WI BOPM Statement 1/9/26
Less than a mile from where Minneapolis police lynched George Floyd in 2020, the U.S. government has claimed another life. Renee Nicole Good was observing the ICE gestapo terrorizing her community when she was viciously executed.
Trump’s administration has predictably defended the murder, claiming the ICE goon feared for his life, that Good’s car was a weapon, and that her killing was necessary. This is the same worn-out script that has been used to justify and normalize police violence time and again.
This is the garbage narrative that the state employed after Fitchburg police entered the home of Kevin Price, a gay, bi-racial man, and shot him three times in the chest. After three days alone in a Madison hospital, Kevin died, and only then was his family contacted. Police alleged that Kevin Price lunged at them with a knife, a claim that was disproven by video evidence. No charges have been filed.
It’s the same garbage narrative that was used after Jonathan Tubby, an Oneida man who was unarmed, handcuffed, had been pepper sprayed, and was face down on the ground was shot five times from behind by a Green Bay police officer. They said the police feared that Jonathan had a weapon, no charges were filed. Later, a federal judge dismissed the family’s lawsuit against the Green Bay PD.
There are far too many others whose stories go the same way. And make no mistake, the state violence we are seeing from ICE is a continuation, an outgrowth of the attacks on our communities by the racist U.S. police state. This ICE terror campaign is not something completely new, unique, and different from what we’ve seen before.
Trump’s mass deportation campaign, like the police occupation of Black neighborhoods, is a weapon of class rule. It is designed to terrorize migrants, communities of color and the LGBTQIA communities to keep workers divided and fearful, and to normalize the use of military-style force on U.S. streets. ICE raids, Border Patrol tactical teams, and local police SWAT units all blend into one repressive apparatus whose real target is the working class – especially Black, Latine, Arab, Muslim, Indigenous, and other oppressed communities.
When trump and his officials defend an ICE execution and call it “law and order,” they are sending a message to every cop, every ICE agent, every border guard: You will be protected when you pull the trigger. This is how fascist forces inside the state are encouraged and emboldened. To fight back against these escalations will require collective action from the working class.
Speaking of his experiences during the rise of Nazism in a post-war interview, German journalist and historian Sebastian Haffner said “Each time something happened, we hoped it would be the last excess. We kept waiting for people to step in, for institutions to act, for it to stop. And because we waited, it never stopped.”
Now may be our last chance to act before today’s excesses progress beyond the point of no return. We cannot wait for someone else to step in. Capitalist politicians and institutions have proven that they are ill-equipped to rise to this moment in history. It is only through international working class solidarity and the development of a principled and unified People’s Front that we will be able to fight back and win against this fascist onslaught.
We must heed the lessons learned through generations of peoples’ resistance and apply them creatively today. Consider how James Connolly and the Irish Citizen Army formed battalions of union workers trained to serve as a self-defense force to protect picket lines and demonstrations against the brutal union-busting attacks of the Dublin police. Union members today can marshal whatever resources they have to fight for the entire working class and all oppressed peoples. For example, there are union halls all over the state that can be prepared for the coming struggle. They could be safe spaces and be outfitted for class combat in its many forms. Having halls with kitchens, supplies, history, and culture where the people can come together, educate one another, build community, and develop class consciousness is a precious resource.
We must recognize that these ICE attacks are a tendril of U.S. imperialism. The same state that arms ICE to terrorize neighborhoods here has also been arming Israeli terrorists to commit genocide in Palestine and has been attacking and destabilizing Venezuela for well over a decade. The United States government is the largest terrorist entity in the history of the world and no one in the world will truly be free until the system of U.S. global imperialism is dismantled, root and branch.
We demand ICE out of our streets! We demand the U.S. out of Venezuela! We demand a free Palestine from the river to the sea! We demand U.S. hands off Cuba, the Caribbean, South America, Africa, West Asia, and the rest of Asia! There are No Borders in the Workers Struggle!
This is one system, one war on the working class – and it can only be confronted through unified working-class and oppressed peoples resistance.
Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement 
You must be logged in to post a comment.