Red star tribune | revolutionary news & history

LOS ANGELES–Over a thousand people and representatives from over 60 organizations marched through the streets of downtown on February 17–Presidents’ Day–from Olvera Street to Los Angeles City Hall and back in response to President Trump’s fascist campaign against immigrants and migrants across America.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have already announced they have arrested nearly 200 people in the L.A. County area, and the rumored threat of more “large-scale” operations coming soon looms over the immigrant community in the region.

In response to these events and the history of others, community members first gathered at the Plaza Olvera, the historic center of the old Pueblo, starting the morning off with a rally with several speakers from the endorsing organizations. Soon, the large, diverse crowd of around 1,000 with a myriad of different national flags prepared themselves to march down Alameda Street before holding another brief speaking segment in front of the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal holding facility that flanks the Roybal Federal Building.

The march then took a turn and marched through Little Tokyo, while referencing the treatment of the Japanese-American community during the 1940s, proclaiming that they “will never let [ethnic cleansing] happen again to our neighbors,” and landed at the steps of City Hall to protest directly at the doorstep of the institution which they say has failed to do its job of protecting the vulnerable immigrant community.

Many organizers and speakers of the march spoke of feeling that the city and county political establishment are capitulating to Trump’s Project 2025 and not using the recent Sanctuary City ordinance to halt these ICE raids.

Due to the perceived lack of protection offered by the municipal government, a new coalition has formed among several community organizations to protect their communities from local and federal law enforcement agencies’ efforts to rip apart families. The Community Self-Defense Coalition of Los Angeles (CSDC) formed in the last two weeks with over 60 organizations having signed on and endorsed its mission.

Including Centro C.S.O., chapters of Jewish Voices for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, Union de Barrio, the National Lawyers Guild, the L.A. Hands Off Cuba Committee, Black Alliance for Peace, the Rosemead Tenants Union, the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice, and dozens more. The coalition is also seeking to extend to other communities in Southern California with large immigrant populations.

The “Points of Unity” for the coalition are as follows, as listed on the coalition’s Instagram page:

• End police & ICE terrorism in our communities! NO to Raids, Deportations & family separation!
• Money for Public Education and Social Services! Not Fascism or Genocide!
• End US intervention in Nuestra America, Africa, Asia, Middle East
• Close ALL Concentration Camps (Immigration Detention facilities, Prisons)
• We will NOT collaborate with ICE, police, sheriffs.
• This Land belongs to Indigenous people; (Tongva, Kizh, Chumash, all original protectors of the land)
• We will struggle for Self-Determination for ALL oppressed people and our future generations!

Community organizer Gabriel Quiroz Jr. of Centro C.S.O. out of Boyle Heights, when interviewed about the coalition his organization helped found, remarked that it was “formed to protect our Raza from these racist right-wing attacks on our people, the constant executive orders and talks about mass deportations are a direct attack on our Raza,” and was confident that the Chicano/Latin community would, “stand up and fight back.”

The coalition has organized community patrols “in Boyle Heights and East Los investigating reports of ICE Activity and talking with and informing our Raza of their rights,” and seeks to establish branches of the coalition in other communities in Southern California where immigrant communities are at risk, currently seeking to build coalitions in San Diego and the Inland Empire in addition to Los Angeles. Several community patrols have publicized encounters with ICE and law enforcement warding community members away from them and generally peacefully harassing the ICE agents until they leave the respective neighborhoods. So far, it has not escalated into armed self-defense like in a similar situation in Lincoln Heights.

As the far-right continues to escalate and neoliberal politicians continue to capitulate in LA, the clash between immigrant and migrant-based communities and law enforcement will only increase. The rise of coalitions such as the Community Self-Defense Coalition in Los Angeles proves the organizing potential of the immigrant and migrant communities, as well as the wider progressive movements’ ability to unify in the face of fascist repression.