Abolish ICE

Release Date: January 23, 2026

Hello Comrades,

What a horrible year 2026 has been so far! It started with an illegal, ill-planned, and violent kidnapping of the president of Venezuela based on the flimsiest of reasoning and a brazen promise to exploit the economically ruined country’s oil resources, and within days, we all watched an ICE agent murder a US Citizen in her car in broad daylight on video for the world to see.

But even as we’re seeing the horrors of potential fascism consolidate into the horrors of actual fascism, we are also seeing people fired up and fighting back even more than before. The city of Minneapolis is joining together to stand up against the paramilitary occupation of their city, and people all over the country are joining in solidarity, showing that while the fight may feel dire, it’s not hopeless.

On Saturday, Jan 3, I participated with Tucson DSA at a rally downtown, joining with our comrades in the Party for Socialism and Liberation to march down the street calling for an end to ICE’s militarization of our streets and to the US’ militarization of Latin America. It was a great rally, but what inspired me even more was knowing that it was just one of three different anti-ICE rallies happening in Tucson on that same day, including a protest outside Congressman Juan Ciscomani’s office in the morning and another organized by local immigrant rights groups in the afternoon.

It is good to see that we are not alone in our outrage, and not alone in our desire to do something about the descent into brutality and totalitarianism we are facing. But it was also clear, despite the feelings of unity and power that a good march can bring, that this is not enough. The tyrannical regime will not end simply because we gathered in a park or got motorists to honk as we passed by. We all have to do more if we hope to steer the ship of state away from its doomed expedition.

In the midst of the past few week’s horrors, we also had a moment that points to a better future, here in our fair city. Miranda Schubert, the card-carrying Democratic Socialist that we helped elect in November, was sworn in as a member of the Tucson City Council in December. Dozens of our members flooded city council chambers on Tuesday, January 6th, showing support for our new standard-bearer, pressuring the mayor and council to put a public power utility before voters this year, and showing that there is a constituency for making Tucson a better, freer, more affordable, and more equal city.

(Photo by Kathleen Dreier)

In her first speech this year before the Tucson City Council, Miranda quoted early 20th century labor activist Rose Schneiderman, who said in 1912 that “the worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too,” putting herself in the lineage of countless activists throughout American history who have fought for a better world through socialism.

“Workers deserve access to basic necessities and also dignity and things of beauty like art and culture, fighting for sustenance and for joy,” Miranda said. “We believe that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not make profits for a few.”

If we’re ever going to survive this dark moment we are living through, this will be how. Through taking power, and using power, we can push back against the right wing’s race to the bottom. We have some of that power in our city council, and we won’t stop until we’ve changed the whole federal government.

What Can I Do Right Now?

1. Come to tomorrow’s general meeting!

It’s the end of January, and that means our monthly meeting is coming up soon. We’re facing an unprecedentedly difficult time to be a leftist organizer as our country descends into fascist police state, but we also have amazing tailwinds on our local efforts like public power. We will also have a chance to meet candidates and discuss our elections for DSA steering committee as well as for our new Electoral and Socialists in Office committee.

Come to Valencia Library, 202 W Valencia Rd, at 2pm on Saturday, Jan 24 to discuss the future of our chapter, and how to hit this new year running.

2. Run for Tucson DSA Steering Committee

The new year means we are approaching the end of our one-year terms for Tucson DSA Steering Committee. Applications to run for Steering Committee opened on January 19 and we need strong leadership to help build on our 2025 victories. Our chapter is only as powerful as our members are willing to make it, so we need your help in making this the best chapter it can be in 2026.

The steering committee positions available for election are as follow:

• 2 co-chairs

• Outreach Coordinator

• Communications Coordinator

• Mutual Aid Coordinator

• Labor Coordinator

• Field Coordinator

• Research Coordinator

Two Harassment and Grievance Officer will also be elected, but are not voting members of the Steering Committee.

Learn more about the Steering Committee’s responsibilities and each position here. The Steering Committee as a whole is responsible for setting agendas for meetings, planning events, approving chapter spending, and deciding on strategies to implement chapter campaigns and priorities.

If you’re still interested, contact someone from the steering committee, chat with folks on Discord, or respond to this email.

3. Read The Red Deal with DSA book club on Sunday

We voted recently on our next book club book, and chose Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth, published by The Red Nation, a socialist indigenous action collective. The book is a call to arms and a rethinking of ecological activism to better integrate indigenous knowledge and activism into environmental activism, and especially the dream of The Green New Deal. For our chapter involved in ecological activism, in a heavily indigenous area, this book is essential.

We are having our next meeting a week from now, on Saturday, January 31 at Homeward Books on 1st St. at 11am. Come and hang out, even if you haven’t had a chance to finish the book yet!

We have also selected our February reading. Instead of reading a whole book, we will be reading a series of several articles chosen by the Labor Committee as part of their research and planning. We are still in the process of choosing essays, so if you have any suggestions, please tell Jared so that we can get them sent out ASAP.

Looking forward to the following, we have decided that March will be the Month of Marx for Tucson DSA’s book club, coming back to the many writings of the foundational leftist thinker every year when spring hits. We have not yet selected which Marx readings to discuss this March.

4. Get ready for more protests, and more actions

As discussed above, the brazen brutality in Minnesota and Venezuela that started this year with a bang has led to people around the country rising up to fight back. We intend to be on the front lines of this fight, so while we do not know all the protests and other direct action events that will come in the next few weeks, either through DSA or in collaboration with other Tucson activism groups, we can guarantee that there will be more, and that many of them may come at short notice.

As part of our general meeting tomorrow, we will be holding a mini-Know Your Rights training and planning for ICE coming to Tucson the way they did in Minneapolis. On Tuesday, the mayor and city council made moves towards blocking cooperation from the city government. Mayor Romero referred to “when” ICE comes to Tucson, not if. We have to be prepared.

I can’t honestly tell you when or where the next actions will happen, but I can guarantee that they will. Stay tuned to our Discord, and be prepared to get mobilized fast if that’s what is needed to fight back.

Calendar

• Saturday, January 24 @ 2pm - January General Meeting @ Valencia Library, 202 W Valencia Rd  

• Thursday, January 29 @ 6pm - Social at St. Charles Tavern

• Saturday, January 31st @ 11 am-1pm - January Book Club meeting @ Homeward Books Collective, 3054 N 1st Ave.

• Thursday, February 5 @ 6PM: DSA 101 at TBD

• Sunday, February 8 @ 11AM: Social at Revolutionary Grounds

• Thursday, February 19 @ 6PM: Celebrate the launch of our ESIOC Social at TBD

• Saturday, February 24 @ 2pm: February General Meeting at TBD

Revolutionary Quote of the Week:  

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” - Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” 1852

Back when I was twelve years old, the United States entered into an unprovoked war against Iraq, bombing cities, wreaking havoc on government and civil society, and provoking over a decade of brutal civil war up to and including the takeover by ISIS. At the time, many leftists argued that, regardless of the claims of “spreading democracy” or UN speeches about Iraq developing weapons of mass destruction, that this was a naked imperial war in search of oil.

For decades, there has been real debate over this question – while much of George W. Bush’s administration was staffed with oil executives and others standing to profit off of the war, it also seems likely that many of the neoconservatives who designed the invasion did indeed believe their own bullshit and thought that it was America’s god-given responsibility to spread its military around the world and spread Western values at the barrel of a gun – itself just as terrifying as the naked materialist explanation.

I speak of this debate because one of the crazier things about the Trump administration’s reckless adventurism in Venezuela is that no one is even pretending that it is for the good of the Venezuelan people. President Trump has repeatedly announced that he intends to steal Venezuela’s oil, that he has no interest in elections or any other means of self-government by the Venezuelan people, and that the United States will govern the country unilaterally for the foreseeable future.

All this month, I have found myself thinking of Marx’s classic quote, which he wrote in reaction to the ascendancy of Napoleon III to the position of Emperor of France in 1852, just 48 years after his grandfather had done the same. Once again, the French populace had rebelled against the monarchical control of a King Louis from the House of Bourbon, and once again, the revolution that began with ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity had not ended with a republic that provided equality to the masses, but rather another despot, once again from the House of Bonaparte.

“The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce” has become an all-too-often refrain about the course of history. When the popular revolution is transformed into a means for one-man military rule the first time, one can do nothing but weep. When it happens again, one can do nothing but laugh. Seeing the Trump administration blunder into a fragile situation in a country they barely understand with even less planning than the notoriously unprepared Bush administration had, fills me with anger, but I can’t help but admit that there is something deeply funny about seeing history repeat so farcically in my lifetime.

Marx did not know in 1852 that while Napoleon III was the second Bonaparte named Napoleon to become a French emperor, he would also be the last. He was in fact the final monarch in a country that had been ruled by a king for over a thousand years. In 1870, Napoleon III’s ill-planned misadventures in foreign war led to his capture, and the French people promptly replaced him with a new republican government, and never looked back.

It is insulting and depressing that Trump and his cronies don’t even have the dignity to lie to us, to build public support for their war the way that Bush tried to in 2003. But it is also a show of weakness. It is a sign that this project no longer has the public support it once had, that the glory days for American Empire are not in its future. May we be so lucky as to see a return to a free republic in our time.

Let the tragedy and the farce both end,

The Sonoran Socialist 🌹🌵