Frontlines TPUSA covered an anti-ICE protest in Portland, Oregon, last Friday, which also featured a communist rally.
At the rally, a speaker involved with the Revolutionary Communists of America gave an address to a nearby crowd discussing how communism can be applied to current political problems in the US.
The speaker, focusing most of his speech on ICE, said the agency needs to leave the cities it is conducting operations in, such as Minneapolis, Minnesota, where tensions between protesters and ICE have escalated within the past month.
Marxist language and terms derived from communist Russia such as “comrades,” “Bolsheviks,” “proletariat,” and “working class,” were prevalent throughout the speech.
The speaker initially stated that attempts to influence the way in which government officials think and operate are ineffective. According to his communist ideology, a total dismantling of capitalism is the only feasible way to make political progress in the future.
“We cannot train them better to make them better,” the speaker said.
He later claimed that the tension between anti-ICE protesters and the US government “is a facet of the capitalist system that we live in.”
Focusing on ICE, and how he and like-minded people can best oppose the agency and its current efforts, the speaker called for a general strike.
“We can also call for more than just a single day of action: we can say go farther and turn this into the greatest weapon the working class has at its disposal, the general strike. Only with a coordinated mass direct action can we shut down the capitalist machine that ICE is beholden to,” he said. “An economy brought to its knees will make the murderers of ICE and their masters in Washington tremble at the might of the working class. Not just in the Twin Cities, but all across the nation, we can kick ICE out of our cities.”
