The class struggle surrounding racist raids, arrests, and deportations is intensifying by the minute here in Chicago and around the country. The new vile administration of President Donald Trump has come crashing out of the gate, making good on many of the fascist threats made on the campaign trail, spurred on by a flurry of executive orders made the evening of his inauguration.
Chicago particularly, as a so-called “sanctuary” city has been in headlines in the lead-up to Trump returning to power as a “ground zero” for the anti-worker attacks unleashed by the Gestapo Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and their border czar Tom Homan.As a result, there is a cloud of fear hanging everywhere. In one West Side dual-language elementary school, over 50 students didn’t show up the Wednesday after the inauguration out of anxiety the school would be raided. Indeed, there have been reports of federal agents showing up at schools, although as of this writing they have been successfully repelled by education workers. Undocumented workers hesitate to step out of their homes, forced to choose between feelings of safety and earning wages.
But even as the bosses spread state terror, the working class here is demonstrating resilience, organization, and fightback! Numerous rapid response networks have been springing up everywhere, determined to patrol, mobilize and defend neighborhoods against fascist ICE. In schools and universities plans are being made to repel attacks, and healthcare workers are finding ways to secure the wellbeing of the workers they serve.
The international communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is finding ways to connect with these struggles here and give leadership on the ground in our neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. We will continue to connect these racist attacks to the wider decay of the capitalist profit system, and the need to build a worker-run communist society to truly guarantee the safety and dignity that our class deserves!
Inter-imperialist rivalry drives fascism, lays ground for war
Trump’s frenzy of activity and assault on workers in cities like Chicago can best be understood in the context of the continuing decline of U.S. imperialism on a global level. Losing ground internationally to imperialist rivals like China and Russia, the U.S. ruling class is forced to ramp up fascist attacks, including scapegoating migrant workers, pushing extreme nationalism, and making deep cuts to social services to discipline workers and get the country on a better war footing. Although these are attacks that Trump and his faction of the ruling class take on with delight, overall they are embraced by all bosses who understand the inevitable trends of capitalism towards wider war.
Growing fascism in the U.S. and many other places around the world means that the bosses are more inclined to dispense with any pretense of the so-called “rule of law” and due process and instead resort to more unmasked class dictatorship. Even as we help organize with other workers around know-your-rights workshops, we cannot for an instant believe that the bosses will willingly give up their state power. They will attack us in any way that suits their short or long-term interests.
Nor can we hope or ally with any liberal or “progressive” wing of the capitalist ruling class to come to our defense. These class enemies have shown no hesitation in doing above and beyond the vicious assaults that Trump is boasting about today. We have seen the record numbers of deportations under the administrations of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, not to mention their gung-ho support of Israel’s genocide on workers in Gaza. Even the “People’s Mayor” Brandon Johnson of Chicago showed his “solidarity” to migrant workers by corralling them into overcrowded filthy shelters, feeding them rotten food and letting kids die (see CHALLENGE, 1/31/24).
Notably, several of the groups responding to ICE presence on the ground take their leadership from non-profit organizations, which themselves are generally appendages of the liberal capitalist bosses. Absent a revolutionary outlook, the call can only be for workers to hide and wait until a “better” set of bosses can get back in power. But deportations and raids are still guaranteed as long as capitalism exists.
As communists we have an essential role to play not only in giving leadership to defending our working-class siblings but also to educate how only communism can break down borders and create the egalitarian classless society that makes designations like “undocumented” and “citizen” irrelevant.
¡Abajo con Trump – Que viva comunismo!
It’s clear that the international working class is heading into an extremely volatile period. Many risks and dangers will present themselves but at the same time there are opportunities to expose the true deadly and unsustainable nature of capitalism and win more workers to building a mass PLP and the fight for communist revolution. We must be bold yet collective as we make plans and refuse to meet the bosses’ attacks with complacency or fear.
The impulses on display right now to support and protect our fellow workers in a climate of state terror are the glimmers of communism in action. We need to nurture and grow these selfless seedlings into an international, multiracial movement and a Party of millions that uproots and burns down this rotten system once and for all. ¡Abajo con Trump, Biden y capitalismo! ¡Que viva el communismo! (Down with Trump, Biden, and Capitalism! Long Live Communism!)
