Stop campus racism

The more than 300 students and activists who confronted vicious anti-immigrant organizing by the New York University (NYU) College Republicans deserve a cheer for their act of solidarity. They turned out to protest a white supremacist “contest” offensively named “Catch the Illegal Immigrant.”

These right-wing events are being organized on campuses across the country. One person is secretly tagged as an “immigrant.” Students are encouraged to hunt and capture the person for a cash prize. Reactionaries like the Young Americans for Freedom and Young Republicans have organized this “game.”

Billed as “sport,” this event acts out the actual fascist vigilantism of the so-called Minutemen on the U.S.-Mexico border. It is historically reminiscent of racist lynch mobs and bounty hunters chasing African peoples under the “Fugitive Slave Act.”

This “game” has been organized at a time when political pundits like Lou Dobbs have been given endless airtime to deliver classical fascist rants and harangues that undocumented workers are an “enemy within.”

Anti-racists turned out in much greater numbers than the reactionaries at NYU, as they have at other campuses in the U.S., including Michigan State, the University of Michigan and Penn State. These youth and their allies have demonstrated that it is the immigrant-bashers that are the “enemy within.”

This anti-racist protest in solidarity with undocumented workers revived the truth that many marched in support of in the 1960s: “There are no borders in the workers’ struggle.” This solidarity—in word and in deed—is a model for how to shut down these white supremacists trying to whip up vigilante mentality.