My first introduction to ICE came on August 14th, from about 8pm to 10pm when a block in Lake Worth was shut down so that a gang of State Troopers could brutalize my neighbors. Local news was almost entirely silent on the matter, save for a brief article describing the police stopping a work van. 

The article reported that during this stop cops began to ask about immigration status and their victim, a local father and laborer, ran, and managed to stay safe until that evening, when he was tracked down to his home.

The article fails to mention the crowd of concerned citizens that the police officers openly mocked and threatened with arrest. It also omits the cowardice of the police force, as they are on camera, refusing to give their names or badge numbers. One cop bragged about his salary as unmarked cars blocked the street and a helicopter was circling overhead. 

Two children, one around the age of ten, and one not yet old enough to walk, were held under armed guard as they sat on the pavement for hours. The community watched as their home’s front door get smashed in with a battering ram; then their windows. A community member who tried to give one of the children water was tackled and arrested by Deputy Anthony of the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office, who forced the man’s arm back at an unnatural angle. This should come as no surprise, since different law enforcement agencies work together to locate, detain and brutalize migrants in accordance with the 287g agreement. 

What shocked me the most was the unreality of the moment. I had no reference, not even a fictional one, for this type of cruelty. In movies, fascists at least display enough integrity to give the characters some sort of watchable depth. This wasn’t that. It was burger-grease, lazy sadism, thoughtless and stupid and bored. 

In the days that followed, I found myself re-watching the footage mostly during the quiet, normal moments that don’t imply a new gestapo. I did so hoping that the footage would reveal that I’d been blinded by a veneer of temporary insanity, and that migrants weren’t being taken off the streets by force. 

Five months later on December 8th, I watched an ICE agent, annoyed by my presence as one might be at the presence of a rude customer at a deli, abduct a painting crew. He did so masked and unidentified. 

The grey-brown mini-van the cops used was disguised as the car of a mother. There was a stuffed dinosaur on the dashboard, the kind a kid might leave in the car on accident. In the five months between those two incidents thousands of immigrants in the US have been hauled away. Many of them have died. Reports have come out that immigrants are being flown to countries they never resided in for crimes they never get charged with, or being beaten and tortured in a camp hidden away in the Everglades. This newly bolstered army spent that time learning how to disguise themselves as soccer moms to abduct people more easily.

Not a full week after the painting crew were taken I attended a vigil to honor the victims of ICE. Children spoke on behalf of their parents. Many of them have been left essentially orphaned by the state. Community members, some of whom are barely getting by, have given the little that they have in order to provide some relief, taking on extra shifts or working extra hours to do so. Police rolled slowly by the vigil as children fought through tears to explain how the call goes when a lawyer tells you “your parent was taken by ICE and we don’t know where they’re detained”.

Undercover cars watched from a nearby overpass. The glare of laptops was visible through tinted windows. They watched, stopping to chat with the cruiser rolling by, not even bothering to fully disguise themselves. I assume they were taking note of who was there, in hopes that they might find someone else to add to their quota.

The state has resources and strategies, while the masses are just beginning to meet and have conversations. We first need to recognize what the state armies and their allies are doing: they are trying to isolate us. Not isolation in the vague way of therapy talk and muted loneliness, though that helps to spread unrest as well—this is an enforced isolation. This is isolation in the way that armies isolate a platoon in a low-lying forest; isolation as a very real threat that your involvement on behalf of your neighbors can get you arrested or worse. 

The prevalence of the capitalist ideological machine makes this possible with a constant, ceaseless, banter either about the crimes of migrants, (or queer folks, or whomever) or about the inescapably of the state’s power, should you be discontent. The state is vying for control and knows that we are best controlled when left in the smallest, shallow valley, scared and surrounded by nobody we trust.

On Strategy

In the case that you’ve overcome fear and have taken action, it is likely you have done so with great discomfort and often times at great personal cost. I understand and sympathize with the enormous frustration one feels when you have spent the little money that you have, given what little time you have to demonstrations and see no changes despite your efforts. My sympathy, however and the love I have for my friends in the struggle, do nothing to change the reality of the situation. The state has helicopters and new fascist platoons; we have collection baskets, and even those are running dry. The state’s strategy is effective because it acknowledges this as a war. We need to do the same.

Up until now, the efforts of the broad opposition can be roughly divided into two camps: defensive and symbolic.

The first—defensive, include mutual and legal aid, ICE watches, information gathering and dissemination, and/or community defense. As a way to minimize harm, these are vital, but these efforts by themselves are not a panacea. While they may slow the fascist state, they do not create a world where fascists have no power.

The second camp; symbolic is based on flawed logic. The state sanctioned marches, the hundreds and thousands of Democratic party decrees and proclamations which scold ICE, or wag their finger at DHS officials for their inhumanity are limited and do nothing to progress towards a truly safe society for immigrants. 

We can no longer abide by the believe that our society is dictated by a battle of ideas which will be inevitably won by the most well-crafted argument. No idea can mend the contradiction between the exploiter and the exploited. Misery is a feature of the capitalist and imperialist system, it is the symptom that keeps you working towards their goals. They will not minimize it for you. To petition a fascist for rights is to petition a tiger to put away its teeth. This is a war between the capitalist class and the rest of us. The capitalists realize it; their efforts are why we often don’t. You cannot and will not be able to convince state agents or corporations to stop doing fascism, they are not doing it for your sake, they’re doing for their interest.

If the most well-crafted idea does not necessarily win, the most organized force will. We must fight for more than symbolic victories, and even defensive work is no longer enough. This fight is about power—power over our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our labor, and our communities–the ability to call for strikes and boycotts and actions which decisively cut off labor and resources to reactionary interests. This power will only be developed through unity and independent organization, which in turn comes through open and honest struggle, not through passive agreement. 

We have seen throughout history that efforts to organize and defend ourselves against domination, exploitation and oppression are possible—and when struggle is possible, passivity can no longer be viewed as an option. It is beneath us to fight only for symbolic wins, and farther beneath even that to not fight at all. 

This struggle has shown us the networks of resistance we need do not exist and it is up to us to build independent organizations which can fight back. This starts with your family, neighbors, coworkers, and friends. Start conversations among your circles and struggle to build a community capable of resisting the state’s oppression. 

When your labor is used to enrich the powerful while your loved ones are neglected and abused it shows us that we must fight towards an economy not based in exploitation. When the state or it’s friends in the media are able spread lies about our neighbors and divide us, we must take the ability to spread information, and when it sends in an army to a residential neighborhood to enforce that divide, it is not enough to standby, it is not enough to debate, or to get conciliation, we must fight for power. We must view this the way the state does, as a war, and organize to win it.

The post Toys on the Dash and Cops at the Vigil appeared first on One Struggle.

Articles

• “Lake Worth: When Communities Become Luxuries”
  • Strategies like engaging with elected officials are insufficient to halt gentrification. We can see this in Lake Worth Beach where the state government placed their thumb on the scale to attract developers and additionally when a local institution pushed for new buildings that would price out many of the residents already there. The strategies that work are those that maintain the power of organized groups of people, not those that funnel them into one outlet.
• “Trailer Home Residents Fight Back”
  • An examination of the fight between Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park residents and CREI Holdings & the government of Sweetwater as the latter has been trying to displace the former in their quest to build a multi-use apartment complex. Drawing on retrospectives written by members of Black Rose/Rosa Negra and continued reporting from local news sources, we point out not just who is doing this, but what it means to resist this whenever it happens.
• “When Developers Say Luxury Apartments, We Hear Replacement!”
  • Because of the economic situation we’re all currently living in, something as essential as housing is growing inaccessible for more and more people as time goes on. Especially in South Florida as we remove existing forms of housing and replace them with those that are much more expensive, even though that goes against the will of the masses. Capitalist developers devour our neighborhoods and we’re reaching a crossroads; resist or leave.

Check out our previous issue at the link below.
Issue #1

The post Beyond the Headlines: Issue #2 appeared first on One Struggle.

Join One Struggle in our campaign to shut down Alligator Alcatraz

Florida Governor Ron Desantis has jumped at the opportunity to flex his authoritarian muscle, enrich his campaign donors and signal his loyalty to Trump through the swift development of the Everglades internment camp “Alligator Alcatraz.”  Immigrants were detained in the series of tented cages within a couple of weeks of anyone finding out about it, even local officials in Miami-Dade County which technically “owns” the land. Within two months a Florida district judge has halted further construction and ordered that the camp be cleared out within 60 days. The governor has vowed that he will not be deterred in aiding Trump with his mandates. However long the life of the camp itself, we will be dealing with the consequences of this bold flex of the American imperialist muscle for the foreseeable future.

More Than Just the Camp
It would be a mistake to let our struggles begin and end with this camp, or the multiple camps sprouting up around the nation with similar tactics. The moment represents an evolution of capitalism politically, economically and ideologically. There are multiple accomplishments of ruling class interest:

• The erosion of due process
• The abuse of emergency power towards the growth of privatization
• Environmental destruction
• Theft of tribal land
• Promotion of xenophobic violence

It’s Fascism Y’all

We don’t need to tell you, these aren’t new problems. Due process has always been selectively afforded to citizens and immigrants alike, more “flexible” when applied to black and brown folks and others the state deems “undesirable”. Privatization of public lands, services and industries are no surprise to families of South Florida from all over the Caribbean and Latin America, countries who have fallen prey to the World Bank and IMF. Neither are corruption, shady contracts and environmental destruction. Capitalism itself is predicated on the eradication of the indigenous and the theft of their lands for hundreds of years. Yeah, it’s the same play book but on the imperialist home field. What is significant is the abandonment of any need for justification, any need to appeal to the masses. The ruling class used to strong-arm economies in the name of democracy, but here they claim to pursue “efficiency” while clearly hocking snake oil. They claim to be protecting us from the worst of the worst like we can’t see news segments about grandmothers being detained and day laborers being run into traffic. The capitalist class is mask-off, scratching in profits like someone is gonna shut the game down.

Some embrace the most hateful, putrid ideology gleefully because it has always been essential to their system of exploitation, just not socially acceptable until now. Others will be horrified by the overt disdain for humanity like they weren’t a part of the backroom deals or passivity that afforded those in power their platform and dominance. No matter their reaction, they are locked into the global arrangement of imperialism even as it destroys the world around them.

This is why we need to divest from all the tools and spoils of imperialism – the components of structural adjustment we saw carve out social programs in authoritarian dictatorships in South America are being implemented against us now with the abuse of emergency powers and the erosion of due process; the corruption we thought was particular to “banana republics” is now rampant in the contracts being awarded to political donors and criminal cover-ups we see in the news every other day; insane inflation, stagnant wages, and lack of access to basic resources like healthcare, and clean food or water was the “pitiful” state of countries we deemed “backwards” because of the debt we buried them in…but those are the same conditions we’re finding ourselves in at the hands of the same motherfuckers who made it happen elsewhere.

If we don’t speak up loudly, things will continue to operate as usual, and what is behind the scenes will remain hidden. They don’t want us to get organized, so that is precisely what we need to do. We cannot rely on the American legal system, which still codifies slavery, does not guarantee your citizenship, and constantly walks back environmental protections at the behest of industry. We cannot work too closely with political organizations or NGOs that answer to benefactors and donors. Although we won’t shut down any pressure that could contribute to the broader movement, we know the core of our issues is the social and political structures that allow fascism to arise and consolidate power. Politicians, the legal system, NGOs – these are imperialist structures that feed off of our complacency with bureaucracy. Independent forms of organization combat that bureaucracy when we decide to do things ourselves and stay connected to each other. We cannot expect others to do the work that needs to be done to secure our future, economically, socially, or environmentally.

Join One Struggle in our campaign to pressure the companies to end their contracts.

Public Pressure – A Place to Begin

For decades we have pawned off all our political power to politicians, believing the false differences between Democrat and Republican would be enough to represent the interests of the most people. Our system is one of checks and balances, apparently, with each side pressuring the other to do better. But political pressure doesn’t come from the kind of slick business back dealing that was never a bug, but always a feature of our democracy – it comes from us, regular people, deciding that we’re going to represent ourselves. Companies and individuals that enrich themselves through the suffering of our community members should be known. They themselves should also know that we as a society agree this level of exploitation will not be tolerated.

How can we feel so sure of this, and yet it seems that what we should refuse to tolerate is happening around us constantly? We can’t afford rent, groceries or healthcare – let alone all three at once. Police still harass, arrest and murder innocent people. Child labor is being used in the US, isn’t that an agreement we made a long time ago?! What does it mean to build and uphold social agreements? The fact is, we only have what we can defend. To do that, we have to learn how to work together.

Because we haven’t represented ourselves in so long, our forms of pressure start small – sending emails and making calls with the objective of gumming up the gears of the private entities contracted to carry out this latest escalation of state violence. This early in the game, it’s possible we might encounter people – employees, interns, sub-contractors, family members – who don’t know the work they’re contributing to. Until they show us otherwise, we assume there is room to implore them to resist how they can once the call has been made to be accountable to the information we’re sharing with them.  

This is not the first or last form of pressure that can be applied. We can break out of the algorithmic echo-chambers of our social media feeds and share information with others, helping everyone understand the implications this facility has for every Floridian and every United States resident. We can also build pressure – but only if we coordinate our efforts and build relationships with others through our struggle to understand the fresh hell in front of us and how best to continue our fight to resist it. This pressure campaign aims to build with others an understanding of what “Alligator Alcatraz” is, what it means for the future and how we can work together to push back against this moment and those to come.

Join us by:
* Sending letters, emails and phone calls to the companies involved in the detention camps. Flood their socials and google reviews with the truth – they are feeding fascism! Use the resources located here
* Coming out to One Struggle events to meet and talk (updates on IG @SeedsofUnity)
* Help host pressure events for your friends, organization, or community with our support and resources
* Contribute to the campaign through research and making agitational content – artists and writers!
* Share your knowledge of and connections to the detention camp

These Are Our Demands:

1. If you are in a position to terminate your company’s contract, do so.
2. If you are not, as an employee there are still ways that you can clear your conscience. If you have a way to slow down the kidnapping and abuse, do so.
   • Tell the press and the community what you have seen, as it may help build a case against these horrific detention camps.
   • Organize your coworkers and employees against these camps.
   • If all else fails, we urge you to find other employment. No amount of money can justify the kidnapping, dispossession, and theft of people from their jobs, homes, and families. No amount of money can justify the poisoning and destruction of the land we live in.
3. Publicly denounce this stain on human history. Discourage anyone else in your industry from picking up the contract.

The resistance will not stop with the pressure campaign. Help us construct the path forward through building shared understanding and strong social bonds. For too long we have trusted our righteous discontent to politicians and NGOs who have in turn sold us to the highest bidder, leaving us to fight fascism unarmed as it arrives in our own backyard.

Resist! Arise! Organize!

The post Organize Against Alligator Alcatraz! appeared first on One Struggle.

    A week ago, an equal hatred for our current administration had hundreds of Miamians out on the streets of downtown. A scheduled time-in/ time-out organized protest with nationwide events all to say “Trump is not a king”. Our only agreement was dissent from this current government. The protest was part of the “50501 movement” created by Indivisible, an NGO established in 2016 to oppose the Donald Trump administration. The main mission of this Democratic-party NGO is to resist the GOP’s agenda, elect local candidates, and “fight for progressive policies”. Aside from the discontent with this presidency, there’s no mention of capitalism and imperialism being the root cause of the problems our society faces today. Nor how the current administration is pushing towards a fascist state. The “50501 movement,” run by Indivisible, believes in the alternative that the democratic party is selling. They think that the answer to all of these problems lies within the administrative state and electoral politics. But the democrats are just as complicit as the Trump administration in their support of continued violence overseas and profiting off of our higher cost of living. Those who came to protest did not have the collective understanding that capitalism and imperialism are the systems at fault. When we tried chanting “Hey Hey Ho Ho Fascism’s gotta go,” we were quickly shut down as we were crossing the streets. Indivisible and ACLU organizers shouted over us with megaphones to ensure no one stepped out early over the line. As a matter of fact, last Saturday’s protest in Miami had almost no chants. On either side of the streets on Biscayne, people stood with signs, shouted at the traffic as they honked back (mostly in solidarity), but there was very little space for real conversations among us.

    A variety of scientists, teachers, immigrants, young, old, democrats, anarchists, communists, pro-Palestine, and trans-right activists made loops from the Torch of Friendship to the Freedom Tower. The loop has become Miami’s free speech path, since this zone is a space protected as a “free speech zone” where large crowds can gather without permits. Cops in cars surrounded this zone, cops on motorbikes and bicycles also contained us; organizers at corners on their megaphones ensured them we would not step out of our free speech path. To only have one path for free speech is a mockery. In Miami, we have fewer and fewer of these spaces where people can gather as a community, resist, and build unity. When we say unity, we mean a shared understanding, through theory and practice, that builds connections and relationships outside of the traditional structures that dominate us. Building unity together is the only way that we can bring about a more progressive future.

    Among the crowd were some voices denouncing the Democratic party and its allies, progressive voices who recognized that both democrats and republicans are two sides of the same coin; both at fault for the creation/ operations of ICE, the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, the exploitation of the working class globally, and the growth of fascism. Some of the other organizations and protesters we talked to recognized that the democrats are not the progressive alternative. Two women with their megaphone stood out denouncing the democrats’ involvement in the Gaza genocide. They talked about the violence perpetrated against the indigenous peoples of this country, despite the crowd’s seeming uninterested, and even offered us a chance to speak. They were one of the great handfuls of talks we had that day. While it may feel nice to be heard by many, it is more important to have a conversation that struggles for unity. Building a legitimate progressive movement requires a larger amount of unity that cannot be built at one protest.

    To the hundreds in attendance and even to those who couldn’t make it… Your discontent shouldn’t end at a protest. The moment we face, where our bills compete with our wages, housing is unaffordable, and our families, friends, and neighbors are living in fear, is all part of the capitalist system of domination. These are the same problems that we have been facing since the beginning of our country. It is clear that neither political party operates in the interests of the people, but instead for the wealthy, who decide what cultural issue we should divide ourselves on next. These systems, the imperialist political machine and the profit-over-all-else, planet destroying motives of capitalism want us closed off, silent, and obedient. The NGOs want to co-opt you and use you as a foot soldier, in this circumstance, for the benefit of the Democratic Party. But what they want done might not always be what your community needs.

    ​​​​​​​We must get organized, we must speak with our neighbors, coworkers, friends, and build networks of resistance. Imagine if this protest brought together organizations of workers who are seeing their colleagues deported, neighbors who are fighting ICE and the loss of public housing, teachers worried about their students’ safety while fighting censorship and privatization. Groups of people who organize independently of the state, from political parties and moneyed interests, can work together to build unity around the fact that all struggle is class struggle. They would inevitably see that what unites us is the fight against capitalism and imperialism. Then the call wouldn’t be “No Kings,” it would be: “NO DOMINATION, NO EXPLOITATION, NOTHING BUT WHAT SERVES THE PEOPLE!”

    This is the flyer One Struggle shared at the No Kings Protest. Let us know if any of this resonates with you or what your experience was if you attended the protest. Reach out to us if you’re looking for more perspective or if you’d like to get organized.

The post “No Kings Day 2025”: Your discontent shouldn’t end at a protest appeared first on One Struggle.

One Struggle is grateful for our connection to Haiti: we organize around core concepts that come from the working class organization Batay Ouvriye (you can watch a short film about their struggle here). The Rapid Response Network was developed as a way to spread calls for solidarity from the workers, not only in the form of financial help but also to pressure factory owners, politicians and other parts of bourgeois Haitian society. 

Since last May, the situation in Haiti has devolved.  According to the United Nations about 5,000 people in Haiti have been killed in 2024 by gang-related violence. There is no formal government to pressure and factories have shut down. Workers in industrial parks that are still open are being gunned down in random gang attacks. The streets that used to host brave and defiant May Day protests are on lock down by gangsters heavily armed with weapons from profitable US gun manufacturers, arriving to the ports on ships from the US. Despite this, Batay Ouvriye continues to provide support to their workers. In a moment when most anyone would be dominated by fear, these workers are trying to navigate the logistics of providing for the families that have lost their loved ones, for children whose mothers have been taken by the violence. 

This needs to be the loudest story we’re telling. Batay Ouvriye has reached out asking for funds and we want to share that request, you can donate here or through Venmo @RRNSolidarity. 

The global imperialist machine has shown us what it is willing to do; getting organized is our only hope for protection. Organizing doesn’t get easier when the threat of armed militias stand between you and your neighbors or your coworkers. We can agree that things are moving towards repression. Now is the time to build the relationships, unity, strength and capacity to support each other for when the austerity gets more dire, when society is feeling more hopelessly divided. The consistency and the struggle that this kind of organization requires is not easy, but it is essential and a hell of a lot easier to do now than it will be in the future.

Where do you want to start? What do you need organizing to do for your communtiy? Discuss it with the person who shared this article with you, reach out to One Struggle through onestruggle.southflorida@gmail.com or on IG through @SeedsOfUnity. Please donate to help workers in Haiti with funeral costs and family support, and to continue to survive and fight the most essential battle of our time: it’s us versus them, the people versus imperialism.

For a longer form perspective on the moment, you can read our last article here with information shared from a member of Batay Ouvriye.

The post Solidarity and Support for Haiti in 2025 appeared first on One Struggle.

The post Beyond the Headlines: Issue #1 appeared first on One Struggle.

Unfortunately, media is nothing more than privatized corporations whose main goal is to earn an income rather than inform our communities. Beyond The Headlines is a project by One Struggle that seeks to dig deeper into the stories that affect us and analyze how our struggles are connected and rooted in capitalism and imperialism.

We want to reveal the class warfare we face in Florida every day. We want to dig into local stories, inform about the laws affecting us, gather real intel from our communities and share our perspective with the goal of informing and providing the tools to fight back. We will share our independent commentary with the goal to expose class struggles, build networks of resistance and inspire independent organizing. Beyond The Headlines seeks to shed light on the rapid domination and privatization of healthcare, education, housing, and the various systems we rely on, which is caused by capitalism and imperialism.

South Floridians are ready and capable to come together and build independent organizations against the systems that oppress and dominate us.

Sign up for our newsletter, read our pamphlets, tell us what you’d like to know more about, and get organized for a better future!

The post Beyond the Headlines: appeared first on One Struggle.

One Struggle has been offering solidarity from where we are in order to support Haitian workers and peasants organized with Batay Ouvriye for multiple years. We’ve started and supported various Rapid Response Network Campaigns to pressure factory owners and other bourgeois elements in Haiti to engage with workers’ demands and also sought donations to aid in organizing efforts. Even though we’ve had many iterations, we’ve kept up our attempts to maintain solidarity throughout our development because we cannot defeat imperialism without defeating it everywhere.

The organizing work Batay Ouvriye does amongst factory workers and peasants is difficult under normal circumstances. But the current political, economic, and social developments are not normal circumstances at all. As a result of the escalating gang violence combined with the economic and political devastation, chaos is a new component of everyday life. With shipping, airports, and factories shut down, workers are getting laid off while it is dangerous to move on the street. Peasants are working land in gang-controlled or contested territory.

Some would say that this chaos was always going to happen, even going so far to say that Haiti is cursed to forever be in turmoil. Make no mistake, this current situation is the result of decades of “development” and domination.

Below is a report from a contact who has regular communication with BO. They compiled this summary report to give some contextual information and history to understand this moment.

Lastly, please consider a donation to support Batay Ouvriye members.

They need financial support to make it through this time, because they are determined that their fight is not over.

Batay L’ap Kontinye – The Struggle Continues – Solidarity Forever.

HOW DID HAITI GET TO THIS POINT OF ANARCY? 

A History of Destabilization

Note:  To gain some understanding of the current situation in Haiti, one must understand some of the historical developments that led to this moment of complete instability. This overview of what’s happening in Haiti begins in 1986. But you could go back further for a deeper understanding of how imperialism has continually dominated and destabilized Haitian economy and politics, particularly the workers and peasant political struggles and movements.

Rampant gang violence is a major feature of the news on Haiti these days, although it is a relatively recent development. The rise of gang rule in Haiti originated in the post-Duvalier years, after 1986, with the disbanding of paramilitary forces and the Haitian army, and persistent political instability. This also coincided with the expansion of narcotrafficking networks using Haiti as a major unregulated transit point with the help of some government cronies. This was compounded by the expulsion and repatriation of Haitian immigrants jailed in the US for various crimes.

Each successive administration built its own network of armed supporters in poor neighborhoods to consolidate their power and influence elections. Contending political parties established their own bases of armed supporters and integrated them into various illicit trades. Major business owners, like Mews, Madsen, Acra, Bigio, and Boulos, also propped up gangs and private security forces to protect their businesses and attack their competitors.

In some poor neighborhoods, self-defense resistance committees (“brigad vijilans”) that were setup during the coup years against Aristide (1991-94) eventually devolved into gangs that took over control of their areas, as the Haitian state was systematically weakened through neoliberal reforms and the police forces rendered more ineffective.

This rising influence of gangs is a complex phenomenon, intimately linked to the failure of neoliberal reforms imposed through imperialist domination, such as free trade policies that devastate the local economy because of cheap imports, austerity policies that impose cutbacks on all social services and incapacitates the state, policies promoting low wages and cheap labor that impoverish working people, privatization of state run enterprises that further reduce state budgets and render them more dependent on foreign funding, deepening odious debts incurred by US supported dictatorships, all of which serves to deepen imperialist domination and the misery of the poor masses.

The rise of gangs is not unique to Haiti and has seen parallel developments in many countries like in Jamaica, Honduras and narco-states like Mexico and Colombia. It is also linked to the expanding illicit international arms trade sponsored by the endless imperialist wars and the arms trafficking linked to these conflicts. The gangs come to rule through the absence of the weakened state.

2010:  Earthquake & US “Aid.” UN “Peacekeepers” bring Cholera. Plus, a Hurricane.

On January 12, 2010, during the last year of René Préval’s lame duck presidency, a massive 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti and killed an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 persons, (over 2% of Haiti’s population), mostly in the capital’s metropolitan area, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. The earthquake that was popularized as “goudou-goudou” also laid waste to most of the capital’s infrastructure, including most government offices.

The US spearheaded the international response by taking over the main airport, prioritizing the deployment of about 20,000 troops to maintain control, and organizing the distribution of aid at gun point. This militarization of the aid meant that most of the effective rescue efforts were led by the local population mobilizing the meager resources that were still available, mainly with bare hands and shovels.

The Obama-Biden-Clinton administration appointed Bill Clinton as an overseer of aid distribution and over $5 billion in international aid were funneled through a vast network of hundreds of mostly US based NGOs to bypass the Haitian government and “prevent misappropriation”. This resulted in massive fraud, corruption and inefficiency profiting mostly the NGOs, with an estimated 5¢ on the dollar reaching aid recipients.

The US troop deployment was phased out and replaced by beefing up the existing UN MINUSTAH mission to keep the lid on a potential exodus of immigrants seeking refuge in the US. A newly deployed Nepalese contingent of UN “peacekeepers” introduced cholera to Haiti, resulting in an epidemic that led to the death of about 10,000 and the infection of about 800,000 persons.

On November 9th of that same year, in 2010, Hurricane Thomas struck Haiti, displacing hundreds of thousands and worsening the already bleak situation.

Those are the circumstances in which the US pushed through the holding of elections on November 28, 2010, in order to replace the Préval administration that had been meekly stalling and pushing back on neoliberal reforms: the earthquake aftermath with hundreds of thousands still living in makeshift tents, a huge cholera outbreak, and a devastating hurricane.

The US then coerced the crippled Haitian government into changing the election results to promote its favorite candidate, Michel Martelly, to the second round of elections, which he eventually won with a turnout of 20% of voters. Michel Martelly, a popular musician, a depraved, confessed drug dealer and FBI informant, was the US choice to implement its “Haiti is open for business” policy, a featured example of “disaster capitalism”, with much more disaster than capitalism.

The US-backed Martelly administration fully opened the gates to neoliberal reforms while greatly expanding the institutionalized corruption of the Haitian state, narco-trafficking, contraband trade and the promotion and expansion of government affiliated gangs. It also postponed elections at all levels and resorted to political appointments and vacancies to establish control of all 3 branches of government, ultimately ruling by executive order.

The accelerated ongoing degradation of the Haitian state, economy and social structures can be traced back to these policies.

Jovenel Moise: Accelerated erosion of Economy, State. Growth of Armed Gangs. Assassination.

Although elections were held in November 2016, the newly elected president, Jovenel Moise, was hand-picked to serve as a puppet to Martelly’s governing PHTK (bald head) party and its affiliated bureaucratic and comprador bourgeois fractions (those who wield state power as a source of enrichment and those who profit from import-export trade and the assembly manufacturing sector).

The Moise administration continued with the same policies that fostered the accelerated degradation of conditions overall and the spread of armed gang violence, resulting in large widespread demonstrations, particularly in 2019, demanding that he step down. Despite massive protests, Jovenel held on to power 5 months beyond his constitutional mandate, because he had the support of the “international community”, mainly the “Core Group” (US, France, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Germany, the OAS, the UN, and the EU).

Internal strife within the ruling PHTK party led to Jovenel’s assassination on July 7, 2021, by a squad of mostly Colombian mercenaries. Claude Joseph, the acting prime at the time, was soon replaced by Ariel Henry who had just been nominated by Jovenel to replace him. Claude was replaced by Ariel through a Tweet from the US Embassy, officializing “Core Group” support for Ariel. Ariel Henry was the leader of the opposition that deposed then president Aristide in 2004 and forced him into exile.

Ariel’s appointment as prime minister was entirely outside of Haitian constitutional order since there did not exist a parliamentary quorum to ratify his appointment nor a head of state to officialize it. That is why he was often referred to as a “de-facto prime minister”. Ariel’s supposed mandate was to organize new general elections that would replenish the vacated office holders whose terms had expired. However, by refusing to compromise the domination of the ruling PHTK party, all the political negotiations to hold new elections failed in stalemates.

Ariel’s main achievement was staying in power for 2 1/2 years while riding out ever growing waves of protests demanding he step down. He ruled by decree during these 2 1/2 years, overseeing an increasingly chaotic and anarchic situation that saw the proliferation of gangs and extreme depraved violence against the population, such as gang rapes of girls and women, rampant kidnappings and extortion, public burning and dismembering of bodies, instances of cannibalism, massive dislocations of hundreds of thousands in poor neighborhoods fleeing this persecution, the division of the capital’s metropolitan area into subdivisions of gang-controlled areas cutting off and restricting traffic on the main highways and roads, imposing check points and tolls on public roads.

The reigns of terror established by these local gangs were propped up by this wanton depraved violence, as the gangs continued to be financed by various factions in the government, the bureaucratic and the comprador fractions of the bourgeoisie and their networks of contraband and drug trade. Although the extreme violence perpetrated by these gangs also reached some members of the ruling classes, their most important strategic effect was to quell public and mass demonstrations, filling in for the weakened police forces.

Viv Ansanm:  Gangs Take Full Control

Notwithstanding this rule of terror, the popular masses of Haiti sustained several month-long and week-long mobilizations, “peyi lòk” (locked down country), similar in effect to general strikes. There were also several worker-led mobilizations organized by Batay Ouvriye of several thousand assembly sector workers and some students to demand an end to the insecurity and an adjustment to the minimum wage while facing tear gas and live bullets from the police. These remarkable achievements in such dire circumstances failed to account for the fact that the ruling classes have far more reserves than the masses and control the repressive forces, highlighting the limits of peaceful resistance.

The autonomy of most of these gangs expanded as they grew less dependent on their sponsors and relied more and more on ransoms, kidnappings, extortions, contraband, arms, and drug trade.

In November of 2022, Ariel appealed to the UN Security Council to intervene in Haiti, ostensibly to restore the rule of law and to put down the gangs, but mostly to shore up his flailing authority.

It took about a year for the UN Security Council to reach a compromise Title 7 agreement to sanction a non-UN police assistance force (MMAS – Multinational Security Assistance Mission) led by about a thousand police from Kenya, mostly funded by a $200 million yearly grant by the US.

As this agreement was stalled in Kenya due to constitutional technicalities, Ariel Henry traveled to Kenya, prompted by US diplomatic efforts, and signed an agreement on March 1, 2024, to resolve these. However, Ariel’s attempt to return to Haiti on March 3 was foiled by the uprising of the gangs that blocked the airport and the Dominican Republic’s sudden refusal that Ariel’s plane land in the DR, forcing Ariel to land in Puerto-Rico.

During Ariel’s trip abroad, there was a loose coalition-alliance, calling itself “Viv Ansanm” (Living Together), formed by most of the gangs in the capital’s metropolitan area, prompted by the government’s attempt to mobilize foreign forces against them. They coalesced to demand Ariel’s resignation, and to attack and take over police stations, strategic infrastructures, and government offices. They have succeeded in these objectives for the most part, although the main airport and the police training facility are still under siege and not yet in their control.

This upheaval prompted the “international community” to dump their support for Ariel Henry and call for his resignation. Ariel put out a resignation video on March 11, in concurrence with US demands to set up a provisional ruling council of 7 qualified representatives from several political parties and the business sector. These qualifications include that they must support the deployment of foreign troops to Haiti and that they must not have been previously convicted of felonies.

This coalition-alliance and stunning sudden apparent shift in gang activity, from depraved massacres and infighting warring for territorial control by gangs flaunting their viciousness to a “Living Together” rebranding of these same gangs to “’armed groups” suddenly wearing military uniforms cannot be easily explained. What could make these warring sworn enemies suddenly coalesce to join forces and collaborate in a political struggle?

One possibility is that there is a controlling force supplying these gangs with guns and munitions that has brought this about. A plausible but unconfirmed possibility is that international drug cartels are trying to maintain an anarchic situation in Haiti that facilitates their operations. “Viv Ansanm” has stated that whoever comes to power in Haiti would still be beholden to them. This would be consistent with recent political events, including the assassination of president Jovenel Moise in 2021. It is also plausible that the gangs are negotiating for amnesty and integration into the newly reinstated Haitian armed forces, while facing the impending threat of foreign forces.

BBQ & Gangs Do Not Represent the People’s Interests

Much has been made of the apparent self-declared leader of the “Viv Ansanm” coalition, Jimmy Cherisier, aka “Barbecue”, a former police officer implicated in various massacres in popular neighborhoods. Cherisier, a leader of the former “G-9” UN sponsored gang coalition, has consistently denounced the inequalities of Haitian society, blaming a few in the Haitian oligarchy for the misery of the masses. He also has consistently claimed the legitimacy of armed resistance to injustice while, unlike other gangs, renouncing acts of persecution of people, such as kidnappings and rapes, in the areas controlled by gangs in the G-9 coalition.

He has repeatedly claimed that he is leading a revolutionary movement to right these injustices, while also publicly mourning the assassination of president Jovenel Moise, clearly implicated in them.

However, these claims belie the fact that the G-9 control strategic infrastructures like the main petroleum receiving port and the use of this control to leverage numerous exactions to fund their operations. He has also publicly acknowledged responsibility for several massacres involving rival gangs while calling for reconciliation with them. He has also publicly acknowledged his previous affiliation with part of the same oligarchy (Boulos) that he currently denounces. Where did the guns and the money come from?

The claims of popular revolutionary aspirations conflict with reality. Barbecue has successfully positioned himself into a populist negotiating position in the current unfolding of events as a spokesperson for the sponsors and behind-the-scenes controllers of the gangs.

Proposed Political “Alternatives”

This political positioning is in alignment with an attempt to establish a 3-person provisional governing council, headed by Guy Philippe, a released convicted drug dealer, former officer of the Haitian army, who led the 2004-armed putsch that deposed Aristide, and a former Haitian senator. This is part of a coalition with the “Pitit Desalin” (Sons of Dessalines) political party headed by Moise Jean Charles, a populist political figure in the opposition camp to Ariel Henry. This Guy Philippe option has garnered significant popular support in street demonstrations and is to date leading in-country mobilizations.

On the other hand, it seems that US-led diplomatic efforts, through CARICOM, to impose a 7-person ruling council that would select a new prime minister, are facing increasing opposition in Haiti.  Haitian political parties have yet to agree on the composition of this 7-persosn ruling council and are seeking to delay their nomination.

The gangs in the “Viv Ansanm” coalition, acting like a paramilitary force, have effectively taken control of most strategic positions and sacked most police stations, many banks, major car dealerships and government offices, as well as public institutions, universities, hospitals, and private residences, reinforcing a state of anarchy. Various rumors spreading like wildfire are provoking panic in the streets. The Kenyan deployment of a thousand police has been put on hold until the political situation has been stabilized.

The Biden administration has publicly renounced deploying US troops to intervene in Haiti, as that would be a major tactical vulnerability in an election year. Special forces have been deployed to secure the US embassy, the fourth largest US embassy in the world, while US citizens have been urged to evacuate.

The US administration is also considering using Guantanamo to once again jail Haitian refugees apprehended trying to seek asylum before reaching US shores. The specter of a flood of poor black refugees reaching Florida in an election year seems to be a key factor determining US policies toward Haiti. As such there seems to be little differentiating Trump’s position on Haiti as being a “shithole country” and Biden’s statement that if Haiti were to disappear and sink into the sea it would be of little consequence to the US.

The situation in Haiti is extremely chaotic and the unfolding of events is very unpredictable. It seems like the US has lost some of its leverage while the state of anarchy is becoming more entrenched, giving the gangs and their sponsors more power, while the overall situation becomes more and more unlivable for the masses.

Although the imperialists are attempting to use the UN, CARICOM, the OAS, and foreign troops to reinforce their domination, they are struggling to come up with a viable alternative. Something will have to give at some point, probably in an explosive manner, to resolve these contradictions, even if in an unconclusive temporary manner.

Impacts on the People

About two thirds of the assembly sector workforce has been laid off due to the sanctions imposed by the “international community” and the prevailing security crisis. Several factories have closed down, and most of the remaining factories are operating with reduced hours and cutbacks in production. Workers are facing increasing difficulties just surviving day to day, navigating the exorbitant cost of living, dodging bullets and the insecurity.

Gang violence has also severely affected most people living in poor neighborhoods and rural areas. Hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee their neighborhoods because of massacres and indiscriminate shootings, rapes, and the burning down of their homes as various gangs competed to take over each other’s territories or to expand into new territories. Schools have been shut down for extended periods, people dealing in small trade (“ti machann”) have been forced out because the roads they use for purchasing and transporting their goods are blocked by the gangs or their goods have been stolen. The prices of most common goods have skyrocketed due to their scarcity. Corrupt officials in rural areas have used gangs to expropriate small farmers and to repress their calls for justice. Organizing efforts of poor peasants and rural day laborers have come under increasing repression and also face perilous, sometimes prohibitive conditions.

Call for Support, Once Again

These dangerous and difficult conditions call for greater resolve and combativity, even while the prospects of immediate relief remain distant.

BO is not in a position to lead mass mobilizations and resistance because it faces brutal armed violence of the gangs and the police. This is a defensive moment to preserve our organizations and movement, to consolidate our efforts while trying to grow them in these perilous conditions.

Even if it is subdued for the moment, there will always be uprisings and mass protests by the people against their domination and repression.

We call for the solidarity of those who believe in the struggles of workers, exploited laborers, and the oppressed masses to organize to build a better world. We ask you to spread our message as we send you our solidarity to you in your own struggles.

We have nothing to lose but our chains.

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The post GANG VIOLENCE, CHAOS IN HAITI – WHY? appeared first on One Struggle.

We all live in neighborhoods. They are dynamic, complex arenas of class struggle – becoming, growing, and changing based on interests and conflicts that have developed over time. They are landing places for people who play many different roles in society – students and workers, the young and old, renters and owners, etc. People’s access to neighborhoods is reliant in no small part on the interests of real estate developers and banks. Although we – the people who live and work in a place – make the soul of a neighborhood, the body belongs to said interests and that body can be moved, chopped up or sold without any say on our part. This tendency is not unique to our homes and communities – it is in fact the mode of operating that the global economy relies on. Public services, schools, workplaces, even international relations follow this model (imperialism) of gutting a place/thing, depriving it of resources and then coming with a new shiny alternative, a new source of profit to some section/s of the ruling class. It is to the interest and benefit of capital, which needs constant expansion and contraction of markets to find a way to ground the spoils of its speculative endeavors all over the world. In the inter-capitalist class struggle between financial and industrial capital, this process is happening faster and further all the time.

Back to real estate, it is used to maintain the dominance of the ruling class economically and politically. They make fortunes off rent, speculation, and “ownership” of resources. It is also one of the most common avenues that average people have for “moving up” in life, “the path to generational wealth.”

The issue is that inevitable weakness of capitalism – the need for endless profit from finite resources. For workers and the petit-bourgeois (or middle-class) our solution is to scrape and scramble to buy property (or take advantage of government homebuyer programs that could snap back in our faces in the form of global economic meltdown…and the loss of our homes) and cross our fingers that it doesn’t get in the way of the ambitions of some bigger fish that wants to build a highway through or “enrich” the community we’ve invested ourselves in.
For the capitalist class, gentrification is the solution to this limitation. Neighborhoods, the places where we express and experience reality, are a variable factor in their profit equations. They use tactics like purposeful neglect, systemic racism, “reinvestment,” etc to bend that variable to their favor. Our traumatic eviction is a number on a spreadsheet to them. It isn’t a matter of conspiracy – there is plenty of conflict happening among the people that are profiting from gentrification and varied approaches for how it should be executed. However, despite their disagreements they are unified in maintaining a system that devalues and revalues the land we all live on with destabilizing, violent consequence to the rest of us.

One Struggle is encountering and trying to understand one specific tool the capitalist class uses to gentrify, the community redevelopment agency (CRA). They are entities set up by a city or county to promote private-sector involvement in the “economic development” of certain areas that are deemed to have “blight”. To be clear, “blight” is the policy term for poorly maintained buildings, people hanging outside of corner stores, or houseless people simply existing. The Miami-Dade CRA website blatantly “calls for private sector involvement to the maximum degree possible.” So, it is a way for capitalists to have more control over real estate speculation while also totally skirting their responsibility for poverty and homelessness. It furthers the tendency of public-private mixes or total privatization of things like roads, transportation, housing and development. The federal Housing Act of 1949 established the existence of CRAs where local governments can essentially court and be courted by private interest to fund development programs. In FL, the Redevelopment Trust Fund is supplied by tax increment financing (TIF). Basically, there are special districts where they will use revenue collected from property taxes and a certain portion is allocated to the CRA. They “freeze” the taxable property values that the county or city can get, and any taxes collected above that value as time goes on and property values increase go to the trust fund for the CRA. This is an obvious incentive for property taxes to increase which, among other new fees and bureaucratic nonsense, drives people out of being able to afford their homes. Property taxes are meant to be allocated to things like sewer and water, fire department, roads, education etc. These special districts take that money and give it to the CRA to incentivize private involvement, allow for private profit and make the prices of everything go up. Often, they just provide some version of the same services that money would have gone to in the first place, except it isn’t subject to the same public input or regulation.

CRAs can buy and sell property, charge rent, obtain land through eminent domain, sell bonds, and operate public facilities like waste management and utilities. They are predatory organizations uniting public officials and capitalists to keep churning out crazy profits from a real estate market that should be stagnant because no one that is actually from any given place can afford to be there, whether it is to live or work or play. They have the veneer of “helping” communities and operate with significant influence, largely unwatched. However, they are still public institutions and so they must operate with a level of transparency with open meetings and records. Communities need to recognize the force and interests of these agencies and other capitalist institutions in their neighborhoods and build our power to resist their short-sighted drive for profit. They are organized and gaining power, we need to be too. We accomplish this through coming together to understand our realities in the context of this class struggle to find where we can work together and start to push the power dynamic in our favor.

This flyer was made to pass around a neighborhood being gentrified by a CRA.

If you see the neighborhoods around you changing and want to understand more about our perspective or want to contribute to this struggle in any way, reach out!

The post Don’t Fall for Capitalist Slick Talk About “Community Redevelopment” appeared first on One Struggle.

The U.S. government has a policy of leveraging war and destabilization for economic gain. The war between Hamas and Israel is no different.

Both political parties in the U.S. are complicit in the destruction of Gaza and the West Bank, in addition to the deaths of thousands of innocent Palestinians. They hide this fact with empty promises and “pressure” on Israel to allow humanitarian aid. A few hours notice for a bombing campaign or a break in a constant siege is not enough to clean the blood on our hands.

A war that many of us did not sign up to fund. Our state and federal governments see more use in sending hundreds of millions to fund the Israeli genocide effort rather than using that money for its people. The crumbling infrastructure in our cities, our underfunded schools and teachers, any of our needs is second string compared to the war.

They hear our chants and try to disorganize our efforts, they know that this war is unpopular. There are even some world leaders who have agreed on the call for an immediate ceasefire. Yet nothing happens in our country, other than funding more war. Voting, protesting and civil disobedience will only get us so far. Our real power rises when we come together to build independent organizations that are capable of resisting and pushing back imperialist forces. We hold collective power when we build our political unity, grow independent from the state, and become combative in our personal, professional, and social spaces.

It’s our time to stand up and fight back for our needs!

If you agree, disagree or have any thoughts, reach out!

The post Our taxes are funding war and a genocide! appeared first on One Struggle.