By: Calliope Anastasiadis
At approximately 10:30 on June 8, 2025, Pawtucket Police responded to a call outside an apartment complex. Within seconds of showing up on the scene, the responding officers opened fire on a 28 year old disabled man, hitting him in the shoulder.
The man, Sebastian Yidana, was carrying an orange-tipped toy gun. According to witnesses, he was known to the Pawtucket community, and had previously been outside the apartment complex, with the toy gun and had been making suicidal gestures with the toy gun in days prior to the shooting. Yidana was taken to the hospital, with injuries from the shooting.
In the hours after the shooting, the intersection where the attack took place was completely shut down, with public transport around Pawtucket stopped in its tracks. Pawtucket is a working-class “mill town” directly north of Providence, Rhode Island, and is also where People’s Defense – Rhode Island (PDRI) is currently organizing.
PDRI investigated the scene, and an activist from the organization gave a speech later that day at a protest in Pawtucket in solidarity with the ongoing resistance to ICE nationally that outlined the connections between the Pawtucket shooting, the need for militant community organization, and the police murder of 19 year old Nathan Fejerang in Chicago.
The identity of the police officer who shot Yidana has not yet been released to the public. Pawtucket PD claims they will disclose this “Later in the week.” While Yidana was sent to the hospital, the officer who shot him was put on administrative leave.
Less than 24 hours after the shooting, a flyer was spread among local activists, calling for a protest to be held in Providence proper in solidarity with the LA uprisings. Around 500 people showed up in downtown Providence, ready for struggle. What became apparent, was that the protest was organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) who had circulated the flyer without their logo or authorship, likely because of their bad reputation among many Providence activists. What followed was a march led by the PSL, escorted by the Providence PD, with plainclothes officers circling the crowd like vultures.
What should have been a rebellious and combative event, one that would shake the city, turned out to be yet another underwhelming parade through Providence’s downtown commercial center, separated from the actual working-class immigrant neighborhoods that surround the affluent areas of Providence like a belt. This display ended with slogans of “abolish ICE” in front of ICE’s administrative offices, long after the building had closed for the day. PSL’s tactics in the organizing of the protest, their collaboration with pigs and the Imperialist State, and the tired conduct of the protest itself, all demonstrate in action the damaging effect opportunist leadership has on the mass movement, particularly during periods of mass resistance and rebellion.
These two incidents that occurred in rapid succession from one another contrast the growing mass anger nationally with the parasitic opportunists of different types who hope to use this mass energy for their own careerist and self-serving purposes. PSL’s organization of this protest yielded immediate quantitative results for their social media and local leadership, but clearly betrayed the masses and diverted their fury away from the path of rebellion and towards the path of pacifism and inactivity.
To break out of this trap laid for us by the class enemy, we must practice the “3 withs,” and work to mobilize, politicize and organize the mass around their demands and grievances, things like police terror, workplace exploitation, and rampant deportations. This is a hard, and difficult task that does not serve an activist’s career or social media profile, but it is a task that is necessary to walk down the road of revolution in this country. This of course has no appeal to the opportunists, such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation, who are happy to co-opt the efforts of grassroots mass activists, but then resort to capitulationism when things get a little too hot for their liking.
Justice for Sebastian Yidana!
Justice for Nathan Fejerang!
Down with US Imperialism!
