CHICAGO, November 20—A multiracial group of protestors took the streets of downtown Chicago this evening to attack a racist, anti-immigrant worker non-profit organization. For the second year in a row, anti-racist fighters blocked the entrances of the luxurious Swissotel on Wacker Drive, where Heartland Alliance was hosting their annual fundraising gala.
Although liberal politicians like to paint themselves as the saviors of immigrants, and the working class in general, their history of fascist collaboration with agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and mass deportations shows a deadlier reality.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and friends took part in this action, which enabled us to expose the liberal wing of the capitalist ruling class as the greater long-term threat to our class. Our goal is to win workers to break entirely with capitalist politricks in favor of joining a mass international PLP that smashes all borders with communist revolution!
Hold the antiracist line
Before the gala even began, there was already a sizable group of anti-racist fighters lined up on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. There were signs and banners that called out Heartland Alliance’s racist profiteering off of the detention of immigrant working-class youth. Some of the protestors were even dressed in elegant gowns and suits while wearing grotesque masks as a way to mock Heartland’s donors.
As the gala’s attendees started trying to pull in  to the driveway in front of the hotel, they were met with a human chain of protestors blocking their entrance. Although the hotel security was able to sneak in a few vehicles, there were a number of vehicles that were turned away entirely as we refused to break the line.
Once we had reached a critical mass in our numbers, we cranked up the militancy and took over nearby Wacker Drive during rush hour traffic. Both lanes of the street were blocked, as protestors held a long banner that read “Heartland Loves ICE: Imprisoning Children for Profit.” All the while, there were speakers on the bullhorn explaining Heartland’s connections to capitalism’s deportation machine and chants of “Heartland Alliance, jails kids for money!” and “Heartland donors, shame on you!”
Sure enough, it wasn’t long after blocking one of the busiest streets in the city’s wealthiest area that the bosses saw it necessary to call in their guard dogs of the Chicago Police Department (CPD).The racists-in-blue immediately started threatening arrests while trying to box in the anti-racist fighters with their patrol bicycles. Despite their threats, we refused to back down easily, holding the street for close to twenty more minutes before finally getting pushed onto the sidewalk.
This more militant action was a bold and necessary step. Many of the demonstrations organized in support of immigrant workers and refugees are limited by the liberal misleaders containing us, both physically and politically. To truly advance the mass movement, we need to be ready to break with the bosses’ laws as well as their misleadership in favor of revolutionary militancy backed up by communist politics and organization.
Heartland and liberals: guilty as hell
Heartland Alliance is definitely a worthy target of working-class rage. Since 2013, the organization has received more than $180 million from the federal government to house children around Chicago, making it one of the five largest detention operators in the United States. They mandate that any sponsor looking to gain custody of a detained youth give fingerprints and other information to databases that ICE then uses to track and terrorize immigrant workers (Chicago Reader, 11/27). They were forced to shut down four of their facilities in the surrounding suburbs after complaints surfaced about mistreatment and even sexual abuse of youth (ProPublica Illinois, 3/13).  
However, Heartland Alliance is only another liberal symptom of the larger capitalist disease. The liberal, more-dominant wing of the U.S. capitalist ruling class likes to rail against injustice and violence against immigrant workers, but only for their own political and economic profit. They cry fake tears about immigrant children being separated from their parents, but conveniently forget that many of the prisons where the children are held were built under Deporter-in-Chief Barack Obama’s watch. They all back the capitalist profit system at the end of the day, the same system that uses borders, racism and imperialism to divide, oppress and exploit all workers.
Abolish borders with communist revolution
To guarantee liberation for the international working class, we need to reject all forms of fascism, whether it be the domestic Small Fascists represented by Donald Trump and his ilk, or the international Big Fascists, fronted by the various stooges in the Democratic Party. The abolition of borders does not and will never come from voting, but only by building a mass international communist movement.
PLP represents the seeds of that movement, which will bury capitalism, racism, deportations, and exploitation for good. Join us and fight for a borderless, worker-run world.