Migrants, the international working class and May Day

Excerpts from a talk by WW Secretariat member Teresa Gutierrez to the WWP National Conference, Nov. 14.

To add to the long list of crimes against humanity perpetrated by imperialism, we can include today’s unprecedented wave of human migration. I speak not only of the millions of undocumented migrants forced to leave their countries in hazardous boats or sweltering windowless trucks, transport that too often becomes the coffins for too many.

I speak also of the immense number of workers who are documented and move from one country or continent to another because of little opportunity at home. And I speak of the massive number of people who are forced to migrate as a result of natural environmental disasters aggravated by the neglect of capitalist governments: climate refugees.

A ravaging profit-driven war-mongering imperialist system has produced a sea of workers whose true numbers may never been known—who are thrust from one part of the world to another against their will.

But in that sea of workers lies the demise of imperialism. For this is an army in the making, an army of workers whose eyes have been opened about the true nature of capitalism.

Here are some of the numbers, which are very conservative estimates.

In 2006, 426 natural disasters occurred in 108 countries, affecting 143 million people. In 2008, climate-related natural disasters like droughts and floods forced 20 million people out of their homes.

Another 4.6 million were internally displaced by so-called conflicts.

That same year 5 million were displaced by flooding in India. In 2008 in the Philippines, nearly 2 million were forced from their homes by storms. Filipinos were devastated once again by another typhoon a few weeks ago.

We will never forget Hurricane Katrina, where at least 1,500 people died in New Orleans alone. Tens of thousands more were forced out of their homes as a result of capitalist neglect.

Hurricane Katrina will always be synonymous with one of the greatest racist acts of genocide against African Americans in this country ever.

Workers being forced to migrate even for backbreaking and low-paying jobs amounts to what has been recently coined by Filipinos as a massive “brain and brawn drain.”

The stories of these workers are some of the greatest human tragedies. The tears that have been shed for them would probably fill an ocean.

We know about the tragedies of those who die in Arizona, the sweatshops of Los Angeles or the detention centers of New York.

But too little is known here about the workers from Algeria, Morocco and Kenya as they make their way to Europe.

One-third of the 200 million international migrants live in Europe. Migration to Europe has become a trail of tears. Some reports state that since 1988 over 14,000 people have died on the European borders. At least 6,000 are missing at sea.

In the often photographed Mediterranean Sea, at least 11,000 people have died in the last few years. Heading towards Spain 5,000 more have died in the waters. Inside ferries and cargo vessels, hundreds more die of asphyxiation.

The Sahara Desert is a dangerous but obligatory passage. Almost 2,000 people have died in that desert since 1996 and that is conservative. In the mountains of Turkey and Greece, 112 people have frozen to death as they tried to make it to Europe.

If they make it in, increased racism and xenophobia awaits. Europe, taking a U.S. cue, is passing anti-immigrant legislation, such as Fortress Europe.

Yet the tide cannot be stopped. Over 200 million people worldwide live outside their country of birth. Nineteen cities around the world have 1 million or more foreign born.

We are in a unique moment in history. The contradiction between the socialized means of production and capitalist private property relations is on a phenomenal world scale.

The workers of the world travel the world like never before, although mainly under duress. But it has resulted in a global workforce where barriers of language and culture are being chipped away. Forced migration has laid the basis for an army whose instincts are thoroughly anti-capitalist. Its potential has yet to be tapped but it is nonetheless there.

There is one day when workers around the world—from the Philippines to France, from Bolivia to Bangladesh, from Kenya and Cuba to Canada and Korea—come together.

And that day is May Day.

We must leave the 2009 50th anniversary conference with this in mind: because of our work, because of our Leninism in particular, we are in a key position with regards to building May Day 2010. We take that responsibility seriously, with no other objective in mind than advancing the struggle.

We aim to unite U.S.-born workers with immigrants: We want it, we work for it, we demand it!

And we are getting ready. On one front alone, there is an explosion waiting to happen.

Millions around the world cannot go home because there are no jobs. Yet the bosses no longer want them in the capitalist countries. This is a tension that is sure to explode. Where can these workers go?

They must go into the offices and buildings of all the working-class organizations around the world who want what we want.

And that is to build the class struggle, to build May Day 2010 and every year after that.

Long Live May Day!