Support immigrants, fight global warming

Teresa Gutierrez WW photo: G. Dunkel

Speech of Workers World Party Secretariat member Teresa Gutierrez to WWP’s National Conference on Nov. 17-18, 2007.

If ever there was a need for a working class party such as ours, a party guided by the principles of Marx, Lenin and Sam Marcy, our founder, it is now. If ever there was a need for the revolutionary movement in the U.S. to raise high the banner for socialism, it is now.

The attacks against the international working class are fierce. We are obliged to examine each and every social, economic and political development in order to develop a strategy for struggle. Because the class struggle is what we live for and that is why this conference is so important.

This weekend we will discuss some of these strategies. Fighting racism will be at the top of our agenda. Building the struggle against the war and how to respond to the growing economic crisis illuminated by the wave of housing foreclosures are also issues that we will take up.

The struggle for immigrant rights continues to be a top priority for our party. And in light of the increased attacks against immigrants, together with the looming economic crisis, the party’s perspective of reaching out to U.S.-born workers to unite with immigrants and our perspective of Black/Brown unity is not only important, it is decisive. The Lou Dobbs-ization of the immigrant debate must be defeated if the working class in this country is to advance.

But there is also another issue that I want to bring to the forefront as a working class issue, one that a communist party must not only raise as a struggle but be in the vanguard of.

And that is the issue of global warming and the destruction of this planet by the ruling capitalist class. This an issue that not only faces every single worker in the world today but it affects as well future generations of workers to come. And it affects them greatly.

Comrades know that I love disaster movies. I don’t care how cheesy, stupid or badly made they are, I love to see them all. I love end-of-the-world movies where a catastrophe of some sort envisioned by Hollywood brings some kind of horrific destruction.

I cannot give a Marxist explanation as to why I love them. That would be a waste of time. But I can tell you that I thoroughly disagree politically with most of these movies. The future that Hollywood paints is not at all correct.

The world may indeed face a major catastrophe in the years ahead. It has already—Hurricanes Katrina and Rita for one, aggravated mainly by Hurricane Bush.

Hollywood movies depict horrific plagues that kill thousands. Yet have we not seen that already in the AIDS crisis? And witnessed how the capitalist system handles such a crisis, allowing it to ravage Africa, and devastate mainly the gay and people of color communities in this country.

But make no mistake about it: the Hollywood future is not our future—our future is one of hope and struggle, our future is one of vast unrest but tremendous social change, our future is one where the workers and oppressed will not only take center stage in a historic mass struggle but a future where that struggle will be victorious.

Our future is socialism, not just in Cuba or elsewhere, but right here in the United States.

There is a major catastrophe looming but that catastrophe is the death and destruction of capitalism, a catastrophe for the ruling class but a victory for us.

I remember the first time that I heard about the environmental issue. It was in the mid 1970s. Amidst the problems that Chican@s faced, which was the struggle I was involved in, the environment seemed so irrelevant that at the time I smirked at its mention.

It seemed a luxury issue that only the privileged few, which was primarily the white middle class students around me, could get involved in. We could not get Chican@ history taught on our campus, why would we be concerned with the air above us? A 12-year-old Chicano boy had been killed by the Houston police and dumped in the bayou. Of what relevance did the ozone layer have on our lives? Not much.

At that time, too, the government, the media and the multinational corporations denied or lied about the problem. It took decades for there to be a general recognition that this planet was in trouble. It took many articles and books before the capitalist government gave the issue a nod.

Now there is no doubt that the capitalist system is ruining the environment. Comrade Deirdre will be elaborating more on this subject in tomorrow’s plenum. Listen closely to this talk.

But I want to stress today how this issue is very much an issue for communists, how much this must be a priority for our party.

Here is one good reason. The corporations are working feverishly to co-opt this struggle. Look at this plastic bottle of water. First of all, what a crime that we have to pay for water to begin with. And second of all, do we really believe that the very corporations that ruined the environment will honestly fix it up? Of course not.

What it means is that the ruling class has assessed how anxious people are about this issue. The go-green rhetoric we hear here is just that, rhetoric. But it is also insidious. It is also sinister. If the environmental movement allows the ruling class to co-opt this struggle, it will spell disaster for humanity.

It is a danger that the recent series “Planet in Peril” on CNN was sponsored by British Petroleum and BMW!

The petroleum companies in their commercials show a little green frog as a symbol of their go-green concern for the environment. When you see that frog you should remember the little spiders in Matrix. That little green frog is more likely to be like that spider: a genetically modified robot that will be used to spy on the revolutionary movement rather than a symbol of doing something good for the environment!

But we can stop these kinds of attacks before they start! After all, it is workers who will make, produce and distribute those frogs!

Two days ago in Bangladesh we saw on television once again the terrified faces of oppressed people forced to flee their homes as a result of yet another disaster. Over 3 million people had to be evacuated. At least 1,000 people died [later reports estimated 3,000 deaths—ed.]. 1,000 people in one hit. Who will rebuild their homes? Who will heal them? Who will give them jobs?

Fires in southern California, earthquakes in Chile, a hurricane in Mexico are just three weather-related disasters that hit in this month alone. This makes it clear that if humanity is to progress, we must reach for and build socialism, here and around the world.

Because what other kind of government will address these crises genuinely? Not a profit-driven one. Tiny Cuba, a small island nation of 11 million people, sends doctors to Pakistan, Honduras, Gambia when disaster strikes. Imagine if the U.S. could do just a little bit of that?

Well, we cannot just imagine. We must do it. Only a socialist U.S. will have the necessary political will to deal with each environmental crisis. We will begin with reparations for the third world to get rid of the condescending charity of celebrities and the fake material aid of U.S. government agencies. We will return what was stolen from the continents of Africa, Latin America and Asia so that the people themselves will have the means to rebuild their countries, including the infrastructures to address environmental concerns.

Unbridled imperialism—so-called globalization—has caused one of the greatest waves of migration from the homelands of the oppressed to the developed capitalist countries. It has forced an unprecedented mass movement of workers, all in search of a job.

A socialist U.S. would mean that workers from Mexico or India or the Philippines would no longer be forced to migrate, but they will be welcome if they come and they can stay here if they want.

This is why our party is so important. Our feet are planted firmly on the ground. We can see that the struggle to demand a driver’s license for undocumented workers has become a revolutionary demand. We want to be part of that struggle. But we see ahead as well. Because we demand too that the billions spent on war be used to repair the environment, to do whatever it takes to assure that humanity is safe and warm, fed and housed, no matter the weather.

We owe it to the billions of workers and oppressed of the world to defeat U.S. imperialism. We owe it to them to build a socialist nation right here in the belly of the beast.