I remember exactly where I was when I first heard the invasion of Ukraine had started in 2022. I was in a taxi on the way to a nightclub when I heard on the radio that bombs had fallen on Kyiv. We in LA might live in the heart of the US empire but our destinies have been deeply intertwined with the fates of the Ukrainians suffering Russian aggression and the Palestinians who are victims of genocide funded by US imperialism.

We saw a major shake-up of the post-WW2 global order after Trump embarrassed Ukrainian president Zelensky in front of cameras in February and told him to leave the White House. The US and Russia are now de facto allies under Trump or at least neutral. Ukraine is going to have to rely mainly on Europe to support it as US government support declines.

At the same time, Trump has launched a trade war against all countries including against allies. We have seen Europe realize that the US is an unreliable partner even if Republicans are defeated at the ballot box in 2028, and Europe is preparing to rebuild its militaries so as to rely less on US protection. The US implemented 10% universal tariffs in April. While higher tariffs have been delayed against Europe, they have only been paused.

Our neighbor Canada has also said it will build up its military as Trump casually threatens to annex Canada as a 51st state. While our neighbors were able to negotiate exemptions to 25% tariffs for everything covered under the NAFTA 2.0 trade deal (that Trump negotiated), the fact that Trump is erratic means that they have to prepare for the possibility of Trump abruptly changing his mind. Canadians are traveling to the US significantly less trying to decouple themselves from the US economy as much as possible and maintaining retaliatory 25% tariffs on things not covered by our trade agreement.

The right-wing Conservative Party in Canada had been leading in the polls in January, but the center-left Liberal Party won the national elections in April in large part in a backlash against Trump. Similarly in Australia, the right wing had also been leading earlier in the election but in May the liberal incumbent in Australia won the election in a rejection of Trump-style right-wing populism. Remarkably both these right-wing candidates lost not only the national elections but also their own parliamentary seats. Before Trump was elected, incumbent parties were taking a beating in the developed world due to rising post-pandemic inflation but Trump’s election and all the chaos he created has swung these countries back towards the left.

Also notable in the shift in the global order is that White Canadian tourists, Brits, Europeans, and other Westerners have found themselves sent to immigrant detention centers in the US for weeks over minor issues that at worst might have resulted in being sent on a flight back home in the past. Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene yelled at a White British Sky News reporter that she should go back to her country: the UK! This made clear that the fascist MAGA pro-Trump movement is so xenophobic that it has little interest in maintaining strong ties with even White majority Western countries. They only like Westerners insofar as their countries are less Brown than other countries.

Now of course domestically in the US, the greatest wave of repression has so far been on immigrants, particularly Latino ones, some being sent to gulags in El Salvador, and on non-citizens who have opposed the genocide of the Palestinians. While the Trump regime abruptly detained a number of political prisoners in ICE detention centers including green card holders, there was intense public resistance against this and at least 3 of these antiwar political prisoners have been freed after weeks spent in ICE prisons in the South. From Badar Khan Suri, an Indian academic at Georgetown most recently freed to Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts grad student who was kidnapped from outside her home in Massachusetts by ICE agents not in uniform, to Palestinian Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, they have been freed. Additionally, hundreds of students who had their student visa status abruptly revoked have had their visas restored via court order. Palestinian Columbia University grad Mahmoud Khalil unfortunately remains in detention as of this writing.

Many brave people continue to speak out. A Black NYU student spoke about the genocide in Palestine in his graduation speech. He has been punished by his diploma being withheld. A White female George Washington Student also spoke out against the genocide in her graduation speech. As a result, she has been banned from the GW campus. While these punishments are shameful, the fact these speeches were able to be given at all is progress given that USC banned its pro-Palestinian South Asian Muslim valedictorian from speaking last year fearing she might bring up Palestine.

Global protests against the Israeli war machine took place in May on the 77th anniversary of Nakba. For over a year now fewer than 1/3 of Americans under the age of 50 support giving more military aid to Israel. People will continue to speak out against genocide regardless of intimidation from the authorities.

I want to end by tying the local to the global as I think visiting the political repression of the last 20 years in Los Angeles will help us see the trajectory capitalism has taken in the 21st century toward fascism.

In the last 20 years, there have been 4 major violent repressions against protesters in Los Angeles. In 2007 immigrant rights protesters (including grandmothers) and numerous journalists were beaten on MayDay by the police at MacArthur Park. In 2011-2012 Occupy LA, a part of the anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street movement, faced mass arrests and police brutality. In a settlement, Los Angeles paid out $2.6 million dollars to nearly 300 protesters that police arrested during the raid on the OccupyLA camp.

In 2013, 2014, and 2020 Black Lives Matter protesters faced mass arrests and police brutality. In 2013 rubber bullets hit my friends 5 feet to my side at a protest for Justice for Trayvon Martin, demanding justice for a Black boy murdered by a racist vigilante. In 2014 police arrested 323 Black Lives Matter protesters. 7 protesters were prosecuted and had a trial but a hung jury did not convict them and prosecutors dropped all charges against them in 2016.

Then in 2020, LAPD fired at least 2 rounds of tear gas and rubber bullets against BLM protesters at a park in central LA. 1 man shot in the face with a rubber bullet by LAPD at that park won $375,000 for his injuries. The use of tear gas was nearly unprecedented as the LAPD almost never uses tear gas against protesters. But it was part of a mass wave of repression as police used tear gas against protesters in 100 American cities in 2020 in a few weeks. Over 3000 protesters were arrested during that week’s BLM protests in Los Angeles.

And of course, most recently there have been mass arrests, police brutality, and detention of protesters in immigration prisons for protesting against the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians with the peak of this brutality beginning in Spring 2024 and accelerating under the fascist Trump regime. At UCLA last year after a night of antiwar protesters being attacked by violent pro-Israel thugs, the next day police brutalized and arrested over 200 UCLA protesters as they dismantled the UCLA camp. Fortunately, eventually all charges were dropped against these antiwar protesters and the almost 100 protesters who had been arrested at USC the same week.

The most fiercely repressed movements in LA and the US in the last 20 years have been the antiwar pro-Palestinian movement, the anticapitalist movement, the anti-racist anti-police brutality movement, and the immigrant rights movement. The road to fascism is a long one and we have seen who the powerful feel most threatened by. Anti-capitalist, anti-racist, and anti-imperialist movements pose the greatest threats to the capitalist system which relies on racism, bigotry, and xenophobia to divide the working class.

While these are trying times, they are also dynamic times. While the Palestinians are facing their darkest days in more than half a century, they also have more support than they have ever had from the Western masses. We witnessed late last year the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. Syrians showed us that even the most brutal authoritarian systems do not last forever. Hasta la victoria siempre! We will defeat the forces of fascism.