LOS ANGELES, the second largest city in the US, exploded over the weekend following a massive raid on Friday by federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration across the city.
Thousands took to the streets after the raids, carried out in a military style operation, targeted locations in Los Angeles – which contain many labour intensive industries including Home Depot stores and a clothing wholesaler – in their search to arrest and detain ‘undocumented’ migrant workers.
The raids were carried out on the direct authority of the Trump administration and with no agreement from the California state elected leaders.
The initial raids that arrested around 100 sparked the fury of workers and youth with protests raging across the city for three days leading to standoffs between protesters and ICE enforcers.
On Saturday night President Trump, against the wishes of California’s governor Gavin Newson, called out the National Guard to quell the uprising.
2,000 National Guard troops arrived in LA to crush what a White House memo described as constituting ‘a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.’
This memo further opens the door for US armed forces to be deployed in LA at the discretion of the Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth.
Trump’s decision to deploy National Guard troops to LA has sent shockwaves through the American political system.
Newson, along with other Democratic governors, described this as an ‘alarming abuse of power’ saying: ‘This is a serious breach of state sovereignty’ and demanding it be immediately rescinded.
There is no chance that Trump will rescind this move because of appeals from Democratic politicians that the president has torn up the rule of law and the US Constitution.
Indeed, Nanette Barragan, Democratic Congresswoman whose constituency is in the heart of downtown LA, said she has been told to prepare for ‘Thirty days of ICE enforcement’.
Thirty days, at least, of working class areas of LA being under the complete domination of paramilitary forces of the capitalist state.
Trump is prepared to use the ICE enforcers, the National Guard and US troops to subdue workers and youth who are rising up against his vicious dictatorial rule in LA and across the US.
Trump is not going to back down in the face of complaints that he is acting like a dictator, after all, prior to his election he openly boasted that he would be a dictator ‘from day one’ if elected.
Driving the Trump administration rapidly along the path of completely dispensing with the façade of bourgeois democracy and towards a police/military dictatorship, is the massive historical crisis of US capitalism.
With the US national debt reaching nearly $37 trillion and with Trump’s plans to rescue US capitalism from diving into recession through trade wars on the world in tatters, the drive to impose the crisis on the backs of US workers has become imperative.
This necessitates the most powerful capitalist nation dumping the old ‘democratic’ rule and turning to the naked dictatorship of the ruling class over the working class.
This move is being followed by capitalist nations across Europe and the UK, with ever increasing use of the police and courts to try to intimidate all those standing against imperialist wars and genocide and in defence of their democratic rights.
Now is the time for the powerful working class in the US, UK and Europe to end this development by bankrupt capitalism towards a form of dictatorial rule to impose its economic collapse by forcing tens of millions of workers into abject poverty.
The urgent task today is to build a leadership in the working class prepared to organise and lead mass strike actions to bring down the capitalist governments and go forward to take power by overthrowing the capitalist state and bringing in a workers’ state and socialism.
This means building up the WRP and Young Socialists in Britain and building sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country to lead the world socialist revolution to victory.
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