In recent months the United States government has launched a multitude of attacks on migrants, women, and LGBTQ+ people. It has fired or otherwise forced out of work hundreds of thousands of federal employees and attacked their unions. It has imposed severe cuts to essential government payments (including Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP, and Social Security), medical and other scientific research essential to life and quality of life, the U.S. disaster response networks (including the Federal Emergency Management Agency and hurricane forecasting systems), fossil fuel reduction and other climate emergency initiatives, and more.
It has waged attacks on science and education. In addition to limiting who has the right to study in the U.S., it has attempted to dictate the teaching of a distorted perspective of history and the current state of the world. Funding has been withdrawn from colleges and universities, which have also faced other attacks for not adhering to the dictates of the Trump administration.
These attacks have not only directly destroyed many people’s lives; they have also terrorized many, many more in a variety of ways. Within the U.S., this has perhaps been particularly blatant in the massive attacks on recent migrants and long-time foreign-born residents. ICE agents have been mobilized around the country grabbing people off the streets, at their workplaces, in their homes and schools, at court appearances and more.
The government has also continued its complicity, by providing major funding and military assistance, in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and now the war on Iran.
There has been a widespread reaction with demonstrations of millions of people in thousands of locations across the country and the world.
In response, the federal government has demonstrated its readiness to respond to opposition when people in Los Angeles responded to the provocations of a massive assault on people in a section of that city. It brought the California National Guard under its control and sent in 2,000 guard members, along with 700 U.S. Marines to Los Angeles to occupy parts of the city.
Now, the government is trying to scare and divide us in additional ways. They are threatening organizations that have been part of the opposition to these attacks. A variety of human service and political organizations who focus on defending migrants have received threatening letters from the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, claiming that they have provided support to what this committee calls ”riots” and “lawless mob actions” in Los Angeles. The letters demand that these groups stop their migrant support activities and prepare to turn over a variety of internal documents to this committee, including revealing the identities of people who have participated in organizing efforts or may have donated money to these groups.
This is a blatant obstruction of our rights to free speech, assembly, and protest. What’s more, they are meant to scare us into silence and stop people from organizing or even feeling safe to speak out against injustice, whether it is attacks on people in our communities or wars on people in other parts of the world.
We cannot surrender our rights and allow these scare tactics to slow down or weaken our resistance. We cannot allow ourselves to be divided. Our power is in our collective action. The movement to defend people, wherever we were born, from these government attacks must unify and grow so that we can protect each other, and secure basic human rights and a quality life for everyone. We stand with all organizations fighting against ICE and against all of these attacks on working-class, poor, and other oppressed people.
Speak Out Socialists, June 25, 2025
