By Jesse D. Palmer
The regime thought they could send masked goons to occupy cities, carry out arbitrary abductions, street corner identity checks and house raids against immigrants — and most people would just accept it as the new normal. Anyone who protested could be isolated, othered and brutalized. They thought ICE enforcement would be another wedge issue dividing society to consolidate power. But their macho man tactics have backfired.
ICE isn’t about immigration. Mass deportations with detention facilities and masked agents lay the groundwork for sham elections. It’s about cameras using facial recognition and AI to create databases of troublemakers. If it’s not happening to you yet because you’re a citizen or because you’re white — it’s just a matter of time.
But we’re not going to let it happen. Every day we disrupt brutality, improve our networks, expand the space we have to maneuver, set up alternative communications and economic systems and build solidarity and mutual aid helps. Obedience and passive compliance is not neutral or safe — it’s active complicity and riskier for your personal safety in the long run
It’s up to me and you and millions of people everywhere from all walks of life refuse to accept the script and act out. Psychological determination to fight for freedom and reject tyranny is the most crucial thing we need to build. Obviously it’s harder to figure out specifically what each of us can do at each moment, although I try to make some suggestions below. But if willpower and intentions are strong, effective resistance follows.
Even though the most outrageous aspects of the regime’s ICE secret police tactics have backfired, so far, it’s no exaggeration to say there’s not much time to act. Every day, the bullies are trying to consolidate their power in hundreds of ways, many of which we cannot see or which are not being met with a big public backlash. We’re not out of danger just because one one of their tactics fails. Once authoritarians seize total power, it can take decades to dislodge them, so the next months may determine how we live for the rest of our lives.
What we’ve learned in the last year is that the regime will grab as much power as they can — they’re not going to be satisfied or stop on their own. They want it all.
But what we’ve also learned is that their power is not total yet — they overreach and back down when people stand up to them. The feds have been able to dominate some big institutions and companies that have operations and assets they can control and seize, but it’s much harder to get millions of regular people and small businesses and organizations to submit. The feds don’t have enough goons or prosecutors to physically stop or punish us all.
Instead, their plan has been to use publicized acts of brutality to inspire fear and submission. This has backfired spectacularly. Instead of everyone giving up, it seems like masked thugs kidnapping, smashing and killing have pissed off and activated millions of people, some of whom were perhaps trying not to pay attention or who were feeling overwhelmed or paralyzed.
In cities invaded by ICE, the population has risen up with incredible courage, self-organization, solidarity and generosity towards those being hunted. It hasn’t just been a few people who can be isolated and marginalized, but broad cross-sections of the community from every conceivable walk of life. Repression has made people more committed to protecting their neighborhoods from invaders.
As an anonymous crimethinc author wrote, “When you ask patrollers what they want people to know about what’s happening in their city, they barely mention the broken windows and bruises. They describe the feeling of connection and solidarity filling the streets. They make hearts with their hands from car to car, they blow kisses. They make dinners for one another, they drop off groceries for undocumented families that have been locked inside their homes for weeks. They tell us about how, when a skirmish broke out on a busy road, an entire café full of people stood up as one, dropping what they were doing to run towards the sound. We hear again and again about their deep love for the community in the Twin Cities and for their neighbors. Every day, people who never imagined themselves fighting ICE are participating in bold combative actions.”
The vigorous response has been the opposite of what the feds expected based on their cynical, cruel and selfish worldview. It has proved that face-to-face relationships and grassroots community are stronger than hierarchical repressive structures, especially when they’re broad-based and extend beyond radical bubbles. This type of mobilization requires a gigantic effort by huge numbers of courageous people. It isn’t easy nor guaranteed.
There’s wide consensus in the US that people don’t want to live in a police state. Along with the US’s roots in slavery, genocide, and colonialism, there’s also tolerance and neighborliness. There is broad commitment that people should have a voice in public decisions and that freedom of speech and fairness are American values.
Culture and values are more powerful than government and legal structures, because culture is decentralized and personal so it can’t be revoked or so easily corrupted. Resisting the descent into autocracy depends on harnessing culture to fuel action.
Refuse, delay, obstruct, brawl
We cannot protest, dialogue or reform ourselves out of fascism — it’s absurd to assume there will be free and fair elections or a smooth transfer of power if tyrants lose a vote. Nonetheless, it’s easier for authoritarians to rule if most of the population supports them and it’s harder for them if most people oppose them. Despots can lose control when almost everyone’s against them. That’s why the regime is so focused on optics, degrading alternative information channels, dominating the narrative and lying about virtually everything.
It’s worth our time to expose their corruption and make fun of their stupidity so everyone can see what embarrassing bozos they are. What if instead of fearing and hating them, we laughed at them instead?
Successful resistance can happen on a mass scale because it is decentralized — both arising from existing community connections and building new ones. Now is a good time to talk to friends, family members and people you know through work, school, church, sports, social connections or whatever — ballroom dancing.
The most basic thing people can do is refuse to go along — in whatever form that takes and often in small ways. It’s great if you can turn ICE away from your restaurant or refuse to sell them gasoline or use the bathroom. Government workers or workers at corporations collaborating with the government can resign, refuse orders or just do work poorly, incompetently and slowly.
The economy should not be working well while despots seize power — anything that hurts the economy and redirects resources away from regime-complicit big business fights back. Alternative economic systems like barter, gifting, mutual aid, gardening, sharing, bicycling, cooperation, and focusing less on consumption and more on relationships and experiences will shift us away from the machine. When you have to spend money, can you avoid big corporations that support the regime and re-direct to local small businesses? I’m looking at you, Amazon and Whole Foods… Purity isn’t necessary — we can all withdraw as much as we’re comfortable with, starting slowly and expanding over time.
Europeans are boycotting US products such as tech platforms that all support the regime and are major US exports. But the biggest US export are fossil fuels — fascism and climate change go hand in hand. Every time you fill up the tank, some of your money is going to pay for the new ballroom. The US economy is global and vulnerable. What if everyone stopped lending to the US government to support its 1.8 trillion dollar budget deficit?
And why are we paying taxes for our own jail cells? Perhaps businesses could switch to a donation model like some in Minneapolis have? If millions of people paid less tax or refused to pay taxes, the government’s enforcement apparatus are limited. Remember the Boston Tea Party? Let’s use cash as much as possible so it cannot be phased out, which is what’s happened in China where the government monitors all transactions. The government is at war with its own people but we’re not defenseless.
Along with independent economic structures, it’s time to build and nourish independent communication and media operations that are local and person-to-person. While the regime spreads propaganda to prop up public opinion, its big tech puppets have got us addicted like junkies to their shiny toys that collect our data so we can be categorized, surveilled and followed. A few allied billionaires have recently purchased a majority of the TV and radio broadcasters and entertainment studios. Constant scrolling and mass-media garbage are mental junk food that leaves us feeling empty, lonely and sad. We can do better.
Stepping back from a system based on tedious, meaningless jobs that concentrate obscene levels of wealth into a tiny number of hands while wrecking the environment is a good idea even beyond weakening tyrants. The less we participate, the more our our sense of agency, self-esteem and satisfaction expand as we figure out how to do stuff for ourselves and connect with real people and ecological systems close at hand.
Building own own alternative economies, redirecting our time and resources away from our oppressors and stepping away from this collapsing mess is a creative, life-affirming adventure. It’s not easy in practice. But trying to fit into systems that are broken is what has brought us to this moment with all of its boredom, meaninglessness, loneliness and isolation, along with fascism.
Freedom is not something you have — it’s something you do. Let’s figure out how to take up as much space as possible so as to keep space open, rather than self-limit and shrink down.
The day Alex Pretti was senselessly shot in the back, I felt physically ill — I needed to do something right away to respond. My daughter had received a progress pride flag as a gift, so I went to the hardware store to get a flagpole to hang it up on our house to be loud and proud in devotion to a more inclusive community. I also taped an “ICE out” sign to my bicycle. Everywhere I go, it starts conversations. My wife started wearing abolish ICE t-shirts. Anyone can do this stuff. It’s harder for despots if they get booed whenever they go out in public. It builds public morale if everywhere you go, people are displaying signs denouncing the secret police.
Going to protests isn’t enough, yet I’ve felt much better after some recent marches — they’re shared experiences that build solidarity and determination. My 13-year-old daughter walked out of middle school for the January 30 general strike, which was one of my proudest moments as a parent so far.
Protests can be fun and disruptive. There were hundreds of Alex Pretti memorial bike rides in late January that combined dissent with socializing, exercise, fresh air and visibility. It’s been great to see all the creativity — inflatable frog dance parties, sing-alongs outside hotels so ICE agents cannot sleep, and people throwing dildos at ICE vehicles. In addition to blowing whistles and filming, there’s many ways to help keep federal agents caught in traffic.
Focusing on our humanity, dignity and joy can help us to overcome the regime’s division, fear and anger — which is really all they have. If you need heavily armed masked men to get your way, you’re proving how frightened and weak you really are. The future belongs to people who believe in something and who believe in each other. It belongs to people who step out of line and take risks because it’s the right thing to do and because we care, not because we’re trying to control or dominate anyone. Our strength flows from the better world we carry in our hearts.