by Jean Allen

Today, in the early hours of January 3rd, 2026, Donald Trump ordered the bombing of Caracas and the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Maduro as well as the first lady. This international smash and grab succeeded where twenty years of sanctions and international law couldn’t. As of the 3rd, the Bolivarian republic seems decapitated, and President Trump is openly speaking of taking Venezuelan oil.

The first political action I ever took was when my dad brought me to the 2003 protest against the Iraq War in New York City. It was the first time I’ve felt something I have felt so many times since–that I was within history, that I was doing something important with hundreds of thousands of other people. The 2003 protests were organized by the ANSWER coalition, a mix of socialist sects and newly mobilized liberals. ANSWER hoped to replicate the Vietnam-era protests against the war, and in terms of pure numbers they beat them. More Americans marched in 3/2003 than they ever had for any cause before. 

In a way, those protests had an effect on the US state, just not the one wished for by the protestors. By 2003, the government had spent 30 years insulating foreign policy from popular discontent, by removing the draft and having our incursions short and based on air warfare. The opposition to Bush’s wars accelerated this process, as our military became focused on a small group of special forces ‘operators’ and mercenaries drawn from a smaller and smaller portion of the United States.

At this point, the President and his appointees are the only people who truly get to decide anything about our foreign policy. The president comes to power via indirect and relatively low-participation elections. In both elections Trump won, “Did Not Vote” would have beaten him and his opponent. This is in keeping with the vision our founders had of an executive with the power to interact with foreign kings, insulated from the will of the popular classes.

Because of this insulation, the relation most American citizens have to US foreign policy is that of spectators. We watch the TV show, we have opinions on it, we argue with each other about those opinions. Maybe we attend a rally, maybe we sign a statement, maybe we get our union to sign a statement, maybe we do a direct action which will affect .1% of the military materiel produced. Zooming out, for most people politics means arguing with family members about the TV show. But none of those things matter, none of those touch power. And so we spend most of our time arguing with each other about the TV show we’re all watching, because that feels like power. The Anti-Iraq War coalition fell apart under that tension, and the life of any activist is full of examples of infighting because of this. 

I want to be clear that I view every single person who’s organized against the military as a hero. And I do not say this to demoralize. But we need to start planning at the scale we need to, and acknowledging the insufficiency of the tools we have against our undemocratic and colonial government is the first step to that. Our unions are an order of magnitude smaller and less militant than we need. Our rallies next to empty federal buildings are ignored. Our direct actions are affecting a small portion of the military industrial complex. Our international organization is effectively nonexistent. Socialists can only meaningfully elect federal-level politicians in a handful of places, and too often, anti-imperialism has been seen as a luxury belief unrelated to the socialist aim of affordability. Malcolm Harris said the day before Trump’s attack, “What’s the point of wanting to take power if you can’t?” That perspective, that we are arguing for nothing, has been a healthy counter to the crab-in-a-bucket instinct to infight since we can’t do much. Even the gesture at innovating new tactics feels like sand in my mouth. But it accepts that we will always be infantilized, always be spectators, in a way that feels disgusting now.

We have the tactics, we know the goal: organize the working class and the oppressed together to win a society where we can rule. But we do not have a plan at the scale we need to prevent the world from being brought down alongside the death throes of our declining empire. While we often talk about raising consciousness or educating the masses, popular opinion is on our side, both regarding socialism and against Trump’s suicidal adventurism. These opinions do not get to be expressed in our political system, so what DSA must focus on, in 2026 and 2028 and going forward, is voting in a bloc of congressional legislators who will be a consistent voice against militarization. We must do this because the attacks on Venezuela are accelerating a worldwide move towards increased militarization powered by world-destroying arms; and every dollar spent on guns, tanks, and aircraft is money not spent on the hospitals, schools, and environmental protections we’ll need in our hotter and hotter world. We have few chances to stop this, and we must prepare on a larger scale for the first opportunity.

The post Citizen Spectators first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

Welcome: Welcome to The Nutmeg Socialist. This is a forum for Connecticut socialists to share thoughts, document our organizing work, […]

Tell Gov Whitmer to support AG Nessel’s Anonymous ICE Reporting Platform!

In the wake of ICE’s murderous campaign to kidnap our neighbors and restrict our Constitutional rights, we call on Governor Whitmer to support Attorney General Nessel’s recently launched anonymous reporting platform. We call on Whitmer to form an accountability commission to review ICE’s many crimes and constitutional violations. This group of masked secret police has been terrorizing communities with impunity for far too long.

Michigan will not be safe until we know that we have the ability to hold ICE accountable for their many assaults upon our communities and country. Our residents must also be able to do so knowing they are protected by our State from what has been proven to be an extremely corrupt and vengeful Trump regime.

• Anonymity & Privacy Protection: Individuals can now report misconduct without revealing their identity or contact information.
• Secure Evidence Submission: Photos, videos, and documents can now be submitted securely to protect the integrity of the evidence.
• Independent Oversight: Reports MUST be reviewed by an impartial body, ensuring transparency and fairness in the investigative process.
• Legal Protections for Whistleblowers: Michigan residents who report abuses MUST be protected by state and federal whistleblower laws.
• Collaboration with Advocacy Groups: The platform MUST work closely with civil rights organizations to ensure that the process remains accessible, credible, and effective.

The post Break the ICE: Accountability for ICE appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.

The surge of ICE harassment, raids and deportations in the second Trump administration has focused unprecedented attention on the problem of anti-migration enforcement. In the wake of the murders of Renee Goode and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, we have not seen the likes of this mobilization on any major political question since the peak of the Black Lives Matter Movement. A recent opinion poll shows that nationally, a near-majority of the population now supports abolishing ICE. We need to seize this moment and keep the momentum going to make sure that this is achieved.

This milestone, evidence of a growing collective aspiration for an abolitionist, socialist future, should have translated into decisive planning at the state level. As a dues-paying member and invited panelist for Danbury Unites for Immigrants attending virtually, I left the meeting appreciating the earnest effort while recognizing some missed opportunities. What follows is offered in a spirit of comradely critique, with the aim of strengthening our shared work.

Civilization rises and falls—sometimes in meer moments. Pompeii, Nagasaki, the Sack of Rome, Atlantis… Sometimes I think about how short life could have been and whether that’s better or worse than dying when you’re older. I think about people that have survived horrors—Holocaust survivors who lived through death camps but died in a car accident. My own grandmother who immigrated to the United States from Iran completely by herself, lived with my grandfather who was an abusive drunk (although loved her), lived through a global pandemic, and then, DURING the pandemic, got cancer, and passed away just before she could see me get married. Throughout this whole time, friends of mine were having children. Babies were born, people died, and life carried on. But times were scary. We didn’t know what was coming next. So the question remains: does life actually find a way? Is it responsible to have children and carry on a legacy when you know the dangers around every corner? 

I would like to begin this section by briefly channeling the collective spirit of our Fascist friends. Don’t be alarmed […]

Polling from mid-2025 showed 62% of Democratic voters felt a change in party leadership was needed. These voters are shown to feel that current leaders are not doing enough to fight against Trump’s creeping (if not galloping) authoritarianism. This divide is likely to expand in the face of an underwhelming response to the occupation of Minneapolis and the clearly recorded execution of two of the city’s citizens, Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

This past Saturday, the Connecticut Democratic Socialists of America (CT DSA) held an emergency meeting to organize around abolishing United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). There’s been a lot of news about ICE lately, as many of the other recent articles on the Nutmeg Socialist cover.