Reportback: Reflections on January 26th, 2025 in Dallas
Often people ask us what the radical landscape is like in DFW. Our response is usually a prompt and succinct “it’s shit” followed by how living here makes one of us feel constantly suicidal. Luckily, we received this reportback about a significant recent protest in Dallas that can help us paint a better picture of the situation in the city. As the level of protest described here represents a significant break from normality that’s noteworthy to write about, you can imagine what normality is like…
Either way we appreciate the description, analysis, and questions it raises. Of course, like most of the submissions we receive, we don’t agree with every point but it’s important to see these types of reflections and writing on situations outside the American metropoles.
“A bunch of people just felt free for the first time,” was the immediate reaction of a seasoned comrade to a protest on January 26th, 2025. The demonstration was organized by two Latina high school girls to support migrants against the escalating deportations and racist policies coming from the newly minted Trump White House. The call for the action had minimal and vague goals (just to hold signs and be present), yet it spread virally on social media, especially Tik Tok, turning out over a thousand people on a cold and rainy day in Dallas Texas. What was so thrilling about the event was seeing people carefully but bravely maneuver around the cops and step up the disruption. They began by chanting and holding signs and ended up blocking a downtown bridge for several hours. People walked past cops who sheepishly said, “hey you should get on the sidewalk,” and even brought some consequences to a racist counter protestor. Sometimes the simple things are the most beautiful.
I am not a Dallas-ite, though I’ve been living here for a year and a half. I did not attend nor am I writing this as part of an organized crew. I do have many years of experience at protests and in the streets, some of them much more disruptive and confrontational than this action. But as I said, sometimes the simple things are the most beautiful. There are a number of aspects of this action that I think are incredibly important for us all to consider. Specifically, the mechanics of how and why this protest took some bolder turns than it set out to, and importantly, what that can teach us about the fragility of the eerie quiet around social struggle in a place like Dallas.
This action has been followed by numerous other demonstrations and become part of a national wave of mobilization. Most of the actions here in Dallas, however, have been steered away from the promising courage and militancy of that initial event. While this is due to many factors, we should not overlook a plain lack of clarity and creativity about what it would take to further escalate, and what even counts as escalation in the first place. Instead there have been successful attempts to reduce the unruly aspects of the crowd in the name of some vague “effectiveness.” This is an unfortunate, but unsurprising development. However, this turn to passivity is not one set in stone. In the interests of helping people imagine what a more powerful and in fact effective development could look like, I offer the following thoughts. The hope is that with some careful reflection those of you in the struggle can see that we already have the power and opportunity to win much more than a retreat of the Trumpist reaction: the transformation of our social lives which have been and remain broken regardless of who’s in the White House.
What Happened
Lets begin with a basic rundown of the event. The crowd began to amass a little before the scheduled 3pm start time. For the first couple hours things were low-key, but with the large turn out there was a good energy. The official plan had been to rally on the edge of the road and along a pedestrian bridge easily visible from the more prominent Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge (aka, The Large Marge). The young and inexperienced organizers of the event explicitly did not want to take the streets and aimed for things to be “peaceful.” There was brief marching down the pedestrian bridge, but they turned around before it got close to the street. At the beginning of the action there was a small but meaningful police presence, four or five cars and about as many officers.
The crowd was split between those further from the road where a mic was available for people to speak, and those right at the curb. The energy next to the road was higher and began to feel spicy when a lone counter protestor showed up holding a 30ft flag pole bearing an American flag and a Trump flag declaring “Mass Deportations Now.” This solo idiot had a ring of protesters shaming him with about five cops protecting him. Compare this to the five cops watching the other thousand people. Serving and protecting.
As all this was happening a slow parade of cars was passing the protest, all supporters. Some were blasting music, some were waving Mexican flags, some spinning their tires and backfiring their engines. This caravan was clogging up traffic for blocks and was starting to blur the lines between the curb and the road.
After hours of not doing much, a tipping point appeared as more and more people snuck onto the medians and islands in the street, headed over to where the lonely American Patriot was standing. People had been crossing, mostly following the traffic light, but in a sudden moment a few more people than before lingered on the road, and then a few more people stepped out despite the red “Don’t Walk” sign. People realized this was their chance to take the street and like a bouncing ball of slime they filled all four lanes of the road. People still on the curb looked on nervously as the cops swiftly shifted position, but soon felt the thrill of being bold and joined. The cops decided to accommodate this rather than squash it. The crowd began to chant, “Whose streets, our streets” with a new fervor.
After a while of pressing against a mostly polite police line at the bridge the Patriot decided to leave and the front line became the rear guard as he was followed by the proud and the bold. Something happened to his flags, and something happened to his face. But now the crowd was facing a new direction and since the cops had closed the street a boulevard was open for marching. So again, carefully, people started marching down the road, others saw the momentum shift and went with it. Then they were marching down the block, with supportive neighbors waving Mexican flags from their condo balconies.
A few blocks down somehow the decision was made to turn back around and head back to the original intersection. With that shift the crowd eventually returned to confronting the police presence on the bridge. No one was left on the grass and no one cared about the isolated cops half heartedly pointing off the road. Half way down the bridge, an emblematic symbol of contemporary Dallas, people were stopped by a police line and took pictures standing on the roadway with no sidewalk to be found.
This is where my rundown ends. The majority of people decided to leave that boundary be, the crowd had thinned, the sun had gone down, and this phase seemed done, as was I. Plenty of folks did remain for several hours and new folks showed up seeming to have heard about the fun. Things did continue to escalate a bit and some water bottles were thrown at the police, much to the chagrin of “experienced activists” in the crowd who were worried for people’s “safety.” As I said, I have seen much more disruptive actions, but this one was lovely for a whole host of reasons.
What to make of it
While this action was admittedly not very large and kinda silly, a bunch of people clogged up an unimportant intersection for a few hours, I think it was actually smarter and larger than it seemed. Given the context of Dallas this type of militancy is remarkable. It’s wrong to say it’s unheard of, but it’s rare and most recent public protests around immigration policies have been small and highly stage-managed.
But also the action itself showed some real sparks of strategic inspiration. The location was at the foot of a bridge whose construction was a spectacular waste of public resources, all for the purposes of erecting a dramatic icon to sell the city. The enormous public expense of building it and the prestigious architect employed are ridiculously incongruous with the amount of traffic it carries over the glorified flood plain called the Trinity River. The neighborhood around it was the historic barrio, now heavily gentrified and replaced with condos and strange public development projects (what the hell is an “Art Park and Beer Garden”?), though Aztec inspired murals and upscale taco spots still line the street. But that dubious history of development also meant there was ample free public parking and accessible restrooms. Perhaps most importantly, the actual park where the protestors gathered is the site of a regular and quasi legal Cumbia dance party. The cultural networks around this served to turn out a broader and deeper set of people than any currently active political organization could.
Additionally, the tactics deployed in the streets were surprisingly sharp. The apparent timidity of taking the street was in reality caution and care to check the mood of the cops, who have been known in this town to bring the boot early and forcefully. Crowds dissolving away from standoffs with the police and marches doing arbitrary 180s were absolutely deescalating confrontation with the cops, but they were also maneuvers to prevent the police from locking the crowd into a clear and easily contained narrative. On top of that, they helped keep the afternoon interesting and avoided the familiar splitting of the crowd into brazen and meek. By being more measured with the peaks of combat, more people were able to feel more brave.
Probably the most genius contribution was the caravan of cars. By pre-clogging traffic, the caravan not only made it safer for folks to be in the street, but it also connected to the deep roots of the local car culture. People are proud of their trucks – raised or lowered. They want to show them off in the rowdy and rebellious style of local sideshows complete with whiffs of burning rubber and cracks of backfiring engines. In North Texas cars are life, for better or for worse. This action embraced as well as criticized this reality by demonstrating these are “our streets” whether we’re on foot or behind the wheel.
Even the way the crowd reacted to the ding-bat Trumper was notably subtle. It was a good two hours before anything happened to him besides getting yelled at. This allowed for a slow escalation that again, brought the crowd along for the ride. In particular, it allowed for the combative anger toward him to spread like an itch through people. As folks got bored and excited they had something to turn feisty about. If things had moved more swiftly and efficiently it’s likely that either no one would have noticed, or the ones who took out the trash would have been encapsulated and neutralized.
Lastly, and most importantly, the resistance to incorporate established organizations was a real recognition that in this town, despite whatever narrative said groups might tell themselves, they are more of a drag than a boost to people’s rebellious spirit. A number of folks made feeble efforts to “marshal” the crowd, but they were soundly ignored. The services experienced activists could bring was mostly reduced to leading chants which was done just fine without waving acronym-laden flags or wearing little vests. Perhaps the only thing that would have helped was more bullhorns, but honestly, a good crowd is louder without them. [note from haters: fuck bullhorns and the like]
Of course the action was still small and full of limitations. For one, the boldness only went so far. The lack of aggressive action by the cops was because they were able to push the crowds into mostly modest traffic disruptions without having to resort to such tactics. Their light hand was calculated counter-insurgency, not weakness. For another, the messaging and sloganing were almost entirely liberal and reformist. One sign carried a common riff “Fuck weed, legalize my mom.” While the emotional resonance is clear it’s not obvious why legalization is the be-all-end-all, and more importantly: ¿porque no los dos?
Also of note, the Mexican flag and chants of “Viva Mexico” abounded, which shows complicated layers to people’s political imagination, especially at a time when the officially “progressive” Sheinbaum is all too happy to do her part in militarizing the border. I personally find this un-American nationalism a refreshing shift from the Red White and Blue waving assimilationism so prominent in previous phases of Latino immigrant struggle, and one that disrupts the imperative to choose one “nation” to be dedicated to. Yet the embrace of existing nation-state identity holds us back from a dream of being dedicated to no nations. It also resists a deeper and sophisticated critique of imperial capitalism, that recognizes the border as a key aspect of managing this exploitative economic system as well as the role of Mexico and other Latin American states in this management.
These limitations and many others leave no clear path to transition from the simple first steps of social conflict into a cycle of escalation that could actually impact the balance of power in this city. As I mentioned, this is not the only time in recent memory that actions like this have pushed boundaries and odds are things will go back to their eerie quiet like they have before.
Against this tendency, our goal as revolutionaries must be to help the growth and development from small beginnings to radical ruptures. However, we all need to think hard about what types of interventions might do that, and what our dreams of escalation look like. For one thing, we shouldn’t confuse development of the struggle with “better plans” when that actually means tighter control over the movement by self-proclaimed leaders. Too often the call for “effectiveness” is actually a call for obedience. This tendency is not only whack, but it also stifles further escalation even if the disobedient masses have no meaningful strategy of “leverage.” While the disruption and thoughtfulness of actions needs to increase, the most important aspect is to increase people’s capacity to act and to control their own actions.
Part of doing this needs to be tracking and understanding the actual mechanics of how things escalate. In this situation, for example, that meant appreciating the use of cars to soften the boundary of the street, or how standoffs with the cops aren’t always the be-all-end-all. This also means understanding where people’s rebellious spirit is already showing up. Quasi legal dance parties and anti-social truck mods (no one can say bright white LEDs in the wheel-wells of lifted pickups are polite …) aren’t quite political, but they are examples of people doing what they want, not what they’re told. Moving with and through things like this is the only way to the explosions we’re looking for not only of mass anger, but also of mass desire to run our own lives.
At the same time, we can’t confuse prioritizing people’s creativity with assuming people will magically figure out how to build toward revolution. Things escalating is never inevitable (especially not in Dallas-fucking-Texas) and even when they do, the turn from anger about the present to claiming power over our future is even harder. Importantly, we can’t assume that ideas play no, or a negligible, role in how things progress. The reformist and reactionary off-ramps are so often taken in part because they jive with the common sense laid down by the ruling order: “the state can be a force to help people;” “not all cops are bastards;” “businesses can be cool;” “being a boss is cool;” and most importantly, “collective control of our lives is impossible.” Revolutionaries have a responsibility to combat these assumptions and offer alternatives, but we cannot be paternalistic and dogmatic. Instead we’ve got to be experimenting and listening as we offer things. For example, the chant “Luigi Mangione / Did Nothing Wrong,” did not take off in the crowd, but changing “Whose Streets? \ Our Streets!” to “Whose Land / Our Land” got people fired up. That specific example is exceptionally complicated in our settler colonial empire (which includes Mexico and the rest of Latin America), but there’s something there. One task then will be to pull out what’s liberatory of that slogan, and find ways to push away what’s whack.
In practice that can’t be done simply through words – thinking happens just as much through action. In Dallas, one of the main ideas that has to be disseminated is that struggle and freedom are possible. That means that the top priority for furthering the escalation probably isn’t picking the right target, strategy, or slogan, but rather to find more ways for more people to experience the thrill of defying authority and courageously confronting the existing order. Practically this means things like planning actions based on the opportunity for people to surprise themselves with what they’re capable of in the form of unpermitted marches, space occupations, or something much more creative. It could also mean taking the advantage of actions planned with modest goals and supporting people to push boundaries and have more fun.
The last thing revolutionaries need to be paying attention to as things develop, both here and everywhere else, is how things can turn from letting off steam to asserting control. That’s the mystical move that we have to keep our eyes set on. Maybe there’s an intermediary step of “fighting for a demand,” but we can’t get lost in that. For example, if things do transition more formally to the workplace in the form of mass strikes like the “Day Without an Immigrant” in 2006 (as it seems some folks are trying to do), the most significant aspect will be how people meet their needs without the boss, and the demonstration that the entire economy is already in our hands. Subtleties like this will contain the opportunities for the truly inspiring new steps.
All this is only possible if we realize that, for the most part, we revolutionaries have no idea what we’re doing. At least in the sense that our inherited models and strategies are spent. This includes hundred year old nonsense as much as stuff that we learned in the streets in 2020. The task needs to be to use those experiences to discover what’s new today. That might be even more possible in places without the baggage of activist glory like Portland or New York City, and instead emerge from the stranger and much more wild territory of freeways, strip malls, and bridges to nowhere.
– Ramon Byrne