At this moment, there is still a huge gulf between what the decent people who hate everything about Trump MAGA fascism are doing about it and the rapid advancement of this fascism. One very important front in changing this is people being able to make the shift from individual acts of conscience—as courageous as many of these have been—to everyone in the institutions (whether it be education, government, the media, law or science and medical care) demanding their institutions as institutions stand up and actively refuse to allow their institutions to capitulate. Instead of the wave of shameless compliance with the literal extortion and loyalty being demanded by Trump, the majority of people in these institutions need to demand defiant noncompliance as part of building up the strength to drive the whole regime from power. 

One encouraging example of where this is happening is in the LA Unified School District (LAUSD) where the whole school district, taking stock of a horrific summer of raids, made plans for the opening of the fall 2025 semester. The schools this week have already seen students and parents picked up and detained near the schools. This included an 18-year-old about to enter his senior year in the San Fernando Valley who was kidnapped by ICE while walking his dog near the school and was disappeared to the desert detention center in Adelanto. In another incident, ICE drew their guns on a 15-year-old disabled high school student and detained him until his family convinced ICE he was not the person they were looking for.

Earlier this month, 500 teachers marched to the school district offices during their annual convention. Instead of the yearly contract demands, this year the teachers were demanding the district take a more aggressive stance towards the Trump regime. The superintendent of the LA school district is Alberto Carvalho, who came to the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant from Portugal. As the only one of his six siblings to graduate high school, Carvalho experienced growing up with impoverishment and homelessness. A naturalized U.S. citizen, he has been a champion of immigrant Los Angeles where 30,000 students are immigrants and an estimated quarter of these are undocumented. Carvalho and the Board have gone all in to ensure the protection of their students, including budgeting funds that could put significant strains on their yearly budget. 

The district and teachers have been especially concerned about the students who have to get to school unaccompanied. They developed plans for bus routes and the establishment of two-block perimeters around 100 campuses in the most at-risk neighborhoods, to be patrolled by staff and volunteers to alert each school to any presence of ICE being in the area. Communications have been established with parents in case the schools need to go into lockdown. Principals have given thought to the risks they are willing to take to protect their students. Staff at every level from teachers to janitors, librarians to bus drivers and school police are being involved.

The LA Times has reported that the elaborate planning has involved three layers of defense. The first layer is a watch zone by the school district; the second tier of defense is organized by the teachers union for faculty observers to watch and report any ICE activity; this network then alerts the third tier of defense—community organizations who are trained to provide support and if necessary obstruct immigration agents even if it risks arrest. 

“Imagine leaving your home in the morning and not knowing if your parents or your tio or tia is going to be there when you get back, or your grandparents,” said Pomona Unified School District Superintendent Darren Knowles. (Tio and tia are the Spanish words for uncle and aunt.)

Alfonso Morales, Lynwood school board member, immigration attorney, and member of Refuse Fascism described the coming school year this way:

I really do think there's a sense of urgency because they are playing out what they are saying, it's not just rhetoric anymore. And now that schools are starting to open up again we've already had instances where parents have been arrested as they're dropping their kids off. We had a disabled child in LAUSD mistakenly arrested by them. This is not the type of society we're supposed to be living in. This is a scary fascist society that we are living. If you really want to be on the American side, you're going to be on the side of Refuse Fascism and be a leader. Take a role in what's happening. Because it will become too late—he [Trump] has the power to suspend elections. He's already working on a plan to militarize the country and have military units at the ready within the hours of a protest. That's not the way we're supposed to be living when it comes to the First Amendment of our Constitution. 

We've been reactive and for the most part the reason that people are reactive in my opinion is because they don't want to be troublemakers they don't want to cause issues. But the problem is that trouble is coming for us and what needs to happen is that people realize that and it's an issue that is not just “immigration-related.” It's freedom-related. And it's exactly why everyone has an interest because it's going to be systematic. In Washington DC they are going after the homeless and communities of color and asking them for their identification, for their papers. And it's important that we start to organize . A lot of the greatest movements that have ever occurred in this country start at the school site. 

So what's going to start happening in my opinion is that the children who are losing their parents, who are losing their family members... are going to start to get vocal and marching. What we do in Lynwood Unified whenever there is a social issue that occurs where our kids are going to protest and walk out is we send our security vehicles to help make sure that there's no issue with security insofar as them being run over... what happens if ICE comes upon them and starts to accost them or take information what are we going to do? I think there has to be an agreement within the community on what the response will be and how we will move forward with that because it needs to be unified. And I think people are starting to see that that's the need. Along with thinking about schools... the colleges need to get involved. I think the best we can do as leaders is show up and to start planning because if we don't do it—you can bet they're planning. I remember one of my high school teachers making the statement that having no plan is a plan for failure. So we have to have a plan.

There are many challenges in the weeks and months to come but the LAUSD is setting an important example for what schools everywhere should be doing. On the first day of school attendance was an unusual 92 percent.