![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/13/3.jpg\")
\nStarting on June 6, Los Angeles erupted in resistance to federal raids targeting immigrants. The unrest rapidly spread around the country. In the following report, participants in a full day of breakaway marches and confrontations in Chicago on June 10 reflect on the potential of this moment and what it will take to unlock it.
\n\nTrump’s November 2024 victory and the first days of his second administration saw little of the carnivalesque street protests that accompanied his rise to power in 2016. Some comrades said this was evidence that most people were demoralized, demobilized, and resigned to adjust their lives to living under a new regime rather than fighting back. We had a different hypothesis: we believed that hundreds of thousands of people, and maybe more, were biding their time, waiting for the chance to take their shot. With hardly any extra-parliamentary fascists to fight in the streets, and little sense milling around outside various Trump Towers brandishing clever signage, what was the issue, where were the targets, and what was the best opportunity to hit back at Trump and the program he represents in a meaningful and effective way?
\n\nMarches on Tesla dealerships—and the more promising destruction of Tesla cars and infrastructure—provided one such path, though this remained firmly within the bounds of a consumer boycott, if a fiery one. Indivisible and 50501 protests recalled the bad old days of 2017’s endless open-air group therapy sessions and, for the most part, repeated the messages of that time point for point: We demand a more competent steward of capitalism’s blood-soaked drive toward planetary suicide.
\n\nThen came the scenes in Los Angeles: bold and decisive collective action to interrupt Trump’s bumbling efforts at the “largest deportation in American history.” The action was not symbolic, but direct and effective. The risks were not taken to speak truth to fascism, but to practically impede its unfolding plans. And the enemy was not just Trump or his Stormfront-addled federal goons, but the local cops, blue city elites, and the entire social order that makes the global South a place people seek to flee while rendering sub-minimum wage migrant labor both economically necessary and cruelly disposable.
\n\nAs we watched the uprising in LA unfold, federal employees were meeting to coordinate resources and personnel and help put it down. They were worried about a “Portland-type incident”—federal overreach that provoked months of bitter street fighting in 2020 and eventually left the government humiliated. Across the country, these anxieties have been fulfilled. The Trump administration’s suppression of the LA rebels has repeated the heavy-handed overcommitment that turned Portland’s protests into a months-long uprising, with the National Guard deployed and Marines trained in crowd suppression techniques on standby. And in the cities where homegrown police response tends away from outright brutality, the administration is doing its best to make up for lost time. In response to the previous days’ unrest, the Trump administration announced on the night of the tenth that they intend to deploy Strategic Response Teams—the militarized ICE units whose mass raids turned the anti-ICE demonstrations in Paramount, California into a citywide uprising—in New York, Philadelphia, Northern Virginia, Seattle and Chicago.
\n\nLos Angeles provided a path forward for people waiting for the right moment to fight. Maximizing the potential of this moment and helping to steer its unfolding into a more generalized revolt against capitalist society is the responsibility of all who seek liberation. This requires a willingness to experiment, take risks, and reflect honestly on what is working and what isn’t. What follows is one such attempt, based on our experiences in Chicago. In the wake of the battle of Los Angeles, we say: It has to start somewhere, it has to start sometime. What better place than here, what better time than now?
\n\n\nOn June 10, Chicago took its best shot at matching the momentum begun in Los Angeles.\nThe previous day, a dozen people were abducted during their court appearances on the fourteenth floor of a building in Chicago’s downtown Loop neighborhood. Anonymous activists called a series of demonstrations at the site’s parking exits for June 10, hoping to intercept ICE vans before they made their way to a processing center elsewhere in the same neighborhood or out of the state to federal detention centers. Protesters arrived at 55 East Monroe Street at 9 am and aggressively questioned every van that left the parking lot. Worried that the crowd would only grow during the 3 pm demonstration and that clashes over deportation vans would provide a flashpoint for serious unrest, the city’s immigration courts decided to close for the day, at both 55 East Monroe and the other location in the Loop, a federal building at 101 Ida B. Wells Drive, which also houses the ICE field office.
\n\nThe 3 pm demonstration went ahead as planned. Initially, turnout was small and fairly obedient, and we weren’t sure anything was going to happen. A representative from the building came out and demanded that we stand off of the building’s “private property,” gesturing to a faint line separating one shade of concrete from another. The crowd complied. But being forced off of most of the sidewalk created an opening as the demonstration grew. By 3:30, the crowd had taken the street, and some participants floated marching to the other ICE hub in the Loop, the field office on Ida B. Wells, which was still in operation even though its court was closed. The rest of the crowd followed them.
\n\nAs the march approached the field office, a bike line came into view, backed by a row of CPD cars and a couple strands of yellow caution tape. With the numbers we had, it was possible that under different conditions, with a tighter-knit and better-skilled crowd, we could have forced the police back. But the march was too slow, too spread out, and not coordinated enough to do so; one participant yelled “be water” and suggested turning around, and the rest of the crowd complied.
\n\nAt this point, directed more by responses to police harassment than clear strategic priorities, the demonstration turned into a march to nowhere. We walked for three hours, led in a maze by CPD bike lines—repeatedly passing by the Metropolitan Corrections Center, while the crowd chanted “free them all” and people on the inside tapped on the glass, and Federal Plaza, where a demonstration called by the Party for Socialism and Liberation was slated to occur at 5:30, at a comfortable distance from any local ICE infrastructure. A few protesters at the front tried to rush forward through bike lines as they formed, but the rest of the crowd wasn’t prepared to move with them.
\n\nProtesters disagreed about which tactics were acceptable. Some people dragged trash cans into the street; others, seemingly not understanding the value of road obstructions for staving off a direct charge from police and hostile (and potentially murderous) motorists, stopped to put them back in their correct place and pick up whatever trash had spilled. Some people wanted to square off with the police at the routine bike lines that directed marchers down certain streets and away from police and ICE infrastructure; others felt obliged to protect the police from the protesters. It wasn’t clear, at this point in the day, which side would predominate, or on which lines the difference broke. But despite the best efforts of peace police and professional activists, every time the Chicago Police Department attempted to snatch someone off the side of the march, a hundred people sprang into action, throwing CPD against the wall and physically tearing arrestees away from them.
\n\nAs the hours dragged on, the march’s numbers dwindled to just over a hundred. During long stretches, we marched in silence. CPD, intending to capitalize on this demoralization, funneled the march closer and closer to the PSL demonstration on the plaza, eventually confining the protesters that were willing to take the street to the bike line and forcing the other hundred to march through the PSL rally. Like before, this attempt to push the march off its prior footing encouraged it to develop rather than dispersing it.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/13/6.jpg\")
\nThe autonomous march’s final pass by Federal Plaza happened at 5:50, twenty minutes into the PSL rally and well before their regular programming would have intended to start moving. But twenty minutes of speeches seemed to have worn on the crowd. The march, contained to the bike lane and pushed up onto the plaza, chanted “Whose streets? Our streets!” and “PSL hop in!”—and as the handful of stragglers pushed through the crowd, hundreds of attendees joined in. Dozens of young people, many in keffiyehs, pushed through into the bike lane and surged north through a police bike line that was attempting, too slow, to turn the march west in another huge circle. The standing demonstrators found themselves moving with the crowd. The Party for Socialism and Liberation followed anxiously behind.
\n\nBy 6:00, working people across Chicago were passing through the Loop, while office employees and service workers along the impromptu march route who had just clocked out found themselves down the street from a steadily growing march. As we headed northeast towards Trump Tower, lodged at the front segment of the march, we figured our demonstration had grown by a few hundred. But as we passed by a building-mounted news broadcast, we realized that we had underestimated our own success: a helicopter’s live footage showed that the street was full, for a dozen blocks, of thousands of people. We’d found ourselves at the front of an unplanned, unpermitted march, thousands strong and still growing.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/13/5.jpg\")
\nEventually, the march made its way to Michigan Avenue. Some marchers, remembering the layout of the city’s downtown ICE infrastructure, reminded those at the head of the march about the immigration court at 55 East Monroe, and started an “ICE is that way!” chant, gesturing to the turn as it approached. Hundreds peeled off of the front of the march, but the court’s parking entrance was barricaded, and the front of the march wasn’t ready to break into it, so the breakaway cut further into the Loop.
\n\nAs we marched under the elevated rail tracks, CPD began to set bike lines up, intending to force us back towards Millennium Park. On the way to the first bike line, the composition of the front of the crowd changed sharply: frontliners equipped with gear that’d been collecting dust since 2020 pushed up to the front, joining less equipped people fresh off work to break the first police bike line with force, scattering CPD and prompting cheers from the rest of the crowd. Two subsequent bike lines broke voluntarily when confronted by the breakaway.
\n\nThe endless snake marches that followed—diverging and recombining, and soldiering ever forward in search of a mission—call to mind the post-Ferguson moment in 2014, before the original Black Lives Matter movement was decisively enclosed by the non-profit industrial complex. Except this time, marchers were outfitted with the acumen and tactical gear of a decade of street battles around the world. Tactics like the de-arrest were common sense to many who have lived through recent struggles, some of whom cannot understand why any self-proclaimed radical would stand around watching their comrades taken to jail. Alternatively, there was a pronounced gap between the equipment of the marchers—some of whom came in full bloc and frontliner gear, equipped with items like leaf blowers, which are useful to redirect tear gas which CPD hasn’t used in sixty years—and the content of the march itself, which was mostly an exercise in collective jaywalking. These would-be frontliners were in search of an opening that has yet to be created. The most ambitious edges of the rest of the day’s protests would experiment with breaking it open.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/13/4.jpg\")
\nAfter the third bike line retreated, we were folded into what we initially assumed was the larger PSL march—but which was actually another breakaway that had been forced away from the field office at Ida B. Wells. Organizers with the PSL and FRSO contingent tried to lead the crowd into a large park, presumably to finish the battery of speeches that our autonomous march had cut short, but again, hundreds of people decided otherwise and the thousands behind them followed their lead, passing by the park and taking both sides of Lake Shore drive. On the way to the highway, protesters tagged CTA buses stuck in the crowd: “FUCK ICE.” “FUCK CPD.”
\n\nThe main organized contingents led the majority of the day’s participants back to Daley Plaza, where they held a “dance party” meant to stall the marches and send people home. For the most part, that worked, and numbers dwindled. But a few hundred people decided to start marching again, aiming for the immigration court at 55 East Monroe. The composition of this leg of the march was different from the high point of the day: as the sun went down, the immigration court-bound breakaway was mostly made up of young Latino people, backed by frontliners and people in black bloc regalia. As it traveled through the heart of the Loop, this breakaway made good on the hesitant militancy of the day’s first march. In response to one of CPD’s few successful arrests, people surrounded a paddy wagon, tearing open its back doors to liberate their kidnapped friend, only to be stopped by an additional metal barrier. Projectiles came out, and confrontations with the police became more and more forceful, eclipsing anything we have seen in Chicago since the 2020 uprising. Throughout the night, buses, cop cars, paddy wagons, and Teslas were smashed and tagged.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/13/2.jpg\")
\nThis is an impulse that’s waiting for a chance to express itself. Los Angeles tipped over from protest into uprising by breaking with the usual terms that dictate these American anti-regime struggles—single-issue anti-Trump malaise, aimless anti-fascism, or even specifically anti-ICE agitation that doesn’t generalize into antipathy toward all cops and the social order they uphold. The class and racial geography of Los Angeles, along with its infamously brutal police and sheriff’s departments, lent themselves to the protests’ expansion into an anti-police revolt. The most promising moments on June 10 tended toward a similar path in Chicago. Their success will be determined in the weeks to come by whether Chicago’s specialized activist scene can make contact with the thousands of people ready to liberate their friends from police and ICE custody by whatever means they deem necessary.
\n\nWe can’t substitute ourselves for that missing proletarian component, but we can help set the conditions for its emergence. Tactically, this looks like spreading skills and knowledge about street tactics—spreading illustrations of street formations, tips for barricade-building, and ways to break through bike and riot lines; holding trainings when possible; and encouraging trainees to train their own friends. Some technical problems protesters encounter will require new technical solutions—for example, the paddy wagon’s internal barrier. Instead of an excessive focus on gear and equipment, which specializes them as a specific detachment of protesters, would-be frontliners should draw up and share specific information about how certain pieces of equipment or crowd techniques can be used to solve pressing issues raised by tactics that have already emerged in the streets.
\n\nSpreading specific information about ICE operations in our communities can help move the dial away from the prevailing aimlessness. This could take the form of posting flyers in neighborhoods near deportation infrastructure, publicly broadcasting when and where ICE agents get to work, or clarifying the rough schedule of kidnappings, transfers, processing, transit to detention centers, and transit from detention centers to nearby airports. If possible, sites at critical points on these pathways should be chosen for confrontations that could open up semi-permanent sites of conflict, the way that the federal building in Portland became an epicenter of struggle in 2020.
\n\nTactical sensibilities and political commitments that are not suited to unsafe yet absolutely necessary struggle against the state and its police will not be able to describe, much less explain, the emerging conflict in a way that the participants can understand. We have to find ways to popularize tactics with radical implications while highlighting their political content in a way that can be legible to everyday participants in the struggle. The present moment demands an intelligent, tactically sharp, strategically clear street force capable of blocking the deportation machine in conjunction with the uprising in Los Angeles, so that the sparks can spread to dozens of other cities and towns.
\n\nThey want to bring in the National Guard, escalate their response, and force people to stay home. We have to be ready to meet them with the same determination.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/13/1.jpg\")
A Tesla in the wake of the demonstration.
\nThe wave of resistance to federal raids that erupted in Minneapolis and spread to Los Angeles is generating shockwaves of revolt all around the country.1 As Donald Trump concentrates National Guard and Marines in Los Angeles in an effort to terrorize those who are bravely standing up for their communities, the best form of solidarity is to extend the battle lines far and wide, overstretching the mercenaries who serve him. In the following account, participants in a demonstration in Austin, Texas on June 9 describe how they escaped the control of party organizers who sought to limit the potential of the protest, then evaded police for two hours, escalating the pressure on those who seek to subdue us.
\n\nOn the evening of Monday, June 9, over 600 protesters gathered at the Texas Capitol for a march announced by the Party for Socialism and Liberation. A revolutionary organization called for a parallel demonstration with a start time set an hour and a half later in front of the JJ Pickle Federal building, a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility four blocks from the Capitol.
\n\nThe PSL rally began marching, tailed by a police motorcycle escort, and reached the ICE facility by 7:45 pm. The group was energetic and angry. A huge crowd chanted outside the building. Drummers beat a rhythm to the sound of breaking windows. Some people dragged scooters into the street; others painted pro-immigration and anti-ICE slogans or threw balloons filled with paint. All the while, red-shirted organizers from PSL were urging the crowd to keep moving. Dozens of people pushed back, chanting “ICE is right here!” Nonetheless, by 8 pm, the PSL organizers had mobilized most of the crowd back towards the capitol, successfully convincing some participants to tell others that moving would keep the group safe. A splinter group of about 100 stayed behind and continued to express their feelings with art and music. The march was effectively split between those who were acting on their own initiative and those who were submitting to the authority of the PSL.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/11/1.jpg\")
The march surrounds the JJ Pickle Federal Building in Downtown Austin, which ICE uses as a base of operations and temporary detention center.
\nPSL shepherded the larger group back towards the capitol building, to an intersection with nothing but high fences, mounted cops, and streets blockaded by police. PSL organizers got on the microphone to formally disband the march. They thanked everybody for coming and encouraged them to go home and rest up to do it all again later. The crowd grew uncertain, largely returning to the sidewalk in front of the fenced off capitol and very nearly ceding the street to the police except for a few insistent spirits who remained in the intersection, dancing with banners. Troopers blared their sirens on both sides and commanded them to get onto the sidewalk—but the dancers stayed, leading chants of “Chinga la migra! Chinga la migra!”
\n\nMeanwhile, at the Pickle ICE facility, police tear-gassed the remaining revelers and tackled some of them to the ground, pushing the crowd away from the building.
\n\nUnaware of this, the cheerleaders at the capitol continued to dance, especially when the walk signal was on, inspiring some of the crowd to flood out across the street. The crowd re-mobilized in waves. This first wave took a sidewalk route back to the Pickle, where it collided with the smaller splinter group that had just been gassed. Together, they created a barrier of scooters across the street behind them and began to square off with the police in front of them.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/11/2.jpg\")
Protesters stand behind a line of electric scooters dragged into the streets to defend against police incursions.
\nBack at the capitol, a chant of “Whose streets? Our streets!” brought the hundreds still on the sidewalk back into the intersection and returning south on Congress Avenue.
\n\nAlmost immediately, two motorcycle cops confronted the crowd. People hesitated but pushed on. The chopper cops tried to discourage them by blaring their sirens and driving forward. One motorcycle drove into the crowd at high speed, forcing protestors to jump aside. There were immediate consequences for his aggression: a crowd surrounded his vehicle and forced him off of it and to the ground. Meanwhile, the news arrived that the small group at the Pickle building had been gassed and dispersed with a few arrests made. Although this caused a moment of hesitation, when the crowd rounded 8th Street and came upon the barrier line of lime scooters, people became jubilant.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/11/7.jpg\")
A state trooper pepper sprays a protester after a confrontation in response to officers driving their motorcycles into the crowd.
\nFaced with a line of police blocking access to the building, the mostly reassembled crowd turned around. When they reached Congress Avenue again moving west, there was a line of cruisers directly ahead and a line of bike cops to the left. Immediately, the crowd found a gap in the bike line on the sidewalk and flooded through it, embodying the watchword of the Hong Kong uprising of 2019, “Be water”—though many were too young to have heard this saying in the George Floyd rebellion of 2020.
\n\nThe crowd quickly realized what a victory this evasive maneuver was. Suddenly, there were no flashing lights to be seen. They had broken out of the police cordon. For the next few hours, they were able to move freely through downtown Austin.
\n\n“Chinga la migra!” resounded throughout the downtown streets. Rambunctious and playful activity escalated, each gesture building upon the last. Everything that wasn’t nailed down was moved into the street: orange barrels, scooters, event signs. The muses sang to painters from banks and venture capital firms. Some downtown businesses lost windows, some parked Lexuses lost the wind in their sails.
\n\nThe crowd proceeded south down Congress, reaching the Congress bridge and starting across it. At this point, the front of the march was far ahead of rest of the march. People were uncertain about crossing the bridge out of downtown; some started moving onto the sidewalk. There was a moment of hesitation before the crowd doubled back, heading back to familiar targets like City Hall, the capitol, and downtown in general.
\n\nThen they moved west on MLK along the river, stopping at City Hall to hang the Mexican flag over the balcony before traveling north ten long Texas blocks all the way back to the capitol. Fortunately, there, they encountered the remains of the group that had originally remained at the JJ Pickle building until they were tear-gassed and dispersed. There were chants of “LA—lead the way!”
\n\nBolstered back up to two or three hundred people, the crowd finally returned to the Pickle building. More windows were broken. Some trucks showed up and the drivers did burnouts while blasting electrifying music. People emptied water from construction barricades, flooding the street. Everyone loved it. Raucousness, dance party, good cheer.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/11/3.jpg\")
Protesters overturn construction barricades, emptying them and filling the street with water.
\nThe crowd continued on down to 6th Street, the main drag for nightlife. A scooter shattered the custom neon sign of The Mothership, Joe Rogan’s comedy bar. Though the venue appeared closed with its shutter rolled down, it was later learned from Reddit that there was a show going on inside. After this point, the crowd struggled to decide on a route, which slowed it down. This indecisiveness led the crowd to fall back on habit rather than strategy. Memory carried it against its better interests back towards the capitol and the police.
\n\nAfter not seeing a single cop for nearly two hours, the crowd began to encounter motorcycle units at intersections again. Rather than pushing through these units as people had done at first—which the crowd easily could have done again—the crowd allowed the police to determine their route. This went on for at least twenty minutes. That was a fatal mistake: the crowd was permitting the police to guide them into an ambush. People could have moved farther away and dispersed with no arrests, but instead, they walked directly into a trap.
\n\nAfter marching back up 6th Street, the crowd continued west past Congress, the street leading to the capitol building. Within a few blocks, a line of state troopers on motorcycles confronted the march, blocking the way forward. Once again indecisive, the crowd began to split up into different groups—one going north, one south—before consolidating into a single mass heading south. They barely got halfway down the block before two unmarked white vans in the intersection ahead unloaded squads of APD riot cops armed with pepperball guns. Aware that they were in danger of being cornered, the crowd turned down an alley. Those running ahead quickly turned back as a side by side full of more APD riot cops blocked the intersection. The APD cops dismounted and chased people down the alley, grabbing people at random and shooting pepperballs that gassed protesters and some of their own officers for good measure. This pincer move dispersed much of the crowd and led to a handful of arrests.
\n\nShortly after this, a part of the crowd regrouped in front of the downtown tower that hosts the offices of Indeed, the job search company. There, two LRAD tanks confronted them on a busy street full of cars. The crowd targeted the operators of these tanks, pelting them with projectiles, while some of the trucks that had been following the protest prevented the tanks from moving further. This combination of tactics ultimately led to the tanks backing off.
\n\nAt this point, the remaining participants dispersed for the evening.
\n\nWhy did so much time pass during which the police were nowhere to be seen? First, the blockading genuinely interrupted their ability to pursue the march. This was something that the Austin police had not experienced on this scale before. Second, they lacked the numbers to keep up with and corral the protest, and the combativeness of the crowd increased the costs they had to calculate for any engagement. And at the same time, while this crowd was marching, there was still a group surrounding and tagging the federal building and then clashing with cops, so their forces were split between that engagement, defending the capitol, and chasing us.
\n\nAs a police officer described in response to the 2020 uprising,
\n\n\n\n\nWe can handle one 10,000-person protest, but ten 1000-person protests throughout the city will overwhelm us.
\n
Perhaps the police were told to stand down, or not to create a confrontation in the neighborhood that the march passed through, or to focus on the capitol and the federal building, but for now, we don’t know. The march didn’t experience significant confrontation with the police until we returned to the capitol, after which they were only trying to keep up with a single crowd. After that point, when the crowd continued marching, the police were likely clearing the streets and coming up with plans to disperse the crowd, leading to the ambush at the end.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/11/4.jpg\")
A growing crowd occupies the street in front of the federal building.
\nWe’ll conclude with some conclusions about the events of the evening and about what can come next.
\n\nThe main takeaway from the evening is that this moment is explosive. A minimum of physical preparation and a bit of boldness sufficed to transform what would have been a predictable, toothless rally at the capitol into the most powerful demonstration against the racist and authoritarian regime that Austin has seen since 2020. The crowd was more tactically equipped than usual, with several individuals having brought gloves, goggles, art supplies, and respirators, but the most important thing is that right now, people feel urgency.
\n\nAlso: it is important to plan for success. Demonstrators should arrive with an array of possible objectives in mind, in case they easily accomplish their initial goal; but once a march starts to repeat itself, doubling back on the same territory with diminishing returns, it may be time to conclude. In this case, the participants surprised themselves by getting past the police and opening up a new horizon of possibility. Yet after a while, they lost the ability to identify new targets and stay creative, instead becoming trapped in a loop circling the same few blocks of downtown. The crowd should either have dispersed earlier or identified a new target outside the territory they had repeatedly marched through. Once the crowd lost the ability to come up with new targets, move in new directions, or at least keep growing, it was only a matter of time before the police were able to regroup and launch an offensive.
\n\nSimilarly, just as it is crucial to resist the efforts of self-appointed leaders to dictate what a demonstration can do, whenever possible, people should resist the efforts of police to determine their movements. When the crowd encountered a few chopper cops or a single cruiser in its way, some people would shout “they’re kettling us” and turn around rather than charging through. In fact, this is what enabled the police to herd the crowd directly into a situation in which they almost were kettled. It is important to be aware of efforts to kettle a crowd, but often the best way to avoid this is to move through police lines where they are thin, before they are reinforced.
\n\nFinally, it can help to have material reinforcements ready for delivery well after a march gets underway.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/11/6.jpg\")
State troopers deploy tear gas in an attempt to disperse the protest, with some in the crowd launching the canisters back.
\nAs the wave of resistance that started in Minneapolis and spread to Los Angeles unfolds into a nationwide revolt, we can anticipate more hot demonstrations to come. Now we know that people will turn out to combative mass demonstrations here, if they are invited to. Ahead of the next moment of possibility, there are a few things that crews could do now to prepare:
\n\nThe window of opportunity is open right now and the possibilities are endless. It is up to all of us to bring those possibilities into existence before the forces that seek to preserve a world of police, borders, and exploitation can slam it shut.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/11/5.jpg\")
Graffiti on the federal building.
\nLiberals who feared that Donald Trump was intentionally provoking unrest in “blue states” in order to discredit Democratic politicians will have to come up with a new narrative as the unrest spreads to states ruled by Republicans. ↩
\nOn June 3, a crowd drove federal agents out of Minneapolis following a raid on a taqueria. On June 4, people confronted US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as they carried out raids in Chicago and Grand Rapids. On Friday, June 6, people in Los Angeles responded to an ICE raid, precipitating a full day of clashes that continue today. In the following firsthand report, participants describe how people came together to do their best to prevent federal agents from kidnapping people from their community.
\n\nDonald Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, has announced that he will send the National Guard into Los Angeles in response. If the situation escalates elsewhere around the country, as well, it is thinkable that we could see a movement that picks up where the George Floyd uprising left off. Arguably, in sweeping up the president of the California chapter of the Service Employees International Union in their attacks on people in Los Angeles, ICE and the various federal agencies that are being reassigned to support them risk making more enemies just as this confrontation is getting underway.
\n\nAlthough the Trump administration has begun by attacking immigrants—both documented and undocumented—this is only the first step in their effort to establish an autocracy. They are targeting immigrants because they believe them to be the most vulnerable target, but their overarching goal is to accustom all of us to passivity in the face of brutal state violence, breaking the basic bonds of solidarity that ought to connect all human beings.
\n\nIt must be clear to everyone—even the most milquetoast centrists—that the outcome of the conflict that is ramping up now will determine the prospects for every other target Trump has lined up in his sights, from Harvard University to those who simply wish to be able to afford groceries.
\n\nIncidentally, if it is possible that you will be in an environment in which chemical weapons are deployed, it is possible to extinguish tear gas canisters—read this short guide. You can find a wealth of similar information about how to stay safe in demonstrations here. To learn about other things you can do to stop ICE, start here.
\n\nTo support those arrested in Los Angeles, start here.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/08/5.jpg\")
\nOn social media, the news spread that ICE was raiding several spots in downtown Los Angeles, Highland Park, and MacArthur Park. Agents had begun to raid a building in the flower district when a spontaneous mob trapped them inside. People blocked every side of the building, every single entrance, so the agents couldn’t get out. They had detained a lot of people in the building already and hadn’t expected a swarm of 50-100 Angelenos to trap them.
\n\nApparently, they expected to be able to conduct a visible raid in downtown Los Angeles without a response from the neighborhood. They were wrong. Of the six or more locations that they raided, that one was in the area with the densest population, just blocks from skid row and a few steps from the Piñata district.
\n\nA large number of people were at the front entrance blocking ICE from leaving the building. Caught off guard by the crowd, the ICE agents were visibly trying to figure out how to evacuate. Family members of the detained were crying at the doors and the gates, wondering what was going to happen to their loved ones.
\n\nThe federal government had declared war on Los Angeles.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/08/7.jpg\")
\nICE ordered in an armored truck with three dozen federal riot police and a fleet of vans in tow. The entrance they wanted to come into was the one being blocked by an SEIU sound truck and they began threatening to tow it. SEIU complied and moved their truck, even going so far as to use their sound system to yell “Get on the sidewalk!” at the crowd. Half of the people listened to them and half didn’t, but it was a small enough crowd that that made a significant difference. As a consequence, the armored truck and the vans were able to make it up to the gate.
\n\nFederal agents in riot gear began trying to push everyone out. The small group who had refused to leave continued to stand their ground, twisting their little riot shields and mocking them. The agents were visibly rattled by the resilience of this group that had somehow assembled within fifteen minutes. In a desperate push, the FBI agents began to throw tear gas canisters into the crowd. Everyone was screaming at the fascist mercenaries as they tried to push back the line. Amid the confusion, the agents managed to clear a path for the vans to enter through the gate.
\n\nThe feds put the detained workers into the van and began to drive out. The crowd tried to stop them but the FBI escalated—snatching protesters and shooting pepper balls and rubber bullets at everyone. One of the vans sped up and struck the president of the California branch of the Service Employees International Union, injuring him. He was then arrested.
\n\nThe crowd got more rowdy, lighting fireworks and throwing debris, water bottles, and cabbage at the mercenaries. The FBI responded with a barrage of flash-bang grenades and rubber bullets and more pepper balls.
\n\nWhile that fight continued, someone followed the ICE vans to the Burbank airport, where agents had reportedly claimed that they were bringing a “hockey team.” People have been attempting to track the flight and see where it went since.
\n\nThe other detainees were taken to the MDC (Metro Detention Center) which triggered an action to be called for a couple hours later.
\n\nMDC is where hundreds of detainees from the raids are still currently being held. It was also the site of the 2017 abolish ICE encampment which lasted for 60 days.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/08/4.jpg\")
\nPeople started amassing at the Metropolitan Detention Center. A press conference took place involving Union Del Barrio, the SEIU, and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. Peace policing caused fights between the paid activists and the crowd. The activists ended up leaving and the crowd stayed—tagging everything, smashing windows, breaking things, and being ungovernable. Someone had brought a sledgehammer and was breaking the concrete pillars so that people could use the pieces as projectiles to throw at the police. Someone used a swivel chair as a barricade; another person showed up in a dinosaur suit.
\n\nThe feds were scrambling, throwing everything they could back at the crowd. People were tear-gassed several times, but were neutralizing the effect by putting ice and water on the canisters as well as traffic cones like they did in Chile. Some people were also throwing the canisters back to the Department of Homeland Security agents that were responsible for them. The crowd was extremely lively and brave. Some right-wing internet streamers tried to get into the area, but they were spotted and promptly dealt with.
\n\nDHS couldn’t control the situation. The feds were overwhelmed and begged the Los Angeles Police Department to come save them. Despite LA mayor Karen Bass saying she was “appalled” about the presence of ICE in Los Angeles, the LAPD still showed up in large numbers. A low-flying helicopter was telling people that they would be arrested and issuing dispersal orders as LAPD pushed people away from the building over the next four to five hours. Everyone left covered in pepper ball dust and tear gas.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/08/1.jpg\")
\nA message circulated to the effect that ICE was spotted staging for a raid in Chinatown. (Later, it turned out that they were planning to hold that parking lot for a press conference for Thomas Homan, Trump’s “Border Czar,” at 7 am the following morning—a press conference that was apparently cancelled.)
\n\nHundreds of people started trickling in, strobing flashlights in the eyes of the federal agents and yelling chants and insults at the riot line.
\n\nEven though people had been at actions all day, the energy was high, attracting passersby and random Dodgers fans to join in. The crowd took the street and blocked the entrances once again as things started getting rowdy. This time, LAPD wasn’t present, so the federal agents prepared to try to push the people out themselves.
\n\nParticipants in the crowd tagged the armored ICE vehicle and begin jumping up and down on it while an LRAD was blaring. Someone tagged “FUCK ICE” and spray painted the cameras on a Waymo self-driving car. No organizations were present except a strong contingent from the Los Angeles Tenants Union, who were present for every action in the course of the day.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/08/3.jpg\")
\nThe federal agents decided that the parking lot was too difficult to hold and began to retreat. The crowd seized the opportunity to block them off, throwing fireworks and rocks, bottles, and, somehow, ceramic plates. The FBI threw a few flash-bang grenades and tear gas canisters in response, but the spirits of those standing up to them remained high.
\n\nPeople began to smash the windows on the feds’ cars. At that point, ICE decided to leave, and a celebration began in the street. More fireworks were set off in a jubilant atmosphere. People partied momentarily before drifting home, heartened by a small victory after a horrifying and dehumanizing day in the so-called United States.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/08/2.jpg\")
\nThese anonymous posters are circulating in several variants—connecting struggles against the police in Los Angeles, Gaza, and Greece to Atlanta, Chicago, Minneapolis, Oakland, Portland, and Seattle.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/08/6.jpg\")
Click on the image to download the poster.
\nThis short guide has been circulating in the wake of the uprising in Los Angeles. It covers street safety and other important factors to consider in the midst of the resistance to ICE and Donald Trump’s attempt to impose fascism via military occupation.
\n\nThe full text of the guide follows for your convenience.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/06/08/uprising-survival-guide_front.jpg\")
Anonymous
\n\nWe need to do our part to spread revolt against the deportation machine and the system it upholds. The Republican and Democratic parties have collaborated to construct a sprawling deportation regime that threatens all of our communities.
\n\nTogether, we can defeat it.
\n\nHere are some essential strategies to weather the storm and seize the day.
\n\nThis uprising requires support from people and networks who aren’t on the frontlines. Increase the links between frontliners and people who want to be in supporting roles.
\n\nTalk to Your Community:\nDeepen existing relationships (family, neighbors, friends, etc) into potential links of the network.
\n\nStart with Simple Conversations:\nMeet people where they’re at, identify tangible ways they might help.
\n\nEach One Teach One:\nHave your contacts repeat this process with their networks. The right questions are more important than the right answers.
\n\nBuild Networks of Networks:\nSeek out well connected people in various social formations, and ask under what circumstances they would deploy their influence in support.
\n\nStrengthen and Secure:\nWith security in mind, develop protocols for sharing information, needs, and materials in an efficient manner.
\n\nTake security seriously, but avoid speculative paranoia. We can protect one another with a few simple practices.
\n\nBring Buddies:\nDon’t arrive or leave a demo alone. If you think you’re being followed, don’t lead them to your home or your comrade’s homes.
\n\nSupport Arrestees:\nBail, jail, and court support is crucial. Fundraise for bail and legal defense.
\n\nCreate Safe Houses and Support Networks:\nPeople may need to hide and be supported materially and emotionally. Plan now.
\n\nDon’t Talk to the Police:\nNothing good ever comes from talking to them. Do tell your comrades if you are visited by the police.
\n\nDon’t Brag or Implicate Others:\nSensitive info should not be shared publicly.
\n\nBeware Accusations of Infiltration:\nDon’t speculate on motives. If you don’t trust someone, don’t work with them. Don’t make accusations without definitive proof. Don’t do the cops’ job for them.
\n\nOur leaders don’t care about us denouncing their violence; we need to physically disrupt the deportation machine.
\n\nSometimes symbolically significant targets are the least tactically useful. What’s more of a threat: a rally after hours at a vacant City Hall, or a disruptive protest blocking freeway traffic during rush hour?
\n\nStay together:\nDon’t let the police separate your crew. Stay tight, regroup, and hold space, never turning your back to the adversary. Attempts to split the march into “good” and “bad” protesters are doing the police’s work for them.
\n\nUse barricades:\nDragging objects into the street behind the march protects everyone from traffic and police charges.
\n\nKeep moving:\nThe police might try to surround the march to “kettle” and mass arrest everyone. Keep it moving, especially in vulnerable terrain like intersections. Avoid bridges.
\n\nSituational Awareness:\nKeep an eye on the police lines closest to you, but also on the ‘white shirts’ behind the line who may be revealing their orders with hand signals or gestures.
\n\nGet in formation:\nPractice moving together in a “stack” with your crew. Keep your group together, holding onto each others’ shoulders or backpacks.
\n\nWe can defend against police riot control munitions with preparation and the right gear.
\n\nClothing\nNondescript, without identifying logos or bright colors. Police will review surveillance footage after the fact to identify suspects. Cover identifying tattoos, piercings, and hair.
\n\nMasks\nFull-face respirators or half-face respirators paired with sealed/unvented goggles offer protection against chemical weapons and eye injuries from police munitions. Always cover your face to prevent identification.
\n\nHelmets\nWearing an inconspicuous helmet (like a baseball bump cap or bike helmet) can protect against head trauma from rubber bullets, grenades, and batons.
\n\nGloves\nGloves make sure you don’t leave fingerprints. Heat-resistant nomex or insulated leather gloves protect your hands if you throw away police tear gas canisters.
\n\nUmbrella\nDeflect police munitions, block pepper spray, and provide cover from police and media cameras.
\n\nCash\nGet home safely without getting tracked through apps or payment processing systems.
\n\nBuy your protest gear in cash. Bring a set of different clothes to change into directly after the action, but don’t bring your phone!
\n\nWearing heat-proof gloves and a respirator, submerge the tear gas grenade in a wide-mouthed water jug containing 3 tablespoons of baking soda, dish soap, and/or vegetable oil for each liter of water.
\n\nCover the top with one hand, just enough to keep the gas from getting out, and shake the jug. Never seal a bottle containing an active tear gas canister—you don’t want it to explode.
\n\nYou can also use heat-proof gloves to throw the gas canisters away from the crowd, or sticks to knock them away. Leaf blowers can disperse the gas quickly, keeping the air fresh and breathable.
\n\nNow is the time to acquire material resources, build infrastructure, and grow support systems. From pandemics to uprisings to natural disasters, mutual aid is the foundation for collective strength.
\n\nCare for One Another:\nMap skills and supplies for everything from physical and mental health to housing to growing food. Pool resources to help those who need them.
\n\nDefend One Another:\nCommunity self defense ranges from de-escalation to physical intervention. Build resilient neighborhoods where the police are not welcome and we take care of our own conflicts. Spread revolt as an act of solidarity\nwith those already facing repression.
\n\nDistribute:\nFind ways to share skills and supplies in decentralized, coordinated ways. Build logistic strategies to get people and supplies from one place to another. Diversify roles to build a stronger movement\nwhere people can take different levels of risk.
\n\nCommunicate:\nPractice digital security. Use Signal and burner phones. If digital networks go down or become unsafe, have a plan for alternate forms of communication like two- way radio or runners.
\n\nWe cannot meet a super power on its own terms. What we lack in biochemical weapons and armored vehicles, we make up for in numbers, intelligence, and adaptability.
\n\nKeep Your Toolbox Full:\nDon’t rule out tactics that might be new or uncomfortable for you. Debate is healthy, but “violence” versus “non-violence” is a mirage.
\n\nBe Wise in Application:\nWork with the terrain. Address actions you think were a mistake in good faith. Adjust tactics and formations to specific goals. Discuss the pros and cons beforehand. Debrief afterwards.
\n\nLearn Together:\nTreat each act as training for the next. Reflect upon what is working and what is not. Share your insights with others.
\n\nBe Creative:\nWhen one tactic is hitting a limit, try something new. Our greatest strength lies in our ability to rapidly evolve and act with asymmetric impact
\n\nUprisings succeed when they remain complex, diverse, and contagious. Refuse the impulse to condemn people fighting tyranny—whether through sit-ins, marches or direct confrontation. By embracing those who fight beside us, we protect everyone from the repression that will eventually come for us all.
\n\nWe all must risk something in order to sustain a movement that pushes past our differences and changes the course of history.
\n\nFUCK ICE / CHINGA LA MIGRA / FREE THEM ALL
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2025/02/13/the-students-walk-out-in-los-angeles-a-report-from-the-streets", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2025/02/13/the-students-walk-out-in-los-angeles-a-report-from-the-streets", "title": "The Students Walk Out in Los Angeles : A Report from the Streets", "summary": "Participants in this month's demonstrations in Los Angeles offer a short report from the streets.", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/02/12/header.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/02/12/header.jpg", "date_published": "2025-02-13T08:57:19Z", "date_modified": "2025-02-18T04:55:25Z", "tags": [ "los angeles", "borders", "ICE" ], "content_html": "In the opening weeks of Donald Trump’s second presidency, some of the fiercest expressions of defiance have come from the communities that Trump is threatening to attack. In Los Angeles, students have engaged in weeks of walkouts and other protests against the mass deportations Trump promised. In Cincinnati, the historically Black community Lincoln Heights responded to a neo-Nazi rally by chasing off the white supremacists, burning their swastika flags, and conducting an armed watch lest they attempt to return.
\n\nBoth of these communities draw on deep roots of resistance. The students in Los Angeles are walking out in the footsteps of previous student rebels, including those who participated in the historic protests of 2006 against the repression of the undocumented. People in Cincinnati rose in rebellion in 2001 against police violence, foreshadowing the movement that got underway in response to the murder of Oscar Grant in 2008 and arrived on the world stage in 2014 with the uprising in Ferguson. In continuing these legacies, today’s protesters show how difficult it will be for Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and other racist billionaires to control the population of this continent. They also point the way for others who are still trying to figure out how to defend themselves against the new regime.
\n\nHere, participants in this month’s demonstrations in Los Angeles offer a short report from the streets.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/02/12/4.jpg\")
You can view many other photographs depicting the week’s events by the same photographer here.
\nThe ongoing anti-ICE protests in downtown Los Angeles have been led by Latino and Latina youth, including striking high school students and fleets of teenagers on 29er BMXes, minibikes, and lowriders. The streets are significantly livelier, compared to the last year of demonstrations protesting the genocide in Gaza. The Los Angeles Police Department has reported several injuries to officers, as well as slashed tires on police vehicles.
\n\nUnencumbered by formal speeches and megaphone-driven chants, the participants have instead spent their time setting off fireworks and smoke bombs, doing burnouts at intersections, and chanting “Culero!” at the cops. Anger, frustration, excitement, and joy have mingled in the streets as cumbias and corridos blast from car stereos and live bandas and the smell of burning rubber fills the air.
\n\nThe events of Sunday, February 2, began at the El Pueblo de Los Angeles historical monument, where thousands rallied with speeches, music, and performances organized by a loose coalition of political organizations and social media influencers. After the performances and speeches, the participants marched to City Hall, where hundreds of people occupied the steps and lawns. The rally formally ended at 11 AM, but the crowd continued to march from City Hall back to El Pueblo de Los Angeles where protesters remained until 11 PM.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/02/12/3.jpg\")
This protester’s ensemble succinctly conveys an entire political program. Credit.
\nIt was clear that although the rally was called by formal political organizations, the crowd’s energy quickly exceeded any control they may have had over people’s movement. Crowds took over the 101 freeway in downtown three separate times, leaving the walls painted with “Fuck ICE,” “Brown Pride,” and “Chinga tu Madre Trump!” An estimated three thousand people, including street vendors who flocked in to sustain the protest, held down the blocks between the 101 freeway and Olvera Street all evening, until LAPD eventually used tear gas to disperse the crowd.
\n\nAccording to one participant,
\n\n\n\n\n“A crowd of about 100 swarmed an LAPD vehicle, trapping it as they danced cumbia on all sides. Orders to disperse were met with empty cans of beer thrown at police cruisers.”
\n
The next day, on February 3, students across Southern California and in parts of the rest of the country skipped classes and crowds gathered to mark “A Day Without Immigrants,” echoing a 2017 call to protest and boycott in response to the first Trump administration’s rhetorical and material attacks on immigrants. Los Angeles Unified School District attendance was reported at 66%, and traffic on the 101 was temporarily stopped by hundreds of protesters again.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/02/12/2.jpg\")
Graffiti on Los Angeles City Hall.
\nAfter the previous day’s disordered and timid response to protesters, the LAPD was actively looking for opportunities to escalate and perform arrests. At least one man was arrested on a felony vandalism charge during the demonstrations. Minor skirmishes between protesters and police on February 3, including the use of green-strap 40-millimeter less-than-lethal rounds, culminated in the police kettling a group of 200-250 protesters in a tunnel on Chavez Avenue. At this point, the LAPD faltered, failing to muster and coordinate the necessary resources to carry out mass arrests. The tenacity of the crowd and protesters outside the kettle effectively succeeded in de-escalating the police response; after several hours, the protesters were cited and released.
\n\nThe strength of these initial protests laid the groundwork for the following week of resistance across Los Angeles County. Student walkouts have happened nearly every day and continue still, with community and mutual aid organizations supporting them. This form of resistance follows in the legacy of the 1968 East Los Angeles Walkouts (also known as the Chicano Blowouts), during which 20,000 high schoolers walked out demanding anti-racist education. The March 2006 rally for immigration reform also saw tens of thousands of students walk out. The energy in the streets and the overall swagger of the protesters recalls the rowdy celebrations after the Dodgers won the World Series in October, which escalated to looting in downtown and the burning of a Metropolitan Transit Authority bus in Echo Park.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2025/02/12/1.jpg\")
You can view more work by this photographer here.
\nThe speed of response, scale, and sustained nature of the protests in Los Angeles were notable. However, marches in San Diego, Phoenix, Austin, and dozens of other cities showed that the draw to make resistance public is not isolated to Southern California. While people have taken to the streets less rapidly than eight years ago, this should not be understood as a public disillusionment with the tactic of mass protest. We don’t have a complete answer for what tactical role street protests should play in the current political moment, but this week in Los Angeles has reminded us that there is still an intoxicating joy to be found in the streets in these collective gatherings of resistance.
\n\nAnd regardless of whether activists, organizations, and organizers call for them—they are going to happen.
\n\nThe demonstrators at City Hall on February 4, 2025. A video shared by People’s City Council, Los Angeles.
\n