cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24553
The mayor of Portland, Oregon demanded that federal immigration enforcement officials leave his city after they were seen lobbing tear gas and flash bang grenades at demonstrators.
As reported by The Oregonian on Sunday, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson reacted with outrage after seeing federal agents deploying tear gas and firing rubber bullets at thousands of protesters who on Saturday marched to a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in the city's South Waterfront neighborhood.
Wilson called the agents' attacks on protesters a vast overreaction to a "peaceful daytime protest, where the vast majority of those present violated no laws, made no threat, and posed no danger to federal forces" stationed at the facility.
“To those who continue to work for ICE: Resign. To those who control this facility: Leave,” Wilson said. "Through your use of violence and the trampling of the Constitution, you have lost all legitimacy and replaced it with shame."
The mayor also heaped scorn on federal agents for employing such tactics when several children were present in the crowd.
"To those who continue to make these sickening decisions, go home, look in a mirror, and ask yourselves why you have gassed children," he said. "Ask yourselves why you continue to work for an agency responsible for murders on American streets. No one is forcing you to lie to yourself, even as your bosses continue to lie to the American people."
Erin Hoover Barnett, a former Oregonian reporter who attended the demonstration, told the paper that she saw "what looked like two guys with rocket launchers" who started dousing the crowd with tear gas on Saturday.
"To be among parents frantically trying to tend to little children in strollers," she said, "people using motorized carts trying to navigate as the rest of us staggered in retreat, unsure of how to get to safety, was terrifying."
A Portland protester identified only as Robin gave an account similar to Barnett's during an interview with local news station KPTV.
"About eight or 10 of them came out with guns whatever kind of guns they have and flash bombed just started throwing them at the crowd just exploding everywhere," said Robin. "It was like a war zone. It felt like we were under attack. I definitely got hit. I had to run around the corner and pour a bunch of water on my face."
One local protester identified only as Celeste told local news station KOIN 6 that she was out on the streets because she wanted to "fight tyranny."
"What’s happening in our streets with ICE is ridiculous," said Celeste. "It’s illegal. It’s got to be stopped. And no one’s going to stop it. Except we the people. We’ve got a tyrant in the White House, and no one will stop him but us.”
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
The nascent conditions for revolution are developing beyond anything we have seen in 100 years and youre talking about "proper ideology" lol
You have a personal responsibility to connect new people with education and meaningful political work. Hopefully, as a proper leftist, youre all booked up with one on ones, classes and events that youre helping to facilitate
I largely agree with your post, the concern is that as we do our best to spread our vision of a socialist future, there are like 100 different fascist rabbit holes with tons of resources that we are competing against. The "proper ideology" isn't in the left-sectarian sense, but the socialism or barbarism sense.
We need to show up and guide/educate/lead, if fascists come into our movement and start stealing people out of our meetings and actions, then that's on us.
Dont invent problems we dont have when we can help solves the ones we do. And right now there are major capacity problems everywhere, more people joining orgs than are able to be engaged with, more appetite for action and training than we have capacity to train or lead classes and events.
looking at what's happening now as the nascent conditions for revolution may be jumping the gun a bit but a nascent revolution can go either way, so yes you want people to have some sort of actual ideological basis to guide their energy or else it can either be co-opted by 'never trump republicans' or the establishment democrats who want to act like just making ICE wear bodycams and no masks is the solution, or fizzle out because they don't know the end goal of what they're fighting for. what would that revolution look like if there's not some sort of ideology or broader shared set of goals? think back to occupy and what happened to their ideologically aimless movement, they had some good criticisms and energy but it ultimately got funneled elsewhere or fizzled out
First of all, from a marxist perspective, the nascent conditions for revolution are always present in capitalism. Nothing the bourgeoisie does erases the fundamental contradiction of capitalism, or the revolutionary potential of the working class.
I understand what you mean though, and its a big ask from liberals and the USian middle class to sign on to a revolution.
But, even if the current moment isnt revolutionary, nothing about it is hypothetical. So all that is needed is to do what we already know needs done. We def dont need to make up more problems than the ones we face directly IRL organizing
Also the left has transformed dramatically since occupy. It doesn't even compare imo.
of course lol i didn't get into that because i figure it's implied
the point about the left during occupy vs now is true. i hope there are enough of us to guide the liberals who are finding new disdain towards this bullshit country and system in the right direction
My personal responsibility is giving all my spare money to China so I can fund an actual revolution instead of the Western, and even worse, the American, left
Death to America
I'd love to talk to you sometime to learn more about your theories, reach out to me if you wanna have a discussion, I'm very interested in hearing more