Image is of a protest in San Diego against ICE.
On January 7th, 37-year-old Renee Good was murdered by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. While a considerable amount of the discussion online has been about the direction her wheels were turning and things like that, truthfully, I think it's just fundamentally bad to shoot a person to death with a gun if you happen to be a state mercenary enforcing an incredibly racist federal policy, regardless of the circumstances.
The murder has since prompted a wave of vigils and protests, not only in Minneapolis, but also in virtually every major city in the country. The demands are justice for Good in particular, and the abolition of ICE in general, to avenge its many victims. The Trump administration has done all they can to inflame the situation, designating Good a "domestic terrorist" and saying that the agent who shot her will be immune from prosecution.
Protests and resistance to this administration's policies have, encouragingly, had an element of international solidarity - not only are flags from countries throughout Latin America (and also Palestine) present, but speakers in protests have even been actively condemning the recent imperialist actions against Venezuela. For it is, of course, one joint struggle. The imperial boomerang always returns - and in the modern day, it returns rapidly.
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The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Isn't that a totally lib org? I blocked them on Bluesky because their posts were lib city.
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Edit 1
I had no idea it started on Reddit. And "grassroots"? I don't believe that and there's no mention of who funds it. Smells very fishy.
Also - how involved is the democratic party in this "grassroots" thing? They must have their tentacles involved. I simply can't believe otherwise.
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Edit 2
I've been googling but the results are worse than shit.
It's a space contested by libs and leftists. It draws millions of people and they will either be pulled to socialism or co-opted by the Dems.
I don't know if you saw my edit. Also - who funds it?
In my experience, a lot of the original (local) organizers were basically just angry libs online who have never organized a day in their life, but looked to the Democratic Party for leadership informally. They seemed to mostly chat in discord and started having regular meetings eventually. There was no official structure or centralized leadership, although in places like DC it seemed like a slightly different story. Interestingly, where I live this also meant that unions which were often deeply attached to the Democratic Party were in contact and open to being involved, but the Democratic Party itself seemed to offer no help or financial support.
There is a big distinction (often missed by ultra-left tendencies) between the people showing up to these no kings events and the 50501 leadership regardless, and the PSL identified that this is opening a relatively progressive space for large numbers of dissatisfied working class people. -so by engaging with popular language, and even being helpful to their organizers (despite some significant political differences), there is massive potential to help shift the conversation toward revolutionary socialist consciousness to people who would have otherwise only looked to the Democratic Party.
This worked quite well, and showed itself in particular when the PSL successfully helped shift a “no kings” event to “ice out” messaging, which was a clear departure from the Democratic Party’s stance on immigration and would not have been the focus were it not for PSL (at least as far as I can tell). I know at least locally, this was also when the lib organizers were bullied into allowing our Palestinian coalition partners into speaking at their demonstrations and it was met with an incredibly positive response from the crowd that shut up all of the negativity coming from the most reactionary lib organizers. (where I live, the things they told the Palestinians not to say (that everyone ignored) ended up getting the most positive responses from the masses)
I agree with jack, this has proven to be the correct call and has potentially bridged the gap between the growing anti-imperialist movement in the US and the mass movement against Trump that otherwise would have inevitably ended with only a call to vote for the Democrats and something performative. Hundreds of thousands have been able to connect the dots between Trump and the system itself rather than just blaming Trump. And for instance, when Maduro was kidnapped, there was another break from the typical Democratic Party imperialist politics, where many many more people turned out than normal for anti-war demonstrations despite the democratic party bending over backwards to manufacture consent. Where I live, the local media even covered those actions, and mentioned the PSL, despite for years leaving out the Party’s name or attributing our actions to other socialist organizations if they covered an event at all. imo, it has also proven that the PSL can intervene in national politics in a way that a communist party has not been able to since the 30s. The US is still nowhere near broad revolutionary consciousness, but this is still a significant change
Yup,the difference in local media coverage lately has been wild to see.
I've interacted with a ton of these people. It's definitely grassroots and nobody funds it. None of them had any clue what they were doing when they started a year ago and they had no resources or training. Just people mad at Trump who wanted to protest that went viral.
Somebody funds it. How involved is the democratic party?
What are you basing that on? What expenditure of funds have you seen?
They want to have control of it and in some cities they do. In other cities they've been totally boxed out. Lots of places remain contested. The leadership is very ideologically divided, but swaying more and more left.
Google is giving me shitty results. I searched for "50501 democratic party involvement". The following is not a good source. But it's the best I found so far.
[Edit. The source was simply too shity so I deleted the link and quote. I wish google worked. Sigh.]
The 50501/no kings protests in my nearest city are certainly 100% in alignment with the democrats, with local democrat officials speaking at them and instructing everyone to vote blue and indicating that voting blue is the only possible route to stopping trump. I don't know anything about the movement's organizers but the protests here just present as DNC stump speech events.
Sounds like the left orgs nearby aren't contesting that space well.
I drove an hour to get to one of the protests and got dirty looks for wearing a palestine flag hat. It's definitely safe to say there's no left orgs contesting the space there.
you are assuming that the Democrats are competent, but they have so much contempt for their own constituents that they won’t lift a finger. They assume that it will all work in their favor as the official “Opposition” (TM) - and the saddest part is that is true everywhere the communists exclude themselves from those spaces
States have public donor databases that will contain detailed breakdowns. All of these 501 orgs have to report, usually on a quarterly basis.
It is funded by DNC associated groups
How would interacting with the random libs who show up give you any indication in who is funding the events? Are you speaking to the organizers themselves? I really don’t see how you are reaching these conclusions, this is an obvious DNC front group
Yes, I would recommend reading the comments you respond to
No it’s completely DNC controlled and Liberal. Entryism to DNC orgs doesn’t work. They will work to peace police the protests to death
No it isnt
This is not a DNC org and it's not entryism
What does that even mean
If you don’t know what peace policing a protest to death means you obviously weren’t around for the dwindling and suffocation of the George Floyd riots into peaceful meek DNC campaign events, and you aren’t really trustworthy to advise on tactics and strategy if you aren’t familiar with this American tendency to protests
Ok
Watch as PSL walks right into the sheepdog trap laid out for them, as they do campaign events for Democrats. I really hope I’m wrong and PSL has some other plan cause based on an outside view their events are indistinguishable from 50501/No Kings events which are DNC campaign events. Them getting further entangled with those backstabbing opportunists does not bode well.
What do you think should be the strategy to engage with the very large numbers of people attending these protests?
Not have veterans and Democrat politicians on stage to speak, for one
An event the PSL actually organizes - as in sets the speaker list on its own terms - would never have a Democratic politician. A veteran would need to be an anti-imperialist organizer denouncing the military. But what if party organizers get invited to speak at an event that a Democrat was also invited to speak at? Should they say, "no, I will not sully myself with adjancency to a Democrat" or should they say "I will utilize the platform to push a radical message in opposition to the Democrats to this crowd"? Which one is more effective to our ends?
This was an official PSL-DSA-Answer joint event on January 10th, at Battlefield Memorial Park in Portland. PSL_PDX has the banner on their Instagram.
The speakers included two democrat politicians so you are just straight up wrong. Portland city commissioner and I believe a state senator who was a Somali immigrant. They also let About Face talk, a Vet organization, who kept spouting incoherent patriotic bullshit. They didn’t denounce the military, they talked about how much better the military is than ICE the whole time.
I was the only one in attendance with a Palestine flag. There were more Ukraine flags there than Palestine flags.
Local politicians might have a specific relationship with a movement or group, I dunno.
About Face is a legit group of anti-imperialist veterans. If he was doing pro-military bullshit, he was misrepresenting his own org.
If so that sucks, but again, what should they do? Spend time yelling at people about their Ukraine flags?
What happened to “PSL would NEVER let a democrat speak”???? See how easily you spout 100% wrong bullshit?
By their fruits ye shall know them. If their fruits are just peaceful permitted marches with the exact same people from 50501 they are doing something wrong. The fact you can’t address this or won’t address this is concerning
Guess I was wrong about a decision that branch made. Could be something the DSA partners pushed for as well, I don't know. Could be the party just endorsed the event and didn't organize it at all or had to compromise with other organizations.
Edit: would also be curious who the specific politicians were to see if they're actually democrats
Soon as ya know it, it’s a DNC campaign event cause “partners” in 50501 “pushed for it”
This is the trap that I’m warning you about that you are ignoring, very suspiciously
Welcome to the compromises of real world organizing,not just posting. Democrats want to seize control of this movement. Your strategy, which can only be inferred by negation since you have no proscriptive strategy, is apparently for the PSL to automatically cede control because they may have to occasionally share space with people who might be Democrats in the process of fighting for the support of the people seeking political solutions.
Again, what is the "trap"? What do you think the party should do to engage with these protest movements?
Oh yes the “real world compromises” which require us to just become Liberals.
Begone
Democrats love a communist like you because you'd never bother to challenge them
They love “communists” like you because you are just the same as them but wearing a red shirt
What do you think the party should do to engage with these protest movements?
They should get involved in actual organization and civil disobedience. They should not continue to do permitted protests forever but actually start threatening commerce, blocking bridges, shutting down transport, etc.
Think more civil rights movement and less 50501
So we should go to a 50501 protest and transform it into a transportation blockade? How do you convince people to do that if you show up and start calling them fascists?
Straw man. PSL should ignore 50501 protests and organize radical civil disobedience instead, drawing all activists and radicals to them like a banner
There are not enough of them to win. We need to make more. That requires engaging with the disillusioned liberals. A vanguard party leads the working class, not the activist world.
Doing the same thing as the failing Liberal institutions and even beginning to merge your movement with theirs will have the opposite effect you think it will.
Fighting is how you grow. Distinguishing yourself as different is how you grow. Biding your time twiddling your thumbs and compromising is how you slowly die. Intertwining your fate with Liberal opportunists is how you become defunct and useless.
Look at Hamas vs Fatah. Fatah gave up, liberalized, refused to fight and tried to bide their time and now they are a bunch of traitorous Zionist scum. Hamas was willing to fight and the masses rallied to them.
The masses demand action. The moment demands action. If PSL refuses then they miss their opportunity