Los Angeles is the front line, not the fringe.

Friends,

Let me say this plainly: Donald Trump is a fading, flailing authoritarian. A loser’s idea of a strongman. 

His parade this weekend flopped harder than his bankrupt casinos. A sad cosplay of power from a man whose only real skill is bluster.

But the goon squad and hatchet men behind him, they’re not done. They are serious. And they just ran a test in Los Angeles.

Because if you want to know what’s coming next in this country, don’t look at Trump’s empty stage, look at how Democratic leaders responded when the boots showed up in LA.

MAGA brought batons, tear gas, and unmarked vans.

And California Democratic leaders brought curfews, kettling, and riot shields. 

They met federal overreach not with resistance but with compliance. 

Boot-on-neck-lite.

If you’re done watching Democrats cosign state violence and call it leadership, chip in now to help us build something that actually fights back.

What they just did in LA, they’re about to replicate in Atlanta, in Chicago, in New York. They’re already on the ground in Seattle.

And the Democratic Party isn’t ready – not to stop it, not to call it out, and certainly not to protect us from it.

For years they have accepted the right’s framing on crime. On immigration. On LGBTQ+ rights.

They’ve swallowed the lie that cities like LA—diverse, working-class, and loud—are outliers from “real” America.

Los Angeles County has more people than ten U.S. states combined. And yet the Democrats treat it like an embarrassment, bending over backward to appease a nostalgic fantasy of white, rural “normalcy” that never existed.

And while they pretend to walk some moral middle line, the state is being militarized out from under us.

Safety isn’t kicking out ICE just so LAPD can restock its “less lethal” arsenal and fire on protestors with impunity. 

But that’s what’s happening. And the Democrats are managing it.

That’s why we need to build something new.

Butch Ware is running for governor of California on a Green Party platform that doesn’t just condemn this state violence, it rejects the entire bipartisan machinery that enables it.

This campaign is rooted in labor solidarity, immigrant defense, and street-level organizing.

The final tally on this weekend’s No Kings rallies topped 13 million people. Imagine what we could do if, instead of hanging out on a Saturday afternoon, we organized that kind of energy into a general strike?

We’re calling for a general strike because protest isn’t enough. We need disruption. We need power. 13 million protesters will annoy them for a day. But 13 million workers on strike will bring them to their knees.

Because whether it’s the bloviating of a fast food tyrant or the insidious compliance, capitulation, and complicity of a Democratic Party that’s given up the will to fight, we know neither path leads to justice. 

Only organized power does.

If that’s the fight you believe in, chip in now.

Solidarity,

Jason Call
Campaign Manager
Butch Ware