- cross-posted to:
- usa@midwest.social
- cross-posted to:
- usa@midwest.social
Planned Locations for New and Expanded ICE Offices
- 2334 E. Highway 80, Douglas, Arizona
- Deconcini Port of Entry, Nogales, Arizona
- 2020 Main Street, Irvine, California
- James C. Corman Federal Building, Los Angeles, California
- John E. Moss Federal Building, Sacramento, California
- Edward J. Schwartz Courthouse and Federal Building, San Diego, California
- Santa Ana Federal Building, Santa Ana, California
- Abraham A. Ribicoff Federal Building, Hartford, Connecticut
- Potomac Center North, Washington, DC
- One Enterprise Center, Jacksonville, Florida
- One Riverview Square, Miami, Florida
- 75 Vineyards Boulevard, Naples, Florida
- 12249 Science Drive, Orlando, Florida
- 1551 Sawgrass Corporate Parkway, Sunrise, Florida
- Portico At Meridian Center, Meridian, Idaho
- Oakbrook Gateway, Oakbrook, Illinois
- Penn on Parkway, Carmel, Indiana
- 1201 Third Street, Alexandria, Louisiana
- One City Center Building, Portland, Maine
- 201 International Circle, Cockeysville, Maryland
- 6505 Belcrest Road, Hyattsville, Maryland
- John F. Kennedy Federal Building, Boston, Massachusetts
- Rosa Parks Federal Building, Detroit, Michigan
- Waters Center, Grand Rapids, Michigan
- One Towne Square, Southfield, Michigan
- Norris Cotton Federal Building, Manchester, New Hampshire
- 5 Becker Farm Road, Roseland, New Jersey
- 843 Union Avenue, New Windsor, New York
- 88 Froehlich Farm Boulevard, Woodbury, New York
- 11000 Regency Lakeview, Cary, North Carolina
- Whitehall Corporate Center, Charlotte, North Carolina
- 774 Park Meadow Road, Westerville, Ohio
- Corporate Tower, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
- Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building, Portland, Oregon
- 1000 Westlakes Drive, Berwyn, Pennsylvania
- 801 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Park Place Corporate Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- 3000 Sidney Street, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Yorktowne Medical Center, York, Pennsylvania
- San Patricio Office Center, Guaynabo, Puerto Rico
- 1441 Main Street, Columbia, South Carolina
- 5904 Ridgeway Center Parkway, Memphis, Tennessee
- Estes Kefauver Federal Building, Nashville, Tennessee
- Nashville House Office Building, Nashville, Tennessee
- 3381 US Highway 277, Eagle Pass, Texas
- Epicenter Office Community, El Paso, Texas
- 222 E. Van Buren Avenue, Harlingen, Texas
- 125 E. John Carpenter Freeway, Irving, Texas
- 15727 Anthem Parkway, San Antonio, Texas
- 1780 Hughes Landing, The Woodlands, Texas
- Heritage Center, Annandale, Virginia
- The Moorefield, Richmond, Virginia
- Cabot Park, Sterling, Virginia
- Riverfront Technical Park, Tukwila, Washington
Archived copies of the article (do not contain the location list)
If you have one coming, it’s important to set up a local rapid response network. That means:
- A hotline for locals to call (and distributing the number)
- Town or neighborhood level signal chats to alert people about what is happening
- Whistle distribution so that it’s possible to rapidly alert immediate neighbors
- Starting regular patrols to spot ICE before they kidnap anybody
We haven’t even tried our most powerful non-violent tactic yet: a proper, long-term, nation wide General Strike.
The country would be brought to its knees if suddenly deprived of profit and labor, allowing us to simply ignore the democrats and their lack of spine, and instead demand real changes (abolishing ICE should be towards the top of the list).
That tactic was extremely effective in Chile in 2019, and had they not fallen for the trick of liberal reform, they would’ve had a successful revolution on their hands with virtually no bloodshed.
There are some concrete steps all of us can take toward enacting that hard-core general strike to make it more viable and bearable for us all. (the titles below expand if you click them).
Learn First Aid! ⛑️
As we’re seeing, deadly violence is being used against us and it will only continue. It extremely important to have the skills to be able to keep yourself and others alive if they get hurt.
Tacticool Girlfriend provides a great introduction to building a personal first aid kit, called an IFAK, which can deal with things like bullet wounds and other serious bleeding wounds. I also want to emphasize her recommendation of only buying medical gear from reputable sources (not Amazon!), such as North American Rescue to avoid fakes that could cost you your life.
But you’ll need to learn how to use that equipment, too. The best resource for that is to take a local Stop The Bleed class, which are pretty widely available in most places. They may cost a small fee, but can also sometimes be free. Alternatively, if you cannot access a local class, this video by PrepMedic will give you a solid understanding of how to use Tourniquets and Gauze for wound packing.
Injuries are less harmful if they are tended to early. Learning first aid can help conserve resources when healthcare becomes unaffordable. Having several medics in case of harm by police is an extremely powerful morale booster during a protest that may become a police riot. When you become comfortable with the basics of first aid, riot medicine is the next suggested step.
Establish or join local Mutual Aid networks ✊
If you haven’t already, get to know your neighbors. Mutual aid is a willingness to support and grow your community. This can include informal networks through friends, tenant/renter organizations, solidarity groups, and industrial unions.
These are groups using direct action to solve each other’s problems. Building strong communities makes it difficult for fascism to take root. The actions of the government are going to hit every community hard, and the ones who build trust in each other and work together are most likely to survive. We’ve been building a list of resources in !inperson@slrpnk.net to help you on your way. Also check out this handy guide to find existing groups in your area.
This isn’t only for your own community protection. Your ability to organize today will change the political landscape tomorrow. When revolution occurs, the social organizations that show the greatest resilience through the regime are the ones typically calling the shots when the dust settles. When it comes to elections, get out the vote drives are useless if most of the voters are fascists. At some point, you have to do grassroots political education if you don’t want fascist candidates winning elections. Mutual aid networks are excellent forums not only for teaching each other good political ideas, but demonstrating them in practice.
Join a Union and Prepare for an even longer General Strike! 💪
If you aren’t in a union (or even if you are, it’s worth dual-carding), consider joining the IWW to unionize your workplace (bonus: you’ll get higher wages, better benefits, and more time off if you succeed!) to strengthen a general strike if we manage to enact one, as most unions have a strike fund that can supplement your income during a general strike to make it more financially bearable (you should also save as much money as you can reasonably do, so it can also be used to keep yourself afloat during a strike). A General Strike is officially planned by the UAW for May 1st 2028, but it was planned before Trump was elected, and by then may be too late, so prepare now for one that may start sooner.
And for our international friends, you should join one as well, as fascism is gaining momentum globally. If your country isn’t listed below, just contact the IWW directly in the link above, and they’ll help you set up a new local branch.
Adopt Security Culture and Digital Camouflage 🛡️
Sometimes benign seeming efforts can turn into unexpected personal data collecting traps. Like an obscure website for exchanging contact info with other students turning into a global ad-tech surveillance network (Facebook), or innocent seeming online personality tests being use to harvest character profiles. Even Etsy, Reddit, Tinder, and Duolingo are feeding information to US Government Agencies like ICE.
Security culture is commonly used to describe the general awareness of such potential traps and how it can affect groups or entire communities. This goes beyond mere individual privacy efforts, as without joint efforts these often fail to work.
Especially in activist circles, security culture is paramount. For opsec reasons not everyone in the group might be aware of what clandestine efforts others are involved in, but with a general security culture many potential data leaks can be avoided.
Movements are made by the volume of their participants, and the easier and less dangerous it is to participate, the more people will get involved. As more people get involved, individual involvement becomes even less dangerous, creating a virtuous cycle.
We’ll start it off with some General Advice:
For a full guide on what encrypted communications platforms to use, and how to stay off the radar, read the Digital Camouflage section within the Monthly Meta post here (you’ll need to scroll down. I’d add it here, but it won’t fit in this comment).
I’d also highly recommend Full Spectrum Resistance to anyone who wants further info on how to resist (audiobook version here).
you need to read US labor history if you think it’s been unarmed. See Blair Mountain.
I’m very familiar with it. Matewan (which takes place before the battle for Blair Mountain) is one of my favorite movies.
The difference is in the period where the US labor movement employed violent resistance; The government was not literal Nazis, the US had not yet become the most advanced military on the planet, and the police and strike-breaker thugs weren’t as well equipped as the military itself, nor had state funded billion dollar budgets to boot. Hell, the workers at Blair Mountain could’ve done a lot of damage, maybe even inspire a popular revolt across the US, had they not been persuaded to stop.
We, and the US labor movement, is at this moment facing a problem much closer to the consolidation of power ofNazi Germany, where unions were destroyed by an overwhelming state violence.
I’m not saying that it’d be a bad idea to be prepared if non-violent resistance fails, I’ve made posts in that area as well. But at the same time, it’s quite clear that the regime is looking for an excuse to call martial law, cancel the elections, and unleash the military upon all who oppose it.
I’m personally not super confident that the US military will refuse orders, or that a large enough faction within it would split off and join the resistance if ordered to round up and kill US citizens. Without that, being the initiator in a violent resistance would light off a powder keg that is not to our advantage, as it would then reduce our resistance force to only the most militant. And again, if the military blindly follows orders, it would be open-slaughter in a straight up fight. At best, the resistance could manage a Troubles like reaction.
There’s a point where we may be forced into that position regardless, but we’re currently dominating in winning public sentiment, and lowering the popularity of the regime, which also doesn’t seem competent enough realize that they’re speedrunning the violent suppression part (Hitler and Mussolini built it up patiently over a decade), and aren’t providing the economic gains to their base to compensate for the violent shock.
It would seem prudent to let the regime continue to hang itself as we further ferment non-violent resistance and educate workers of how much power they can wield with a general strike, and to organize for one before it’s too late. And at least in my opinion, it’d be damned foolish not to even try the non-violent path considering how effective its been demonstrated to be, especially when the alternative is a tremendous amount of death, and possibly a new civil war.
Hitler talked about exactly this - waiting just makes it worse, and your choices are fighting or full submission.
“Only one danger could have jeopardised this development — if our adversaries had understood its principle, established a clear understanding of our ideas, and not offered any resistance. Or, alternatively, if they had from the first day annihilated with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement.”
They’re not going to wait for an excuse, or they’ll make one. You’re dealing with a false choice here.
It hasn’t been. I would highly recommend a book called This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed, which is about exactly the use of non-violence in the US Civil Rights movement - the reality as opposed to the myth that has been forced down since. The tl;dr; is this - the movement was all nonviolent, it was a tactic that also recognized it had violence in riots to offer as another path, and most importantly, the US cared about public opinion internationally due to competition with the USSR. None of that is applicable here.
I don’t believe it’s a simple binary. During Nazi Germany’s rise, Hitler was extremely popular with the average citizen. I will agree that in that period, a militant option might’ve been their only real move, as the Unions, despite being far stronger than they are in the US today, didn’t seem to take the threat seriously enough to call for a general strike (or at least, I can’t easily find an example of them doing so) before he took power, or after Hitler began attacking the unions.
In contrast, the US unions (besides the teamsters) seem to be aware of the threat, and are actively making inroads to a general strike.
I agree that they will eventually pull a Reichstag fire, but it’s not clear to me that accelerating a confrontation is wise. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend checking out the article I linked in my previous response.
I’m not sure that’s applicable, or perhaps we’re using the word violence differently. I’m not at all against property destruction or riots, but you didn’t see Black Panthers actively going on the offensive and gunning down cops. Had they done so, it would’ve brought the whole military down on them and they’d likely be wiped out without mercy, which the government was itching to justify as evidenced by the Desire group being shot at with 30 thousand rounds without provocation.
I think the Civil rights movement used property destruction and the very real threat of violence quite effectively, but I’m unsure how things would’ve gone had Malcolm X openly called for the movement to open fire, as he almost did after the murders of Nation of Islam members. Maybe that would’ve kicked off a successful revolution, another civil war, or the quick extinguishing of those radical members by the military. It’s hard to say.
As to the quote in the photo you left: I agree that a peaceful protest will change nothing without a credible threat to back it up. A general strike is one threat, and a very effective one if enacted (as evidenced by how the government of Chile reacted to one). Property damage is another, as are riots. The last option is the cartridge box, it should not be the first option unless you know you can win, and have a pretty good idea that it will save more lives than not using it.
In addition to This Nonviolent Stuff, please go read The Death of Democracy, about exactly how the Nazis took power.
Contrary to Cold War revisionism (which had to paint the commies as villians), the tactic of the SPD to avoid violent confrontation with the right (which is why they unleashed the Freikorps on the left) was never going to work. The conservatives, and crucially Hindenberg, saw any democratic or socialist government as unacceptable. Compromises and attempting to keep the peace actually just let the Nazis gather strength and normalize their own violence.
The lesson here is clear - deciding to unilaterally reject violence against a violent opponent just means you give them the luxury of deciding when to strike, and that is usually fatal. Ask the dead in MN if the US administration is non-violent.