Established in August 2000, Action LA (ALA) is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit group that, from its inception, professed a commitment to promoting “Action for World Liberation Everyday.” Describing itself as a “people’s movement for justice” that sought to “help labor, immigrant, youth, environment and economic justice movements across the city [of Los Angeles] and California,” ALA in its early years sponsored and promoted “marches, nonviolent direct actions and events” that called for U.S. society to undergo “a total change of priorities.”

The nascent ALA was particularly outspoken as an opponent of United States border-security policies. Aggressively supporting open borders and a mandatory “living wage” for illegal-alien workers, the organization characterized efforts to enforce immigration laws as evidence of American racism and xenophobia. The remedy for such vices, said ALA, would be “immigration reform leading towards a path of permanent status for immigrants here now and wider legal channels for those coming in the future” — i.e., blanket amnesty for the millions of illegals already residing in the U.S.

In 2002, ALA endorsed the Market Workers Justice Campaign of the activist coalition “Communities in Solidarity with Immigrant Workers.”  This initiative called for higher wages and better benefits for Korean and Latino immigrant workers, including those living unlawfully in the United States.

On June 15, 2004, ALA posted an article condemning the U.S. Border Patrol for having “created a frightening environment for Latinos by conducting arrests of suspected undocumented people, which always means brown people, regardless of status or country of birth.” The same piece advised illegals who may have been “arrested recently” by Border Patrol agents to contact the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which was “launching an investigation into the conduct of the Border Patrol during recent raids in Southern California.”

Amplifying its open-borders ideals, the ALA website provided a link to a December 15, 2005 Pasadena Weekly editorial which characterized America as a nation “formally created by a bunch of aging, rich white guys who owned slaves.” In particular, the piece excoriated Georgia Republican Congressman Nathan Deal, who had recently authored House Resolution 698, which sought to terminate the practice of conferring automatic citizenship on the American-born children of illegal aliens. Portraying Deal and his Republican allies as “America’s real enemies,” “xenophobes,” and “well-fed racists,” the editorial advised Mr. Deal: “Rather than change the Constitution for your own racist motives, start your own party and call it what it really is, the Nazi Party, or the Klan Party …”

In January 2006, ALA presented the Los Angeles City Council with a petition opposing a House of Representatives bill: (a) endorsing the felony prosecution of illegal aliens, and (b) authorizing local police officers to enforcefederal immigration laws. Predicting that such measures would create “unsafe conditions for all Angelinos,” ALA instead sought to prohibit police from “questioning, detaining, or interrogating persons solely because of suspected undocumented immigration status.”

Equally high on ALA’s list of leading concerns during its early years was its passionate opposition to U.S. involvement in the Iraq War. The organization worked closely with World Can’t Wait, an anti-war, anti-Republican entity founded by C. Clark Kissinger of the Revolutionary Communist Party. Among the anti-war icons whom ALA most revered was Cindy Sheehan, the America-hating founder of Gold Star Families for Peace.

ALA’s website in the organization’s formative years provided a link to an Event Calendar where local leftists could post announcements regarding upcoming activist presentations and initiatives. Moreover, the website was replete with allegations of U.S.-perpetrated war crimes and atrocities against the Iraqi people: “Massacres in Iraq,” read one boldfaced, representative headline in July 2004. The ALA website also featured numerous photographs showing scenes of the U.S. military’s alleged torture of Iraqi detainees at the prison complex in Abu Ghraib. In ALA’s narrative regarding the Iraq War, evil was mostly the domain of the U.S. military and its commander-in-chief, President George W. Bush. Further, the ALA website featured an “Iraq Body Count” display, showing the ever-rising number of deaths caused by the war. The underlying premise was that every war-related fatality in Iraq was a moral tragedy resulting from an unnecessary and unjustifiable American invasion.

As a manifestation of its belief that the United States was to blame for most of the world’s international disharmony, ALA in 2003-04 endorsed a Peace Action-initiated program called Campaign for a New Foreign Policy, which exhorted a supposedly intransigent America to finally “support human rights and democracy,” “reduce the threat from weapons of mass destruction,” and “cooperate with the world community.” Other endorsers of this campaign included: the American Friends Service Committee; Code Pink; the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee; the Feminist Majority Foundation; Friends for a Non-Violent World; Iraq Action Coalition; the League of United Latin American Citizens; Military Families Speak Out, the NACCP; the National Organization for Women; the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation; Pax Christi USA; Physicians for Social Responsibility; the Service Employees International Union; United for Peace and Justice; Veterans for Peace; Witness for Peace; Women Against Military Madness; Women Against War; Women’s Action for New Directions; and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

During the years and decades since then, the ALA website has continued to serve as a forum where Los Angeles-area leftists are free to post links to a wide array of Internet articles promoting ALA’s worldview as well as activist events. During President Donald Trump’s second term in office (which began in 2025), the organization publicly reiterated its founding commitment to promoting “Action for World Liberation.” Moreover, ALA described itself as “an activist organization with a global perspective” aimed at promoting “constructive change and … a shared future for humanity.”

ALA today is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that operates under the fiscal sponsorship of the Alliance for Global Justice. It is closely allied with the National Immigrant Solidarity Network, the China-U.S. Solidarity Network, Panda Aid, and the Peace NO War Network.