by Jorge Luis Macias

María Cux, born in Guatemala, her 8-year-old son Ismael and their dog “Rocky” watched the noisy demonstration circulating south of Burlington Street in the Westlake and MacArthur Park neighborhood and stopped to ask the reason for the protest.

Members of the RevCom movement handed her a pamphlet with a message from Bob Avakian, founder of the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1975, warning that the “fascist” government of Donald Trump will deport millions of people if it is not stopped beforehand with massive protests in the streets of the United States.

“Many people say that this is not right,” said María, who works in the garment industry and emigrated to Los Angeles when she was 13.

“You leave your country due to necessity to avoid dying from violence or hunger.”

New Year, No Fear

“New Year, No Fear!” was the chant of the followers of the movement of the revolutionary leader and author of “new communism,” Bob Avakian, 77, who in the early 1970s served a prison sentence for desecrating the U.S. flag during a demonstration.

“We cannot hide; we must leave fear behind,” said Nicaraguan-born Andrés Rico. “The nightmare [of deportations] is coming and you must be brave to face the new year with courage. We will rise up in a resistance movement to defeat Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement, which are full of racism.”

At the corner of Sixth Street and Bonnie Brae, megaphone in hand, Andrés and his companions warned the community of Westlake and around MacArthur Park that “no one is going to be safe” from the promised mass deportations.

“Trump’s racist and fascist movement must be torn out by the roots, and we all have to be part of a revolution to defeat them,” the protester said.

The neighborhood, where mostly Central American immigrants live, could be “ground zero” for immigration raids by the incoming Donald Trump administration.

“I pray to God that nothing happens, because many people are already become panicked,” said María Cux.

In District One of the city of Los Angeles there is an unofficial count of approximately one million Central American residents.

“It’s tough. We just came here to work, and we don’t take jobs away from anyone,” said Melchor Genaro, a taco vendor from Totonicapán, Guatemala.

“For now, there is no protection for anyone,” added Marisol, a fruit and fruit juice vendor. “If they wanted to deport me, I would have to leave with my three-year-old son who was born here.”

Trump, no! Fascism, no! Humanity, yes! Migrants, yes! and “We are all illegal” were the slogans shouted by the protesters [in Spanish and English], who walked from Sixth Street north to Third Street and returned to their starting point on Burlington Street, before the astonished gaze of the immigrants.

“From day one of Trump-Pence [sic] and MAGA fascism, there are going to be bloody areas around here, which is one of the neighborhoods of highest concentration in Los Angeles of people from throughout Latin America,” predicted Noche Díaz, a member of the RevCom Corps-Los Angeles (Corps of Revolutionary Communists of Los Angeles), when explaining why they chose the Westlake-MacArthur area for their protest.

“They have said that the raids will start in Chicago, but they are talking about deporting people from everywhere, and in their attacks they are going to separate families and take away their children as well,” the activist said.

“The message to those who live here is that there is no reason to just despair and live in fear,” he added. “It is time for the fury and determination to put an end to this. People outside of this neighborhood need to know that there will be people who will come and not only support them, but will also fight the Trump-Vance fascists.”

“Trump Has Gone to a Whole Other Level of Attack”

Michelle Xai, who participated in a similar RevCom demonstration in New York, told La Opinión that the Donald Trump administration is attacking the immigrant community “at a whole other level.”

“People won’t even be able to go out in the streets,” she said. “And, on the contrary, that is what we most need now, not like a normal march, but like a national movement able to stop what they want to do, which is nothing less than get rid of the immigrant community.”

Xai explained that the slogan “New Year, No Fear” is not to tell people that everything is going to be okay and that they should not be afraid, but rather it is a call to support, protect and defend, and fight “against open fascism.”

The protest in New York coincided with the announcement of a new court decision confirming that the prisons in that state were holding immigrants in detention so they could be handed over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (ICE) for deportation.

The same thing happens in state prisons in the “Big Apple.”

The New York Times reported that between 1997 and 2012, New York City jails illegally held more than 20,000 people up to two days beyond their release dates so that ICE could detain them and put them in custody.

“In these times, we need to defend those who are being targeted by this fascist deportation program,” Michelle Xai said. “In the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America.”

“This Is Not Just Immoral”

In a letter to the Biden administration on Dec. 10, Democratic senators urged the president to take action in the final days of his term to protect immigrant communities long term and ensure that families are not returned to countries where they would face danger.

The letter, signed by California senator Alex Padilla, Nevada senator Catherine Cortez Masto, and New Mexico senator Ben Ray Luján, urges Joe Biden to support strong border security measures and ensure the protection of DACA beneficiaries and holders of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program.

“This is not only immoral: By taking away the legal status and work authorization from these individuals, we would be destroying critical sectors of our workforce,” Senator Padilla said at the time.

“President Biden has the power to prevent this harm, and I urge him to seize this moment to protect the immigrants long term and strengthen our economy.”

With less than three weeks until Trump takes office, there is no sign of any substantial change in protections for anyone.

In fact, in his first administration (2016-2020), Trump tried to eliminate TPS for several countries and in his campaign for the White House he promised to end TPS for Haitian refugees who entered the United States legally, through the CBP One program, including Cubans, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.

Hundreds of Thousands in Danger

California is home to about 68,000 TPS beneficiaries and 150,000 people who obtained work permits and protections against deportation through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program from the era of former President Barack Obama.

And while in the United States, at least 180,000 Salvadorans have lived in this country for more than 23 years with this permit, working honestly and maintaining impeccable moral conduct, Trump has already threatened to eliminate TPS when he takes office in less than three weeks.

However, according to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office, more than 860,000 immigrants from 17 countries—Afghanistan, Burma, Myanmar, Cameroon, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Lebanon, Nepal, Nicaragua, Syria, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Ucrania, Venezuela, and Yemen) are protected under the TPS that President Joe Biden significantly expanded.

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Revcom.us editors’ note: While there are some secondary inaccuracies concerning Bob Avakian (BA) in this La Opinión article, overall this article correctly reflects what the Revcom Corps did and said in the march. To get the full story on why and when BA served time in jail, consult his memoir From Ike To Mao and Beyond, especially the chapter "Getting Down with Revolution." (The memoir is now available in eBook format.)