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MAY DAY 2008

Unity grows among immigrants, Black community and labor

Published Apr 30, 2008 9:47 PM

April 27—On April 25 when the not guilty verdict against the cop killers of Sean Bell, a 23-year-old African American was announced, immigrant rights activists and many immigrants spontaneously joined the progressive movement in a demonstration in Queens, N.Y., to protest the racist verdict.


May Day press conference, April 28,
New York City. Third from the left is
Teresa Gutierrez.
WW photo: Deirdre Griswold

In November 2006 on the night before his wedding, Sean Bell was killed in a hail of 50 bullets. In the streets of New York, the cops became judge, jury and executioner. The verdict was once again a message sent by the capitalist state that the lives of Black people are worth nothing.

Immigrants and immigrant activists converged in Queens alongside those who had been for months organizing justice for Bell. They held signs that read, “Mexicans Support Sean Bell” and “NYPD Plus ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] Equals Racism.”

This development is enormously important for the tremendous growing solidarity that it represents among Latin@ and Black people. But it is also important for the cause of immigrant rights.

This kind of solidarity and unity is not only significant. It is decisive.

Since the historic upsurge of immigrants in the spring of 2006, the capitalist state has been determined to carry out a massive attack against immigrants.

For the last two years, efforts to get pro-immigrant, pro-worker and humane immigrant legislation through Congress have failed. A stalemate occurred in 2007 after hundreds of labor and progressive activists as well as immigrants descended upon Washington, D.C., in efforts to lobby Congress for progressive legislation.

These activists were first told to wait until the November congressional elections. Then they were told to wait until after the presidential elections; this came from friendlier congressional elements.

But in parallel with this stalemate in legislation, a vicious, racist, anti-worker and anti-immigrant policy has been implemented in this country every day. In too many ways to count, capitalist institutions locally, statewide and nationally are applying anti-immigration policies every day and in the most oppressive way possible.

These attacks are diverse, from ICE raids and deportations to police investigations and legislation that is punitive and repressive. Racial profiling by police officials is sweeping the country.

The abuses are so pervasive that even many mainstream newspapers have spoken out against the raids and the profiling. And even the Pope, no friend of the oppressed and one who tried to put a squash on the pro-poor and revolutionary liberation theology, has been forced to speak out against U.S. immigration policy.

Repression breeds resistance

Medill Reports, a Northwestern University—Washington publication of the Medill School, states that use of a little known 1996 law that permits cooperation between police officials and ICE “has mushroomed in the past year.”

“Under the program city and state officials may take on some immigration law enforcement funds, a prerogative left to the federal government.

“A total of 47 state and local law enforcement agencies are stepping in where Congress left off ... when it failed to pass immigration reform.”

The program is officially called 287(g), Immigration and Nationality Act; Delegation of Immigration Authority.

The law has resulted in abuse such as in Prince William County in Northern Virginia, where it is reported that the jails there are terrifyingly overcrowded.

In Maricopa County, Ariz., known as ground zero for fascistlike terror against immigrants and Latin@s, Sheriff Joe Arpaio has been accused of “mounting a posse” against immigrants.

Also in Arizona, right-wing racist legislators are attempting to bar public schools from teaching anything related to the history of people who are not white. A Republican representative, Russell Pearce, said his target is not “diversity instruction but schools that use taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate students” in what he characterized as “anti-American or seditious thinking.”

It was that kind of racist thinking that lay behind the attacks against Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of Barack Obama.

According to the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, “ICE agents arrested 4,000 people in workplace raids between October 2006 and September 2007.” These raids have a chilling effect in the immigrant community, but they are also anti-union as they are often aimed to bust up organizing drives.

In other attacks, the City Council of Merrimack, N.H., voted on April 17 to adopt an ordinance to ban nonresidents from the local beaches. The law was geared to keep out Latin@ immigrants.

This repression will not continue without a fightback. Across the county, dozens and dozens of cities will be marching on May Day for immigrant and workers’ rights. Coalitions around the country report growing unity. In Chicago, for example, the immigrant rights movement has met with leaders of Rainbow Push to work together for May Day.

In New York City, a U.S.-born truck driver will be leading the march from Union Square to downtown Manhattan for the closing rally, not on foot but with his semi-rig truck. This is a big development because it is yet another example of the seeds of unity and solidarity that are coalescing in the class struggle.

The immigrant struggle cannot advance without the solidarity and unity of U.S.-born workers. The struggle against unemployment and home foreclosures cannot advance without standing in solidarity with immigrants. And unity among Black people and Latin@s will be the final lynchpin that can end the capitalist system’s attacks against the multinational working class altogether.

That is why the fact that Mexican and other immigrants went all the way from the Bronx to Queens to show their solidarity with justice for Sean Bell is a revolutionary act. These kinds of actions must be duplicated and multiplied so that at a May Day very soon, tens of millions of workers from around the world and those born in the U.S. will march not just against attacks against immigrants or against people of color or high gas and food prices but against the capitalist system altogether. In those acts lie the seeds of liberation.

Workers World Party Secretariat members Teresa Gutierrez and Fred Goldstein will deliver papers at the Fourth International Conference on the Work of Karl Marx and the Challenges of the 21st Century in Havana, Cuba, May 5-8. This article continues the analysis made in Gutierrez’s paper on “Immigrants, the Revival of May Day in the United States and the Future for a United Working-class Fightback.” Both papers will soon be available on the workers.org Web site in their entirety. Gutierrez is also a leading organizer with the May 1st Coalition for Immigrant and Workers Rights in New York City.