Click on the headline to link to the International Communist League website.
Markin comment:
I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.
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CAPITALIST EUROPE’S WAR ON IMMIGRANTS IS A WAR ON ALL WORKERS
WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!
JULY 12, 2002
One day after a powerful general strike paralyzed Spain on June 20, 2002, Europe’s capitalist rulers met in Seville to ratchet up the war against immigrants as the spearhead of an attack against the proletariat as a whole. The competition between the dominant nations of the European Union (EU) for economic advantage in the midst of a recession meant that the summit fell short of its stated goal of establishing supranational police-state measures, such as joint border patrols on land and sea, but all that and more is promised by the guardians of Fortress Europe. In the meantime, each capitalist ruling class is trying to outdo the next in raising the bar to immigration and enhancing police-state measures against immigrants with the aim of regimenting the entire population, driving down wages and slashing social gains which were wrested through decades of class struggle.
The Seville EU summit seized on the recent electoral gains by fascists like Le Pen and the British National Party to pander to their anti-immigrant demagoguery. Anti-immigrant racism is the time-worn method to divide the proletariat and deflect class struggle, but fundamentally the anti-immigrant campaign is drive not by “bad ideas” but by the workings of the capitalist economy and is enforced by bourgeois politicians from the left and the right. Large numbers of immigrants were brought into West Europe when their labor was needed, due in part to the low birthrate; now that Europe is in recession, the bourgeoisie does not need more immigrants as a source of cheap labor or even as a “ reserve army of labor.” It would be an embellishment of bourgeosis democracy to believe that it would require fascism to have mass deportations of immigrants. Such in fact happened during the 1930’s Great Depression in France, when numbers of foreign workers were reduced by one half million through mass expulsions. And these workers were mainly European and Roman Catholic, much easier to assimilate than the forcibly segregated North Africans and black Africans. In the same period, there were mass deportations of Mexican immigrants from the United States.
A decade ago the Soviet Union was destroyed through capitalist counter-revolution. This monumental defeat for the international working class and the ensuing bourgeois triumphism and lie that “communism is dead” has thrown back the consciousness of the proletariat and the youth who misidentify the Stalinist sellouts with communism. Capitalist rule in Europe is not challenged by a revolutionary-minded and insurrectionary proletariat today, and correspondingly the working class and dark-skinned minorities and immigrant populations in Europe are repressed mainly through the “normal” workings of the whole capitalist system, from the cops in the ghettos to the capitalist courts, and the prisons which are disproportionately filled with minorities and immigrants. In this context, parties that are by history, outlook and intent fascist, from Haider’s Freedom Party (FPO) in Austria to LePen’s Nation Front in France, have mainly advanced as electoral phenomena and pressure groups on more mainstream bourgeois parties.
The “normal” ebbs and flows of the world capitalist economy. Which produce such vast human misery, cannot be eliminated short of replacement of capitalism THROUGH PROLETARIAN SOCIALIST REVOLUTION. Those, like the social-democratic leaders and their “left” tails, who accept the capitalist framework necessarily become complicit in implementing and even spearheading anti-immigrant racism. The machinery of state repression has been augmented since 9/11, but most of the anti-immigrant and anti-“terrorist” laws and policies were enacted years earlier by the “left” governments. The now-ousted French Socialist Party, which ruled France in a popular-front coalition with the Communist Party and the Greens, burns with anger that the new right-wing Chirac government claims credit for the racist “security” campaign which was in fact masterminded by the “left”! in order to rule of behalf of capital, the historic parties of the French working class, the Communists and the Socialists and their analogues in the trade-union bureaucracies, poison class-consciousness and solidarity among workers by fomenting religious, national and ethnic divisions. Thus the popular-front government paved the way for LePen’s big score in the 2002 French presidential elections and the election of a more right-wing government.
The so-called “far Left” bears large responsibility too. Groups like the United Secretariat’s Ligue Communiste Revolutionaire (LCR) began the recent popular-front years with a vote for the Socialist Party’s Jospin… and ended with a call to “bar the road to LePen”- i.e., vote Chirac! This is such a low, even for the LCR, which has long had the posture and backbone of a snake, that they feel compelled to publicly molt rather than defend their crime. The LCR were aggressive and energetic activists who channeled the massive youth demonstrations which shook France in the Spring of 2002 with justified outrage at the racism of lepton’s National front in reactionary “Republican unity” with Chirac. Similarly, in Britain, the Socialist Workers Party directed opposition to the BNP fascists into a call to vote for “anyone else”- i.e., even bourgeois parties, but especially Blair’s New Labor Party. Each falsely proclaimed that there was an imminent danger of fascism, the better to corral support for Labor and even Chirac. Moreover, in situations where fascist gangs do pose an immediate threat, they cannot be stopped by parlimentarist means but only by mobilizing the proletariat to crush them.
DEFEND IMMIGRANTS, DEFEND THE WORKING CLASS
In Italy, the new arsenal of repression includes roundups of immigrants for fingerprinting, as if being non-European makes one “criminal.” With the Vatican railing against marriages between Christians and Muslims, the Italian police launched “Operation Just Married” to snoop into mixed marriages. Residency permits will be limited to the duration of a work contract, so that seasonal agricultural workers will become “illegal” the moment a crop has been harvested, and Italian employers will be compelled to pay the state in advance for the deportation of any immigrant who overstays the work contract! This is not even particularly rational from the standpoint of the bourgeoisie, which needs a source of cheap agricultural labor.
The right of asylum is under intensified attack everywhere: Blair’s Britain promises immediate deportations without right of appeal for rejected asylum-seekers, while Denmark claims the right to revoke asylum for refugees when the new right-wing government decides that any given country an immigrant fled has become sufficiently “democratic.”
In stilling racial hatred at an early age to inculcate patriotism and loyalty to the crown, rotting Britain threatens to forcibly segregate the children of asylum-seekers from other schoolchildren. In Germany, we have been actively protesting against the computer-aided racist roundups of students. In this reactionary climate, immigrant workers and foreign students face not only persecution at the hands of the capitalist state but also stepped-up racist violence on the streets. In Ireland the murder of a Chinese student in 2002 can be laid directly at the feet of the policy of the Irish government.
Everywhere, families are being ripped apart through restrictions on “family reunion.” Women suffer the brunt of this. If they mange to join their husbands in Europe, they are often deprived of the right to work and so are forced into low-wage and dangerous black market jobs. In France, apace with anti-immigrant laws, a veritable “marriage market” has spread like cancer in immigrant communities where an arranged marriage with a young women possessing citizenship is now the last best hope of escaping poverty and political repression elsewhere. The slamming shut of doors to immigration and the segregation of oppressed communities tend to increase and help perpetuate arranged marriages, kidnappings, female genital mutilations, wife-beatings and “honor killings,” all of which are on the rise in Europe. These facts show that even a minimal democratic demand, like full citizenship rights for everyone, who has managed to make it to a European country, is literally a question of life and death, especially for women.
The squalid war between Blair’s Britain and Chirac’s France to close a refugee camp exposes the hoax of the ‘free world” and the direct link between capitalist counterrevolution in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the rise of economic misery, imperialist war and political repression. The Red Cross refugee camp is filled with refugees from the bloody wars waged by U.S. imperialism and its NATO allies. Murderous nationalism, whipped up as a vehicle for capitalist counterrevolution to destroy the bureaucratically deformed workers states of East Europe, uprooted minority populations including the Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) in an orgy of “ethnic cleansing” a decade ago. Another flood of refugees was triggered by the U.S./NATO ravaging of what was left of the former Yugoslavia in the 1999 Balkans War. Today the Sangrette camp is filled with Iraqis fleeing ten years of the starvation blockade imposed by the United Nations.
Thousands of Afghans fled the hell created by U.S. imperialism’s support to the women-hating mujahedin, When Soviet forces entered Afghanistan in 1979 after repeated requests by the left-nationalist PDPA government, we of the ICL straightforwardly said, “Hail Red Army IN Afghanistan! Extend the Social Gains of the October Revolution to the Afghan peoples!” Gorbachev’s treacherous withdrawal in 1988-89 culminated in the victory of the Islamic fundamentalists and eventually the rule of the Taliban- truly a Frankenstein’s monster created by U.S. imperialists with the help of their Pakistani allies. Now the terror bombing of Afghanistan by Bush, Blair and Co. in the name of the “war on terror” has created new thousands of refugees.
Borrowing from LePen’s campaign promise to close the Sangrette camp and deport the refugees, Chirac has announced plans to close the camp and in the meantime plans to build an enormous fence around the rail yard and install high-tech scanners to detect heartbeats in the tunnel. Not to be outdone, Blair is mobilizing the navy to turn back (read: fire on and sink) ships of refugees and plans to cage asylum-seekers in militarized detention camps, and to beach England through airlift deportations of dark-skinned immigrants and blatant racial exclusion of people trying to get into the country from airports elsewhere in Europe.
Meanwhile, anyone who does make it into Britain will be compelled to carry a national identity card. These police-state measures are intended to regiment and accustom the entire population to restrictions on democratic rights, to accept police identity checks as “normal,” to chill free speech and impede politically organizing against the government and the ruling class. To this end, the whole spectrum of capitalist politicians from left to right is whipping up hysteria over immigrants as an alleged “enemy within.” The model for police-state control of Arab, Asian, African and Turkish populations in West Europe is the French state’s “Vigipirate.” The large population of North African descent, particularly the youth are systemically brutalized by the French police, subject to identity checks even in the hallways of their own apartment buildings, and treated as “criminal” and “surplus” population. Changes in the French nationality code, whereby children born in France of Immigrant parents no longer automatically gain French citizenship, prepare the ground for possible mass deportation. A look at history renders that prospect not unreal as you will find such mass deportations whenever politically or economically advantageous to France’s capitalist rulers, from the Polish and Italian immigrants deported em masse between the two World Wars to the Jews stripped of French citizenship and deported to Nazi death camps under Vichy.
Capitalism needs a bogey man. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, the “ red menace” has been largely replaced with orchestrated hysteria against the “green menace” of Islamic fundamentalism. This has reached fever pitch since 9/11and a new word “Islamophobia,” has entered the lexicon to “explain” racist assaults on women in veils, men in turbans, and anyone suspected of being of Arab origin. The restrictions on civil liberties and the patriotic fervor have also been used to criminals political dissent and outlaw parties and national liberation movements, from the Kurdish PKK and Palestinian PFLP to the Turkisk Guevarist DHKC and the Basque Batasuna organization in Spain. Meanwhile, the biggest state terrorist rain bombs on Iraq and threaten invasion, continue to pound Afghanistan and arm the Zionist state of Israel in its war against the Palestinian people. Now the leader of the “free world” has the gal to tell the Palestinian people who they can and cannot elect to represent them in the Occupied Territories and “homeland” overrun by Zionist stormtroopers. ISRAEL OUT OF THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES! DEFEND THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!
RACIAL OPPRESSION IS INTRINSIC TO CAPITALISM
The “maximum” program” of social-democratic reformism and the so-called “left” groups who function as its apologists is to restore the “welfare state” and paint a “human face” on capitalist austerity. Contrary to the myths of reformists such as Lutte Ouvriere, who campaign to “ban layoffs” and demand that the cops fight “real crime” instead of bashing immigrants, the truth is that under capitalism the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, a d racial oppression in intrinsic to the whole rotten domestic and world system. Whether the government is dominated by social-democrats or ultrarightists, the laws of capitalist work the same way: the harder you work, the more wealth you produce for others, and the more precarious your existence becomes as you are at risk of being laid off. According to its economic needs, capitalism brings into the proletariat at its bottom new sources of cheaper labor, principally immigrants from poorer countries who are deemed disposable in times of economic contraction. As Karl Marx wrote in Capital (Volume I): “The degree of the intensity of the competition among themselves [the workers] depends wholly on the pressure of the relative surplus population; as soon as, by Trades Unions, &c., they try to organize a regular co-operation between employed and unemployed in order to destroy or to weaken the ruinous effects of the natural law of capitalistic production on their class, so soon capital and its sycophant, political economy, cry out at the infringement of the ‘eternal” and so to say ‘sacred’ law of supply and demand. Every combination of employed and unemployed disturbs the ‘harmonious’ action of this law.”
That is why we in the ICL fight for the unity and integrity of the working class against chauvinism and racism. The struggle in defense of immigrant labor today is a vital task for the working class as a whole. We fight for FULL CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS FOR ALL IMMIGRANTS! NO DEPORTATIONS! FREE ALL DETAINEES! ORGANIZE THE UNORGANIZED! COPS, PRISON GUARDS AND SECURITY GUARDS OUT OF THE UNIONS! FOR LABOR IMMIGRANT MOBILIZATIONS AGAINST FASCIST ATTACKS! JOBS FOR ALL-FOR A SLIDING SCALE OF WAGES AND HOURS AT NO LOSS IN PAY! EXPROPRIATE THE CAPITALIST CLASS-FOR A PLANNED SOCIALIST ECONOMY ORGANIZED INTERNATIONALLY! In every country where we exist, the ICL has fought to expose the; lie of “national unity” between workers and bosses and to rally the proletariat in class solidarity with immigrants and minorities. As an example of this perspective, on 9 February 2002 in the San Francisco Bay are our American comrades mobilized a labor-based united front rally around the slogans: “Anti-Terrorist Laws Target Immigrants, Blacks< Labor-No to the USA-Patriot Act and the Maritime Security Act! Down with the Anti-Immigrant Witchhunt!
There are important developments in Europe that point the way to a class- struggle road to unite the proletariat in defense of its own interests against attacks by capital. From Turkish/Kurdish metal workers in Germany to black and Asian transport workers in London, immigrants and their children are a key component of strategic, unionized sectors of the proletariat. In Italy and Germany, there have been important breaks with the narrow economism and national chauvinism pushed by the trade-union bureaucrats in their role as “labor: lieutenants of capital.” Thus in Italy, the CGIL trade union federation and COBAS have called general strikes by labor and immigrants against the Bossi/Fini anti-immigrant law and also against the government’s attempt to make the labor market “flexible” for increased exploitation by shedding union gains won through several decades of hard fought battles! In response to the popular outrage, Rifondazione Comunista (RC) is now obliged to call protests calling for closing down the detention centers which RC itself had earlier voted for setting up. In Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz on 20 June 2002, a mass picket of German construction worker spiked an attempt to manipulate Portuguese immigrants as strikebreakers, by appealing to them to fight along side the union in struggling for the rights of all labor, including foreign workers. As the Portuguese workers applauded and refused to cross the picket lines, the strikers yelled, “Long live international solidarity!” This shows, as our comrades in Germany said in their leaflet to these strikers, “German, foreign and immigrant workers can only push forward their interests together, or they will be beaten back separately.”
Advancement along this class struggle road is obstructed by reformists and trade union misleaders who deploy strikes not to combat capitalist rule but as pressure tactics on capitalist politicians to whom they are ultimately beholden. Thus the IG Metall strike, which united German, Turkish and Kurdish workers in struggle in May 2002, was called off by the SPD [Social Democratic Party] union tops as soon as SPD party leader Schroder warned that a long strike would cost the German capitalist money (isn’t that the point of strikes, to hit the bosses in their pocketbooks?) and so threaten the SPD’s standing in the then upcoming parliamentary elections. Similarly, Italy’s RC leader Bertinotti supports strike action against the Berlusconi government explicitly to put a center-left coalition back in power to better manage capitalist rule. RC’s left wing, the “Proposta” group now admits that RC shares responsibility for anti-immigrant laws during its support the Prodi government, but their role is to keep leftist militants within the fold of RC reformism. As our Italian comrades have noted of Proposta, “Their perspective is not to build a Leninist vanguard party to lead the workers to power, but a ‘left pole” that puts pressure on the reformist leaders and contributes to bringing them back to the helm of capitalism” (Spartaco No. 60, May 2002).
FOR A SOCIALIST FIGHT FOR A WORKERS EUROPE!
The rise of racist demagogy, government attacks on immigrants and the threat of fascist terror bands can only be eradicated through a victorious struggle against the capitalist system. This perspective is the fundamental point of departure separating the ICL from all of our competitors in the workers movement. The anarchist milieu, while often admirably audacious in militant protests against the powers that be, lacks a program to effectively combat much less replace the rule of capital. At bottom, their worldview is that of streetfighting liberals: pressure politics expressing justified outrage outside meetings of the capitalist rulers, rather than loathsome suit-and-tie parliamentary reformism. It’s not enough to protest, it is necessary to have a perspective to fight to transform society, to topple the rapacious imperialist system and create a workers state as the necessary first step on the road to a classless society. The former Stalinist parties and the social democrats long ago made their peace with capitalist rule; indeed, across Europe they administered it and augmented the attacks on the working class and immigrants. Our psuedo-Trotskysist competitors peddle their wares in the shadow of the social democracy because their aim is not to forge an authentic Leninist party by splitting the proletarian base of the reformist parties from their pro-capitalist tops but to pressure these misleaders.
On the question of immigration, groups like Workers Power promote the call to “open the borders.” It’s a catchy slogan, but what it would mean for “Third World” countries is an open door for imperialist investors. More generally, ii is a utopian and reactionary demand for an egalitarian world within the framework of capitalism. It is retrograde to promote the notion that somehow capitalism can be rational or humane. Unlike groups such as Workers Power, which spout rhetoric against racism and slogans like “open the borders” but politically support the chauvinist social democrats, we seek urgently to mobilize the working class to take up the fight for full citizenship rights for all who manage to cross the borders and drive home the understanding that the source of exploitation of all labor is the capitalist system of production, which is defended to the bitter end by the capitalist state. Until we achieve an internationally planned, socialist economy based on collectivized property, it will not be possible to abolish the state or national borders. The nation-state is the basis of the organization of the capitalist economy, and to deny that is to capitulate to muddle-headed bourgeois “democrats.” As Lenin said in his April 1917 speech on the national question, “What does ‘Down with frontiers’ mean? It is the beginning of anarchy…. Only when the socialist revolution has become a reality, and not a method, will the slogan ‘Down with frontiers’ be a correct slogan.”
Against capitalist Fortress Europe, our perspective is the fight for the SOCIALIST UNITED STATES OF EUROPE as a vital step in the world socialist revolution. The necessary instruments to bring the working class to power are Leninist parties, politically guided with a program that is proletarian, revolutionary and internationalist. We fight to reforge the Fourth International founded by Leon Trotsky. Despite the regression in political consciousness today and the huge gulf between our purpose and present means, it is evident that there is no shortage of combativity and desire on the part of the working people, oppressed minorities and youth to fight. For their struggles to be successful and not derailed into the trap of reformist pressure politics, it is urgent to construct a revolutionary leadership. This is what we fight for. Nothing more nothing less.
Showing posts with label full citizenship rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label full citizenship rights. Show all posts
Friday, September 14, 2012
Saturday, June 09, 2012
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-“Mitt” on Immigration- A Short Note
Never let it be said that this writer is not an equal opportunity critic. I have spend most of my time over the years hammering the various Democratic presidential candidates for being weak-kneed and perfidious because from my perspective as an advocate of a workers party the kind of people who might be attracted to such a venture are today found, among other places, in the myopic (some say mythical but we will let that pass here) left-wing of the Democratic Party. Can anyone really argue that it is worthwhile to try to argue with Republicans into moving at least into the 18th century? That applies, as well, to this current decade’s crop of Republican candidates because for the most part they are beyond the pale. However this year’s presumptive (nice touch, right) Republican presidential candidate in particular, Mitt Romney has taken the lead on immigrant bashing and therefore are ‘worthy’ of comment.
The odd part (at least to the politically naïve) of the controversy is that when he was Governor of Massachusetts he held, at worst, rather benign positions on the question of illegal immigrants. Now Romney has taken to calling the current regime a virtual sieve for illegal immigration. And Obama has replied in kind about Mitt’s previous efforts in Massachusetts. My question is who are these gentlemen trying to woo by acting as this generation’s version of the yahoos of the anti-immigrant Know Nothing (American) Party. I know for certain that it is not me. Although my father’s forbears came to this country from England one jump ahead of the law in the early 1800’s and my mother’s forbears came over from Ireland on the “famine” ships in the 1840’s I still in many ways feel like an immigrant. And that is exactly the point-virtually everyone here came from somewhere else so we better be damn sure of our own ‘green card’ status before we worry about those who have come after us. I, therefore, at least know who I am not trying to woo. When the deal goes down I am sure we will find that the current Know Nothings probably have only been here a couple of generations themselves. Forget the illegals I want the names and numbers of those people for immediate action (and status report).
As stated above, and as I have mentioned in previous entries, I stand for the proposition that we need a workers party that fights for a workers government. As such I do not have an immigration plan as per Obama and Romney and others. That is this government’s problem and I will provide no advice. Today I would define the immigration question negatively, and urge others to think about it this way as well. That means the central thrust should be to fight for full citizenship rights for all who make it here. A big step in that direction is a real amnesty program. In a nation full of generation after generation of immigrants who came here under all kinds of conditions this is what we should be worrying about. Down with the Know Nothings!
The odd part (at least to the politically naïve) of the controversy is that when he was Governor of Massachusetts he held, at worst, rather benign positions on the question of illegal immigrants. Now Romney has taken to calling the current regime a virtual sieve for illegal immigration. And Obama has replied in kind about Mitt’s previous efforts in Massachusetts. My question is who are these gentlemen trying to woo by acting as this generation’s version of the yahoos of the anti-immigrant Know Nothing (American) Party. I know for certain that it is not me. Although my father’s forbears came to this country from England one jump ahead of the law in the early 1800’s and my mother’s forbears came over from Ireland on the “famine” ships in the 1840’s I still in many ways feel like an immigrant. And that is exactly the point-virtually everyone here came from somewhere else so we better be damn sure of our own ‘green card’ status before we worry about those who have come after us. I, therefore, at least know who I am not trying to woo. When the deal goes down I am sure we will find that the current Know Nothings probably have only been here a couple of generations themselves. Forget the illegals I want the names and numbers of those people for immediate action (and status report).
As stated above, and as I have mentioned in previous entries, I stand for the proposition that we need a workers party that fights for a workers government. As such I do not have an immigration plan as per Obama and Romney and others. That is this government’s problem and I will provide no advice. Today I would define the immigration question negatively, and urge others to think about it this way as well. That means the central thrust should be to fight for full citizenship rights for all who make it here. A big step in that direction is a real amnesty program. In a nation full of generation after generation of immigrants who came here under all kinds of conditions this is what we should be worrying about. Down with the Know Nothings!
Monday, September 26, 2011
From The Pages Of "Australasian Spartacist"-Drop the Charges Against Refugee Protesters!-No Deportations!
Australasian Spartacist No. 213
Winter 2011
Drop the Charges Against Refugee Protesters!
No Deportations!
We reprint below a Partisan Defence Committee (PDC) letter sent to the federal Attorney-General on 26 May protesting the charging of refugees over demonstrations at Villawood on 20 April. Since then, on 9 June, federal police again fired “bean-bag” bullets and used capsicum spray to suppress an angry protest by refugees at the Christmas Island detention centre. The protest reportedly erupted in response to further rejections of asylum claims. Shortly afterwards, federal police charged 18 asylum seekers over the earlier 13 March Christmas Island protest. As with those charged following the Villawood protests, they face being denied a permanent visa if convicted.
Refugees are kept imprisoned for months, and even years, under constant threat of being deported to countries where they can face brutal punishment, persecution and death. This torture of desperate people, many seeking asylum from reactionary terror, has led to growing acts of self-harm. There have been numerous deaths in detention. This does not include the hundreds who have died making the treacherous sea voyage, such as the estimated 50 men, women and children who horrifically drowned when their boat crashed on rocks off Christmas Island on 15 December last year.
We say: Drop all the charges against the refugee protesters! No deportations! The trade unions must be mobilised to defend refugees and immigrants, and fight against all the government’s racist immigration laws.
The PDC is a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defence organisation associated with the Spartacist League.
* * *
We protest the federal Labor government’s brutal crackdown following a wave of desperate protests by refugees including at the remote Christmas Island and Sydney Villawood detention centres.
On 13 March up to 300 protesting detainees at Christmas Island were tear-gassed and fired upon by federal police using “bean-bag” bullets, reportedly breaking the leg of one detainee. On 20 April up to 100 protested at the Villawood detention centre, culminating in an eleven-day rooftop protest. Following the Villawood protests, 22 men were taken to Silverwater jail and held in solitary confinement. Seven have been charged with offences including affray and destroying or damaging property by fire. Outrageously some of those charged could face up to twelve years imprisonment. Two refugees from Christmas Island are also threatened with charges from separate alleged incidents. Meanwhile the government has vindictively put in place measures that deny permanent visas to those it deems to have committed an offence while in custody. But the real crime is that the government incarcerates and denies basic rights to desperate people who have already risked their lives fleeing poverty, oppression and war.
Under the Labor government’s grotesque regime of mandatory detention some 7,000 men, women and children languish in the many refugee detention centres across the country. There have been at least six deaths in these hellholes in the last eight months. It is a measure of the racist barbarism of the Australian capitalist state that it incarcerates and seeks to deport Iraqi, Afghan and Tamil refugees back to countries that the Australian imperialist military has directly taken part in the destruction of, in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, or, in the case of Sri Lanka, where the Australian government backed the Sinhala-chauvinist government in its murderous war against the Tamil population.
We condemn the federal government’s persecution and repression of defiant refugees and demand: Drop the charges against the detention centre detainees! No deportations! Release the refugees! Close the detention centres! Full citizenship rights for all who have made it here!
Winter 2011
Drop the Charges Against Refugee Protesters!
No Deportations!
We reprint below a Partisan Defence Committee (PDC) letter sent to the federal Attorney-General on 26 May protesting the charging of refugees over demonstrations at Villawood on 20 April. Since then, on 9 June, federal police again fired “bean-bag” bullets and used capsicum spray to suppress an angry protest by refugees at the Christmas Island detention centre. The protest reportedly erupted in response to further rejections of asylum claims. Shortly afterwards, federal police charged 18 asylum seekers over the earlier 13 March Christmas Island protest. As with those charged following the Villawood protests, they face being denied a permanent visa if convicted.
Refugees are kept imprisoned for months, and even years, under constant threat of being deported to countries where they can face brutal punishment, persecution and death. This torture of desperate people, many seeking asylum from reactionary terror, has led to growing acts of self-harm. There have been numerous deaths in detention. This does not include the hundreds who have died making the treacherous sea voyage, such as the estimated 50 men, women and children who horrifically drowned when their boat crashed on rocks off Christmas Island on 15 December last year.
We say: Drop all the charges against the refugee protesters! No deportations! The trade unions must be mobilised to defend refugees and immigrants, and fight against all the government’s racist immigration laws.
The PDC is a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defence organisation associated with the Spartacist League.
* * *
We protest the federal Labor government’s brutal crackdown following a wave of desperate protests by refugees including at the remote Christmas Island and Sydney Villawood detention centres.
On 13 March up to 300 protesting detainees at Christmas Island were tear-gassed and fired upon by federal police using “bean-bag” bullets, reportedly breaking the leg of one detainee. On 20 April up to 100 protested at the Villawood detention centre, culminating in an eleven-day rooftop protest. Following the Villawood protests, 22 men were taken to Silverwater jail and held in solitary confinement. Seven have been charged with offences including affray and destroying or damaging property by fire. Outrageously some of those charged could face up to twelve years imprisonment. Two refugees from Christmas Island are also threatened with charges from separate alleged incidents. Meanwhile the government has vindictively put in place measures that deny permanent visas to those it deems to have committed an offence while in custody. But the real crime is that the government incarcerates and denies basic rights to desperate people who have already risked their lives fleeing poverty, oppression and war.
Under the Labor government’s grotesque regime of mandatory detention some 7,000 men, women and children languish in the many refugee detention centres across the country. There have been at least six deaths in these hellholes in the last eight months. It is a measure of the racist barbarism of the Australian capitalist state that it incarcerates and seeks to deport Iraqi, Afghan and Tamil refugees back to countries that the Australian imperialist military has directly taken part in the destruction of, in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, or, in the case of Sri Lanka, where the Australian government backed the Sinhala-chauvinist government in its murderous war against the Tamil population.
We condemn the federal government’s persecution and repression of defiant refugees and demand: Drop the charges against the detention centre detainees! No deportations! Release the refugees! Close the detention centres! Full citizenship rights for all who have made it here!
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Woody Guthrie's "Deportees"- Full Citizenship Rights For All Those Who Make It To The U.S.!
Click on the title to link a YouTube film clip of Arlo Guthrie and Emmylou Harris performing his father's Deportee.
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
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Markin comment:
Woody's words were written long ago but they definitely resonate today. This is a "no-brainer" for us- Full citizenship rights for all who make it to the United States!
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Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)
Lyrics by Woody Guthrie
Music by Martin Hoffman
The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges are piled in their cresote dumps
They're flying you back to the Mexico border
To pay all your money to wade back again
My father's own father, he wanted that river
They took all the money he made in his life
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees
And they rode the truck till they took down and died
CHORUS
Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maris
You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane
And all they will call you will be deportees.
Some of us are illega, and others not wanted
Our work contract's out and we have to move on
But it's six hundred miles to that Mexican border
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like theives.
We died in your hills, we died in your deserts
We died in your valleys and died on your plains
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.
CHORUS
A sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon
Like a fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says they are just deportees.
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except deportees?
©1961 (renewed) & 1963 Ludlow Music Inc., New York,NY (TRO)
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
****
Markin comment:
Woody's words were written long ago but they definitely resonate today. This is a "no-brainer" for us- Full citizenship rights for all who make it to the United States!
**********
Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)
Lyrics by Woody Guthrie
Music by Martin Hoffman
The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges are piled in their cresote dumps
They're flying you back to the Mexico border
To pay all your money to wade back again
My father's own father, he wanted that river
They took all the money he made in his life
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees
And they rode the truck till they took down and died
CHORUS
Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maris
You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane
And all they will call you will be deportees.
Some of us are illega, and others not wanted
Our work contract's out and we have to move on
But it's six hundred miles to that Mexican border
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like theives.
We died in your hills, we died in your deserts
We died in your valleys and died on your plains
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.
CHORUS
A sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon
Like a fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says they are just deportees.
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except deportees?
©1961 (renewed) & 1963 Ludlow Music Inc., New York,NY (TRO)
Monday, July 12, 2010
*From "Boston Indy Media"- The Pro-Immigration Rights Protest And March In Boston During The National Governor's Conference
Click on the headlines to link to a Boston Indy Media post on the pro-immigration rights protest and march in Boston during the recent National Governor's Conference.
Markin comment:
While we radical defenders of immigrant rights do not really have a positive program on bourgeois immigration policy. We are not, after all, advisers to the government on immigration policy. We know what we do want- Full citizenship rights for all who make here. And we know what we do not want- anti-immigrant laws like Arizona's SB 1070 and the trickle of other such state legislative actions of that ilk.
Markin comment:
While we radical defenders of immigrant rights do not really have a positive program on bourgeois immigration policy. We are not, after all, advisers to the government on immigration policy. We know what we do want- Full citizenship rights for all who make here. And we know what we do not want- anti-immigrant laws like Arizona's SB 1070 and the trickle of other such state legislative actions of that ilk.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
*From The Pages Of “Workers Vanguard”-Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!
Click on the headline to link to a "New York Times" article, dated April 24, 2010, concerning the Arizona immigrant law.
Markin comment:
As almost always these historical articles and polemics are purposefully helpful to clarify the issues in the struggle against world imperialism, particularly the “monster” here in America.
Workers Vanguard No. 958
7 May 2010
Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!
Down With Arizona’s Racist Pass Law!
Break with the Democrats—For a Revolutionary Workers Party!
To be brown-skinned in the state of Arizona is to be a suspected criminal under the provisions of the recently enacted “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhood Act.” This apartheid-style, anti-immigrant pass law mandates the cops to stop and question anyone they think might be an “illegal” immigrant. Those who fail to immediately produce documentation proving their “right” to be in the United States could be arrested and thrown behind bars. This is the codification in law of the racist roundups of Latinos that have been carried out for years by notorious Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose prisoners are shackled in chain gangs and housed in tent cities in the blazing heat of the desert.
Outrage against the Arizona law brought out tens of thousands in protest in cities across the country on May 1. But as was the case with the massive immigrant rights demonstrations on May Day 2006, the protest leaders are channeling this outrage into the political shell game that is a central pillar of capitalist rule in America—the idea that the Democratic Party is the “friend” of immigrants, labor and black people. The 2006 rallying cry of “Today we march, tomorrow we vote” paid off handsomely for the Democrats, who captured the overwhelming majority of the Latino vote in the last presidential elections. This year, chants of “Sí, se puede! Yes, we can!”, the election slogan of today’s Commander-in-Chief of U.S. imperialism, Barack Obama, were the chorus orchestrated by the Latino organizations, Democratic Party politicians and trade-union bureaucrats who headed the protests.
In a televised message to hundreds of thousands at a March 21 immigrant rights rally in Washington, D.C., Obama promised to “build a future worthy of our history as a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws.” The ability to use such honey-coated words to mask a system which is based on the exploitation of the working class and rooted in vicious racial oppression is precisely what has made the Democratic Party the often-preferred party of the American bourgeoisie in times of war and economic crisis.
Behind the words stands the iron fist of capitalist state repression. This was seen in Arizona only a week before the passage of the new law, in anti-immigrant raids carried out by Obama’s Department of Homeland Security (now headed by former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano). With helicopters buzzing overhead, up to 800 agents from the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) and other police agencies, some in black hoods, launched a military-style attack on shuttle van businesses that transport immigrant workers in Phoenix, Tucson, Rio Rico and Nogales. Heralded as the biggest smuggling bust in the I.C.E.’s history, these raids provide a chilling snapshot of the Democrats’ program for “immigration reform.”
As described in a Washington Post (1 May) article: “The Democrats’ legislative ‘framework’ includes a slew of new immigration enforcement measures aimed at U.S. borders and workplaces. It would further expand the 20,000-member Border Patrol; triple fines against U.S. employers who hire illegal immigrants; and, most controversially, require all American workers—citizens and noncitizens alike—to get new Social Security cards linked to their fingerprints to ease checks of their work eligibility.” Obama promised to “open a pathway to citizenship” for the more than eleven million undocumented immigrants in this country. What this means is seen in the current Democratic proposal that these desperately impoverished workers turn themselves in as “lawbreakers,” pay heavy fines and back taxes, pass background checks and be proficient in English. Even then they would be granted only a provisional status for eight years.
This has not shaken the reformists’ illusions in Obama as “change” they can “believe in.” As usual, the International Socialist Organization (ISO) takes second place to no one on this score. A 30 April article in its press, Socialist Worker, opines: “A conversation about really progressive immigration reform needs to start by strategizing about how to stop the Arizona scare, and how to force Obama, who repeatedly has recognized that the system is broken, to stop deportations”! This, they argue, “can buy time for the movement to push for legislation...that puts the interests of the entire working class, immigrant and native-born alike, up front.”
The hard truth is that the capitalist system is based on the brutal exploitation of all labor, with the ruling class inflaming racial and ethnic hostilities to keep the working class divided and thus ensure a greater extraction of profit. Just as immigrant workers are brought in during economic boom times to provide a pool of low-wage labor, the current rise in anti-immigrant attacks worldwide is exacerbated by the global economic crisis and its attendant soaring unemployment. As we wrote in the International Communist League’s “Declaration of Principles and Some Elements of Program” (Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 54, Spring 1998):
“Modern capitalism, i.e., imperialism, reaching into all areas of the planet, in the course of the class struggle and as economic need demands, brings into the proletariat at its bottom new sources of cheaper labor, principally immigrants from poorer and less-developed regions of the world—workers with few rights who are deemed more disposable in times of economic contraction. Thus capitalism in ongoing fashion creates different strata among the workers, while simultaneously amalgamating the workers of many different lands. Everywhere, the capitalists, abetted by aristocracy-of-labor opportunists, try to poison class consciousness and solidarity among the workers by fomenting religious, national and ethnic divisions. The struggle for the unity and integrity of the working class against chauvinism and racism is thus a vital task for the proletarian vanguard.”
We do not seek to tinker with the capitalist system by advising the bourgeoisie to take up an alternative immigration policy. We call for full citizenship rights for all immigrants as part of our struggle to advance the class consciousness and solidarity of the multiracial working class, preparing it for the necessary revolutionary battle to end capitalist class rule. A real fight for immigrant rights in this country will only begin when the workers—white, black, Latino and others—struggle based on their common interests as a class. This means opposition to all the political parties and state agencies of the capitalist class. Unlocking the social power of the multiracial working class will take a political fight against the current pro-capitalist misleaders of labor who have shackled the working class to their exploiters, particularly through support for the Democratic Party.
Labor Lieutenants of the Capitalist Class
Many of the 1.8 million members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) are immigrants, and many of these have waged militant struggles to organize unions. But their interests are betrayed by the union leaders. A statement on Arizona’s anti-immigrant law by Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the SEIU, declared:
“This radical anti-immigration law should be a wake-up call to Congress and the White House. Immigration is a national problem that needs a national solution.... We need immigration policies that will eliminate the underground economy by getting undocumented immigrants into the system, paying fines, back taxes, learning English and getting on local, state and federal tax rolls. We need reform that will truly end illegal immigration and hold bad-actor employers responsible for depressing wages and violating the right to a safe worksite for all workers.”
Likewise, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka’s statement in opposition to the Arizona law demanded that “our focus should instead be on a comprehensive solution to the broken immigration system.”
Last year, the SEIU’s “Change to Win” union federation and the AFL-CIO issued a joint statement for “comprehensive immigration reform.” Embracing the government’s campaign against undocumented workers, these labor traitors seek only to tinker with its methods of repression. To regulate immigration, their “unified framework” called for “an independent commission to assess and manage future flows” of immigrant workers, leaving open the possibility of their own participation on such a commission as the labor police for the capitalist state. It also demanded more “rational operational control of the border” and a “secure and effective worker authorization mechanism.”
Since coming to power, bankrolled by millions in contributions from the labor tops, the Obama administration has expanded such “worker authorization mechanisms” as the E-Verify program, which is aimed at confirming the legal status of workers through checking their Social Security numbers against government databases. At one workplace after another, mass firings of immigrant workers have followed such audits. Last year, 254 workers, mostly women, at the food processing plant Overhill Farms and another 1,500 at clothing maker American Apparel, both in the Los Angeles area, were driven out of their jobs after these so-called “desktop raids.” The Obama administration boasts that in its first year it deported a record number of “illegals.”
Such raids are an open invitation to get rid of union activists and other “troublemakers.” In 2006, the bosses at Smithfield’s pork processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, tried to stop a fight for union recognition by firing 75 “no match” workers. A two-day walkout that included black and white workers as well as Latinos forced the company to rehire everyone. The workers won their union in late 2008, but by that time I.C.E. workplace raids had driven out a significant number of the immigrant workers.
The battle at Smithfield underlines the need for a mass, militant union organizing drive throughout the country and particularly in the open shop South. Only 6.5 percent of workers in Arizona, a notorious “right-to-work” state, are organized. Now, in response to the new anti-immigrant law, an article in the Phoenix Business Journal (30 April) reports that SEIU union representatives “say they are seeing a surge in inquiries from Hispanic workers in Arizona worried about the new law and the potential for more police raids and inquiries into their workplaces.” Enlisting immigrant workers—many of whom have a history of militant struggle in their own countries—in the front ranks of the labor movement is an urgent task both to fight the exploitation of the most vulnerable layers of the population and to bust the government’s anti-union laws. This in turn could reverse the decades-long decline of the trade unions in this country. Rather than defending the working class as a whole or even members of their own unions, the union bureaucracy embraces the “national” interests of the U.S. capitalist rulers as its own.
The Democrats’ “immigration reform” plans include the institution of a national biometric identity card for everyone in the United States. This will increase the police-state powers and repressive apparatus of the capitalist state, which have already been vastly augmented under the so-called “war on terror.” Under the Transportation Workers Identity Credential (TWIC) program, such biometric ID cards have already been mandated for hundreds of thousands of workers at the ports. To qualify for a TWIC card, all port workers had to submit to extensive criminal background and immigration checks. For black and Latino port workers, who have been particularly targeted under the racist “war on drugs,” even applying for the card meant running the risk of possible deportation or being pursued as some kind of “fugitive from justice.” The applications of tens of thousands of port workers were rejected, although some eventually won their cases on appeal. An unknown number of longshore and other port workers are permanently gone, branded as a threat to “national security” for trivial offenses like drug possession with “intent” to distribute, or just being an “illegal” immigrant.
Rather than fighting this “anti-terror” law, the response of the leaders of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union—which is still widely seen as a bastion of labor power and militancy—was to call for a more expedient and “fair” implementation of the TWIC program! As we wrote in “‘War on Terror’ Crackdown on the Docks” (WV No. 936, 8 May 2009):
“For the ILWU and other longshore unions to wage a real fight against TWIC and the racist, union-busting ‘war on terror’ laws, the obvious starting point must be opposition to the very state that is enforcing these laws. It means championing full citizenship rights for all immigrants and fighting to organize foreign-born workers.... In a country built on the subjugation of black people, where racist reaction has long served to ratchet up the exploitation of the working class as a whole, the fight for black freedom is directly linked to the fight to break the chains of capitalist wage slavery and the state forces and laws that maintain it. But to wage that kind of struggle, the unions must be led by a different kind of leadership, one rooted in a program of class struggle, as opposed to the present misleaders whose policies of class collaboration increasingly subordinate the unions to the capitalist state.”
When the ILWU embraces TWIC, making itself an auxiliary to the racist crackdown on the port truckers; when the auto unions lobby for the bosses’ bailout schemes, pledging to lower the cost of union labor to rival the depressed wages and rotten conditions in non-union plants; when the powerful Teamsters union pleads that “unsafe” Mexican truckers should be barred from America’s highways: the conservative bureaucrats are lining up against the basic class interests of the international proletariat. Their highest loyalty is to capitalist profitability on behalf of their own racist ruling class, whose benefits are supposed to “trickle down.” This means pitting workers against one another in competition for crumbs and increasing poverty and unemployment, especially for the most vulnerable social layers.
Black Rights and Immigrant Rights
Calls for an economic boycott of Arizona have come from a variety of Democratic Party politicians, ranging from the San Francisco city government to New York’s Al Sharpton, with the reformist left, such as Workers World Party, bringing up the rear with the demand that capitalist investors and businesses “divest from the apartheid-like police state!” The last time there were appeals for such a boycott was in response to the refusal of the Arizona state administration to recognize Martin Luther King’s birthday as an official holiday. That refusal, together with the state’s apartheid-style, anti-immigration law, captures something of the history of Arizona. This history is in turn emblematic of the racial oppression of blacks and anti-immigrant reaction that are central to the maintenance of American capitalism.
Until the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, Arizona like most of the Southwest was part of Mexico. It was in large measure the Southern slavocracy’s drive to extend slavery that motivated the invasion of Mexico, which resulted in the U.S. stealing half of Mexico’s territory. Today, Latinos—largely Mexicans and Mexican Americans—make up more than 30 percent of the state’s population. Although black people are a mere 4.2 percent of Arizona’s population, the state has long been a bastion of anti-black racism. Barry Goldwater, five-term Arizona Senator and Republican candidate for president in 1964, voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. For decades Goldwater was an icon of a right-wing backlash against black rights, unions and any and all social welfare programs. In the past decade, Arizona has been on the cutting edge of anti-immigrant reaction, spawning vigilante Minuteman militias to patrol the borders against “illegals.”
Now, Sharpton—a political hustler who mobilized against Korean-owned grocery stores in Brooklyn before he became a more “respectable” Democratic Party politician—bombastically declares “we will bring Freedom Walkers to Arizona just like Freedom Riders went to the deep south 50 years ago” (New York Daily News, 26 April). The courageous civil rights struggles of the 1960s led to the elimination of formal Jim Crow segregation in the South. But the promise of black freedom was betrayed by the leaders of the civil rights movement, who tied their fortunes to the Democratic Party and were bought off for token concessions and a few “black faces in high places.” Today, Sharpton’s invocation of these heroic freedom riders is aimed at enforcing the rule of racist American capitalism in its Democratic Party face.
A keynote speaker at the 50,000-strong immigrant rights protest in Los Angeles on May Day was the city’s Latino Democratic Party mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. A sign read “We Latinos Are the Jews of the 21st Century.” Only two weeks earlier, a gang of Hitler-loving Nazis staged an anti-immigrant, race-hate rally in Los Angeles to “Reclaim the Southwest.” They were protected by hundreds of L.A. cops, mobilized by the mayor’s office, against a protest by about a thousand anti-fascists. The trade-union misleaders, in a city where immigrant workers have been in the forefront of union organizing over the past two decades, turned a blind eye to this deadly fascist provocation. The fascists should have been stopped by a militant mass mobilization of working people and oppressed led by the labor movement. Labor’s inaction spelled an unqualified defeat for the working class, the bitter fruit of the labor bureaucracy’s allegiance to the Democratic Party.
The working class needs its own party, a multiracial revolutionary workers party. It is the purpose of the Spartacist League/U.S. to forge such a party, which, through education and in the course of sharp class struggle, can make the working class conscious not only of its social power but also of its historic interest as the gravedigger of the vicious and depraved rule of capitalist imperialism. Crucial to building such a party in the U.S. is the understanding of the inextricable link between the fight for labor’s emancipation, the defense of immigrant rights and the cause of black freedom. When the wealth of this country is in the hands of the working class that produced it, we will begin the construction of a socialist planned economy which will provide the material basis for the eradication of black oppression. Grounded in a program of revolutionary internationalism, a workers government will begin to right the historical crimes of U.S. imperialism, for example by returning to Mexico the predominantly Spanish-speaking areas along the border. Such a gesture would be the sharpest possible repudiation of the social-patriotic politics of the present American labor movement and a concrete demonstration of the internationalist program to smash the imperialist world order.
As we wrote in a 2006 joint declaration of the SL/U.S. and our comrades of the Grupo Espartaquista de México (GEM), written to intervene into the mass immigrant rights demonstrations held that year: “The multiracial U.S. working class is potentially the most powerful ally of Mexican workers. The SL/U.S. and the GEM are dedicated to forging revolutionary workers parties on both sides of the border as part of the fight to reforge Trotsky’s Fourth International, world party of socialist revolution.”
Markin comment:
As almost always these historical articles and polemics are purposefully helpful to clarify the issues in the struggle against world imperialism, particularly the “monster” here in America.
Workers Vanguard No. 958
7 May 2010
Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!
Down With Arizona’s Racist Pass Law!
Break with the Democrats—For a Revolutionary Workers Party!
To be brown-skinned in the state of Arizona is to be a suspected criminal under the provisions of the recently enacted “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhood Act.” This apartheid-style, anti-immigrant pass law mandates the cops to stop and question anyone they think might be an “illegal” immigrant. Those who fail to immediately produce documentation proving their “right” to be in the United States could be arrested and thrown behind bars. This is the codification in law of the racist roundups of Latinos that have been carried out for years by notorious Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose prisoners are shackled in chain gangs and housed in tent cities in the blazing heat of the desert.
Outrage against the Arizona law brought out tens of thousands in protest in cities across the country on May 1. But as was the case with the massive immigrant rights demonstrations on May Day 2006, the protest leaders are channeling this outrage into the political shell game that is a central pillar of capitalist rule in America—the idea that the Democratic Party is the “friend” of immigrants, labor and black people. The 2006 rallying cry of “Today we march, tomorrow we vote” paid off handsomely for the Democrats, who captured the overwhelming majority of the Latino vote in the last presidential elections. This year, chants of “Sí, se puede! Yes, we can!”, the election slogan of today’s Commander-in-Chief of U.S. imperialism, Barack Obama, were the chorus orchestrated by the Latino organizations, Democratic Party politicians and trade-union bureaucrats who headed the protests.
In a televised message to hundreds of thousands at a March 21 immigrant rights rally in Washington, D.C., Obama promised to “build a future worthy of our history as a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws.” The ability to use such honey-coated words to mask a system which is based on the exploitation of the working class and rooted in vicious racial oppression is precisely what has made the Democratic Party the often-preferred party of the American bourgeoisie in times of war and economic crisis.
Behind the words stands the iron fist of capitalist state repression. This was seen in Arizona only a week before the passage of the new law, in anti-immigrant raids carried out by Obama’s Department of Homeland Security (now headed by former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano). With helicopters buzzing overhead, up to 800 agents from the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) and other police agencies, some in black hoods, launched a military-style attack on shuttle van businesses that transport immigrant workers in Phoenix, Tucson, Rio Rico and Nogales. Heralded as the biggest smuggling bust in the I.C.E.’s history, these raids provide a chilling snapshot of the Democrats’ program for “immigration reform.”
As described in a Washington Post (1 May) article: “The Democrats’ legislative ‘framework’ includes a slew of new immigration enforcement measures aimed at U.S. borders and workplaces. It would further expand the 20,000-member Border Patrol; triple fines against U.S. employers who hire illegal immigrants; and, most controversially, require all American workers—citizens and noncitizens alike—to get new Social Security cards linked to their fingerprints to ease checks of their work eligibility.” Obama promised to “open a pathway to citizenship” for the more than eleven million undocumented immigrants in this country. What this means is seen in the current Democratic proposal that these desperately impoverished workers turn themselves in as “lawbreakers,” pay heavy fines and back taxes, pass background checks and be proficient in English. Even then they would be granted only a provisional status for eight years.
This has not shaken the reformists’ illusions in Obama as “change” they can “believe in.” As usual, the International Socialist Organization (ISO) takes second place to no one on this score. A 30 April article in its press, Socialist Worker, opines: “A conversation about really progressive immigration reform needs to start by strategizing about how to stop the Arizona scare, and how to force Obama, who repeatedly has recognized that the system is broken, to stop deportations”! This, they argue, “can buy time for the movement to push for legislation...that puts the interests of the entire working class, immigrant and native-born alike, up front.”
The hard truth is that the capitalist system is based on the brutal exploitation of all labor, with the ruling class inflaming racial and ethnic hostilities to keep the working class divided and thus ensure a greater extraction of profit. Just as immigrant workers are brought in during economic boom times to provide a pool of low-wage labor, the current rise in anti-immigrant attacks worldwide is exacerbated by the global economic crisis and its attendant soaring unemployment. As we wrote in the International Communist League’s “Declaration of Principles and Some Elements of Program” (Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 54, Spring 1998):
“Modern capitalism, i.e., imperialism, reaching into all areas of the planet, in the course of the class struggle and as economic need demands, brings into the proletariat at its bottom new sources of cheaper labor, principally immigrants from poorer and less-developed regions of the world—workers with few rights who are deemed more disposable in times of economic contraction. Thus capitalism in ongoing fashion creates different strata among the workers, while simultaneously amalgamating the workers of many different lands. Everywhere, the capitalists, abetted by aristocracy-of-labor opportunists, try to poison class consciousness and solidarity among the workers by fomenting religious, national and ethnic divisions. The struggle for the unity and integrity of the working class against chauvinism and racism is thus a vital task for the proletarian vanguard.”
We do not seek to tinker with the capitalist system by advising the bourgeoisie to take up an alternative immigration policy. We call for full citizenship rights for all immigrants as part of our struggle to advance the class consciousness and solidarity of the multiracial working class, preparing it for the necessary revolutionary battle to end capitalist class rule. A real fight for immigrant rights in this country will only begin when the workers—white, black, Latino and others—struggle based on their common interests as a class. This means opposition to all the political parties and state agencies of the capitalist class. Unlocking the social power of the multiracial working class will take a political fight against the current pro-capitalist misleaders of labor who have shackled the working class to their exploiters, particularly through support for the Democratic Party.
Labor Lieutenants of the Capitalist Class
Many of the 1.8 million members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) are immigrants, and many of these have waged militant struggles to organize unions. But their interests are betrayed by the union leaders. A statement on Arizona’s anti-immigrant law by Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the SEIU, declared:
“This radical anti-immigration law should be a wake-up call to Congress and the White House. Immigration is a national problem that needs a national solution.... We need immigration policies that will eliminate the underground economy by getting undocumented immigrants into the system, paying fines, back taxes, learning English and getting on local, state and federal tax rolls. We need reform that will truly end illegal immigration and hold bad-actor employers responsible for depressing wages and violating the right to a safe worksite for all workers.”
Likewise, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka’s statement in opposition to the Arizona law demanded that “our focus should instead be on a comprehensive solution to the broken immigration system.”
Last year, the SEIU’s “Change to Win” union federation and the AFL-CIO issued a joint statement for “comprehensive immigration reform.” Embracing the government’s campaign against undocumented workers, these labor traitors seek only to tinker with its methods of repression. To regulate immigration, their “unified framework” called for “an independent commission to assess and manage future flows” of immigrant workers, leaving open the possibility of their own participation on such a commission as the labor police for the capitalist state. It also demanded more “rational operational control of the border” and a “secure and effective worker authorization mechanism.”
Since coming to power, bankrolled by millions in contributions from the labor tops, the Obama administration has expanded such “worker authorization mechanisms” as the E-Verify program, which is aimed at confirming the legal status of workers through checking their Social Security numbers against government databases. At one workplace after another, mass firings of immigrant workers have followed such audits. Last year, 254 workers, mostly women, at the food processing plant Overhill Farms and another 1,500 at clothing maker American Apparel, both in the Los Angeles area, were driven out of their jobs after these so-called “desktop raids.” The Obama administration boasts that in its first year it deported a record number of “illegals.”
Such raids are an open invitation to get rid of union activists and other “troublemakers.” In 2006, the bosses at Smithfield’s pork processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, tried to stop a fight for union recognition by firing 75 “no match” workers. A two-day walkout that included black and white workers as well as Latinos forced the company to rehire everyone. The workers won their union in late 2008, but by that time I.C.E. workplace raids had driven out a significant number of the immigrant workers.
The battle at Smithfield underlines the need for a mass, militant union organizing drive throughout the country and particularly in the open shop South. Only 6.5 percent of workers in Arizona, a notorious “right-to-work” state, are organized. Now, in response to the new anti-immigrant law, an article in the Phoenix Business Journal (30 April) reports that SEIU union representatives “say they are seeing a surge in inquiries from Hispanic workers in Arizona worried about the new law and the potential for more police raids and inquiries into their workplaces.” Enlisting immigrant workers—many of whom have a history of militant struggle in their own countries—in the front ranks of the labor movement is an urgent task both to fight the exploitation of the most vulnerable layers of the population and to bust the government’s anti-union laws. This in turn could reverse the decades-long decline of the trade unions in this country. Rather than defending the working class as a whole or even members of their own unions, the union bureaucracy embraces the “national” interests of the U.S. capitalist rulers as its own.
The Democrats’ “immigration reform” plans include the institution of a national biometric identity card for everyone in the United States. This will increase the police-state powers and repressive apparatus of the capitalist state, which have already been vastly augmented under the so-called “war on terror.” Under the Transportation Workers Identity Credential (TWIC) program, such biometric ID cards have already been mandated for hundreds of thousands of workers at the ports. To qualify for a TWIC card, all port workers had to submit to extensive criminal background and immigration checks. For black and Latino port workers, who have been particularly targeted under the racist “war on drugs,” even applying for the card meant running the risk of possible deportation or being pursued as some kind of “fugitive from justice.” The applications of tens of thousands of port workers were rejected, although some eventually won their cases on appeal. An unknown number of longshore and other port workers are permanently gone, branded as a threat to “national security” for trivial offenses like drug possession with “intent” to distribute, or just being an “illegal” immigrant.
Rather than fighting this “anti-terror” law, the response of the leaders of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union—which is still widely seen as a bastion of labor power and militancy—was to call for a more expedient and “fair” implementation of the TWIC program! As we wrote in “‘War on Terror’ Crackdown on the Docks” (WV No. 936, 8 May 2009):
“For the ILWU and other longshore unions to wage a real fight against TWIC and the racist, union-busting ‘war on terror’ laws, the obvious starting point must be opposition to the very state that is enforcing these laws. It means championing full citizenship rights for all immigrants and fighting to organize foreign-born workers.... In a country built on the subjugation of black people, where racist reaction has long served to ratchet up the exploitation of the working class as a whole, the fight for black freedom is directly linked to the fight to break the chains of capitalist wage slavery and the state forces and laws that maintain it. But to wage that kind of struggle, the unions must be led by a different kind of leadership, one rooted in a program of class struggle, as opposed to the present misleaders whose policies of class collaboration increasingly subordinate the unions to the capitalist state.”
When the ILWU embraces TWIC, making itself an auxiliary to the racist crackdown on the port truckers; when the auto unions lobby for the bosses’ bailout schemes, pledging to lower the cost of union labor to rival the depressed wages and rotten conditions in non-union plants; when the powerful Teamsters union pleads that “unsafe” Mexican truckers should be barred from America’s highways: the conservative bureaucrats are lining up against the basic class interests of the international proletariat. Their highest loyalty is to capitalist profitability on behalf of their own racist ruling class, whose benefits are supposed to “trickle down.” This means pitting workers against one another in competition for crumbs and increasing poverty and unemployment, especially for the most vulnerable social layers.
Black Rights and Immigrant Rights
Calls for an economic boycott of Arizona have come from a variety of Democratic Party politicians, ranging from the San Francisco city government to New York’s Al Sharpton, with the reformist left, such as Workers World Party, bringing up the rear with the demand that capitalist investors and businesses “divest from the apartheid-like police state!” The last time there were appeals for such a boycott was in response to the refusal of the Arizona state administration to recognize Martin Luther King’s birthday as an official holiday. That refusal, together with the state’s apartheid-style, anti-immigration law, captures something of the history of Arizona. This history is in turn emblematic of the racial oppression of blacks and anti-immigrant reaction that are central to the maintenance of American capitalism.
Until the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, Arizona like most of the Southwest was part of Mexico. It was in large measure the Southern slavocracy’s drive to extend slavery that motivated the invasion of Mexico, which resulted in the U.S. stealing half of Mexico’s territory. Today, Latinos—largely Mexicans and Mexican Americans—make up more than 30 percent of the state’s population. Although black people are a mere 4.2 percent of Arizona’s population, the state has long been a bastion of anti-black racism. Barry Goldwater, five-term Arizona Senator and Republican candidate for president in 1964, voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. For decades Goldwater was an icon of a right-wing backlash against black rights, unions and any and all social welfare programs. In the past decade, Arizona has been on the cutting edge of anti-immigrant reaction, spawning vigilante Minuteman militias to patrol the borders against “illegals.”
Now, Sharpton—a political hustler who mobilized against Korean-owned grocery stores in Brooklyn before he became a more “respectable” Democratic Party politician—bombastically declares “we will bring Freedom Walkers to Arizona just like Freedom Riders went to the deep south 50 years ago” (New York Daily News, 26 April). The courageous civil rights struggles of the 1960s led to the elimination of formal Jim Crow segregation in the South. But the promise of black freedom was betrayed by the leaders of the civil rights movement, who tied their fortunes to the Democratic Party and were bought off for token concessions and a few “black faces in high places.” Today, Sharpton’s invocation of these heroic freedom riders is aimed at enforcing the rule of racist American capitalism in its Democratic Party face.
A keynote speaker at the 50,000-strong immigrant rights protest in Los Angeles on May Day was the city’s Latino Democratic Party mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. A sign read “We Latinos Are the Jews of the 21st Century.” Only two weeks earlier, a gang of Hitler-loving Nazis staged an anti-immigrant, race-hate rally in Los Angeles to “Reclaim the Southwest.” They were protected by hundreds of L.A. cops, mobilized by the mayor’s office, against a protest by about a thousand anti-fascists. The trade-union misleaders, in a city where immigrant workers have been in the forefront of union organizing over the past two decades, turned a blind eye to this deadly fascist provocation. The fascists should have been stopped by a militant mass mobilization of working people and oppressed led by the labor movement. Labor’s inaction spelled an unqualified defeat for the working class, the bitter fruit of the labor bureaucracy’s allegiance to the Democratic Party.
The working class needs its own party, a multiracial revolutionary workers party. It is the purpose of the Spartacist League/U.S. to forge such a party, which, through education and in the course of sharp class struggle, can make the working class conscious not only of its social power but also of its historic interest as the gravedigger of the vicious and depraved rule of capitalist imperialism. Crucial to building such a party in the U.S. is the understanding of the inextricable link between the fight for labor’s emancipation, the defense of immigrant rights and the cause of black freedom. When the wealth of this country is in the hands of the working class that produced it, we will begin the construction of a socialist planned economy which will provide the material basis for the eradication of black oppression. Grounded in a program of revolutionary internationalism, a workers government will begin to right the historical crimes of U.S. imperialism, for example by returning to Mexico the predominantly Spanish-speaking areas along the border. Such a gesture would be the sharpest possible repudiation of the social-patriotic politics of the present American labor movement and a concrete demonstration of the internationalist program to smash the imperialist world order.
As we wrote in a 2006 joint declaration of the SL/U.S. and our comrades of the Grupo Espartaquista de México (GEM), written to intervene into the mass immigrant rights demonstrations held that year: “The multiracial U.S. working class is potentially the most powerful ally of Mexican workers. The SL/U.S. and the GEM are dedicated to forging revolutionary workers parties on both sides of the border as part of the fight to reforge Trotsky’s Fourth International, world party of socialist revolution.”
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
*From "The Rag Blog"- Arizona's Crackers : 'Illegal is Not a Race'
Click on to link to a "The Rag Blog" entry- Arizona's Crackers : 'Illegal is Not a Race'
Markin comment:
Down With The Arizona anti-immigration law! Full citizenship rights for all who make it here (America). And by the way let's fight for some historic justice by giving Arizona back to where it belongs- Mexico. Then those Anglo rednecks in Arizona better start worrying about THEIR immigration papers!
Markin comment:
Down With The Arizona anti-immigration law! Full citizenship rights for all who make it here (America). And by the way let's fight for some historic justice by giving Arizona back to where it belongs- Mexico. Then those Anglo rednecks in Arizona better start worrying about THEIR immigration papers!
Friday, May 14, 2010
*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Woody Guthrie's "Deportee"
Click on the title to link a "YouTube" film clip of Arlo Guthrie and Emmylou Harrsi perfroming his father's song "Deportee."
In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)
Lyrics by Woody Guthrie
Music by Martin Hoffman
The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges are piled in their cresote dumps
They're flying you back to the Mexico border
To pay all your money to wade back again
My father's own father, he wanted that river
They took all the money he made in his life
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees
And they rode the truck till they took down and died
CHORUS
Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maris
You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane
And all they will call you will be deportees.
Some of us are illega, and others not wanted
Our work contract's out and we have to move on
But it's six hundred miles to that Mexican border
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like theives.
We died in your hills, we died in your deserts
We died in your valleys and died on your plains
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.
CHORUS
A sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon
Like a fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says they are just deportees.
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except deportees?
©1961 (renewed) & 1963 Ludlow Music Inc., New York,NY (TRO)
In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)
Lyrics by Woody Guthrie
Music by Martin Hoffman
The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges are piled in their cresote dumps
They're flying you back to the Mexico border
To pay all your money to wade back again
My father's own father, he wanted that river
They took all the money he made in his life
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees
And they rode the truck till they took down and died
CHORUS
Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maris
You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane
And all they will call you will be deportees.
Some of us are illega, and others not wanted
Our work contract's out and we have to move on
But it's six hundred miles to that Mexican border
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like theives.
We died in your hills, we died in your deserts
We died in your valleys and died on your plains
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.
CHORUS
A sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon
Like a fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says they are just deportees.
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except deportees?
©1961 (renewed) & 1963 Ludlow Music Inc., New York,NY (TRO)
Thursday, October 29, 2009
*From Steve Lendmen's Blog- "Police Raids Against Immigrants"- Obama, Not Bush Style
Click on title to link to Steve Lendmen's blog entry, "Police Raids Against Immigrants". Some stories despite changes in presidential administrations, unfortunately, simply need a xerox to be updated.
Markin comment:
Now is a good time to raise that old slogan- Full Citizenship rights for all who get here. As always, those of us already here best not have our forbears' credentials checked to closely, no matter how far back we go in this country.
Markin comment:
Now is a good time to raise that old slogan- Full Citizenship rights for all who get here. As always, those of us already here best not have our forbears' credentials checked to closely, no matter how far back we go in this country.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Full Citizen Rights For Immigrants- Amnesty Now!
Commentary
If one remembers back only two years ago to May Day 2006 when there were massive protests led by Hispanics in the West, the Southwest and elsewhere over the question of immigrant rights then one would have thought that we would have some justice on this question by now. That has clearly not been the case and mainstream politicians have fallen all over themselves to distance themselves from the mere thought of justice for such people (who moreover either do not or cannot vote, a mortal sin for any politician). There are political reasons for this, including the conscious policies of Hispanic politicians, and others who represent immigrant constituencies to not rock the boat in this august presidential year. This year the protests were rather muted and, in any case, were placed on the back burner by the overwhelming capacity of the current presidential political campaigns to suck all the political oxygen out of the air.
More ominously, since 2006 there have been any numbers of la Migra (immigration service) raids on factories in the Midwest and the South, including one this spring which netted over 400 immigrants at a meat processing plant and that nearly decimated the life of one town. The only rationale for such governmental actions is to tell those who are here illegally (and some who are here legally but want to in the age old tradition of America get 'uppity"- that is, defend their rights) that it is hunting season and they are the targets. Moreover, such actions graphically tell immigrants not to organize themselves for collective protection in such things as trade unions- or you will wind up back from where you came, one way.
There are a whole lot of issues that need to be resolved on the immigration question but no one, and I mean no one in mainstream politics is proposing any just solution to the question. All one hears about there days the need for more deportations, more walls and more cops. Oh, I forgot this gem- also a return to some form of indenture servitude straight out of the 18th century, as well, if some of the proposed legislation in Congress goes through. What this all tells me is that today militants should be proposing a general amnesty for all immigrants, legal or illegal, who have made it here. If anyone, including one Barack Obama whose life profile includes recent immigrant experiences, should in the great by and by propose such a scheme then we will support it. In the meantime the fight is clear- Full citizenship rights for all who make it here. We will worry about the green cards later.
If one remembers back only two years ago to May Day 2006 when there were massive protests led by Hispanics in the West, the Southwest and elsewhere over the question of immigrant rights then one would have thought that we would have some justice on this question by now. That has clearly not been the case and mainstream politicians have fallen all over themselves to distance themselves from the mere thought of justice for such people (who moreover either do not or cannot vote, a mortal sin for any politician). There are political reasons for this, including the conscious policies of Hispanic politicians, and others who represent immigrant constituencies to not rock the boat in this august presidential year. This year the protests were rather muted and, in any case, were placed on the back burner by the overwhelming capacity of the current presidential political campaigns to suck all the political oxygen out of the air.
More ominously, since 2006 there have been any numbers of la Migra (immigration service) raids on factories in the Midwest and the South, including one this spring which netted over 400 immigrants at a meat processing plant and that nearly decimated the life of one town. The only rationale for such governmental actions is to tell those who are here illegally (and some who are here legally but want to in the age old tradition of America get 'uppity"- that is, defend their rights) that it is hunting season and they are the targets. Moreover, such actions graphically tell immigrants not to organize themselves for collective protection in such things as trade unions- or you will wind up back from where you came, one way.
There are a whole lot of issues that need to be resolved on the immigration question but no one, and I mean no one in mainstream politics is proposing any just solution to the question. All one hears about there days the need for more deportations, more walls and more cops. Oh, I forgot this gem- also a return to some form of indenture servitude straight out of the 18th century, as well, if some of the proposed legislation in Congress goes through. What this all tells me is that today militants should be proposing a general amnesty for all immigrants, legal or illegal, who have made it here. If anyone, including one Barack Obama whose life profile includes recent immigrant experiences, should in the great by and by propose such a scheme then we will support it. In the meantime the fight is clear- Full citizenship rights for all who make it here. We will worry about the green cards later.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
RUDY AND MITT ON IMMIGRATION-SANCTUARY FOR THE KNOW NOTHINGS
Never let it be said that this writer is not an equal opportunity critic. I have spend most of my time hammering the various Democratic presidential candidates for being weak-kneed and perfidious because, from my perspective as an advocate of a workers party, the kind of people who might be attracted to such a venture are today found, among other places, in the myopic left wing of the Democratic Party. Can anyone really believe that it is worthwhile to try to argue with Republicans into at least moving into the 18th century? That applies, as well, to this current crop of Republican candidates because for the most part they are beyond the pale. However two Republican candidates in particular, Mitt Romney and Rudy Guiliani, have taken the lead on immigrant-bashing and therefore are ‘worthy’ of comment.
The odd part (at least to the politically naïve) of the controversy between these two worthies is that when they were respectively Governor of Massachusetts and Mayor of New York City they held, at worst, rather benign positions on the question of illegal immigrants. Now Romney has taken to calling Rudy and his regime in New York City a virtual sieve for illegal immigration. And Rudy has replied in kind about Mitt’s Massachusetts. My question is who are these gentlemen trying to woo by acting as this generation’s version of the yahoos of the anti-immigrant Know Nothing (American) Party from the last century. I know for certain that it is not me. Although my father’s forbears came to this country from England one jump ahead of the law in the early 1800’s and my mother’s forbears came over from Ireland on the ‘famine’ ships in the 1840’s I still, in many ways, feel like an immigrant. And that is exactly the point-virtually everyone here came from somewhere else so we better be damn sure of our own ‘green card’ status before we worry about those who have come after us. When the deal goes down I am sure we will find that the current Know Nothings probably have only been here a couple of generations themselves. Forget the illegals I want the names and numbers of those 'newcomers' for immediate action.
As stated above, and as I have mentioned in previous entries, I stand for the proposition that we need a workers party that fights for a workers government. As such I do not have an immigration plan as per Senator McCain and others. That is this government’s problem and I will provide no advice. Today I would define the immigration question generetically, and urge others to think about it this way as well. That means the central thrust should be to fight for full citizenship rights for all who make it here. A big step in that direction is a real amnesty program. In a nation full of generation after generation of immigrants who came here under all kinds of conditions this is what we should be worrying about. Down with the Know Nothings!
The odd part (at least to the politically naïve) of the controversy between these two worthies is that when they were respectively Governor of Massachusetts and Mayor of New York City they held, at worst, rather benign positions on the question of illegal immigrants. Now Romney has taken to calling Rudy and his regime in New York City a virtual sieve for illegal immigration. And Rudy has replied in kind about Mitt’s Massachusetts. My question is who are these gentlemen trying to woo by acting as this generation’s version of the yahoos of the anti-immigrant Know Nothing (American) Party from the last century. I know for certain that it is not me. Although my father’s forbears came to this country from England one jump ahead of the law in the early 1800’s and my mother’s forbears came over from Ireland on the ‘famine’ ships in the 1840’s I still, in many ways, feel like an immigrant. And that is exactly the point-virtually everyone here came from somewhere else so we better be damn sure of our own ‘green card’ status before we worry about those who have come after us. When the deal goes down I am sure we will find that the current Know Nothings probably have only been here a couple of generations themselves. Forget the illegals I want the names and numbers of those 'newcomers' for immediate action.
As stated above, and as I have mentioned in previous entries, I stand for the proposition that we need a workers party that fights for a workers government. As such I do not have an immigration plan as per Senator McCain and others. That is this government’s problem and I will provide no advice. Today I would define the immigration question generetically, and urge others to think about it this way as well. That means the central thrust should be to fight for full citizenship rights for all who make it here. A big step in that direction is a real amnesty program. In a nation full of generation after generation of immigrants who came here under all kinds of conditions this is what we should be worrying about. Down with the Know Nothings!
Thursday, May 04, 2006
MR. GORBACHEV (OOPS!), MR. BUSH TEAR DOWN THAT WALL-FULL CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS FOR ALL IMMIGRANTS
SOME COMMENTARY ABOUT THE IMMIGRATION STRUGGLE AND A FOOLPROOF PLAN FOR SOLVING THE IMMIGRATION CRISIS.
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
Forgive the writer for taking a page from the late, unlamented Ronald Reagan’s playbook but with all this talk on Capitol Hill about walling in the Southwest I got carried away. The point, however, is that such a scheme as is currently proposed in the House version of the immigration bill is flat out crazy. And that, my friends, is a true political statement. No militant can support any of the immigration bills before Congress and if we had workers party representatives in Congress we would emphatically vote such measures down.
A few thoughts on the struggle for full citizenship rights for all immigrants.
As I write these lines there have been a couple of weeks of massive demonstrations for immigrant rights spearheaded by the Hispanic populations of the West and Southwest followed by a massive May Day boycott and further demonstrations. Noteworthy, in Chicago at least, were contingents of Polish, Irish and other nationalities. All these developments are steps in the right direction and points out the stark reality of immigration in America.
Let’s face it, one way or another, in the near or remote past, almost all of us came here as immigrants from someplace else. I will confess that, as far as I know, my father’s forbears were run out of England as horse thieves in the early 1800’s. My mother’s forbears came over from Ireland on the ‘famine ships’ in the 1840’s. Thus, my family tree is a little shaky on what passed for green cards in those days. The point is that people generally do not leave their countries of origin without extremely good reasons to leave. Those who want to shut the door on immigrants here, unless their surnames are Chief Joseph, Red Cloud or Sitting Bull, should be very, very circumspect about their positions. In fact, let us check THEIR green card history. Sorry, even arrival on the Mayflower is not good enough.
It is particularly important that the last waves of immigration gain the same rights that those of us who have been here longer. This is especially true for working class people who have been victimized by the same divide and conquer strategy by the capitalists who run this government and the country. Let’s put the onus where it belongs, on the capitalist who do benefit from such policies. Immigrants do not threaten our livelihoods. Failure to struggle against the bosses does.
One aspect of the current bills is the ‘guest worker’ plan. Let us be clear- THIS IS INDENTURED SERVITUDE- and must be opposed by militants. It is noteworthy that the major labor federations, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win Coalition as well as such an august figure as the National Chairman of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean have expressed at least half-hearted opposition to this portion of the bills. They believe they are being progressive and pro-worker by such a stand. And such a position would be truly progressive- in the 1700’s. For militants today that is not nearly enough.
It is rather ironic that one of the most impoverished sections of the working class-Hispanics- is leading the struggle. This is not accidental, for many of the foreign born militants leading today’s struggles come from countries where they have participated in class struggles against their own boss class (and under less than democratic conditions, including loss of life). It is up to the American labor movement, especially the organized trade union movement, to lead the fight for full citizenship rights for all immigrants in its own self-interest and self-defense. Even a cursory look at the history of social struggles in this country demonstrates that to win any demands sharp class struggle methods are needed. Yesterday’s labor struggles to win union recognition in the 1930’s were not gifts but fought for in the streets, by strikes, sit-downs and other militant methods. The lesson-If you do not fight you cannot win. This battle can be won. Let’s win it.
The writer has been asked what type of immigration bill he would support. Well, I have a simple one point plan. Give each immigrant a local map, and depending on individual economic circumstances, bus fare, train fare or money for a car rental and head him or her to the nearest federal courthouse to be swore in as a citizen. Enough said.
FULL CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS FOR ALL THOSE WHO MAKE IT HERE. NO REPRISALS AGAINST DEMONSTRATORS! DROP CHARGES AGAINST ANY ARRESTEES!
BRING MOTIONS TO SUPPORT THESE DEMANDS BEFORE YOUR UNION, STUDENT GOVERNMENT, POLITCAL ORGANIZATIONS OR RELIGIOUS GROUPS. URGE A NO VOTE ON ALL CURRENT IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION BEFORE CONGRESS.
THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES OF COMMENTARY ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
Forgive the writer for taking a page from the late, unlamented Ronald Reagan’s playbook but with all this talk on Capitol Hill about walling in the Southwest I got carried away. The point, however, is that such a scheme as is currently proposed in the House version of the immigration bill is flat out crazy. And that, my friends, is a true political statement. No militant can support any of the immigration bills before Congress and if we had workers party representatives in Congress we would emphatically vote such measures down.
A few thoughts on the struggle for full citizenship rights for all immigrants.
As I write these lines there have been a couple of weeks of massive demonstrations for immigrant rights spearheaded by the Hispanic populations of the West and Southwest followed by a massive May Day boycott and further demonstrations. Noteworthy, in Chicago at least, were contingents of Polish, Irish and other nationalities. All these developments are steps in the right direction and points out the stark reality of immigration in America.
Let’s face it, one way or another, in the near or remote past, almost all of us came here as immigrants from someplace else. I will confess that, as far as I know, my father’s forbears were run out of England as horse thieves in the early 1800’s. My mother’s forbears came over from Ireland on the ‘famine ships’ in the 1840’s. Thus, my family tree is a little shaky on what passed for green cards in those days. The point is that people generally do not leave their countries of origin without extremely good reasons to leave. Those who want to shut the door on immigrants here, unless their surnames are Chief Joseph, Red Cloud or Sitting Bull, should be very, very circumspect about their positions. In fact, let us check THEIR green card history. Sorry, even arrival on the Mayflower is not good enough.
It is particularly important that the last waves of immigration gain the same rights that those of us who have been here longer. This is especially true for working class people who have been victimized by the same divide and conquer strategy by the capitalists who run this government and the country. Let’s put the onus where it belongs, on the capitalist who do benefit from such policies. Immigrants do not threaten our livelihoods. Failure to struggle against the bosses does.
One aspect of the current bills is the ‘guest worker’ plan. Let us be clear- THIS IS INDENTURED SERVITUDE- and must be opposed by militants. It is noteworthy that the major labor federations, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win Coalition as well as such an august figure as the National Chairman of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean have expressed at least half-hearted opposition to this portion of the bills. They believe they are being progressive and pro-worker by such a stand. And such a position would be truly progressive- in the 1700’s. For militants today that is not nearly enough.
It is rather ironic that one of the most impoverished sections of the working class-Hispanics- is leading the struggle. This is not accidental, for many of the foreign born militants leading today’s struggles come from countries where they have participated in class struggles against their own boss class (and under less than democratic conditions, including loss of life). It is up to the American labor movement, especially the organized trade union movement, to lead the fight for full citizenship rights for all immigrants in its own self-interest and self-defense. Even a cursory look at the history of social struggles in this country demonstrates that to win any demands sharp class struggle methods are needed. Yesterday’s labor struggles to win union recognition in the 1930’s were not gifts but fought for in the streets, by strikes, sit-downs and other militant methods. The lesson-If you do not fight you cannot win. This battle can be won. Let’s win it.
The writer has been asked what type of immigration bill he would support. Well, I have a simple one point plan. Give each immigrant a local map, and depending on individual economic circumstances, bus fare, train fare or money for a car rental and head him or her to the nearest federal courthouse to be swore in as a citizen. Enough said.
FULL CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS FOR ALL THOSE WHO MAKE IT HERE. NO REPRISALS AGAINST DEMONSTRATORS! DROP CHARGES AGAINST ANY ARRESTEES!
BRING MOTIONS TO SUPPORT THESE DEMANDS BEFORE YOUR UNION, STUDENT GOVERNMENT, POLITCAL ORGANIZATIONS OR RELIGIOUS GROUPS. URGE A NO VOTE ON ALL CURRENT IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION BEFORE CONGRESS.
THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES OF COMMENTARY ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
Monday, April 10, 2006
AMERICAN LABOR MUST LEAD THE FIGHT FOR FULL CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS FOR IMMIGRANTS
COMMENTARY
FULL CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS FOR IMMIGRANTS. NO SUPPORT FOR ANY CURRENT LEGISLATION BEFORE CONGRESS. THE LABOR MOVEMENT MUST USE ITS OWN METHODS IN THIS STRUGGLE.
A few thoughts on the struggle for full citizenship rights for all immigrants. As I write these lines there have been a couple of weeks of massive demonstrations for immigrant rights spearheaded by the Hispanic populations of the West and Southwest. This is a step in the right direction for several reasons. Let’s face it, one way or another, in the near or remote past, all of us came here as immigrants from someplace. So it is particularly important that the last waves of immigration gain the same rights that those of us who have been here longer. No, we will not have the last current American citizen close the door for us. This is especially true for working class people who have been victimized by the same divide and conquer strategy by the capitalist who run this government and this country. Let’s put the onus where it belongs. Immigrants do not threaten our livelihoods. Failure to struggle against the bosses does.
It is rather ironic that one of the most impoverished sections of the working class is leading the struggle. This is not accidental, for many of the foreign born militants leading today’s struggles come from countries where they have participated in class struggles against their own boss class (and under less than democratic conditions, including threats to life and limb). It is up to the American labor movement, especially the organized trade union movement, to lead the fight for full citizenship rights for all immigrants in its own self-interest and self-defense. None of the various pieces of legislation currently before Congress is supportable on this issue. Even a cursory look at the history of social struggles in this country demonstrates that to win any demands sharp class struggle methods are needed. Yesterday’s labor struggles to win union recognition in the 1930’s were not gifts but fought for in the streets, by strikes, sit-downs and other militant methods. The lesson-If you do not fight, you cannot win. This battle can be won. Let’s win it. FULL CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS FOR ALL THOSE WHO MAKE IT HERE. FOR STARTERS-BRING MOTIONS TO SUPPORT THIS DEMAND BEFORE YOUR UNION, SCHOOL OR POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS.
FULL CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS FOR IMMIGRANTS. NO SUPPORT FOR ANY CURRENT LEGISLATION BEFORE CONGRESS. THE LABOR MOVEMENT MUST USE ITS OWN METHODS IN THIS STRUGGLE.
A few thoughts on the struggle for full citizenship rights for all immigrants. As I write these lines there have been a couple of weeks of massive demonstrations for immigrant rights spearheaded by the Hispanic populations of the West and Southwest. This is a step in the right direction for several reasons. Let’s face it, one way or another, in the near or remote past, all of us came here as immigrants from someplace. So it is particularly important that the last waves of immigration gain the same rights that those of us who have been here longer. No, we will not have the last current American citizen close the door for us. This is especially true for working class people who have been victimized by the same divide and conquer strategy by the capitalist who run this government and this country. Let’s put the onus where it belongs. Immigrants do not threaten our livelihoods. Failure to struggle against the bosses does.
It is rather ironic that one of the most impoverished sections of the working class is leading the struggle. This is not accidental, for many of the foreign born militants leading today’s struggles come from countries where they have participated in class struggles against their own boss class (and under less than democratic conditions, including threats to life and limb). It is up to the American labor movement, especially the organized trade union movement, to lead the fight for full citizenship rights for all immigrants in its own self-interest and self-defense. None of the various pieces of legislation currently before Congress is supportable on this issue. Even a cursory look at the history of social struggles in this country demonstrates that to win any demands sharp class struggle methods are needed. Yesterday’s labor struggles to win union recognition in the 1930’s were not gifts but fought for in the streets, by strikes, sit-downs and other militant methods. The lesson-If you do not fight, you cannot win. This battle can be won. Let’s win it. FULL CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS FOR ALL THOSE WHO MAKE IT HERE. FOR STARTERS-BRING MOTIONS TO SUPPORT THIS DEMAND BEFORE YOUR UNION, SCHOOL OR POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS.
Friday, March 31, 2006
*Full Citizen Rights For All Immigrants- A Guest Commentary
Click on the title to link to a "Workers Vanguard", newspaper of the Spartacist League/U.S, article on the subject mentioned in the headline.
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