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SPRINGFIELD, Ohio, July 9 (Reuters) - Accompanied by their newborn son, Michelet and his wife arrived at the St. Vincent de Paul Community Center in Springfield, Ohio, last week looking for help from the non-profit's volunteers. They wanted to apply for a valuable document for the infant that for now seems out of reach for them as Haitian immigrants: a U.S. passport. With their own legal status precarious, Michelet and his wife see the passport as crucial proof that their U.S.-born son is an American citizen. But they know that their son's citizenship will do nothing to stop the Trump administration from following through on its goal of deporting them - and hundreds of thousands of other Haitian immigrants - back to the violence-racked Caribbean island nation.

Michelet, who only provided his first name for fear of drawing attention from immigration agents, said he was not interested in migrating to a third country and sees his pending asylum claim as the best option for staying in the U.S. "Moving to Canada or another country would mean starting over," said the 35-year-old, who works for a local auto parts company and came to Springfield via Chile more than two years ago. "I'm already here. I have a job and experience here." Some migrants began exploring such contingency plans after the Department of Homeland Security said on June 27 that it would terminate the Temporary Protected Status providing legal status for half a million Haitians, effective September 2. On July 1, a federal judge in New York blocked that DHS effort, but the Trump administration is expected to appeal. The Supreme Court already allowed a similar move to go ahead, ruling in May that the administration could end TPS protections for Venezuelans in the United States. Initially granted to Haitians after a devastating 2010 earthquake, TPS has been extended numerous times, most recently due to gang violence and unrest that persists to this day. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement that the earthquake no longer posed a risk and that ending TPS showed Trump was "keeping his promise to restore sanity to our immigration system." Eligible Haitians could pursue legal status through other means, she said.

'JESUS PUT ME HERE'

Springfield is home to an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Haitian nationals. Working at Amazon warehouses and auto suppliers, they help drive the local economy. Predominantly Christian, many lean on their faith when talking through their deportation fears. "I'm going to stay here. I'm not afraid," said Jean Marc, a warehouse worker in his 20s. "Jesus put me here." Michelet's and Jean Marc's stories were typical of the dozen Haitian nationals interviewed by Reuters in Springfield last week. Of the total, eight said they were banking on asylum claims for a shot at staying in the United States. All said a third country was an unrealistic option for them. Still, a number of migrants with pending asylum claims have been swept up in the immigration crackdown around the country and are now in detention awaiting court hearings. The Haitians interviewed by Reuters said they remain committed to staying despite facing a torrent of threats and online hate last year triggered by false rumors on social media that Haitian nationals were eating local pets. Those claims were then repeated by Trump on the campaign trail. Some Haitians find it hard to believe that Trump, as a former businessman, would want to deport hardworking members of society contributing to economic growth, said Casey Rollins, executive director at St. Vincent in Springfield. "They have been in such denial about this," she said, adding that some Haitians leaned into a belief that God would take care of them or that the administration would somehow change its thinking and let them stay. "They have this ultimate faith thing," she said. I DON'T HAVE ANYWHERE ELSE TO GO During an interview at the Haitian Community Help and Support Center just outside downtown Springfield, a Haitian man in his 50s lifted his collared shirt to reveal the scar from a hot iron pressed to his chest six years ago. M.B., who only gave his initials because he was afraid of being singled out by ICE, said he did not know the men who tortured him, but believes the attack was likely related to his work for a political party out of power in Haiti at the time. M.B., who is permitted to work for a local manufacturer under the TPS program, said he and his wife are consulting with a lawyer about their asylum claims. In his 50s, he said he did not want to uproot to somewhere else. "This is the only other country that we have lived in besides Haiti," he said. "I don't have anywhere else to go." Rampant gang violence in Haiti has displaced some 1.3 million people from their homes, fueling hunger and insecurity, while hospitals have shut their doors, and much of the economy, judicial system and government remain paralyzed. I.M., a Haitian man in his 20s and a brain cancer survivor, worries he would not be able to get medications needed to sustain his life in Haiti. But he said he will not flee to a third country and would self-deport to avoid detention. I.M. also asked to be identified by his initials, citing concerns he could be targeted by ICE. He laughed when asked about the DHS assertion that Haiti was now stable and safe enough for Haitian migrants to return, pointing to the U.S. State Department advisory warning Americans against traveling there due to "kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and limited health care." "If they tell me to go September the 2nd, I will go before that just not to let people put me in handcuffs and treat me like a criminal," he told Reuters, referring to how migrants deported from the United States are often transported shackled. Viles Dorsainvil, director at the Haitian Community Help and Support Center, said most Haitians faced limited options, without the family ties or financial resources needed to get to a third country like Canada or Brazil. "It's like a Catch-22," he said. "It's so sad."

Walking through Providence, Rhode Island, it’s hard to miss the flyers posted on storefronts, bulletin boards, and lamp posts rallying passersby with a defiant call to action: Let’s Fight Trump’s Fascism! Defend Our Communities! Build a Better World! Come to the Providence General Assembly.

For months, popular assemblies such as these — in Providence, Detroit, and Richmond, Virginia — have been diligently laying the groundwork for resisting Trump’s agenda and building self-governance. In Providence, organizers with the General Assembly tabled at last weekend’s No Kings demonstration, which drew thousands. Some members help operate a hotline for reporting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sightings, a key part of deportation defense efforts that helps alert communities to raids, and makes large-scale, coordinated responses — like those in Los Angeles — more likely to materialize.

But what is a popular assembly, exactly? In Providence, assemblies have been held every other Saturday in a downtown Methodist church since November of last year. These gatherings offer a space for anti-fascist and progressive forces to coordinate, strategize, and make decisions together to build power that can be leveraged against the U.S. government. “We need regularly scheduled radically-democratic meetings to organize, coordinate, mobilize in active defense of our friends, neighbors, and loved ones,” the Providence General Assembly (PGA) writes in its mission statement, “and to fight to create the type of communities and world we want through our collective actions.”

The assemblies are open to all. At a Providence assembly attended by Truthout in March, the atmosphere was warm and welcoming for newcomers. Attendees were greeted at the door by PGA organizers and directed to a table stocked with name tags, free masks, snacks, printed meeting agendas, and informational pamphlets. Community agreements — posted on the wall in both English and Spanish — encouraged participants to stay curious, open, and respectful, and to give and receive feedback with honesty and compassion.

To open the meeting, two facilitators welcomed the semicircle of about 75 people, guiding them through a preset agenda crafted by the Providence General Assembly’s coordinating committee, a group open to anyone who’s attended at least one gathering. Voices from across the room spoke up during the announcement period and open forum, with attendees raising hands to share updates, concerns, or reflections. Five working groups — Mutual Aid, Community Defense, Unhoused Solidarity, Class Struggle, and Anti-Imperialism — briefly summarized their recent efforts in report-backs. Mutual Aid was organizing a mental health free clinic, cooked free meals for the public every weekend, and was involved in starting a community garden at a local school. Anti-Imperialism was collaborating with Jewish Voice for Peace Rhode Island’s campaign to divest from Israel bonds. Community Defense publicized the ICE Watch Defense Line and an upcoming demonstration at ICE headquarters.

The meeting culminated with a proposal to organize a family-friendly May Day demonstration. Several members had brought forward this proposal through the PGA’s formal decision-making process, which asks sponsors to submit proposals 24 hours in advance of the assembly and introduce them formally during the meeting, where it is then debated and discussed, and finally voted on. Proposals must win the support of at least two-thirds of assembly attendees to be adopted/passed.

A lively 20-minute discussion of the May Day demonstration followed, with time set aside for clarifying questions, suggested amendments, and objections. Some attendees weighed the benefits and drawbacks of securing a city permit, while others questioned the strategy of protesting in front of vacant buildings. One participant voiced concern about whether there was enough time to pull the event together. “We’ll try our darndest!” a sponsor responded with a grin. Another sponsor invoked the memory of Providence’s 2006 May Day demonstration, which had drawn hundreds of immigrant workers into the streets. They noted that the PGA was the most broad-based, nonsectarian organizing space seen in Providence in years. In the end, with no major objections and energy high in the room, the proposal passed easily — clearing the required two-thirds majority and sparking a round of applause and celebratory cheers.

A National Movement

Similar people’s assemblies that have taken root in cities like Detroit, Michigan, and Richmond, Virginia, signal the rise of a national movement for self-governance in response to growing authoritarianism in the United States.

Hundreds joined the first People’s Assembly in Detroit on January 26, rallying around one clear and urgent goal. “We have a solid stance against ICE, that is the bottom line,” said Ame, a Detroit-based organizer who helped launch the initiative and withheld their last name because of privacy concerns. To put this stance into action, the assembly formed several working groups to support immigrant Detroiters in different ways.

The mutual aid group operates a hotline connecting residents with legal and material support, and offers weekly immigration office hours to provide legal education and assist with paperwork.

The political education group organizes events and actions, including know your rights training and public demonstrations.

Meanwhile, a third working group called Migra Watch patrols local neighborhoods and attends court hearings, monitoring ICE activity on the ground. When they witness an arrest, they try to collect the individuals’ contact information in order to alert their families and help secure legal support.

“We want to make sure that ICE and all the agencies working with them know they’re not welcome here,” Ame said. “We’re not going to allow people to just be kidnapped and taken away, to have our communities ripped apart and destroyed.”

Most recently, the People’s Assembly in Detroit has begun training local businesses on how to respond to ICE raids. On June 11, assembly organizers rallied outside of the McNamara Federal Building in downtown Detroit after several asylum seekers were detained following their court hearings due to expanded “expedited removal” policies. On June 8, assembly organizers attended a Detroit Public School’s Community District Board meeting to demand that the board take a stand in support of Maykol, a student who was detained by ICE. “Maykol was 3.5 credits away from graduating,” said Ame. “The board made the statement, but he still got detained so we’ve been fundraising, noticing that people who have lawyers are less likely to get deported.”

Across the board, the assemblies are committed to building people’s power beyond the confines of the electoral system. A spokesperson for the Richmond People’s Assembly, who goes by the moniker Ezra, explained that while voting and electoral strategies can sometimes lead to short-term improvements, they ultimately disempower communities by transferring power to officials who rarely bear the consequences of the policies they impose. The assembly hopes to return that decision-making power to the people who have to live with the outcomes of those decisions.

To pursue these goals, Richmond held its first citywide assembly on January 18, drawing a crowd of more than 500 people. During that initial gathering, a group of organizers introduced a proposal to create neighborhood-based assemblies. The proposal passed, and nine neighborhood assemblies have formed across the city in the months since. Since then, they’ve organized community CPR classes, “swap parties” with free clothing and other goods, community discussions with potlucks, block parties, and more.

“We wanted people to be able to address hyperlocal problems,” Ezra explained when asked about the neighborhood-based strategy. “We felt like we couldn’t start at the citywide level without it just becoming an organization of organizers.” The goal is to engage residents who aren’t already politically active — to avoid replicating the racial, class, and age conformity that can sometimes characterize grassroots organizing efforts. One neighborhood assembly is loosely connected to a squatted community garden that’s drawn a diverse crowd — something Ezra sees as a meaningful step toward building broader solidarity. Still, they admitted that the strategy is a work in progress for the relatively short-lived experiment. “[The assemblies are] definitely still mostly folks who are already in organizing circles,” they said, “and that’s something we’re actively trying to push past.”

Organizers with Detroit’s assembly also promoted the strategy of supporting neighborhood assemblies in a piece they wrote for Left Voice, highlighting the need to support workers and community members at sites where ICE raids happen, like schools and hospitals (as opposed to solely forming “roaming squads” that may be disconnected from impacted communities).

In Richmond, organizing efforts also extend beyond the neighborhood level by hosting quarterly city-wide gatherings, which offer workshops, informal socializing, and shared meals in addition to an assembly. “That flow of energy from a meeting setting into these more open forum workshops was really appealing to people,” Ezra reflected. “It’s what helped folks stay engaged through what was nearly a 10-hour day.”

At the heart of these gatherings is the assembly component, which links Richmond’s nine neighborhood assemblies through a spokescouncil. Each neighborhood sends two spokespeople — not to make decisions on behalf of their group, but to communicate important information and report their group’s interests to the wider assembly. This structure is designed to keep power decentralized by preventing a person or small group from wielding a disproportionate amount of influence over others.

This spokescouncil model, Ezra explained, draws inspiration from international examples of direct democracy — most notably Rojava, a multiethnic, feminist movement involving more than 4 million people in North and East Syria. In Rojava, most neighborhoods host at least one “commune,” a form of popular assembly that functions as both a decision-making space and a hub for coordination. These communes manage society’s core needs through dedicated committees for self-defense, food, water, education, electricity, heating oil, health, and garbage collection. Each commune is led by two co-presidents, one male and one female, who convene in regional assemblies. Similarly, every committee is represented by co-spokespeople who meet with their counterparts across the region, forming a federated structure of grassroots governance.

In Syria, years of grassroots organizing — door-knocking and deep conversations with neighbors about their shared struggles — helped build up social acceptance for revolutionary ideologies among the Kurdish population. So when many of Assad’s forces withdrew from North and East Syria in 2012, amid the chaos of the Syrian Civil War, communities were ready to self-organize. Masses of people stepped in to fill the power vacuum to build a new, participatory form of governance.

Without access to formal municipal power as in Rojava, assemblies in Richmond have conducted visualizations and thought experiments about what large-scale self-governance could look like. At the citywide gathering in April, the assembly used a recent water crisis in the city as a springboard for discussing current power structures in Richmond, and to imagine what it would take to build infrastructure capable of managing water for hundreds of thousands of people.

Turning such ambitious visions into reality requires scaling up our movements. For Ezra, the movement’s ability to grow and generalize hinges on recognizing how organizational structures (or the lack of them) influence the quality and scope of our relationships. “People often say that this is relational work, and that is true, but it is only true so far as your relationships are in community, are in dialogue with structure,” they said. “There is a dialectic between relationship and structure that allows for organization. When we lean too far into either end, we will pigeonhole ourselves into either subcultural party scenes, or into a very rigid form of politics that never steps into the real world.”

At a late-March assembly in Providence, participants similarly grappled with the dual challenge of building meaningful relationships while resisting the pull of subcultural insularity. A proposal to form a social committee for organizing and promoting nonpolitical events was ultimately voted down after a thoughtful and good-faith debate. While many assembly-goers agreed on the importance of building connections, they emphasized that relationships would develop organically within the working groups themselves and through shared struggle approached with sincerity, curiosity, and joy.

That spirit came to life a month later during the May Day demonstration, when a crowd gathered together to gleefully thwack effigies of President Donald Trump and a Tesla Cybertruck. It was a collective and cathartic act symbolizing a vision shared by all three assemblies: the dismantling of oppressive systems and the creation of liberatory structures in their place, of a world where people live without the constant fear of displacement, deportation, and state violence.

Walking through Providence, Rhode Island, it’s hard to miss the flyers posted on storefronts, bulletin boards, and lamp posts rallying passersby with a defiant call to action: Let’s Fight Trump’s Fascism! Defend Our Communities! Build a Better World! Come to the Providence General Assembly.

For months, popular assemblies such as these — in Providence, Detroit, and Richmond, Virginia — have been diligently laying the groundwork for resisting Trump’s agenda and building self-governance. In Providence, organizers with the General Assembly tabled at last weekend’s No Kings demonstration, which drew thousands. Some members help operate a hotline for reporting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sightings, a key part of deportation defense efforts that helps alert communities to raids, and makes large-scale, coordinated responses — like those in Los Angeles — more likely to materialize.

But what is a popular assembly, exactly? In Providence, assemblies have been held every other Saturday in a downtown Methodist church since November of last year. These gatherings offer a space for anti-fascist and progressive forces to coordinate, strategize, and make decisions together to build power that can be leveraged against the U.S. government. “We need regularly scheduled radically-democratic meetings to organize, coordinate, mobilize in active defense of our friends, neighbors, and loved ones,” the Providence General Assembly (PGA) writes in its mission statement, “and to fight to create the type of communities and world we want through our collective actions.”

The assemblies are open to all. At a Providence assembly attended by Truthout in March, the atmosphere was warm and welcoming for newcomers. Attendees were greeted at the door by PGA organizers and directed to a table stocked with name tags, free masks, snacks, printed meeting agendas, and informational pamphlets. Community agreements — posted on the wall in both English and Spanish — encouraged participants to stay curious, open, and respectful, and to give and receive feedback with honesty and compassion.

To open the meeting, two facilitators welcomed the semicircle of about 75 people, guiding them through a preset agenda crafted by the Providence General Assembly’s coordinating committee, a group open to anyone who’s attended at least one gathering. Voices from across the room spoke up during the announcement period and open forum, with attendees raising hands to share updates, concerns, or reflections. Five working groups — Mutual Aid, Community Defense, Unhoused Solidarity, Class Struggle, and Anti-Imperialism — briefly summarized their recent efforts in report-backs. Mutual Aid was organizing a mental health free clinic, cooked free meals for the public every weekend, and was involved in starting a community garden at a local school. Anti-Imperialism was collaborating with Jewish Voice for Peace Rhode Island’s campaign to divest from Israel bonds. Community Defense publicized the ICE Watch Defense Line and an upcoming demonstration at ICE headquarters.

The meeting culminated with a proposal to organize a family-friendly May Day demonstration. Several members had brought forward this proposal through the PGA’s formal decision-making process, which asks sponsors to submit proposals 24 hours in advance of the assembly and introduce them formally during the meeting, where it is then debated and discussed, and finally voted on. Proposals must win the support of at least two-thirds of assembly attendees to be adopted/passed.

A lively 20-minute discussion of the May Day demonstration followed, with time set aside for clarifying questions, suggested amendments, and objections. Some attendees weighed the benefits and drawbacks of securing a city permit, while others questioned the strategy of protesting in front of vacant buildings. One participant voiced concern about whether there was enough time to pull the event together. “We’ll try our darndest!” a sponsor responded with a grin. Another sponsor invoked the memory of Providence’s 2006 May Day demonstration, which had drawn hundreds of immigrant workers into the streets. They noted that the PGA was the most broad-based, nonsectarian organizing space seen in Providence in years. In the end, with no major objections and energy high in the room, the proposal passed easily — clearing the required two-thirds majority and sparking a round of applause and celebratory cheers.

A National Movement

Similar people’s assemblies that have taken root in cities like Detroit, Michigan, and Richmond, Virginia, signal the rise of a national movement for self-governance in response to growing authoritarianism in the United States.

Hundreds joined the first People’s Assembly in Detroit on January 26, rallying around one clear and urgent goal. “We have a solid stance against ICE, that is the bottom line,” said Ame, a Detroit-based organizer who helped launch the initiative and withheld their last name because of privacy concerns. To put this stance into action, the assembly formed several working groups to support immigrant Detroiters in different ways.

The mutual aid group operates a hotline connecting residents with legal and material support, and offers weekly immigration office hours to provide legal education and assist with paperwork.

The political education group organizes events and actions, including know your rights training and public demonstrations.

Meanwhile, a third working group called Migra Watch patrols local neighborhoods and attends court hearings, monitoring ICE activity on the ground. When they witness an arrest, they try to collect the individuals’ contact information in order to alert their families and help secure legal support.

“We want to make sure that ICE and all the agencies working with them know they’re not welcome here,” Ame said. “We’re not going to allow people to just be kidnapped and taken away, to have our communities ripped apart and destroyed.”

Most recently, the People’s Assembly in Detroit has begun training local businesses on how to respond to ICE raids. On June 11, assembly organizers rallied outside of the McNamara Federal Building in downtown Detroit after several asylum seekers were detained following their court hearings due to expanded “expedited removal” policies. On June 8, assembly organizers attended a Detroit Public School’s Community District Board meeting to demand that the board take a stand in support of Maykol, a student who was detained by ICE. “Maykol was 3.5 credits away from graduating,” said Ame. “The board made the statement, but he still got detained so we’ve been fundraising, noticing that people who have lawyers are less likely to get deported.”

Across the board, the assemblies are committed to building people’s power beyond the confines of the electoral system. A spokesperson for the Richmond People’s Assembly, who goes by the moniker Ezra, explained that while voting and electoral strategies can sometimes lead to short-term improvements, they ultimately disempower communities by transferring power to officials who rarely bear the consequences of the policies they impose. The assembly hopes to return that decision-making power to the people who have to live with the outcomes of those decisions.

To pursue these goals, Richmond held its first citywide assembly on January 18, drawing a crowd of more than 500 people. During that initial gathering, a group of organizers introduced a proposal to create neighborhood-based assemblies. The proposal passed, and nine neighborhood assemblies have formed across the city in the months since. Since then, they’ve organized community CPR classes, “swap parties” with free clothing and other goods, community discussions with potlucks, block parties, and more.

“We wanted people to be able to address hyperlocal problems,” Ezra explained when asked about the neighborhood-based strategy. “We felt like we couldn’t start at the citywide level without it just becoming an organization of organizers.” The goal is to engage residents who aren’t already politically active — to avoid replicating the racial, class, and age conformity that can sometimes characterize grassroots organizing efforts. One neighborhood assembly is loosely connected to a squatted community garden that’s drawn a diverse crowd — something Ezra sees as a meaningful step toward building broader solidarity. Still, they admitted that the strategy is a work in progress for the relatively short-lived experiment. “[The assemblies are] definitely still mostly folks who are already in organizing circles,” they said, “and that’s something we’re actively trying to push past.”

Organizers with Detroit’s assembly also promoted the strategy of supporting neighborhood assemblies in a piece they wrote for Left Voice, highlighting the need to support workers and community members at sites where ICE raids happen, like schools and hospitals (as opposed to solely forming “roaming squads” that may be disconnected from impacted communities).

In Richmond, organizing efforts also extend beyond the neighborhood level by hosting quarterly city-wide gatherings, which offer workshops, informal socializing, and shared meals in addition to an assembly. “That flow of energy from a meeting setting into these more open forum workshops was really appealing to people,” Ezra reflected. “It’s what helped folks stay engaged through what was nearly a 10-hour day.”

At the heart of these gatherings is the assembly component, which links Richmond’s nine neighborhood assemblies through a spokescouncil. Each neighborhood sends two spokespeople — not to make decisions on behalf of their group, but to communicate important information and report their group’s interests to the wider assembly. This structure is designed to keep power decentralized by preventing a person or small group from wielding a disproportionate amount of influence over others.

This spokescouncil model, Ezra explained, draws inspiration from international examples of direct democracy — most notably Rojava, a multiethnic, feminist movement involving more than 4 million people in North and East Syria. In Rojava, most neighborhoods host at least one “commune,” a form of popular assembly that functions as both a decision-making space and a hub for coordination. These communes manage society’s core needs through dedicated committees for self-defense, food, water, education, electricity, heating oil, health, and garbage collection. Each commune is led by two co-presidents, one male and one female, who convene in regional assemblies. Similarly, every committee is represented by co-spokespeople who meet with their counterparts across the region, forming a federated structure of grassroots governance.

In Syria, years of grassroots organizing — door-knocking and deep conversations with neighbors about their shared struggles — helped build up social acceptance for revolutionary ideologies among the Kurdish population. So when many of Assad’s forces withdrew from North and East Syria in 2012, amid the chaos of the Syrian Civil War, communities were ready to self-organize. Masses of people stepped in to fill the power vacuum to build a new, participatory form of governance.

Without access to formal municipal power as in Rojava, assemblies in Richmond have conducted visualizations and thought experiments about what large-scale self-governance could look like. At the citywide gathering in April, the assembly used a recent water crisis in the city as a springboard for discussing current power structures in Richmond, and to imagine what it would take to build infrastructure capable of managing water for hundreds of thousands of people.

Turning such ambitious visions into reality requires scaling up our movements. For Ezra, the movement’s ability to grow and generalize hinges on recognizing how organizational structures (or the lack of them) influence the quality and scope of our relationships. “People often say that this is relational work, and that is true, but it is only true so far as your relationships are in community, are in dialogue with structure,” they said. “There is a dialectic between relationship and structure that allows for organization. When we lean too far into either end, we will pigeonhole ourselves into either subcultural party scenes, or into a very rigid form of politics that never steps into the real world.”

At a late-March assembly in Providence, participants similarly grappled with the dual challenge of building meaningful relationships while resisting the pull of subcultural insularity. A proposal to form a social committee for organizing and promoting nonpolitical events was ultimately voted down after a thoughtful and good-faith debate. While many assembly-goers agreed on the importance of building connections, they emphasized that relationships would develop organically within the working groups themselves and through shared struggle approached with sincerity, curiosity, and joy.

That spirit came to life a month later during the May Day demonstration, when a crowd gathered together to gleefully thwack effigies of President Donald Trump and a Tesla Cybertruck. It was a collective and cathartic act symbolizing a vision shared by all three assemblies: the dismantling of oppressive systems and the creation of liberatory structures in their place, of a world where people live without the constant fear of displacement, deportation, and state violence.

Donald Trump won the 2024 election on a platform of hate and division, intent on targeting the “vermin” who are “poisoning the blood of the country.”

Now, he and the rest of the fascist forces for an American Third Reich are trying to pull off a “soft” coup to establish their dictatorship. More then ever, people across the country are coming to understand that law and order will not stop them. It’s up to us.

Against the fascist forces that seek to destroy what’s left of our settler colony’s republic, the only way to stop them is by expanding grassroots democracy throughout the nation for an American Revolution of our own. We need to form democratic assemblies in every neighborhood and workplace. We must organize to defend one another from the fascist threat that seeks to divide, conquer, enslave, then exterminate us when we’re no longer needed.

From these democratic assemblies, we must coordinate a truly mass resistance. We must bring these fascists and their dictatorship to its knees by bringing the economy to a grinding halt. In order to do that, we have to learn how to take care of one another, to practice loving solidarity and mutual aid.

This is where we come in. We are The Cleveland Assembly.