Many forms of resistance needed
As the capitalist class continues its assault on the working class and oppressed communities (both overseas and abroad), it is only natural that protest and resistance increase. This resistance takes many forms.
It can be marches in the street joined by all people able and willing to attend. It can be civil disobedience aimed at disrupting the status quo. It can also be a direct confrontation with the state. Obviously, there are many other forms. The point is that resistance exists on a spectrum.
Resistance rises to meet the oppression that created it. Because of this, there is no room for cherry picking the form of resistance that deserves support. Historically, it has always been a combination of different forms of resistance that drove results and expanded the struggles of liberation for workers and oppressed people.
Palestinian, Iran and Yemen
For nearly two years, the world has watched the Palestinian resistance fight against the Zionist occupation by any means necessary – a fight for the survival of their people. Since that time, Yemen has also militarily confronted Israel and the U.S. directly with the stated goal of ending the genocide in Gaza.
More recently, Iran has found itself in a position of military resistance against U.S. imperialism and Zionism. Similar to the fight of the Palestinian people, Iran is fighting for its survival in the face of an imperialist world order that wants to see it crushed.
However, the resistance to U.S. imperialism is not limited to the armed struggle. There has also been the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, the March to Gaza, the Global Conscience Convoy, and the Soumoud Convoy. All of these actions were / are aimed at defying the Zionist entity and breaking the siege of Gaza through the delivery of humanitarian aid. Whether it is fighters ambushing IOF soldiers in the hollowed remains and rubble of the Gaza Strip or everyday people doing whatever they can, this is all resistance, and it should all be supported to oust the oppressive and genocidal U.S.-backed Zionist state.
Parallels between Gaza and Warsaw Ghetto
Varied resistance in the face of apartheid and genocide is not new. Oppressed and colonized people have commonly and historically embraced whatever tactic required for survival, let alone victory. Ironically, one of the most famous examples of resistance in the face of genocide was in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. The word “ironic” is appropriate here because the children and grandchildren of the Jewish radicals and militants who rose up against Nazism in Warsaw are now waging a genocidal campaign on Palestine.
However, the uprising of 1943 was not the only method of resistance that the Jewish community embraced during the horrific implementation of the ghetto system. A year prior, a group of Jewish doctors performed a study of starvation inside the ghetto. The public health and nutrition situation in the Ghetto at the time was stunningly similar to present-day Gaza. Food could only be obtained through soup kitchens that were themselves the targets of the Nazi occupiers. Vaccines, antibiotics, and other crucial medications were all withheld from the Ghetto prisoners by the Nazis.
The Jewish doctors’ stated purpose was to track the impact of genocidal policies on a community in order to help future generations of oppressed people be prepared. To this day, it is the most extensive study of starvation carried out. The 28 Jewish doctors who conducted it were themselves starving. All of these doctors but one died from malnutrition or were executed by the Nazis – but not until they completed and ensured the security of their work. This was certainly as much an act of resistance as the armed uprising in 1943.
Struggle in U.S. now
In the present-day U.S., the same spectrum of resistance to fascism by various oppressed communities can be observed. Across the U.S. in 2025, racist police and fascist ICE agents hunt, jail, and deport immigrant communities. These attacks on immigrants have been going on under both Democratic and Republican presidents. This shows that it is the ruling class, the millionaires and billionaires, the prison industrial complex and military industrial complex that stand to gain from the oppressive crackdown on immigrant communities within the U.S.
As communities came under attack by ICE across the nation, they all began to fight back in their own way. In Maine, residents of the state took to the streets demanding ICE leave their cities and towns. In Baltimore, there have been demonstrations protesting ICE and its brutal raids and attacks on immigrants around the city. There have also been anti-ICE groups who actively disrupt and bust ICE operations whenever possible. Many other cities have held massive demonstrations against ICE, and many other communities have confronted ICE directly during attempted raids.
Rebellion in LA
However, in California, there has been a rebellion in the streets. This rebellion formed to fight not only ICE’s terror raids, but also the apartheid practices of the LAPD and the general military occupation of downtown L.A.
This occupation is a violent assault on the people by a hardline fascist federal security apparatus. This is a campaign meant to scare not just the people of L.A. and California, but all people who find themselves living in the United States. Trump and his allies want oppressed people cowering before his ICE stormtroopers. This fear is designed to force communities into political paralysis. However, through resistance (like that in L.A.) we see that the people can win.
As peaceful protest was met with tear gas, rubber bullets, flashbangs, pepper balls and pepper bombs, the struggle in the streets could only intensify. As residents were shot trying to get home or get the names and ID numbers of officers participating in the occupation, these same residents began to fight back. As more and more people witnessed parents, children, friends, family, and coworkers disappear to gangs of masked men, there came a point where peace could only slow them so much.
So, the people of Los Angeles began directly confronting the occupation of their city to hinder or completely end the kidnapping of their people. They threw bricks, water bottles, chairs, plates and anything else they could get their hands on. The tear gas grenades that were tossed into crowds were tossed back at the fascist forces that threw them. When the community set police cars and ICE armoured vehicles ablaze, it was not a random act of destruction. It was an attempt to stop a brutal Gestapo force that was kidnapping people and breaking up families.
In Los Angeles, peaceful protests continue to be organized, coordinated ICE patrols still happen, petitions and calls continue to get local and higher government to reverse the occupation and ICE operations, and when violence is brought to the people, they are unafraid, willing, equipped and organized to fight back.
Each of these forms of resistance has played a role in the overall goal of combating ICE and ending the occupation. Government officials have gone on record saying that all this activity is hampering ICE’s ability to operate in L.A. at the tempo desired by the ruling class.
Lessons from MLK and Malcom X
Corporate media wants the people to shame resistance. They want the working class divided so the capitalists can conquer. The media goes as far as invoking a false and racist narrative pitting the strategies of the Honorable Malcolm X versus Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in regards to protest and resistance against the state. They paint the resistance in L.A. in the same light as they painted the teachings of Malcolm X. The media wants the people to believe that Malcolm X was a rogue, a renegade who just wanted to see unwarranted violence erupt around the world.
In reality, Malcolm X was speaking of the importance of resistance to injustice. He was speaking of self-defence in the face of brutal racist state violence. In L.A., when pigs and police dogs and horses attack crowds – the crowds attack those pigs back. This is to be expected. The working class has not been known historically for backing down from fascist assault.
The media and the state have whitewashed the legacy of Dr. King, leading people to believe that he was against violence and against resistance. Dr. King said “A riot is the language of the unheard, and “the price that America must pay for the continued oppression of the Negro and other minority groups is the price of its own destruction.”
Clearly, both men understood the importance of all forms of resistance. Both worked to achieve liberation, justice and equality for Black people, and the Federal government assassinated both men for their organizing. The capitalist system’s police cronies can commit violence whenever they deem it acceptable, but will go into overdrive to shame resistance to that violence.
In Los Angeles, the people are fighting back with any means necessary, just like in Baltimore following the murder of Freddie Gray in 2015. When faced with occupation and intimidation, school kids – unable to go home due to police blockades of bus stops and metro stops through riot police and crowd control weapons – the people fought back. Marches through the streets and into the heart of downtown, marches to police stations and city hall and marches through the affected neighborhoods. Both were forms of resistance to the police occupation, and both worked to bring empowerment and some justice to the people of Baltimore affected by police occupation.
The working class of Palestine, Yemen, Iran, Lebanon, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Baltimore – and wherever working people call their home – will continue to meet fascism and genocide with resistance. That fundamental resistance to racism and imperialism should be supported on all fronts and in all forms.
Colby Byrd and Lev Koufax are organizers with the Peoples Power Assembly of Baltimore, reporting from Los Angeles.
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