When they gas our people, we shut it all down.

Friends,

I told you earlier this week: we will not attain justice in California without massive civil disobedience.

Not tweets. Not lawsuits. Not begging for mercy from the people who are stomping us down.

We are doubling down on the call for a general strike in Los Angeles.

When a government is this comfortable using violence, it’s not confused, it’s confident. Confident that the people will stay silent. Obedient. Out of the way.

That’s why they had no problem handcuffing and detaining California Senator Alex Padilla minutes ago for daring to ask questions of ICE Barbie herself, Kristi Noem. 

They’re not hiding authoritarianism anymore. They’re flaunting it.

Well, to hell with that.

Yesterday, in Boyle Heights, federal agents used unmarked SUVs to trap a car with a man, a woman, and a child inside. They rammed it. They gassed it. 

They dragged a man out. And they left a woman and child in the smoke.

They left a child behind to choke on chemical agents. 

That’s ICE’s idea of law and order. 

That is the state of things in Los Angeles under Trump’s deployment. A so-called sanctuary city, now the stage for chemical warfare against civilians.

And while families are being hunted in broad daylight, MAGA mouthpieces like Sen. Josh Hawley are accusing CHIRLA — the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights — of financing the protests. 

That’s the oldest trick in the book. The second working people rise up, the ruling class trots out the same deranged child-brain lunacy: They must be getting paid. Someone’s pulling the strings.

Because God forbid they admit the truth: that people are furious because this system is killing them.

This is a spiritual sickness. And I don’t care how long it’s been festering, we are going to cut it out.

Boyle Heights is not a war zone. It’s a working-class Los Angeles neighborhood under siege. 

And the people who showed up to resist? 

They’re not agitators. They’re the conscience of this country.

So again I say: call the general strike. Shut it all down—commerce, transit, schools, ports, studios, every wheel that turns profit for the powerful while our people bleed in the streets.

Because when LA stops, the nation feels it. And when working people in the cultural and economic engine of this country rise up together, no boot, badge, or billionaire can stop it.

If you believe California should be the first line of defense against this fascist regime, chip in now.

Peace and Power,

Butch Ware