CCDS Statements – Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism

Refuse ICE Employment and Resist ICE Operations

“ICE has a budget bigger than most militaries around the world. It has increased its spending on weapons by 700% since last year. Trump is building his own personal military to terrorize American cities, trample on civil rights, and intimidate his opponents.” —Robert Reich

Under the direction of President Donald Trump US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), often involving masked and brutal agents, has launched a veritable spree of immigration arrests, raids, detentions, and deportations. Asserting only those with serious criminal records would be subject to apprehension is yet another Trump lie.

Those swept up are mostly hardworking and taxpaying immigrants with no or extremely minor criminal records, many of whose documentation paperwork is in order, who are diligently following legal requirements, and may have permanent residency status in the US. In some cases, those who have been swept up include US citizens, and in one instance a US citizen, Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good, has been murdered.

Families have been subjected to wanton and cruel separations. Persons have been held indefinitely, some incommunicado, at locations far from their normal places of residence. Some have been transported to dismal conditions in foreign settings that are not their countries of origin.

Also patently obvious is that this is a politically-driven and racist policy. Urban areas that did not vote for Trump have specifically been targeted for raids and enforcement. Those stopped, subjected to questioning, and detained are typically brown or black. In a diverse, multiethnic and supposedly open society such as the US purports to be, such policy is simply unacceptable.

CCDS urges any and all who encounter calls or advertisements to work for ICE refuse such job offers. Join us in resisting the siren song of racist and anti-democratic employment. Organize and join efforts to restrain and stop ICE, to disrupt their brutal Gestapo-type tactics, challenge them everywhere, support legal action against them, bring the message to all demonstrations and protests to abolish ICE.

We demand humane treatment and well-being for everyone in the US and subject to its jurisdiction. As the labor movement has taught us — “an injury to one is an injury to all!”

See links for further background.

On ICE employment:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ice-law-enforcement-recruitment-online-ads-b2892877.html

On ICE brutality:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/shocking-images-reveal-the-brutality-of-ice-raids-tearing-through-us-communities/ar-AA1PCI7R

[CCDS – January 2026]

A Summary Statement in Protest of US Policy in the Middle East

The Committees of Correspondence For Democracy And Socialism (CCDS): The Middle East Wars and United States Imperialism

By the CCDS Peace & Solidarity Committee

Feb 10, 2025

We in CCDS believe there can be no moral, ethical, or ideological justification to excuse the brutality and modern-day barbarity of US supported Israeli actions in Gaza since October 2023.

Palestine is first and foremost a settler occupied land where Zionists, assisted by western colonial and imperial powers, imposed a colonial set of social relations on its majority Arab Muslim peoples. This majority prevailed from the 7th century to the mid-20th century. Then, prior to the state of Israel being declared the Nakba began, that is, clearing the land of Arab Palestinians.

In the 1890s A World Zionist Organization was formed with the overt intent of creating a Jewish homeland in the Palestine region along the lines of a Jewish nation state. But why Palestine, and not any other place? A long Jewish historical association with the land of Palestine, and a firmly established religious and social strife involving Christianity would provide the emotional bonds and a powerful symbol to anchor a Zionist political ideology with global reach and appeal.

The UK, which held the mandate to govern Palestine, gave the green light to the Zionist project through the Balfour Declaration. In 1947, in the face of years of terrorizing violence directed at Muslims by Zionist settlers, and an alarmingly increasing resettlement of Jews in Palestine, the United Nations recommended the partition of Palestine into two states. At that time, only 1/3 of the land’s inhabitants were of Jewish background.

On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and the chairman of the Jewish Agency in Palestine, declared the establishment of a new state of Israel. Palestinians and Arab neighbors viewed this as an occupation of the residents’ historic land. And the first Middle East war between the new Israel supported by the UK and the US, and Arab states ensued.

During, and under the cover of this war, the Zionists intensified the Nakba which has taken various forms over the decades. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced from their homes, villages, towns, and country to bring us to a Jewish majority on the ground today.

Subsequent wars followed in 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, and intermittently from the 1980s to today’s brutal, genocidal war on the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. These wars supported by the West emboldened Israel to extend its territory both within and beyond its borders. Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, the Old City of Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. Through settler and state sanctioned violence Palestinians were terrorized and cleared off their lands; villages and towns replaced by new Jewish settlements and the territory of Israel expanded.

These wars, then and now, have been waged by Israelis, with unconditional Western support, against Palestinians and neighboring Arab states. The deeply embedded issues fueling this inimical void are two-fold:

Internally: the legitimacy of the state of Israel; the dehumanizing apartheid and racist policies towards Palestinians; the control and weaponizing of energy, water, airspace, and movement to impose a pervasive repressive regime over Palestinian lives; the transformation of the lived reality of the Palestinians into a veritable open-air prison; a draconian military justice system curtailing civilian life; and an on-going unrestrained settler violence as a prelude to settlement expansion and ultimately the removal of the Palestinian people.

Externally: Palestine is centered in a web of geopolitical interests. Control of the region’s oil economy is vital for Western corporate and cartel capitalism’s global economic hegemony. So is Palestine’s geopolitical location along a historical bridge connecting Western Europe and North Africa to Asia. Israel also features prominently in the US led capitalist empire’s quest for control of the territory and its resources from the Red Sea to the Adriatic Sea and control of the Mediterranean Sea. For these Western interests, Israel is the vital outpost to ensure geopolitical control. It performs the role of destabilizer and attack force.

Various organizations like the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, and Hezbollah emerged to challenge and resist the Israeli state and its land expansion over the last fifty years. The United States, Britain, France, the former Soviet Union, and neighboring Arab states have all played significant roles in the development of this conflict.

Emerging from World War II as the most powerful economic and military power on the globe, the United States cultivated a special relation of support for Israel that refuses to falter even in the face of starkly evident genocidal actions against humanity. Israel has the most powerful military in the region suited up with the latest in military technology and weapons from the US; is a nuclear power and boasts a powerful global intelligence network. The United States, through finance; technology and intelligence sharing; military support; and its veto privileges in international institutions, has aided and abetted every aspect of this abominable state.

In the very period of Israel’s genocide, between October 2023 and October 2024, the US provided Israel with $17.9 billion, and devastating bombs that make a mockery of nuclear scares. The US provides Israel with enough military material to defend itself from any other country’s intervention. And today, the US president openly advocates for the total disappearance of Palestinians in Palestine to be replaced by others from or favored by the US. We therefore hold the United States equally culpable for all of Israel’s crimes against humanity. The United States is also deeply enmeshed in the expansionist drama unfolding in Syria. Even further it is involved in imperialist regime change and secession programs in many parts of the world.

Today, pro-Israel lobby groups in the United States support continued military and economic aid to Israel. Israel, with United States support, opposes serious negotiations with the legitimate Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. That the countries of the world, for multiple and strategic reasons, have not been able to militarily intercede in this genocide in Gaza may result in a hardening of Israeli opposition to any serious negotiation in the aftermath of signing a temporary cease-fire. Israel and the pro-Israeli United States appear untroubled by the global tide of criticism from the real international community and its demand for a just peace.

We in CCDS believe there can be no moral, ethical, ideological, or other justification to excuse the brutality and modern day barbarity of US supported Israeli actions in Gaza since October 2023. This is first, a crime against Palestinians; then it is a crime against all of humanity – a crime against all of us. We condemn the actions of the US for its complicity and partnership in Israel’s genocidal actions.

We call on our fellow US citizens and residents, institutions, and political organizations to stand firm against the genocidal and expansionist actions in Palestine and beyond.

We demand in the name of peace, justice, democracy, and freedom for all the world’s peoples,

an end to Israeli support

an end to legislative endeavors to curtail just criticism of Israeli actions

an end to imperial designs

an end to regime change

an end to our military presence around the world

an end to hybrid wars

an end to support for terrorists and assassins

Let us stand for a just and shared future for all in the world.

Sleepwalking to Disaster

The Fierce Urgency of Now

By Jay D. Jurie

Endorsed by the CCDS National Executive

Later this year the midterm elections will determine whether the Democratic Party will lose control of the US Senate, the House, or both. A loss of either would significantly advance the Republican Party drive to create a one-party state along with a neo-fascist seizure of power. If such success was followed by a Trump victory in 2024, or the victory of an even more capable neo-fascist in 2025, such a takeover would virtually be guaranteed.

Already underway is a reconfiguration of a wide variety of public policies by state governments under the control of Republican governors and/or supermajority legislatures. Besides standard Republican goals denying worker and reproductive rights, more corporate welfare for the wealthy, and so on, the ante has been upped by the Republican conversion into a de facto neo-fascist party. More recently we’ve seen measures that directly assault democracy, the democratic process and institutions. These include voter suppression, the designation of false slates of electors, and the substitution of far right loyalists for conventional election officials, among others.

Cementing such a transformation into place would produce drastically severe consequences for progressive organizations, campaigns, and ideals along with the restructuring and disruption of the daily lives of millions of US citizens and residents. For the neo-fascist project to succeed, more in the US would need to be persuaded to get on board and support changes brought about, as many doubtlessly would. Others who are not in accord, or who resist these changes, will find themselves subject to active repression, including quite possibly detention and violent reprisals.

Yet many, including progressives, continue to go about their normal routine oblivious to this looming threat. Much of what the progressive agenda seeks to advance will of necessity have to be put on sustained hold if such events were to come to pass. There will be little or no chance to pass, enact, or administer legislation or other measures that vitally affect the lives and well-being of millions and our environment. It has not registered with the public at large what these changes would mean to their routines and aspirations, which for those not in accord with them, would prove extreme and highly undesirable.

We have two urgent responsibilities at this moment. First, regardless of other issues we may be pursuing, we must add significant electoral involvement to our “must do” list. In some instances we can use the electoral dilemma to advance our causes de jour, so the two might dovetail. In other words, we don’t have to drop what we’re doing to rush over to do electoral work. But to the extent that work is not on our current agenda, it is incumbent upon us to make it so, or, to prioritize it if need be.

The important second task is to consider what we might do in the aftermath of a possible neo-fascist victory. What will we need to survive, carry on important elements of our work, even if underground, and to mount effective resistance? We do have models to draw upon, about which we should undertake a quick study, and learn more. We need to think through this contingency and be as prepared as possible, to incorporate what we need into our planning, and be ready to keep moving even under what would prove to be very adverse circumstances.

As Palmiro Togliatti, who survived fascism under Mussolini, taught us in his Lectures on Fascism, “Totalitarianism does not close the path of struggle…but opens new paths (p. 27).”