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By: Ben A
BOSTON, MA – In the wake of the Trump regime’s criminal attack on the Bolivarian Revolution and Venezuela’s sovereignty, as well as the ICE killings of Renee Good and Keith Porter, over a thousand people gathered on Saturday January 10th in the Boston Common and City Hall Plaza to demonstrate their refusal to stand by while the Trump regime commits heinous acts of violence at home and abroad.
The protest on the Common was organized by the Boston chapters of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), alongside a number of sponsoring organizations, including Cambridge Our Revolution, Mass. Peace Action, the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), the MA Sierra Club, Mass. 50501, and others, which marched through the streets of downtown Boston to meet up with a simultaneous protest in City Hall Plaza organized by the LUCE Immigrant Justice Network.
Renee Good, one of the two murdered by the secret police, participated in a Minneapolis ICE Watch operation similar to LUCE.
“We bore witness to the imperial boomerang this week,” said Bonnie Jin, co-chair of Boston DSA, and a speaker at the rally. Jin outlined demands for Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey and other elected representatives to take more authoritative action. “Take a public stand against ICE, and use the full power of the law to hold ICE accountable.”
This protest was just one of nearly a thousand that took place across the country, many of which were part of a day of action called for by the national leadership of DSA, along with PSL and the Palestinian Youth Movement nationwide. While the political tendencies represented at this protest were diverse, protesters were largely united in their demands. Protesters carried signs demanding “No Wars for Oil,” a call back to the deeply unpopular and disastrous Iraq War, as well as “Abolish ICE” and “Nobody is Illegal on Stolen Land.”
The shared messaging points to a larger shared understanding.
Most protesters, affirmed with each head nod to each speaker, hold a series of beliefs:
- Immigrants are not our enemies,
- We don’t benefit from imperialist wars in other countries, especially not our immigrant neighbors terrorized by ICE, and,
- ICE is our actual foe, alongside the government funding its crimes, the same government attacking Venezuela.
While the crisis of capitalism, manifested by an affordability crisis and a housing crisis, continues to ruin the lives of working class people in the United States, Trump’s regime would rather dump hundreds of billions of dollars into paying for war in other nations and tens of billions into expanding ICE operations, instead of helping working class people afford their rent, their groceries, or their utilities.
Rallying for the Safe Communities Act
While protests stretched across most major cities nationwide, one specific aspect of Boston’s was a demand: the Safe Communities Act.
A priority of Boston DSA in its campaign alongside ICE Watch, the Safe Communities Act would terminate state cooperation with ICE, including courts and police questioning about immigration status, as well as protecting basic rights. The rally drew numerous labor leaders, including Evan McKay, former president of the Harvard Graduate Student Union (HGSU) and DSA-endorsed candidate for Cambridge’s Middlesex-25 district for State Representative, who told Working Mass about the need for urgent action and passing of the Safe Communities Act.
This legislation has been blocked by the Statehouse in secret votes, year after year, in secret votes by powerful politicians that want to hide from accountability. Today, we said enough is enough, because we know who is accountable… State House leadership.
MacKay is challenging incumbent Marjorie Decker for the Cambridge district spanning from Central Square to Harvard and Porter in the 2026 election, which they lost in 2024 by only a handful of votes.
Nadeen from the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) drew connecting lines between military action in Venezuela and the genocide in Palestine:
Economic strangulation is presented as policy, long term occupation and intervention presented as stability – but stability just for the oil oligarchs.
Another speaker from the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) has launched a long-shot bid for U.S. Senate. The candidate, Joe Tache, connected the historic context of Boston as a site of revolutionary and abolition activity to the current moment:
I see Renee Good’s murder as connected to Trump’s war of aggression in Venezuela, which he is trying to conquer for oil. The capitalist system which prioritizes profits above all else, and uses racism as a tool to dominate working people, is going to continue to allow figures like Trump and the right-wing to grow.
Trump’s recent kidnapping of Venezuelan President Maduro is the continuation of a long history of illegal U.S. interventions in Latin America. President Trump, in a moment of remarkable transparency, posted on Truth Social about the financial inflow from the operation, writing that, “this Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and the money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America…”.
Geo Maher, an abolitionist scholar and author, has argued that the move for the U.S. to reassert itself in Latin America represents a decline of traditional U.S. imperial power on the global stage.
Both the ICE crackdown at home, and the U.S. assault on Venezuela abroad are symptoms of the crisis of capitalism and the decline of the US empire. ICE operations target and remove people deemed expendable by the Trump Regime and the capitalist class, mimicking mass incarceration by essentially getting rid of people that the US can no longer provide for as economic conditions worsen. Meanwhile, the attack on Venezuela is designed to prevent China and Russia from accessing much needed oil, and to create more compliant regimes in Venezuela and all of Latin America as the United States proceeds with its plans to create new supply chains that cut out China and are based in Latin America. The plan is clearly outlined in the latest National Security Strategy document released by the Trump regime in November 2025.
Deportations may also serve to bolster this as well, by keeping the Latin American work force in Latin America, forcing them to become the labor driving this new supply chain.
The long term vision of this plan decoupling the U.S. supply chain from China in order to prepare for a great power war. Obviously, the consequences would be devastating to the all of the working classes around the globe. Our only chance of ensuring that we never see this outcome is by creating a powerful anti-war movement that can ultimately challenge the capitalist class’s control of the US and the world. Actions like the nationwide protests seen on Saturday are important developments along the path of building this movement, with more to come soon.
Ben A is a member of Boston DSA and contributing writer to Working Mass.
The post January 10, 2026: Mass Protests Against ICE and War in Venezuela Hit the Boston Common appeared first on Working Mass.
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