The Past Four Days

 

The autocratic breakthrough is now escalating. At Indivisible, we’ve used the term “autocratic breakthrough” a lot in recent months. The breakthrough is characterized by Trump’s firing of the internal auditors; his empowering of Musk to ransack the government; his open defiance of court orders; and his attacks on law firms, media institutions, universities, businesses, and nonprofits. 

Trump and Stephen Miller have been driving a rapacious, vicious escalation in ICE raids and detentions. ICE agents have been assigned massive quotas for detentions, and to meet them, they’re going after the people they can find -- workers at job sites, immigrants who are following all the rules and reporting for check-ins at courthouses, kids at schools.

Over the weekend, this led to a predictable clash in Los Angeles. Facts are important, so here’s a timeline of events:

Friday (6/6): Surprise ICE sweeps in LA leading to the detaining of more than 40 workers. Nonviolent protests gather in different parts of the city.

Saturday (6/7): At a nonviolent protest, California’s SEIU leader David Huerta, a US citizen, is assaulted, tear-gassed, and arrested by ICE. Trump calls up 2,000 California National Guard troops over the objection of the governor and mayor, even as the Los Angeles Police Department applauds the protests for remaining peaceful.

Sunday (6/8): Military Humvees arrive in LA. Protesters block the freeway. LAPD declares unlawful assembly and fires non-lethal rounds and teargas on protestors and journalists. Trump (through Secretary of Defense Hegseth) escalates further by threatening to mobilize 500 Marines.

Monday (6/9): Just as we're hitting send on this email, it's reported that 700 Marines are being deployed to LA over the next 24-hours.

Trump and his cadre are escalating to cause enormous human harm against those they view as less than human. But they’re also escalating to create chaos they can then use to legitimize further escalation. So, while protests were overwhelmingly peaceful, when some bad actors engaged in property destruction or violence, the Trump team used that as an excuse to escalate further. That’s their plan -- rinse and repeat.

Where we go from here. The ICE raid escalation has not been limited to LA, and I don’t believe the military escalation will be limited to LA either. Legal experts have noted that Trump’s legally questionable statement commandeering the California National Guard did not limit him to just California. Who knows which city is next. Or cities.

And of course, this is coming at a fraught moment. Trump is planning a taxpayer-funded birthday military parade for himself with tanks in the streets of DC. It’s a flamboyant and intimidating show of force -- an attempt to present himself as a supreme leader. Somewhere, Mussolini is looking up and smiling.

We don’t know how much of this is intended to be an escalation specifically in advance of the parade. What we do know is that this is scary -- intentionally so. Fear is their goal because fear is both demobilizing and contagious.

But we know that courage is contagious, too. When the fascists crack down on small-scale nonviolent protest, we need large-scale nonviolent protest. That’s what works. Leaders, institutions, and people currently on the sideline need to know that the defense of democracy is inevitable, overwhelming, and irresistible. They need to see it with their own eyes.

This is where the good news comes in. When we here at Indivisible heard Trump was planning a birthday military parade, we got to work on No Kings Day counterprogramming. We wanted to avoid counter-protests in DC that would give Trump an excuse to crack down on protestors. Instead, we aimed to organize everywhere else.

I announced the plan last month in a conversation with Rachel Maddow. At the time, we had a handful of partners and about 100 events registered. Today, there are more than 150 national organizational partners, thousands of local leaders, and nearly 1,800 nonviolent protests globally.

Despite how unsettling these escalations are, I’m excited for Saturday. I’m trying to ground myself in some basic beliefs. I believe in our people. I believe in our cause. And I believe that we will win. We just have to do the work to make that more than a belief.

In solidarity,
Ezra Levin
Co-Executive Director Indivisible