Los Angeles: Challenging Trump’s Order to Send Troops to the Border

April 9, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a reader:

On Friday afternoon, April 6, Refuse Fascism in Los Angeles held an emergency press conference and protest march to begin a campaign to challenge and stop Trump’s order to send U.S. National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border—as part of the campaign to drive out the Trump/Pence regime. Since Trump’s announcement, there is further evidence as to what this order is a part of: military concentration camps for undocumented immigrants and placing in those camps refugees arrested at the border areas by the U.S Border Patrol, without any due process. Speakers at the press conference included participants from Indivisible Suffragettes in LA, San Gabriel Valley NOW, the Revolution Club, LA and Refuse Fascism. The action was held in front of U.S. National Guard headquarters in West Los Angeles. Spanish language Channel 62 Estrella TV assisted with videography and choreography, and showed the protest live at 5 pm.

Participants marched to Wilshire Blvd.—a major vehicular thoroughfare—and held a protest action during rush hour traffic. Those participating included a couple who’d recently come from Japan who explained that their prime minister, Abe, is a Trump supporter, and no way they’d miss this action! Participants also included a Honduran woman who’d come to the action looking for answers as to how to rouse the immigrant masses from Central America here in the U.S. at a time when many are having to confront the possibility of ICE arrests and deportation—how to get them to stand up in protest in large numbers in the face of such a situation. She was given a stack of the new Call to Action from Refuse Fascism and plans were made to strategize further on how to solve this huge challenge.

Refuse Fascism’s press release included these comments:

“Trump’s order for the National Guard to further militarize the U.S. / Mexico border comes at a time when a migrant caravan is making its way from Central America, through southern Mexico, on its way north. The caravan includes many Hondurans. Trump’s Twitter burst declaring the caravan ‘must be stopped’ is outrageous and the height of hypocrisy -- it is the United States and its imperial depredation that has oppressed Central America and Honduras for many decades. It is the U.S. government that backed a coup in Honduras in 2009 and has supported the return of a ‘death-squad government’ since then.

“Trump’s call to further militarize the U.S. / Mexico border comes in the context of a comprehensive and major escalation in assaults on Brown and Black immigrants in this country: ending Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for over a quarter of a million people, conducting massive raids in sanctuary cities, ending DACA, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) targeting leaders and activists who stand with the undocumented.

“This all-around assault on refugees and immigrants is not only a horror in its own right, it is the linchpin and battering ram of a whole fascist program being hammered into place by the Trump/Pence Regime. Trump’s ‘Wall’ and this heightened militarization of the border -- as part of comprehensive attack on refugees and immigrants -- is a potent symbol and instrument of terror that concentrates the shattering of old norms and cementing Trump’s new order of: ‘America First... Make America Great White Again.’

“Everything we do must be a part of getting to the point, at the soonest possible moment, when tens of thousands -- leading to hundreds of thousands and eventually millions -- can launch and sustain a nationwide movement of nonviolent political protests, in the streets and public squares, that don’t stop until the demand that the Trump/Pence regime be removed from office is met.”

Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution

Send us your comments.

If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.