Mexican flags have become a symbol of resistance in the LA revolt (Photo: Alex Brittenham)
How significant is the rebellion in Los Angeles?
This rebellion is highly significant. It is a working class, multiracial rebellion against the US state.
It has resonances with the movement against the Vietnam war in the 1960s and 70s. It is also a consolidation of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) rebellion over the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
That had much the same character as this moment—it was working class, widespread and spontaneous and it identified the state as the enemy. And it is a revival of the movement against the war in Palestine.
Some of the labourers who have been picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) are day labourers. That means they are of Mexican or Latin American origin, with or without citizenship, who have to wait on corners for work.
There is this vast, informal economy of people who wait in shopping centres for work.
These day labourers are being arrested by Ice. It’s the same force which arrested Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist at Colombia University. The same force which has arrested, imprisoned and deported other Palestinian activists.
So we have the student movement, the Palestine movement and the working class migrant labourers’ movement all coming together.
That movement is sweeping other working class people, and some middle class people, into its ranks. LA is the epicentre, but the movement has spread very quickly to other working class cities without a white majority.
Ice is arresting farmers who are members of working class communities and organisations. They arrested David Huerta of the SEIU, which is one of the largest and most progressive unions—so that union is now on board.
You see the Mexican flags flying on all the protests. Everyone knows that LA used to be part of Mexico. This is also a war being fought by Indigenous people on land stolen from them by the US. The memory of both imperialism and anti-imperialism are being revived. That’s why Los Angeles is such a brilliant site to challenge the legacies of the US empire and imperialism.
When I lived in San Antonio, a Chicano colleague said to me, “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.”
Palestine remains an important element of the insurgency. Trump really wants to create an Israeli-type state, in which he can treat black and brown workers like Israel treats the Palestinians.
And it has happened with the support of the Democrats—they supported the killing of Palestinians and the incarceration and deportation of Palestinians.
Mahmoud Khalil, George Floyd and David Huerta are all part of this insurgency against an interconnected state war.
What is Trump trying to achieve by unleashing violence on migrant workers?
Capitalism has always depended on low waged migrant labour alongside racism. But this remains a huge contradiction and Trump has tipped the balance towards national chauvinism.
There is a wellspring of class rage which has built up over years of violent attacks on working class people.
Trump’s regime wants to get rid of the Department of Education. And Elon Musk has tried to destroy any last vestiges of a social welfare safety net.
What is happening in LA is a symptom of the crisis in capitalism, and that crisis is felt by workers in their own lives. For many people this is now a battle of life or death. They see we are now one step away from fascism.
Trump mobilised the National Guard. The National Guard was also mobilised during the Rodney King riots of 1992 in the city.
But Trump is also mobilising the Marine Corps. It is very rare for the US army to be deployed against US citizens. Trump’s regime wants to develop new forms of state violence as a last resort for US capitalism. It is locked into competition with China, and it is using state violence to coerce the population into naked capital accumulation.
Trump’s regime is like this capitalist vanguard which is experimenting with and devising new tactics to preserve their wealth and power.
We don’t really know where they are heading—like the capitalist system itself, Trump’s regime is quite anarchic. But the crisis in US capitalism is so deep that it will resort to violence to see if it can pull off its agenda.
The war on Palestine seeded the ground for this moment.
Trump wanted to see how much repression would be tolerated, how many arrests and deportations he could get away with. And that repression did not elicit a response like that we are seeing in LA today.
The best way to force Trump into reverse is through mass rebellion. We always say we want to become ungovernable and now we are.
What is happening in LA is tremendously important and exciting. The US is not the tip of the spear, but it is the heart of the empire. What happens here matters everywhere.
How is Trump using the repressive armoury of the state?
We know the law is never on our side. It is there to protect property.
Trump keeps talking about insurrection. That’s because he wants to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807. It has been used repeatedly against the labour movement and against slave rebellions.
There is a long history of legally sanctioned anti-working class, repressive laws in the US. They are remnants of slavery.
Racism has always been fundamental to US capitalism. Sending in the National Guard is a return to old themes, but I think the current rebellion is more hopeful. It has already erupted in half a dozen other cities and could spread further.
The mainstream media are already saying that Trump’s success depends on this moment.
And on whether he can impose his deportation policies without being derailed by resistance. I believe that is true—we can beat Trump by staying on the streets.
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