[TEASER] Immigration, ICE, and Working Class Rebellion w/ Cecilia Guerrero
Release Date: 06/24/2025
Upstream
This is a free preview of the episode "Immigration, ICE, and Working Class Rebellion w/ Cecilia Guerrero." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a...
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As seems to be the case with most of the countries that the United States goes to war with—much of the population here doesn’t know very much about those countries. And what they do know is usually Western propaganda, misinformation, or outright lies. This couldn’t be more true with Iran, where if it were up to our political leaders and corporate media, the story that Iran was a perfectly happy democracy that was abruptly and rudely destroyed by a rabid and power hungry group of Ayatollahs would never go unquestioned. They certainly wouldn’t want you to know about the Western backed...
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One of the most radical things you can do is live your life in direct opposition to the forces that control our society. Not just fighting for policies or organizing your community, although those are certainly important parts of it, but also living with values that oppose the values of our dominant society. And even more importantly, raising the next generation to embody those values—not in a coercive way, but through organic parenting and role modeling that make radicalism irresistible. This is how we raise revolutionaries: instilling community, love, egalitarianism, and a need for justice...
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This is a free preview of the episode "China Pt. 6: The Long Transition Towards Socialism w/ Gabriel Rockhill." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make...
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Imperialism is the primary contradiction facing the globe—and the split of the world into two poles, the imperialists and the anti-imperialists, is going to continue to shape our revolutionary struggles moving forward. This anti-imperialist struggle is occurring all over the Global South, and perhaps nowhere quite as prominently as in Africa's Sahel region, where the countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger have been waging a struggle against neocolonialism and building a movement towards pan-Africanism through the Alliance of Sahel States—an alliance that has received the praise of...
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If you look around at the state of the world—and the despair that comes with the reality of climate change, fascism spreading its tentacles around the world, the ethnic cleansing of Gaza—it’s very difficult to feel hope. It begins to feel like the forces of destruction and death have colonized our futures, limiting our dreams and stifling our imaginations. It’s in these times specifically that it’s essential we remember that the future, our dreams, our imagination—that these things are political. And that exercising our hope for a just and beautiful future is an important, in...
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This is a free preview of the episode "Alliance of Sahel States Pt. 1: Burkina Faso – An Anti-imperialist Introduction w/ Prudence Iticka." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon...
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There is nothing natural about the way we arrange families under capitalism—in fact, there are many who would argue that there is something quite unnatural about narrowing the experience of romance and child-rearing into the rigid form of the nuclear family. That there are much better ways of arranging these things might come as a surprise to some—but for those who have researched it, it’s no shock: there are much better ways of arranging things, and there’s quite a bit of evidence to back this up. Kristen Ghodsee is Professor of Russian and East European Studies and a member of...
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This is a free preview of the episode "The Imperial Boomerang w/ Julian Go." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: As a Patreon subscriber you will have access to bi-weekly episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. The imperial...
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Chris Smalls had no idea the direction his life would take when he was discharged in 2020 for organizing a walk out in protest against Amazon’s safety protocols during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. He had no idea he was about to embark on one of the most challenging David and Goliath unionization efforts of our century. In this episode, we speak with , the founder and a former president of the , or ALU, as well as , a filmmaker, musician, and educator from Los Angeles who recently produced the documentary film, , following Chris and the other organizers in their fight for...
info_outlineThis is a free preview of the episode "Immigration, ICE, and Working Class Rebellion w/ Cecilia Guerrero." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast
As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.
It’s easy to get lost in the narratives that are fed to us by the very same institutions that oppress us. Whether liberal institutions or far right ones, there’s always something crucial missing—some component of analysis that’s left unaddressed, some root cause that remains misidentified or distorted. And the reason is because when it comes to the class war that we are all engaged in—whether we like it or not—the issues of class, of imperialism, and of monopoly capitalism are never, ever part of the mainstream discussion.
So, what are the root causes of immigration? What do the ICE terror campaigns look like on the ground in cities like LA or Nashville? What happens when we apply a materialist lens to the conversation about mass deportations and conversation about the scapegoating of the more vulnerable groups in society? And what happens when we shift the frame from the more liberal, rights-based approach to activism to one based on unified, solidaristic class struggle? Well, we’ve brought back on the perfect guest to help us unpack some of these pressing questions.
Cecilia Guerrero is Chair and Founding Member of A Luta Sigue, an organization based in Nashville, Tennessee, which incubates and trains young people and workers within advanced sectors of the working class to build and lead their own class struggle organizations.
In this episode, we talk about the terror campaign being waged on immigrants throughout the country and the responses coming from working class communities who are standing up for themselves and standing in solidarity with the oppressed and exploited classes across the globe. We talk about ICE, the role that immigration plays in the imperialist global system, the attempts by liberal institutions to co-opt and neutralize our radical movements, and what the MAGA right gets wrong about the root cause of their immiseration.
Further resources:
- A Luta Sigue
- Poder Popular
- Tennessee Drivers Union
- Southern Youth Solidarity Network
- Capitalism and Workers’ Immigration, V.I. Lenin
- Marx to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt In New York, Karl Marx
Related episodes:
- From the Frontlines: Class Struggle and Class War in the US Southeast w/ Cecilia Guerrero
- The Imperial Boomerang w/ Julian Go
Artwork: CPSU propaganda poster
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