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Feb 17, 17

All the News You Didn’t Even Know Was Going Down

Welcome to the first edition of All the News You Didn’t Even Know Was Going Down since the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States. Due the growing demand and increased use of the IGD we’ve fallen behind on putting this column out every week, but in the future we hope to turn this around and get back to regular columns. But as for now, there’s a lot of ground to cover so let’s not waste any time and get straight to the news. 

Smash the State, Build the Community

Trump has been in office for less than a month, but already he’s worked to make good on a variety of his promises. First, Trump has pushed through a variety of measures that attack government regulation of industry, attacked environmental protections such as stopping coal pollution of water, and rolled back many of the banking reforms that the Obama administration put in place during the wake of the 2008 economic meltdown. As the pro-capitalist journal Forbes wrote:

President Donald Trump’s White House announced two executive actions on Friday designed to signal a new era on Wall Street where banks will no longer be shackled by many of the regulations introduced during the Obama Administration after the financial crisis.

Trump signed the actions after meeting with a group of business leaders, including JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, chief of the nation’s biggest bank, Blackstone billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, the richest private equity chief on Wall Street, and BlackRock’s Larry Fink, CEO of the nation’s biggest asset manager. One of the actions targets for broad review the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform And Consumer Protection Act of 2010. Big bank CEOs like Dimon and Goldman Sach’s Lloyd Blankfein have long been critical of the law.

The executive action cannot obliterate Dodd-Frank on its own and without the help of lawmakers in Congress, but it has started an evaluation process that could lead to a sweeping dismantling of the Wall Street regulations and institutions put in place following the financial crisis.

Drawing more headlines than Trump’s assist to his billionaire friends in the banking and finance world (must be those globalists we keep hearing about) were Trump’s executive orders concerning attacks on Muslims, immigrants, and also giving more powers to the police. As Vox noted:

The day Jeff Sessions was sworn in as Trump’s attorney general, Trump signed a series of executive orders that deal with these issues. But the orders don’t change laws or even really create new policy. Instead, they amount to vague demands that federal agencies establish task forces to investigate and combat crime, anti-police violence, and international drug cartels — with a hint that these task forces could lead to a new push for the types of “tough on crime” policies Trump campaigned on.

Currently, it appears that while the last wave of #MuslimBan executive orders have been stopped by mass resistance and the courts, Trump has announced that a new set or orders is coming next week.

Meanwhile, after repeating various conspiracy theories about migrants almost stealing the election, Trump pushed through another set of orders aimed at attacking broad sections of the migrant population in the US, as many organizers are noticing a shift in tactics from the Obama administration (which relied more on deporting people caught in the prison system) and Trump’s current strategy, which seems to essentially give ICE agents free reign to go after, harass, arrest, and deport at will.

Already, we’ve seen this play out across the country, as upwards of 700 people have been rounded up in a series of raids spanning only 5 days. In Watsonville, a stronghold of Brown Beret and farmworker organizing, ICE police broke windows in homes and set off flash bangs in military style raids. In nearby Santa Cruz, ICE agents in Homeland Security tanks drove through the working-class Beach Flats community.

On the podcast of Latino Rebels, one of the guests, an immigration lawyer spoke about how they monitor ICE agents web forums where the officers are essentially saying it is “round them up and ship them out” time. On an episode of Against the Grain, one guest, an undocumented student at UC Berkeley (who came on the show to support the actions of the black bloc against Milo), correctly points out that only direct action is going to stop the tide of recent ICE raids.

Lastly, there are now reports that two DACA (Deferred Action, a program that allowed undocumented young people to stay in the country) recipients have currently been detained by ICE agents. From Fusion: 

Immigration officials have detained a 19-year-old San Antonio student who is a recipient of Deferred Action, the federal program that provides young immigrants a temporary work permit and protections from deportation.

Josué Romero, who was born in Honduras, has been in ICE custody since Feb. 15.

His arrest comes a week after ICE conducted nationwide raids that led to the detention of at least one other young immigrant who was granted Deferred Action.

“I fear that they’ll deport him, he doesn’t know anyone in [Honduras] because he was four when we left,” Romero’s father told the local Univision affiliate in San Antonio.

Local police arrested Romero on Feb. 14 for alleged possession of marijuana, a class B misdemeanor, according to county records. His bail was set at $800.

Also, how sick is this:

https://twitter.com/sproutdistro/status/830050236131311616

Anti-ICE Raid Actions

As we reported this week, mass protests, disruptions, and marches broke out in response to the raids. First, in Phoenix, Arizona a deportation van was blocked, then in LA, people blocked the freeway in response to mass round ups. In Austin, Texas, disruptive protests broke out for several nights against ICE raids, while in Milwaukee and Baltimore, thousands marched against migrant sweeps and the reactionary pro-Trump sheriff Clarke.

https://twitter.com/70torinoman/status/831269167290470400

https://www.instagram.com/p/BQZrj-Ohp51/?tagged=iceprotests

On Thursday, tens of thousands participated in school walk-outs and mass protests under the banner, #DayWithoutImmigrants. Here’s a roundup:

Repression of Social Movements

As we have already written, the State is currently ramping up efforts against social movements. In the past few weeks, police have announced that they are currently seeking Facebook data of people that were arrested on J20 in Washington DC. A bill is also currently working its way through the channels of Tennessee politics that would make it not a crime to unintentionally run over protesters blockading streets.

#NoDAPL Struggle at Standing Rock

LaDonna Allard has been issued an eviction notice for the Sacred Stone Camp (one of the first camps that kicked off the encampment against DAPL). The BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) has given those still on the land 10 days notice before the roads granting access into the camps will be completely shut down.

According to Democracy Now: 

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has filed a fresh legal challenge to the Dakota Access pipeline, asking a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to block an easement allowing construction on the final leg of the $3.8 billion project. Tuesday’s lawsuit came a day after a judge threw out a separate legal challenge calling for a temporary restraining order against construction. The legal fight came as a top executive with the company building the Dakota Access pipeline on Wednesday compared his opponents to terrorists. In a written statement submitted to Congress, Energy Transfer Partners Executive Vice President Joey Mahmoud accused water protectors of violence and blasted them for shutting down pipeline pumping stations. Mahmoud wrote, “Had these actions been undertaken by foreign nationals, they could only be described as acts of terrorism.”

Anti-Fascism:

First, some headlines.

Jeff Sessions, a champion of the far-Right and anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim extremists has been brought into the Trump administration. More info has come out about Bannon’s love for both neoreactionary thought as well as fascists like Evola. The KKK is vowing to organize in Ohio. White power ‘Mousetrap’ radio has been shut down. In Columbus, Ohio, people protested Andrew Anglin of The Daily Stormer’s dad who seems to manage his money. Far-Right groups continue to grow as Trump electrifies white nationalists and militia groups and in reaction to Black Lives Matter. The campaign against Breitbart and their funding is growing and seems to be winning. Speaking of BB, it seems that Pat Dollard, a regular contributor, has close ties with white nationalists. Also, two people were attacked by a neo-Nazi gang in New York over an antifa sticker.

The Traditionalist Worker Party along with the National Socialist Movement is moving forward with their rally in rural Kentucky on April 29th. Groups in town and outside are mobilizing against it. If you can plug into the counter-organizing, you should.

In Berkeley, Alt-Right members of the ‘Proud Boys’ are taking part in ‘March for Trump’ protests happening across the US on March 4th, and calling an action for the bay area. We’re sure that will go over very well. 

Speaking of ‘March for Trump,’ these actions are being held in various major cities on Feb 27th and March 4th. Here’s a list and more info at this Breitbart article. 

Also in Tennessee, American Renaissance is holding a conference in July.

Oh, also this happened:

Shout-Outs

There’s a bunch of anarchist conferences and gatherings coming up. Hopefully people use these spaces to organize, make plans, and bring new people into our movement. This includes Wild Roots Feral Futures, 2nd annual Transformative Justice Conference, the Nah Fair in LA, the ROAR Conference in Oakland/SF, and the Anarchist Studies Conference in Mexico City.

Also, dag yo, we’re on the cover of the Rolling Stone!

It’s Going Down

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In search of new forms of life. It's Going Down is a digital community center and media platform featuring news, opinion, podcasts, and reporting on autonomous social movements and revolt across so-called North America from an anarchist perspective.

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