment and defeatism! We cannot let it.
Real revolutionists must not only embrace the spontaneous rage of the people, but give it aid and support. Marxists in the affected areas must form combat brigades at once. They must be strategic, arm themselves, and openly march with the people. “But we’ll be destroyed!” Maybe, and maybe not… but if we don’t stand up, then we deserve to be destroyed. The revolutionary who hides from the people, who insists on remaining underground at all costs, or worse, aboveground but only as spokesmen for cowardly social peace, is nothing more than an enemy partisan.
If your organization forbids you from forming combat units, leave it.
We must build combat brigades! A combat brigade is a Marxist organization, composed of militant cadre, organized along military lines for the purpose of providing support and projecting power on the ground. A combat brigade is not the same as community self-defense. Community self-defense is the construction of mass organizations, with trained Marxist membership, sometimes under the direction of Marxist organizations, that mobilizes the activated masses and forms a central spine for them to act.
Quickly, now, study Mao’s On Guerilla Warfare, the Minimanual of the Urban Guerilla, and the U.S. marines doctrine manual Warfighting.
Popular consciousness admits the need for violent confrontation and struggle against the state. The escalation and ultimate military defeat of the student movement, the breaking of the 2020 June Insurrections, the actions of Aaron Bushnell, the Universal Healthcare executioner, and Elias Rodriguez have prepared whole strata of the masses to act. No less, the obscene public show of the Trump immigration police are galvanizing popular resolve.
If you are a Marxist in an insurrectionary region, form your brigade. Be prepared for community defense. Establish emergency phone trees. Hold mass meetings. Assure the community that you will respond. Distribute flyers and pamphlets.
Contact the All-Empire Worker’s League if you want to help coordinate actions. Contact USU Press for propaganda resources. Join us.
The time has come to fight.
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