Bulletin on Domestic Militarism and Repression
Introduction
The strategy is clear, as well as the desperation. Domestic repression in the U.S. colonial/capitalist core is imperative to support the aggressive militarism abroad, the periphery, in the form of wars of aggression, political subversion, economic sanctions, and genocide that have become the consciously and intentionally chosen tools of a rapacious U.S. based global ruling class—a ruling class that is unable to rule in the old way. Yet, it's more than willing to blow up the world and sacrifice millions of people to maintain the predatory material basis for its white supremacist class rule.
The irreconcilable contradictions of the neoliberal order that produced the dramatic swing to the right represented by the warmongering of the Obama administration and later succeeded by Donald Trump and Joe Biden, confirmed for the Black Alliance for Peace that its analysis that predicted an inevitable dependency on force and violence by the U.S. rulers domestically and globally was essentially correct.
This analysis was the basis for the launching of Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) in 2017 and in 2025, is the basis for this bulletin. The Black Alliance for Peace’s bulletin will be committed to monitoring and documenting the various modalities of repression that the U.S. ruling class deploys to drive the general population into passive acceptance and support, and any political opposition into non-oppositional silence.
For the capitalist oligarchy working with and through the duopoly, the mantra is dominate or annihilate because they do not have the ethical or moral values to choose life. Theirs is a death wish emanating from a morally bankrupt culture of death.
Their strategy is clear but ours must be even clearer and, more importantly, more effective. Because after Gaza, the people of the world are starting to understand with unambiguous clarity that either we defeat this criminal elite, or collective humanity will not survive.
Resistance to degradation and dehumanization is an individual and collective human right and is why this bulletin has been incorporated into BAP’s new North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights. Starting modestly with a bi-monthly publishing schedule, it is hoped that the bulletin will be another resource for activists who are not intimidated and have taken up the fight for humanity and a new world.
Ajamu Baraka
Director, North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights
People are scared to go out’: fear of Ice agents forces cancellation of US summer festivals
For Orlando Gutierrez in Kansas City, the thought of cancelling his community’s summer Colombian Independence Day festival first surfaced “the week after the inauguration” in January, “when the raids started happening”. The decision was rooted in “trying to be safe”, Gutierrez said. “We’re not talking about folks that are irregular in terms of their immigration status. You only have to look a certain way and speak a certain language and then you’re in danger.”
For decades prior to 2025, the event had gone on interrupted – “in rain, in extreme heat” – and hosted thousands of Colombians and non-Colombians alike, Gutierrez said. “Our mission is to share our culture with people that don’t know it,” he added. “To not have the opportunity – that’s where it hurts the most.”
In Donald Trump’s second term as president, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has been historically expansionist: it now aims for an unprecedented 3,000 minimum arrests a day. Its agents have thrown undocumented people, residents with protected legal status, and even American citizens into a deportation system that increasingly does not respect due process.
Out of fear of being targeted indiscriminately, cultural and musical events from coast to coast – block parties and summer concerts in California; Mexican heritage celebrations in Chicago; soccer fan watch parties in Massachusetts – have been postponed or canceled altogether. Even religious gatherings are no longer perceived as safe from Ice. In San Bernardino, California, Bishop Alberto Rojas has dispensed his congregation from the obligation to attend mass out of fear of deportation raids.
Every decision to cancel is heartbreaking. In Philadelphia, Carnaval de Puebla, which was scheduled for April, made the call to cancel in February, said organizer Olga Rentería. “We believe this is not a time to celebrate,” Rentería explained, “but a time to remain united, informed, and strong.” In Los Angeles, organizers of Festival Chapín, a celebration of Guatemalan culture, have postponed the event from this August to October. “It was really hard to take that decision,” Walter Rosales, a restaurateur and one of the event’s organizers, told the Guardian. “We have a lot of attendees; more than 50,000 people every year. People have hotels, they have flights. We hire people to be there. But I think it was the best [choice.] The first thing we want is the security of the people.”
Rosales said he hopes that by waiting a few months, Festival Chapín can take place amid a different political climate, one in which Ice sticks to promises made by Trump to target primarily undocumented people with criminal records.
But mass raids are likely to get more frequent: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, legislation forced through Congress by Republicans and signed into law by Trump on the Fourth of July, will slash social programs while funding Ice at levels comparable to the budget of the US army.
It means that even huge stars are questioning whether concerts are safe for their fans. When the Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny announced a recent tour that skips the continental US altogether, social media speculation centered on the notion that the artist did not want to put his fans in Ice’s crosshairs. That theorizing was in part fueled by Bad Bunny’s own dips into the wider political conversation: he’s called Ice agents “sons of bitches” on social media and his “NUEVAYoL” video – in which the Statue of Liberty is garlanded with the Puerto Rican flag – is a lovely and grand ode to New York’s immigrants.
Of avoiding the US on his upcoming tour, the artist himself has only said that, after touring regularly in the US in recent years, more dates at this time were “unnecessary”. (A representative for Bad Bunny did not respond to a request for comment.)
Gabriel Gonzales, the bandleader of the Los Angeles Latin music ensemble La Verdad, said some of their gigs have had to be cancelled this summer. “A lot of people are very scared to go out,” he said. “It’s kind of like the pandemic all over again.”
But as La Verdad continue to perform around Los Angeles and elsewhere, Gonzales is finding new meaning in playing live amid the Trump administration’s policies.
“It’s not like a rebellion,” he said. “It’s more like a resistance. As musicians, we are there to take people away for a few moments. I see communities pulling together and I feel like everything is going to be OK.”
For Joyas Mestizas, a Seattle-based Mexican folk dance youth group, which cancelled their annual festival this year, the plan is to be “more creative” going forward. “But we’re not going anywhere,” said the group’s co-director, Luna Garcia. “If I have to teach kids out of my basement, I’ll do it. The kids are going to dance.”
For some organizers of cultural events for Latino communities, pushing through and executing their plans despite fears of raids has become its own kind of crusade.
In July, federal agents were spotted on the premises of Chicago’s National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts & Culture just days before the institution was scheduled to hold its annual Barrio Arts Festival. The museum said the agents entered the property, “refused multiple requests to present a warrant, badge, or identification”, and “informed museum staff that they were assessing entry and exit points for upcoming events that may draw undocumented attendees”.
(In a statement, homeland security said agents “staged and held a quick briefing in the Museum’s parking lot in advance of an enforcement action related to a narcotics investigation”.)
In response to the presence of the federal agents, the museum decided not to cancel the festival – but, rather, to ensure it would go forward without endangering its attendees. Veronica Ocasio, the museum’s director of education and programming, said that in the days before Barrio Arts, she and her team “met nonstop” in order to create “as tight a security plan as we could”. The museum is located inside Chicago’s Humboldt Park; in order to cover the park’s 200 acres, Ocasio and her co-organizers assembled a group of volunteer immigration advocates who created a trigger warning and stood guard on rotation for the entirety of the two-day festival. If Ice agents were spotted, the museum was ready to shut down the event, close the gates, and bunker in place – holding attendees inside until the agents left. The plan then called for Ocasio and other museum employees to stand out front with immigration attorneys, holding the fort.
Delia Ramirez, an Illinois congresswoman, was also a key part of the museum’s plan. In order to head off potential Ice raids, Ramirez as well as other elected officials were on the premises “around the clock”, she said. “State representatives, city council folks, the mayor. All to protect constituents from homeland security.”
“The president has taken away people’s healthcare so he can hire more Ice agents to terrorize communities,” added Ramirez, but that doesn’t mean “there’s no oversight or accountability. At a time where the federal government wants to harm you, we will keep each other safe”. For Ramirez, Barrio Arts Festival was “a beautiful showing of people saying to Ice, ‘not here, not now, not ever’.”
Beyond her support for local cultural events, Ramirez is attempting to push back on Ice action more broadly: she’s a co-sponsor of the No Anonymity in Immigration Enforcement Act which would prohibit Ice from the now-common practice of carrying out their deportation actions while masked. “People are freaking the hell out,” she said. “They don’t know whether it’s an Ice agent who is going to criminalize them with no due process or it’s someone who wants to rob them. No other law enforcement agency does this.”
Ultimately, not only did the Puerto Rican event in Chicago go on without interruption, but it was “our largest, most well attended Barrio Fest in our 25-year history”, Ocasio said. “We stood against intimidation and we created a blueprint for festivals in the city of Chicago.” The museum has already shared the safety plan it developed on the fly with organizers of upcoming events representing the local Colombian and Mexican communities.
Ahead of New York’s Colombia Independence Day festival – held in July in Corona, a working-class neighborhood in Queens – organizers were similarly concerned about the possibility of Ice raids. They took precautions by bordering off the event, marking it as private, and creating a single entrance point where they would have stopped Ice agents operating without a warrant, organizers said.
Like Chicago’s Barrio Arts Festival, they had lawyers on hand from a local legal services organization. Ultimately, like Barrio Arts, they too set a new attendance record, with around 20,000 festival goers.
Catalina Cruz, a New York state assembly member who helped plan the Colombian festival, said that all the precautions she and her fellow organizers took “doesn’t explain why so many people came out – from all over the city and beyond”. She credited attendees with a certain kind of mental fortitude: “I’m not in their minds, but I don’t think they were giving a fuck about the president.”
Of course, that fuzzy feeling of having put on a successful mass event for the Latino community in the era of all-pervading fear of Ice isn’t a panacea. As Cruz put it: “What would have really stopped [Ice] if they wanted to get in? As we have seen in the case of California” – where federal agents have forcefully and en masse raided parks and working farms – “not a goddamn thing.”
Newly flush with cash thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill Act, Ice is now actively recruiting waves of new agents – to, in their words, “defend the homeland” – by offering $50,000 signing bonuses and student loan forgiveness. Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, has promised to “flood the zone” with Ice agents in New York and other sanctuary cities.
But on that Sunday in Queens, the Colombian festival ticked along beautifully with no sight or sound of the federal government’s aggressive deportation machine. Vendors pushed street-cart ceviche and plastic pouches full of high-octane, primary-color beverages: “Coctelitos, coctelitos!” Seemingly every other person wore the powerful yellow jersey of the Colombian national soccer team. Twentysomethings salsa’d next to older family members grooving in their wheelchairs.
When a performer with serious pipes sang the Star Spangled Banner, everybody perked up. When she followed it up with the national anthem of Colombia, throat-bursting singalongs broke out. After she wrapped up, the DJ smashed the ehh-ehh-EHH horns and, all together, folks chanted: “Viva Colombia! Viva Colombia!”
U.S. Police Militarization in the Age of Trump ICE Raids
Summary:
President Trump rescinded restrictions on the transfer of certain military-style equipment to police on his first day in office.
With recent (ICE) raids, this renewed ability of police to militarize poses danger to U.S. residents, especially in states where local police cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
The 1122 Program is one of many pipelines that enable police militarization, but lawmakers must curtail it, or at the least, mandate more transparency of the program, to prevent more police violence.
On his first day in office of his second term, President Trump rescinded a slew of Biden era executive orders. Among them was a policing executive order that limited the transfer and sale of federal military equipment to state and local law enforcement. The now rescinded order also contained measures to improve use-of-force data collection, ban the use of chokeholds, restrict no-knock entries, and ensure appropriate use of body-worn cameras.
With the rescission of the Biden-era policing executive order, under federal law, local police are now free to obtain grenade launchers and grenades, explosives, armored vehicles for any purpose, weaponized drones, and combat-configured aircraft. Particularly in the context of recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and arrests, this renewed ability of police to further militarize poses a danger to U.S. residents. Local police often cooperate with federal authorities on immigration enforcement via ICE’s 287(g) Program, especially in states where “sanctuary cities” (local governments that have deprioritized or refused to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement) are outlawed. Now that local police have even more avenues to arm themselves with military-style equipment during an era of heightened arrests and forced removals, the threat of harm to U.S. residents is increasingly grave.
The 1122 Program is one of many pipelines that facilitate police militarization. Established in 1994, the 1122 Program allows law enforcement agencies to purchase discounted military equipment for counter-drug, homeland security, and emergency response activities. These discounts encourage local police departments to purchase equipment from department of defense contractors, propping up the same military-industrial companies that profit off of war abroad and police violence at home.
Along with its more well-known sister 1033 Program, which received significant scrutiny in 2014 during Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, the 1122 Program provides police agencies access to battlefield-style equipment such as armored vehicles, MRAPs, and long-range acoustic devices. However, unlike for the 1033 Program, there is no federal mandate for data collection or tracking of purchases through the 1122 Program. Without public and governmental knowledge of what is being sent to which agencies through the 1122 Program, there can be no accountability for use of this equipment by law enforcement agencies.
Given this frightening development, it is promising news that a number of municipal police departments have refused to assist ICE in tearing apart communities through raids and arrests. However, the Justice Department has since taken legal action against these local and state officials.
Conversely, other states and localities have signaled and demonstrated their willingness to aid and abet federal immigration crackdowns. State level executive orders and local police coordination with ICE raises concerns with how these agencies could potentially use military style equipment already in their possession, or soon to be in their possession, in immigration raids.
Policing in the United States is becoming increasingly dangerous by the day. The recent removal of restrictions on police militarization will further equip law enforcement agencies with more nefarious tools to surveil and suppress our country’s residents. If our nation does not act quickly to curtail this power, we will continue to see with increasing frequency and scale how the 1122 Program and other police militarization pipelines intensify violence against marginalized communities.
Analysis: “Public Safety Training Centers" (“Cop Cities")
U.S. police forces are simply another name of the same domestic militarization. In an attempt to quell the 2020 uprisings, following the murder of George Floyd and countless Black/African people in the U.S., “cop cities," under the guise of protecting communities as “public safety training centers," were meant to suppress organic, peoples-centered movements that were making progress against racial capitalist violence.
Countering liberal notions, we understand that the issue is not more training for police. Rather, policing is the issue as a result of the training. Through the 1033 and Deadly Exchange Programs, we see the clear connections between militarization domestically and abroad, enabling U.S. police as a foreign occupying power on Turtle Island (and Hawai’i), to increase the repression of internal colonies in the U.S. Therefore, an end to U.S. militarism and withdrawal of foreign occupation troops in the Americas also necessitates the end to all Cop Cities.
The state’s message to the resistance movement with the planning and implementation of cop cities is clear. Using any and all capital available, the state will double down on its tactics of violence as resistance arises. On the other side of the coin, we understand that this response is only an indicator that the state, in fact, does fear the power of resistance to its hegemonic rule.
Cop cities as “public safety training centers" are strategically placed in locations that will simultaneously maintain the state-imposed status quo in the immediate region and also encourage military recruitment from the region, often targeting youth recruitment. In Baltimore, for example, the proposed cop city is for a $330 million training facility on the campus of Coppin University, an HBCU (Historically Black College/University). A few additional examples on the map include:
In Sanborn, New York, the Law Enforcement Academy is proposed for the college campus of Niagara University.
In Johnston, Rhode Island, a cop city was approved through eminent domain, prioritizing violence militarization in poor communities over a proposed affordable housing project.
A cop city is proposed in collaboration with Clemson University in South Carolina, as a justification for dealing with “mass casualty events" such as school shootings, when there is zero evidence that increased police presence (of any kind) prevents or even deescalates these events.
Concord, North Carolina, residents refer to the local (former) juvenile prison as a “cop city," despite any public-facing propaganda regarding its peace-keeping purpose.
Las Vegas, Nevada, is building the Reality Based Training Center on 200 acres set aside on Nellis Air Force Base.
Nashville, Tennessee, is investing in a $415 million cop city project on 800 acres, which will also house factions of the Department of Corrections (DOC) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Sante Fe, New Mexico, is also home to another Reality Based Training Facility, framed as a “Public Safety Psychology Group," where police forces train for and implement psychological counterinsurgency strategies.
As evidenced through the establishment of cop city in Atlanta, the intentionality of these structures is obvious-- to take life.
The state and the Atlanta Police Foundation, the corporate-funded nonprofit organization leasing the land to build the facility, call it the “Atlanta Public Safety Training Center", with police ‘and politicians insisting that its purpose is to keep Atlantans safe and police officers trained. Forest defenders, on the other hand, call the facility Cop City’ for ‘its mock city design—eerily resembling the mock cities established by the United States military in the wake of the 1960s race riots, where police practised using military-grade weapons against fake street protests (Pettengill 2022). Forest defenders note that Cop City resembles a similar response in the wake of the militant uprisings against deadly, racialised police violence.
BAP-Atlanta Demands End to Cop City Project:
The Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) is the local manifestation of the “Deadly Exchange" program, in which U.S. and Israeli police and Israeli military share hyper-militarized policing techniques and technology and physically travel to zionist Israel to engage in this exchange.
Eviction Notice from the Mvskoke People to Mayor Andre Dickens and Cop City:
Georgia is the birthplace of oppressive policing, originating with Indigenous genocide and the Trail of Tears and the capture and enslavement of African descendants seeking freedom. Our ancestors who are buried here continue to suffer while the City of Atlanta and the State of Georgia deploy the very same escalated militarized tactics against Black, Indigenous and people of the global majority that were used in Indigenous genocide and Black enslavement. The state and the City of Atlanta have a historical, moral, and legal obligation to cease the clearing of trees and land and to cease developing militarized weaponized policing.
NO COMPROMISE NO RETREAT! DEMILITARIZE BALTIMORE CITY!
While Mayor Brandon Scott celebrates declining homicide rates, the Baltimore police department (BPD) has murdered three Black residents in just two weeks, exposing Baltimore City’s reliance on militarized policing, the lack of value of Black and working- class lives, and the colonial relationship where the police are the occupation force tasked with the responsibility to control and contain the surplus, colonized populations into zones of non-being. These killings—execution-style shootings, ambush responses, and violent encounters with people in crisis—reflect the Deadly Exchange programs that train Baltimore officers in tactics imported from Israel and U.S. war zones.
Mayor Scott’s praise of “progress” rings hollow while Black Baltimoreans are hunted by the same police force the DOJ condemned for racial discrimination. Now serving his second term as mayor, Scott’s focus on reducing crime and praise of “progress” rings hollow while Baltimore City policing, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) forces, continues to terrorize Black and working-class residents. From no-knock raids to shootings of unarmed civilians, these murders follow a clear pattern: police escalate, then execute. The victims—Bilal “BJ” Abdullah, Pytorcarcha Clark-Brooks, and Dontae Maurice Melton Jr.—were denied their human right to live, just as their families are now being denied justice. Although the Trump administration ended all consent decrees in May 2025, the 2017 consent decree imposed on Baltimore City—following a DOJ report that confirmed systemic police abuse—has done nothing to stop police terror. Instead, the city has expanded police budgets, proposed a $330 million 'Cop City' training facility, and installed an underfunded, overworked crisis response system, all while ignoring demands for real accountability. The crisis of the unchecked militarized police forces that occupy Baltimore City is a credible threat to the safety and well being of all Black Baltimoreans. The bloodshed will continue as long as police answer to politicians instead of the people. Without Community Control Over the Police, the only path to dismantling Baltimore’s machinery of state violence, the city’s "progress" is a myth written in blood.
The People in Baltimore must break free from the political duopoly to build safe, self-determined communities. Decades of 'reform' have only brought more state violence, masked by empty consent decrees and hollow boasts of 'low crime' from officials.
BAP- Baltimore Demands:
Terminate the Deadly Exchange Program and partnerships with the racist, fascist Israeli Occupation Forces.
End The 1033 Program and all militarized terror forces in our communities!
End Operation Relentless Pursuit and all City, State and National Police & Intelligence Agencies partnerships
No Cop City or any police expansion!
Sign onto the demands here!
Notes on State Repression & Building Power Through Coalition
The militarized raids that have terrorized Los Angeles over the past few months demonstrate what this system truly is, a sham democracy that sends armies against poor and working peoples. Black Alliance for Peace Southern California's 'No Compromise! No Retreat!' campaign makes it clear that domestic militarization isn't some accident. It's what happens when empire starts to collapse.
None of this is without precedent. The armored vehicles, multi-agency strike teams, and national troops all come from the same counterinsurgency playbook they use in Haiti, Palestine, and across the Global South.
The ruling class turns to ever-more forms of spectacular violence, to cohere what are irreconcilable antagonisms - between the few who have increasingly more, and the masses who increasingly have much less. Take, for instance, that since 1990, the 1033 Program has dumped $6 billion in military hardware into police departments, turning working-class communities, especially working-class neighborhoods, into occupied territories. LAPD rolling out MRAPs against protesters, ICE using 'pattern-of-life' surveillance—this is capitalism's answer when exploitation alone isn't enough: counterinsurgency warfare.
Understanding this warfare for what it is, BAP SoCal launched 'No Compromise, No Retreat: Defeating the War Against African/Black People in Southern California' on May 10.
State violence hits us through LAPD occupation, ICE terror, and economic warfare, all working together. Programs like Deadly Exchange, where LAPD adopts Israeli apartheid tactics, reveal the dialectical relationship between imperial violence abroad and domestic repression. The surveillance technologies and urban warfare doctrines developed for Baghdad and Gaza inevitably return to Compton and Watts.
Task Force 51's deployment under USNORTHCOM—the same command structure used for foreign occupations—makes explicit what organizers have long understood: the contradiction between capital and colonized masses knows no borders.
We can't fight this alone. Sanctuary city promises are hollow when militarization is built into the system itself. That's why BAP SoCal joined the Community Self-Defense Coalition and NOlympics LA. We need to move from defense to offense.
Community Self-Defense Coalition builds material infrastructure for survival and resistance: crisis response networks, community patrols, and mutual aid systems. These efforts don't just mitigate state violence. They prefigure a world beyond policing, creating liberated zones where revolutionary practice thrives.
NOlympics LA exposes how capital and the state use mega-events to accelerate militarization and displacement. The 2028 Olympics will embed permanent surveillance, expand LAPD's budget by billions, and displace working-class communities, mirroring the devastation seen in Rio and Tokyo. Fighting the Olympics means attacking the logistics of imperialism itself.
Victory requires dismantling militarized capitalism's entire architecture and building revolutionary consciousness that connects LAPD raids to ICE deportations to AFRICOM operations as unified imperial violence.
The contradictions sharpen daily. We observe the climate crisis, economic collapse, features of imperial decline. As evidenced, the ruling class will intensify domestic counterinsurgency. Our response must be equally uncompromising:
Expand community self-defense: train, document, intervene to keep each other safe
Disrupt the war machine: oppose 1033, Deadly Exchange with Israel ICE, Surveillance Mega-events infrastructure - FIFA, Superbowls, Olympics
Build internationalist solidarity—continue to link local repression to global resistance
We're building the infrastructure to resist the militarized state, defend our neighborhoods and people, and strengthen coalitions. Through the Black Radical Tradition, BAP SoCal is developing the strategic clarity we'll need for the long fight ahead.
End the Colonial Occupation of Washington D.C.: The People Demand Self-Determination and Self-Governance
President Donald Trump’s recent announcement to deploy the National Guard to Washington, DC, framed as a crackdown on crime, marks a dangerous escalation in the federal government’s militarization of one of the spaces of the Black/African internal colony. On August 11, Trump declared, “We’re taking our capital back,” while signaling an unprecedented federal takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department. This move, under the pretext of public safety, follows his March 2025 executive order establishing the “Safe and Beautiful” task force, led by Stephen Miller, an architect of white nationalist immigration policies. The initiative has accelerated mass surveillance, aggressive policing, and the criminalization of Black/African and working-class communities, particularly in Southeast DC.
Trump’s declaration comes on the heels of the "Secure DC” Omnibus bill, alongside decades of Democrat-backed crime bills that have devastated marginalized communities and are now being expanded further under Trump’s task force. His order promotes harsher pretrial detention, sweeps of homeless encampments, ICE raids, and relaxed concealed carry laws—measures that will inevitably target the same communities Democrats once claimed to protect. This bipartisan tradition of punitive governance reflects a shared commitment to maintaining racial and class control, differing only in rhetoric.
Moreover, historically, the National Guard has been weaponized against Black/African communities, from suppressing uprisings during Red Summer (1919) to violently attacking and then occupying the community of Cambridge, Maryland during the Black Freedom Struggle (1963) to the George Floyd uprisings during the first Trump presidency (2020).
Trump’s current deployment revives this legacy, embedding militarized force into daily governance. But this moment is not isolated—it reflects the enduring logic of settler colonialism, where state violence and deputized white civilians (from slave patrols to modern “stand your ground” vigilantes) uphold racial hierarchy. By seizing DC’s police apparatus, Trump isn’t just escalating policing; he’s testing a more blatant and centralized model of authoritarian urban control, one that could soon extend beyond the District.
It is no coincidence that the consolidation of this outright militarized domestic occupation advances as the U.S. deepens its support for the zionist perpetuation of genocide in Gaza. The barbarous collaboration in a live-streamed genocide by the U.S. and collective “West” has opened the door for open disregard for the lives and livelihoods of the masses of people across the globe, as well as the demonization of our resistance. The failure to recognize the humanity and fundamental rights of Palestinians is replicated in the escalating fascistic domestic policies of the U.S. settler-state. Just like with the zionist occupation, this acceleration of barbarous violence and militarized repression is simply an embrace of the states’ settler-colonial foundations.
The tragedy is not just Trump’s brazenness and further consolidation of neofascism, but the Democratic Party’s continued collaboration in strengthening the repressive capacities of the state through militarization, surveillance, and economic austerity. Decades of “tough-on-crime” posturing have normalized the criminalization of poverty, leaving communities vulnerable to even more extreme repression.
Now, as Trump invokes “law and order” to justify occupation, the challenge lies not only in resisting his agenda, but also in confronting the colonial/capitalist structures and oppressive class rule that made it possible. BAP is clear: self-determination and collective resistance are paramount human rights, central to the People(s)-Centered Human Rights framework that BAP is prepared to defend.
The fight ahead is not simply against Trump’s authoritarianism.It is a fight for a future where safety is not imposed by militarization but built through structures of popular democracy, peace, social justice and collective liberation. But to achieve this future it is absolutely clear that the people must fight. We will oppose the intensification of colonial occupation with popular organization and a steeled determination to defend our individual and collective rights by any means necessary.
We want peace. We work for peace but we understand the sacrifice that sometimes must be made for peace and a new world—and we stand prepared to make those sacrifices.
No Justice, No Peace,
No Compromise, No Retreat
Resources
Articles/ Links
Compiled by Karen A. Johnson
July 2025
Impact of ICE on Black and Brown Communities in 2025
ICE Raids are Rearing to Impact More Than Just the Latin Community—Here’s What You Need to Know.
https://www.ebony.com/ice-raids-protest-what-you-need-to-know/
The LA conflict is domestic warfare of international import
https://spokesman-recorder.com/2025/06/24/black-alliance-for-peace-ice-raids/
U.S. Police Militarization in the Age of Trump ICE Raids
https://corruption-tracker.org/blog/u-s-police-militarization-in-the-age-of-trump-ice-raids
Confronting the Deportation State: Black American Responses to Immigrant Expulsion in the Interwar Period. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-american-history/article/confronting-the-deportation-state-black-american-responses-to-immigrant-expulsion-in-the-interwar-period/2EB65C87798FDBFDF474BBD7ACAB9B1C
(This article provides good historical information on the topic of deportation of Black immigrants).
Black Community Leaders Respond to Immigration Enforcement in LA: ‘This is Our Fight Too.’
https://laist.com/news/politics/black-leaders-respond-to-immigration-enforcement
Trump’s Budget Just Passed the Senate. Brace for a Massive Increase in ICE Raids.
https://theintercept.com/2025/07/01/trump-big-beautiful-bill-passes-ice-budget/
Black Immigrants in Atlanta Mobilize Amid Rising Deportation Threats.
https://atlanta.capitalbnews.org/black-atlanta-immigrants-deportation-trump-legal-advice/
The Abominable Sadism of Alligator Auschwitz.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/sadism-alligator-auschwitz/
Resistance Struggles Against ICE & Immigrant Deportations
The People vs ICE: An Uprising Against State Terror.
https://redflag.org.au/article/the-people-vs-ice-an-uprising-against-state-terror
Los Angeles Resistance Standing Against ICE.
https://therealnews.com/los-angeles-resistance-standing-against-ice
Feds Closure of ICE Building Blocks Immigrant’s Access to Critical Legal Aid.
Black Interests in Resisting ICE Raids.
https://ibw21.org/commentary/dr-maulana-karenga/black-interests-in-resisting-ice-raids/
Solidarity Against ICE and the Entire State Apparatus.
https://www.blackagendareport.com/solidarity-against-ice-and-entire-state-apparatus
Protests Signal Publics Readiness to Rebel Against Anti-Immigrant Fascism.
What the LA Protests Against ICE Are Really Like from the Organizers Themselves.
Amid ICE Sweeps and Travel Bans, Here’s How to Support Black Immigrants in Atlanta.
https://atlanta.capitalbnews.org/black-immigrants-atlanta-travel-ban/
Resisting Mass Deportation Under Donald Trump.
https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/resist-mass-deportation-ice-trump/
Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) April 2025
Policy Breakdowns Regarding Black Migrants & Deportation
Unleashing’ America’s Law Enforcement.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C6awJtKWZKY9KlNZro4cuRuJ1lUDuG-jYAIIdU51l2Q/edit?tab=t.0
Migrant Registration Requirement.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cO6givtR5oaxo99IUs7qRlAApZIibHMpPC8YlBiSHv0/edit?tab=t.0
Pressuring States and Cities to Abandon Sanctuary Policies.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a_0kp-cuPZx-MZ9o8R4ZdeCTICsYmcke7SphOOlzASk/edit?tab=t.0
ACLU Press Releases
President Trump’s Visit to Alligator Alcatraz Detention Center Facility Highlights Decent into State-Sponsored Cruelty.
As Communities Mobilize Against Increasing ICE Abuses, Members of Congress Must Fulfill Their Responsibility to Conduct Oversight of Immigration Detentions.
Civil Rights Organizations Raise Alarm Over Conditions and Rights Violations at Immigrant Detention Facilities Run by Facilities by Federal Agencies.
U.S. Government DOD 1033 & 112 Programs
Unaccountable Military Surplus Fuels Police Violence at Home and Abroad.
Trump’s Executive Order Promises to ‘Unleashing’ America’s Law Enforcement and Expand Police Impunity.
Trump’s Executive Order on Policing Explained.
https://www.naacpldf.org/case-issue/president-trumps-executive-order-on-policing-explained/
Trump’s Vision for Policing Comes into Focus.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/trump-s-vision-for-policing-comes-into-focus
The 1122 Program: An Investigative Analysis.
https://internationalpolicy.org/publications/the-1122-program-an-investigative-analysis
Cop City Updates/And or Critical Analysis
Pittsburgh Council Splits on Planned Public Safety Facility Some Deride as Cop City.
Maps of over 80 Cop City Facilities in the USA (Built or Planned)
https://isyourlifebetter.net/cop-cities-usa/
Policing, Protest, and the Future of Atlanta: Inside the Movement Against Cop City.
https://prismreports.org/2025/05/20/no-cop-city-no-cop-world-book/
Cop City Has Opened, But Our Struggle for Justice Grows Stronger.
https://afsc.org/news/cop-city-has-opened-our-struggle-justice-grows-stronger
#StopCopCity: Where Environmental and Policing Collide in the People’s Fight to Protect Life.
Stop Cop City: How Collective Framing Transformed a Local Environmental Protest into A National Social Justice Movement.
Defendants in Georgia ‘Cop City’ Case Say They Are in Limbo as Trial Delay Continues.
https://apnews.com/article/cop-city-rico-charges-61-atlanta-be5ef1ed1951a73870656f61fbbc567b
A Key Fight Over the Most Infamous Police Project in the Country is Coming to a Head.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/04/copy-city-fight-future-of-journalism.html
The Quiet Rollout: Cop Cities Across US Meets Growing Resistance.
https://portside.org/2024-09-10/quiet-rollout-cop-cities-across-us-meets-growing-resistance
Israel and the Training of USA Police Departments
The Legal and Constitutional Consequences of US Police Departments Collaborating with Israeli Security Forces.
US Law Enforcement to Receive Terror Response Training for ZAKA IN First of Its Kind Agreement.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-840926
Deadly Exchange: US Sends Hundreds of Law Enforcement to Israel to Learn Worst Practices from IDF.
US-Israel Strategic Cooperation Joint Police and Law Enforcement training.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joint-us-israel-police-and-law-enforcement-training