ᴮᵉⁿ ᴿᵒʸᶜᵉVOTE IN THE PRIMARIES#Immigration #protests in #LosAngeles #LA #California
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/09/nx-s1-5427215/what-to-know-los-angeles-protests-ice-trump
#Immigration #protests in #LosAngeles #LA #California
A lot of online chatter is focusing on the Mexican Flag in the pictures above
This is going to play a certain way for #MAGA, and #FoxNews, etc is going to focus on that and purposefully avoid the American Flags you can see in the crowds as well
#Immigration #protests in #LosAngeles #LA #California
'Early Sunday, #Trump wrote on Truth Social that “#MASKS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED to be worn at protests.” He wrote, “What do these people have to hide, and why??? Again, thank you to the #NationalGuard for a job well done!”'
https://deadline.com/2025/06/trump-national-guard-los-angeles-ice-raids-newsom-1236426811/
uh huh
#ToddLyons, head of #ICE:
#Immigration #protests in #LosAngeles #LA #California
There's a lot of violent video out there. I'm going to avoid it, it's lurid. But I want to focus on this video because it speaks to our future:
#Waymo taxis on fire
Going after regular people's cars is dumb. It turns regular people against you
But #Waymos are #robots, easy dumb targets, and there is no threat to human life
Plus they are #corporate #AI assets and represent our growing #enshittification from creepy #techbros
Light 'em up
Speed demon 🇪🇺 🇳🇴🇺🇦🇵🇸@benroyce And surveillance platforms :)
kauer@benroyce Plus, many insurance policies specifically exclude wars, political unrest and acts of terrorism from their cover. So there is a better than even chance that destruction of private property by protesters will not be covered by the owner's insurance.
i'm just a nobody, not a protest tactician
but:
protesters when they target corporate assets:
big win
protesters when they target regular people's property:
big lose
how things play out in the media and the popular conscience matters, and organized protests need to focus on effective messaging
of course there will be agent provocateurs warping your messaging from within the crowd
so a good protest must be ready to handle them as well
@stevewfolds@benroyce Fires will be treated as arson. Rocks tossed off bridges as felony assault. A broken window as rioting.
Spreading out into 100 small non violent demonstrations would mess with large concentrations of authority. The LA Police Department said that they can handle a large group in just 1 or 2 locations. The National Guard can’t do it either.
Spreading out into 100 small non violent demonstrations would mess with large concentrations of authority. The LA Police Department said that they can handle a large group in just 1 or 2 locations. The National Guard can’t do it either.
Maggie Maybe@stevewfolds @benroyce please don’t throw rocks off bridges onto cars, that actually kills people.
exactly
that plays on Fox News to MAGA and then you get big support for Trump limiting our civil rights and replying with state violence
Protests yes
Violent protests no
MFennVT has moved@maggiejk What if we aim for ICE vehicles? ;) @stevewfolds @benroyce
(And yes, I'm kidding) (kindof)
krejgo@benroyce this has been one of my favourite tactics that I've seen used in LA so far.
@Yup.
this is what middle America sees. This and the stories about looting and violence.
They will not see the story about the mother or father being separated from their children. They all not see the violence being inflicted by ICE.
All they see is "violent latino criminals" or whatever fox is telling them.
Whatever the points of the protests were, it's lost on a large part of the rest of the country.
MAGA media and social media trolls work hard to jump on a story and shape perception
manufactured optics
if the real story is
"fred punched bob so bob punched fred"
they lie by omission by truncating video, selecting pictures, and goosing narratives to show
"bob punched fred"
Aho
Kevin Leecaster@kbsez @benroyce
Faux News was able to use the videos of violence, rioting, and looting at 2020 BLM protests successfully as propaganda and caused Biden to not have a decent Congress to work with and even worse made the election such a close call that it caused J6 to happen.
Political violence is the opposite of helpful. It is just a few people taking out their rage without consideration of the big picture.
obscurestar@kbsez @benroyce But on the bright side for the fascist fuck, it's super easy to get false-flag operators to do those crimes and sell his agenda. In fact he doesn't have to do anything. His jackbooted sycophants like the Boogaloser Bozos and ProudToddlers, will do it unbidden just like they did killing cops in Oakland during the Floyd protests.
Steve Loughran@benroyce Waymos are on fire because people summoned them deliberately
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/06/robotaxis-burn-in-los-angeles-in-backlash-to-immigration-raids/
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/06/robotaxis-burn-in-los-angeles-in-backlash-to-immigration-raids/
Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈@benroyce darker history in Northern Ireland: taxi drivers were summoned and whoever turned up got killed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Michael_McGoldrick
A decade later I was trying to get a taxi on that same road (Garvaghy Road, Portadown) - they wouldn't come and pick us up until we explained who we were related to. That was years into the peace settlement -but I understand their fears
drivers, delivery people... these are dangerous jobs. endless tedium followed my moments of sheer terror. they are targeted, not just in the troubles for terror, but petty theft under mortal threat all over the world
Dr. Heather Etchevers@stevel ...because their surveillance footage is used by the police as well, without requiring a warrant (as far as I've heard). Sorry about the pollution, not so much about the choice to incapacitate them in this context.
Tody Motmot🤬 Then ICE shouldn't be violently violating our constitutional rights and the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.
SueDiOh@benroyce "Accuse the other of that which you are doing" (or something similar) - Jos. Goebbels, NAZI
j.downs 
@benroyce Wish I were surprised.
f*cking b*tch club@benroyce Yesterday in Manhattan there were mostly Puerto Rican flags as it was the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade. Fox is probably losing its mind…..
@benroyce
Los Angeles ❤️❤️❤️
Do you know who should get photo credit?
ghawam.kouchaki on instagram for the "who is beyond the law" picture
BBC/EPA for the man with the american flag confronting riot police
the rest: reddit, news etc
JxPet✔️@benroyce beware! While we're watching LA the Orange fat-berg is up to some new dodgy shit... Or covering whatever he did last...
It's fcking relentless from that turd.
It's fcking relentless from that turd.
seungjin@benroyce
I am a foreigner and have a question.
I do not understand why there is a Mexican flag instead of an American flag.
I am a foreigner and have a question.
I do not understand why there is a Mexican flag instead of an American flag.
there is no "instead of"
there are american flags and mexican flags in the protests
media and social media trolls with agendas will only show the mexican flags and omit the many american flags
they do this to manipulate the story
by your wording i fear your initial impression has already been touched by their manufactured optics
this is what they do: get in front of a story with lies and misrepresentations to touch your perception
Matilda Loveunderstandable but the point is to reclaim the symbol, not cede the symbol of a nation to the fascists
nonracists like punk music. racists like punk music. because racists like punk music means you're going to stop listening to punk?
don't let evil coopt things which are not automatically theirs. it did, or should, stand for something else
@benroyce claim it if you feel like. i don't want it.
my thinking is #antifa should start flying the american flag. not least because it will piss #MAGA off. you have be strategic with this sort of stuff, not just give up
it's not some random symbol that appears then fades. it's been with us a long time and it will be with for a lot time longer. claim it. own it
@benroyce I have a better idea why don't you go fuck yourself. punk music was created to resist oppression. the American flag was created by white supremacist slavers who loved doing genocide. I'd sooner reclaim the fucking swastika than the American flag.
🤣 🤣 🤣
{tries to have honest conversation}
{encounters moronic hothead}
have a nice day dimwit
you are zero help to anything you fight for or stand for
because you're a moron. you're certain to cause more harm to your cause than to help it
learn to calm the fuck down and think
teacher ciat@benroyce @matildalove Matilda has a point, you know. Have you considered that they... do not want the symbol? Or believe that the US flag deserves... saving or keeping?
Is it really strategic to try to save the symbol of the blood empire?
what you're suggesting is to just give up
france has done horrible things. iran. india. etc. their flags don't mean only what you think it means, it's a symbol of a nation, and is nuanced domestically and internationally. so you can reclaim the symbol as well as reclaim the country. but you're basically coming from "nothing ever changes, nothing ever matters, just give up" which is defeatism
@benroyce @matildalove I'm very sure it comes from proposing a post state that is beyond the current. The US has inflicted infinite pain to the world, so yeah, even if I was an american (perish the thought) I wouldn't touch the thing with a stick. There are valid conceptions of nation and civliization that don't require saving The Spirit Of The Country, and some may just require destroying it. I disagree very strongly with the "it's nuanced" posture. If your nation was responsible with shedding innocent blood at home and abroad since its inception, would you save it? The US flag is synonym with death everywhere except sometimes in the US.
And as someone who has travelled quite a bit and comes from a country ravaged by both Spain and the US, it is not the same to fly a US or British flag to preserve the symbol, than to do the same in, say, France. The amount of suffering inflicted by the former nations and their imperial after-effect is night and day in comparison to the latter. I'm not high on nationalism, but if a french guy told me he does believe in the good that France means, I can sorta kinda believe him and understand where they're coming from. I cannot do the same with the everlasting fascist empire. And I'm very tempted to believe that the Ancian regime would still be in place and the Republic dead if they tried to 'reclaim their symbol', instead of proposing a new one, even if the symbol chosen is no symbol.
@ciatmusings @matildalove sure but wouldn't just be easier to reclaim the flag than what you're suggesting? in other words I don't have a problem with what you're saying so why do you have a problem with what I'm saying. it's not either/or and what I'm saying is 2 billion times easier
plus I'm talking domestically. international is a whole other ball of wax and, frankly, not at all the issue here, since I'm talking about pissing off MAGA
Mïkê 💚 👑🐉🗡️🏳️⚧️@matildalove @benroyce And the Iron Front, Black Army, Antifascistische Aktion, Arditi Del Popolo, Armia Krajowa, and so many others were created by human supremacists. People who didn't think twice about all the animal suffering that went into their diets, and probably wouldn't have changed their ways even if they could have (judging by all the non-vegan leftists that are still around today). Weird, considering they were so against genocide and oppression, right?
It takes a lot of time for people to even just realise they're being hypocritical. Especially when that hypocrisy is so normalised.
For example, do you think two consenting adults should be allowed to do whatever they want in the privacy of their own bedroom? It's a pretty normal position to hold here. But you'd have a hard time finding someone who would admit that that should apply to incestuous couples (who aren't making kids), too. Why? Logically speaking, that's hypocritical. Reprehensible, even. We're going against our principles just because we think those relationships are "gross"?
The logical conclusions of any ideology big on freedom are just that: Conclusions. The very first (white, European) liberal democrats were never going to get that far.
KnowAttitude
Wendroid 🇺🇦
<– like this one?
Ianto Jones@benroyce @matildalove I support this idea, however I personally don't feel comfortable flying the American flag because it has long been associated with MAGA-esque fakery, and other reasons stated here. Curious how that can be overcome.
Roknrol like the slurIt will take two specific steps to reclaim the United States flag and what it was "promised" to be.
1) Fight under it.
2) Win.
We are doing neither of those things. Until those things happen it's just a petty tug of war between Antifa and MAGA.
I do agree that they should be at protests - at the very least it should give the National Guard a reason to pause what they're doing. But don't be fooled into thinking that the soldiers that bother to show up give two shits about the banner, because if they cared about that they wouldn't be there in the first place.
right but scroll up: that's what i'm arguing against: why let MAGA coopt it? it's some meme that disappears in 5 years. *at the very least*, take it back just to piss them off, nevermind the deeper reasons to take the symbol back
just because they grab it, doesn't mean you should go "ok fine it's yours." everything is a fight, we can't just give up and accept it
Bealtaine Healy-Rae-Nua@benroyce @ianto_jones @matildalove
This!
There are racist, anti-refugee, anti-immigrant protestors in Ireland, too, and they've co-opted the Irish tricolour.
We were colonised, we never colonised anywhere, we emigrated because of famine and poverty in our millions. Now these assholes want to stop others coming here?
Fuck them, and fuck them for trying to take our flag. I still wear it proudly. It's a flag for all the people.
The US situation is different, I know, but broadly similar.
Bruce Heerssen 
@bruce @Tarbh @ianto_jones @matildalove
bigots hate foreigners but they love copying hate strategies from other countries
@benroyce @Tarbh @ianto_jones @matildalove
Funny how that works
John Lusk@Tarbh @benroyce @ianto_jones @matildalove
Thanks, Ireland.