By Jamie Azar, Certified Sex, Relationship, and Intimacy Coach
The ICE invasions in Los Angeles have exposed the outright abuse of power, the persistence of colonialist tactics of divide and conquer, and the ongoing, shameful violation of human rights. At the same time, they’ve revealed the strength of collective resistance against these blatant acts of fascism.
As communities rise against the invasion, the kidnapping and assault of innocent people, the separation of families, and the use of violence, threats, and manipulation to incite unrest, protesters have gathered in front of federal buildings demonstrating their collective resistance. In response, law enforcement has met them with tear gas, rubber bullets, and flashbangs.
The federal crackdown intensified when President Trump deployed 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles under the guise of restoring order, when in fact, as Governor Gavin Newsom condemned, it was an unconstitutional violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that limits military involvement in domestic policing and protects civilian authority.
The unrest in Los Angeles has sparked solidarity protests across the country, including in Chicago, where labor unions have called for the release of detained workers. Los Angeles has a deep and complicated history, shaped by Indigenous roots, Spanish conquest, Mexican governance, and generations of global migration. Colonization and white supremacy have built this city atop the displacement of Indigenous people while exploiting their labor and erasing their stories.
This is nothing new. America is a white supremacist, imperialist empire drenched in its shameful past and present of slavery, genocide, and colonization. Human rights should never be questioned, though they’ve been exploited and denied for centuries. The right to live, to love, and to experience joy should belong to everyone, not just a privileged few. Under hatred, conquest, and oppression live the rotting roots of fear, shame, and the hollow abuse of power and we are witnessing the impacts of this abuse in all forms.
We must continue to resist. Through art, creativity, therapy, poetry, organizing, mobilizing, mutual aid, and storytelling, we fight. Your music can be protest. Your conversations can be protest. Your voice is your strongest instrument. Each of us holds the responsibility to be an agent of change, for ourselves and for each other. We must dismantle, decolonize, and disrupt the systems of white supremacy that uphold every other form of oppression. Resistance lives in balance: in fighting and resting, in disrupting and celebrating, in transforming rage into action, and in protecting our joy.
Find your form of resistance.
Keep yourself and each other safe.
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Jamie Azar is former graduate of the Pleasure Psychology and Sexology Certification program, a sex, relationship, and intimacy coach, educator, writer, and mindfulness practitioner based in South Carolina. She offers 1-1 coaching with singles, couples, throuples + to co-create a safe, sex-positive, transformative, liberating, and empowering space that fosters personal and relational growth. She specializes in dismantling limiting beliefs, deconstructing, and destigmatizing harmful narrative constructs, to help clients reframe and redefine their understandings of selfhood, sex, sexuality, and relationships. To work with Jamie go here!