Growing up as the child of two Puerto Rican parents in Paterson, New Jersey, one of the most over-policed cities in the country, I witnessed firsthand the de-humanization of policing and incarceration. Paterson, a majority Black and Brown city, was treated like an occupied territory, with police acting as a hostile force rather than a protective one. I remember being profiled while bowling with my friends and having 6 police officers threaten me with arrest at 13 years old for theft when I was out playing with my friends the entire night. I remember seeing my neighborhood being taken under the Attorney General’s purview at one point because they claimed transplants felt “unsafe”. I used to be able to walk around the block every night until I turned 15 and was followed two blocks by police while walking to the store. This experience shaped my understanding of the carceral state and led me to my current work as a socialist organizer in Philadelphia, a city with its own deep history of policing and repression.
Philadelphia is a 67% non-white city, its diversity is a huge part of its strength. Every neighborhood has something unique and vibrant, connected to the cultures of the people living in it. However, despite all that vibrancy, there’s a dark side. Philadelphia is suffering from a mass unhoused crisis caused by rampant unaffordability and landlord greed. But instead of investing in the communities that are suffering, that are overwhelmingly Black and Brown, the city voted to add millions of dollars to the Philadelphia Police budget providing them $877 million. This act of budgetary violence comes at the same time that we have crippled crisis mobile services for unhoused folx and have resorted to immediately throwing drug users into forced rehabilitation. The community doesn’t need an increase in the police budget, it needs community care.
My experiences in these cities in conjunction are what brought me to being an Abolitionist. I am committed to the movements for police and prison abolition, the dismantling of ICE, and the fight against political repression. These struggles are interconnected, rooted in the same systems opposing white supremacy, capitalism, and state violence. As a Red Rabbit, I saw firsthand how community defense can replace policing.
R26: “Fight Fascist State Repression & ICE” provides a critical framework for revolutionary organizing in this era of escalating state violence. Authored by the Springs of Revolution formation, R26 correctly identifies ICE as a fascistic paramilitary force and calls for a militant working-class response to state repression not through liberal legalism, but through mass mobilization, labor strikes, and community self-defense. The resolution demands the abolition of ICE and an end to all collaboration between local law enforcement and federal deportation forces, while also recognizing that the fight against repression cannot be separated from the broader struggle against capitalism and imperialism.
The Left of DSA, including formations like Red Star, Marxist Unity Group, Libertarian Socialist Caucus, Emerge, Liberation Caucus and the Communist Caucus, understands that abolition and the fight against repression requires a revolutionary theory of change. Reformist appeals to the state will never dismantle the carceral system, because police, prisons, and ICE exist to enforce capitalist and racial domination. Instead, we build working-class power through mass mobilization, direct action, and dual power structures that render these institutions obsolete. In this moment of escalating fascist violence and state repression- from FBI harassment of leftists to the criminalization of protest- our task is clear: organize a militant, disciplined movement that can defend our communities while advancing a socialist horizon. This means expanding community defense networks, building labor-community solidarity against repression, and linking the struggle against policing to the fight against imperialism, and capitalist exploitation. The state will not grant abolition; we must seize it through collective struggle.
As a Red Rabbit who helped organize security for the Philadelphia Palestine encampments, and now as the Co-Chair of the Philadelphia DSA Red Rabbits, helping support immigrant justice work, I’ve seen how R26’s principles apply in practice: when we rely on collective protection rather than the police, we not only keep each other safe but actively undermine the state’s monopoly on violence. The Red Rabbits are the DSA safety contingent that traditionally focuses on protest support. However, in Philadelphia, and in various parts of the country we’ve done encampment support, strike support, mutual aid, and are aiming to expand further. We believe community care is crucial for the world we want to create.
Last summer, when student encampments for Palestine sprang up across Philadelphia, we didn’t call the cops, we organized. Alongside Philadelphia DSA Red Rabbits comrades, I helped coordinate security, de-escalation, and mutual aid to protect protesters from both police violence and right-wing attacks. While the PPD threatened raids and universities hired private security, we kept students safe through collective care – proving that abolition isn’t just possible, but practical. The encampments became liberated zones where we practiced the world we’re fighting for: one without cops, without borders, where safety comes from solidarity, not suppression. That’s the future we’re building through abolitionist struggle.
R26 pushes DSA to go beyond symbolic resistance and build real power through labor disruptions of detention centers, solidarity with political prisoners, and preparation for the growing far-right threat. In a moment where activists face increasing surveillance, grand jury harassment, and bogus “terrorism” charges, R26’s call to “make repression backfire” by responding with escalated organizing is exactly what our movement needs. The path forward isn’t pleading with the state, it’s building the capacity to dismantle its violent apparatus through working-class struggle.
Our resolution recognizes the failures of reforms like body cameras and “diversion programs,” the growing brutality and terrorism of ICE tearing families apart and the history of COINTELPRO and the FBI targeting of Black radicals, Muslim communities and resistance movements. The path forward is clear: We must defund and dismantle these institutions while building real community safety through housing, healthcare, education, and collective care. We must be in unflinching solidarity with our comrades across the world and be active participants in true internationalist resistance. We must organize, resist, and never compromise with a system built on our oppression. From Paterson to Philadelphia to Palestine, the fight for liberation continues.
Jordan Duran is a Marxist organizer, the Red Rabbits Working Group Co-Chair of Philadelphia DSA, and a member of the Local Political Committee.
