CARRIZO SPRINGS, TX, July 3—“Smash racist deportation, working people have no nation!” This international chant resounded as multiracial and multigenerational contingent of Progressive Labor party (PLP) members marched in firm formation towards a newly opened concentration camp for children, a site only 12 miles away from the Crystal City concentration camp that held Japanese, German, and Italian families during World War II. They joined liberal organizers of the protest, who kicked the protest off in a pacifist fashion: mini banners, carrying gifts of bookmarks and teddy bears, all while urging protesters to decorate a fence a hundred yards from the entrance to this Carrizo Springs child detention facility.
Liberal pacifism vs. communist militancy
It was clear that there was tension between liberals, identity centered organizations and PLP when sing-along sheets with “This Little Light of Mine” and “De Colores” were passed out. We knew that singing “This Little Light of Mine” was just a means of steering working-class anger into passivity—telling people to hold out for hope that things will change, rather than calling upon them to join in multiracial unity to defeat and destroy capitalism. PL’ers were immediately critical when these pacifist song-sheets were distributed, and when the leadership of the rally moved to sing them someone in the crowd yelled out, “WHY? NO!”
As the liberals stumbled to answer, members PLP sang “The Internationale,” the communist working-class anthem, while distributing CHALLENGE and communist leaflets. PLP won the crowd over with our anthem, our chants, and our speeches, exposing the politricks of both Republican and Liberal bosses and politicians to use racism to divide the working class and super-exploit migrant workers crossing the border, for their political and financial gain.
We called upon everyone to unite and fight back against capitalist bosses. The capitalist media has been supposedly uncovering the injustices at the US-Mexico border, but the end game is basically to push workers in the U.S. into the dead-end path of voting our way into a better world. But we know better, and in an effort to spread PLP’s line around building a united international working class, members took to protest against a new children’s detention center in Carrizo Springs, Texas.
The squalor in these concentration camps is a holdover from the Obama era but the media focus from outlets controlled by main wing finance capital is new, as they seek to build mass movements to attack Trump, the number one threat to their decades-old blood-soaked world empire.There were approximately 100 people in attendance, including PL’ers from New York, Chicago and New Jersey.
Part of communist training
This trip to the detention facility at Carrizo Springs was a part of a week-long summer project in Texas (see page 8).
We greeted the Toyota Factory workers with communist literature, protested racist deportations again at the border crossing of Laredo and volunteered in migrant shelters nearby.
Three leaflets were written and translated in one day for use through the week.Study groups and forums helped a new generation of young leaders achieve greater unity and understanding of how inter-imperialist rivalry is driving divisions in ruling classes worldwide and the danger that liberal misleaders backed by main-wing finance capitalists planning World War III present the gravest danger to the international working class.
Thugs in blue try to intimidate
In addition to the contradictions of the liberals, the police, true to fascist form, broke their promises to work with the rally organizers and proved that they were there to serve the bosses. From the jump, there was a heavy police presence. From kkkops standing among us in the crowd with Blue Lives Matter patches on their sleeves to squad cars cruising up and down the dirt road, whirring police sirens and ordering us to clear the already cleared pathway.
They cruised slowly up and down the main dusty road in front of the center in large black SUVs, inches away from protesters. They periodically interrupted the speakers with sirens and admonishments to “clear the road” and operated a drone over the crowd to identify demonstrators.  Although we abided, police still called tow trucks without warning and ordered more officers to the ground, blocking both ends of the road in military fashion. At the close of the protest, three people were arrested and two cars were towed.
Leave the flags where they belong...in the gutter
When the contradictions of liberals are pointed out and acknowledged, especially by communists, workers and youth lean further left. Several dozen hand-held American flags the rally organizers planned to distribute went un-used, as the political tone we established made it clear that US nationalism and patriotism would not be well received by the crowd.
Workers won to these ideas will carry out mass murder overseas and, in the end, endorse a border regime of biometric fascism that will make Trump’s border wall look like child’s play as long as it adheres to the liberal fantasy of the “rule of law.” Due to our ability to boldly inject a communist alternative to the liberal misleadership on display, working class internationalism achieved a small but important symbolic victory over nationalism and patriotism, as the U.S. flag remained on the ground, where it belongs, like the flags of all bosses’ nations.New forces committed to raising the red flag of the revolutionary international working class were forged over the past week!