Soldiers and Marines: Join Your Working Class!
LOS ANGELES (USA), June 14— Faced with growing resistance to the ICE reign of terror, Trump sent in four thousand reserve soldiers from the California National Guard and 700 Marines. He hoped to provoke more disturbances for TV. Instead, he gave ICWP comrades an opportunity to talk to our class siblings in uniform.
As we approached soldiers guarding the West LA Federal Building, each ICWP member had to overcome a certain level of anxiety. After all, the soldiers are in a position of power—armed power and power to dismiss our conversations. But the reality is that we have more in common with them than we (or they) have with Trump, ICE, and the LA Police. And this connection is what allowed us to talk to them, even though officers attempted to stop the interaction.
We brought a leaflet which said, in part:
Soldiers and Marines come from similar working-class communities in which workers are taking the streets in the latest ICE raids in Los Angeles.
A comrade reported: “I’m an Army veteran, and I’m also an immigrant. I was born in Central America, came to the US illegally. When I got my green card, I enlisted in the Army and ended up doing over ten years of service with two deployments to Iraq.
“Now, ICE is attacking my own community, and they’re relying on National Guard soldiers and Marines that don’t really want to fight their own families.”
With a simple “Welcome to LA” from our side and friendly smile on their side, we were able to spark conversations and elevate them to political discussions. One soldier said that being called up was a “gut punch,” clearly making a connection with the people in the streets protesting the ICE raids.
One soldier that took our literature said, “I’m on duty, but I’ll read it during our break. We’ll share with our friends.”
Most of the soldiers that we talked to took flyers, and our Military pamphlet. One soldier refused. But then he looked over to his comrade in arms to his right as if to say, do you want them? We offered them to him, and he took them.
Two days later, we ran into some of the same soldiers stationed around the Federal Courthouse downtown. We continued the conversation. Four of them took our pamphlet: “Fight for the Day When No Worker Will Be Called Foreigner.”
As our leaflet continued:
Enough is enough! Let’s turn the guns around on the bosses who force us to attack our own class.
They give us access to military weapons, vehicles, and equipment and expect us to use these same resources against hard working people trying to survive this racist capitalist system. In fact, they force us to use these resources on workers around the world like what happened in Iraq and Vietnam.
The Army veteran comrade continued: “I have more in common with Gazan workers than I have with Trump. I urge soldiers to use their own mind and turn the guns around in any situation that seems like an injustice to the working class. Workers who take the streets are reacting to the racism, sexism, and homophobia that capitalism creates. In the International Communist Workers’ Party, we are fighting for a world without nations, without borders, a communist world that workers around the world desperately need.”
Join ICWP and create the strong alliance between soldiers and workers to make communist revolution a reality. Soldiers, join ICWP, join your working class.
Pamphlet: Soldiers, Sailors, Marines: Crucial to a Communist Workers’ Revolution here