June 21, 2025 (Originally published in The Blazak Report)

There are times when I see the logic of violence. If an ICE agent was trying to abduct a loved one and I was armed, I can imagine my lizard brain telling me to do whatever it takes to save that person from being disappeared from view. This country was founded in violence. Violence was used to free us from tyranny 250 years ago. And violent protest has occasionally played a role in making America great. The role of riots after MLK’s assassination played in the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 is an easy example.

But America is plagued by the dark side of political violence. The deadly shootings in Minnesota by a Trump supporter is only a recent example. And the death at the No Kings rally in Utah was the result of a protest “peacekeeper” trying to stop a man with a gun but shooting a fellow protestor by accident. The narrative of “civil war” has never felt closer

.

I’ve had many people ask if I have a gun or urge me to get a gun. I’ve comfortable with guns but I have a kid in the house, so that changes things. I want through the FBI Citizens Academy and got some good firearm training, but who exactly would I be shooting? When I see ICE agents brandishing weapons or heavily armed Marines in the streets of Los Angeles, I wonder who are they planning on killing. Every gunshot fired is fired with the intent to kill. Nobody shoots a gun just to scare people.

All this is to say, that while the pressure for violence seems to be ramping up, nonviolence is still our path. Even famous pacifist John Lennon said he would use violence to protect his family, but America is not there yet. We still have a clear ethic of doing this with non-violent civil disobedience. I’ve certainly had violent thoughts in this moment. Seeing the hell being levied on our communities by Gestapo-like ICE raids led me to wonder if we could protect those people by just burning all the ICE offices down to the ground. But ultimately people would be hurt or killed and then we’re worse off than we were before. We can do this without fire.

Growing up in the shadow of MLK in Atlanta led me to study Gandhi’s tactics more closely. We take the moral high ground when we throw our bodies against the wheel of death. And, as was the case in India, some of our bodies may be crushed. It seems inevitable that in the clash between protestors and Trump’s federalized goons there will be protestors killed. We could have Kent State on a weekly basis. And Trump will say they hated America and we will make them martyrs, but they will be dead either way. And then there will be those on our side to call for violence as a form of protection. It’s the old MLK vs. Malcolm X dynamic.

I’ve assigned Malcom X to my students for decades, because I want them to know where that “violence as self defense” impetus comes from. I get it. If Marine tanks roll into Portland, there’s going to be a cash course in Molotov cocktails in the Rose City, I’ve already posted the Doors lyric, “They got the guns, but we got the numbers.” You can feel the tension rising. But Mel Gibson fantasies aside, what does that actually get us?

It should be perfectly clear that Donald Trump is a madman. A senile, syphilitic madman. He’s willingness to jump into to the Israel-Iran war should be proof enough. Hundreds of protestors dead as Kristi Noem “liberates” the supposed “socialist” cities on the West Coast would be a trumpeted as a MAGA victory. And then we are in a civil war. We must maintain the moral high ground.

So there are two strategies here that must be kept up in the planning of all actions.

First is the value of peaceful resistance. Things are going to get ugly. Rumors of DHS deputizing Proud Boys and bounty hunters may turn out to be true. They will try to provoke a violent response so they can bring the hammer down, even employing agent provocateurs, so they can claim, “Antifa fired the first shot!” We must resist the impulse to hit back. Non-violent monkey wrenching can take many forms, from human barricades blocking ICE vans to (and this was a YIPPIE trick from the 1960s) loosening the lug nuts on the tires of said vans.

Secondly, these Marines, police, National Guard, and even ICE agents are Americans. They swore an oath to the Constitution, not to Stephen Miller or the Mango Mussolini. We have to encourage them to lay down their arms and walk away from this fascist abuse of the legitimate work they are bounded, by law not Trump, to do. We have to start diffusing the tools of authoritarianism by taking way their cudgel.

June 14 saw 5 to 13 million Americans in the street (depending on your sources). The people are sick of what this madman is doing. Yeah, they got the guns. But we got the numbers and that should be enough.

Note: I’m currently in LA to check on things. I was at the ICE detention center downtown where a half a dozen armed National Guardsmen stood watch, fingers on triggers.