PARIS, June 29 — The strike is not over for all of the 6,769 undocumented workers who struck here since last October. On June 27, their delegates decided to maintain their action against all bosses who have not yet signed a “promise to employ.” This document (called a Cerfa in French), is required for “legalization.” But many bosses must be forced to sign them. And there are many details to be followed to obtain “legalization.”

All this week, informational meetings are being held by trade (construction, restaurant, cleaning and security, temporary worker, etc.) to explain the June 18 agreement ending the eight-month strike (see CHALLENGE, (7/7). Next week similar meetings will be held for all the strike-support organizations.

The strikers and their supporters are establishing a massive organization to monitor every striker’s application for “legalization.” This includes opening two or three offices in Paris and one in every département where there are strikers; local and Paris copies of individual data sheets, so that snags at the local level can be ironed out at the Immigration Ministry in Paris; and special monitoring of the “legalization” of undocumented workers against whom deportation orders are outstanding. All this must be done during the July-August holiday months.

While the strikers’ applications will be given top priority, other undocumented workers also will be helped to file for “legalization.”

Mass Multi-Racial Action The Key

Amid all these bureaucratic capitalist roadblocks, it should be remembered that it was mass, militant, anti-racist rank-and-file action against the racist French government that brought these immigrant workers whatever advances they’ve made. As the CHALLENGE article stated (7/7), “The very fact that they struck as undocumented workers was itself a huge victory. It shows the international working class that immigrant workers worldwide can make such a fight and should be supported by all workers.

“A crucial factor essential to conducting the strike was the forging of multi-racial unity, notably between workers of African and Chinese origin, which gave the workers the fighting spirit needed for the ‘illegal’ occupations of work sites….

“PLP has consistently pointed out that as long as the bosses can divide workers by defining some as ‘illegal’ because they have crossed capitalist-created borders — and enables the bosses to super-exploit them and use them against native-born workers — it will weaken the entire working class. That’s why PLP says workers should ‘Smash All Borders!’ — which can only be accomplished through a communist revolution that eliminates all bosses and all borders….

“The continued existence of ‘conditions’ still differentiates these immigrants from France’s native-born workers….”

As soon as the bosses think they can get away with it (and they do hold state power), they will try to break the “legalization” agreement. The racist labeling of some workers as “illegal” undermines working-class solidarity. It enables the bosses to super-exploit the world’s 215 million immigrant workers with lower wages, worse conditions and constant job insecurity, under threat of deportation if they fight back.

Like the outcome of many workers’ reform struggles under capitalism, this one is a compromise. However, by turning the continuing struggle into a “school for communism,” workers can go beyond the struggle for “legalization” and take state power for ourselves through communist revolution. 

Three and one-half TRILLION dollars….That is the net worth of the 1,011 billionaires in the world today! The wealth of these 1,011 capitalists is probably enough to feed, house and clothe all the billions who live in poverty. But that’s not the way capitalism works.

These blood-sucking bosses accumulated that wealth on the backs of all those who are ill-fed, ill-housed and ill-clothed. It could take care of all the so-called “deficits” afflicting hundreds of millions of workers today.

But again, these bosses’ drive for maximum profits — the cornerstone of the capitalist system — is what puts tens of millions out of work, cuts budgets for schools, forecloses houses, all growing out of the nature of the profit system. When every president, finance minister, governor and mayor says “we” have to “share the sacrifice” of the crisis of capitalism, they represent the interests of these rapacious billionaires. And in cases of politicians like NYC’s billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg, they are one and the same person, cutting budgets for schools, mass transit and all social services.

A recent Forbes Magazine reports all these gory details: the average net worth of these 1,011 is $3.5 billion (multiplying those two figures produces the above $3.5 trillion). The richest is Mexico’s Carlos Slim, with $53.5 billion, slightly ahead of Bill Gates. The U.S. has 403 on that list; China has 64; Russia has 62.

A system that produces such exploitation of the world’s working class is begging to be destroyed, to be replaced by a system — communism — where our class which produces all that wealth will share it according to need.

The “Black Jacobins,” published in 1989, has the complete title “Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution.” But the author, C.L.R. James, points out Toussaint’s (known leader of the Haitian Revolution) grave political weaknesses. He proves that other less-known leaders and the masses themselves were the true movers of Haiti’s revolution against France and for freedom from slavery. This book is an important account of a massive fight against imperialism.

San Domingo was the richest colony in the world. French, British and Spanish conflicts made governing unstable, as did warring factions of white aristocracy, plantation owners and merchants. All agreed, however, on the need for racist oppression. Weekly food rations for slaves would last three days for healthy persons, and they were often whipped to death. Many French workers, so moved by sufferings of slaves, stopped drinking coffee, thinking of it as drenched in blood and sweat.

Slaves Burned Plantations

The ideas of the bourgeois French Revolution influenced the Haitian Revolution. If all men were created equal, then slaves should be included in that too. This encouraged slaves to set fire to plantations. Toussaint, then a coachman, protected his owner’s lands, however, for an entire month.  Finally he began to train other slaves to be soldiers. He also wanted to make a deal, agreeing to reduce the number of slaves freed from 400 to 60. His tendency to give allegiance to French “civilization” and to rely on the “expertise” of white owners would continue to be major weaknesses.

Victor Hugues, of black and white descent (at the time called by the racist name “Mulatto”), commanded slaves to chase out the British. Toussaint’s army gained power over Spanish territory. The Spanish governor handed over the colony to Toussaint in 1800; Toussaint’s first decrees to reduce taxes on property and lower duty on articles of trade, benefited mainly the wealthy.  His constitution continued slave trade!  While he declared that blacks would be free on landing, he returned them to white-dominated plantations.  General Moise disagreed that blacks should still work for whites, and Toussaint executed him. General Dessalines warned, “France will try to make you slaves again.”

Even when Bonaparte (leader of France after the French Revolution) left France with 20,000 troops, Toussaint could not believe France was determined to reinstitute slavery. Bonaparte had convinced his troops they were fighting for the “revolution” against Toussaint, telling them he was a traitor, selling out to the British.

Slaves Fought Bonaparte

 While French troops were increased to 60,000, disease and guerrilla warfare began to tip the balance in favor of the slaves. The slaves fought, hurling enormous stones down from the mountains, blocking paths, and digging pits covered with branches so that horsemen perished.

In retaliation, the French drowned hundreds of people in the Bay of LeCap, burned alive and tortured blacks. Toussaint then tried to make peace. Instead, he was arrested.  Far from being intimidated by these events, Haitian slaves met increasing terror with courage and firmness.

“Mulattos” and slaves under Dessalines and Capois Death took the offensive, attacked ships, hid their boats on shores, disappeared down rivers and reappeared at sea. Lemmonier-Delafosse (a believer in slavery) documented, “What men these blacks are! I have seen a solid column, torn by grape-shot from four pieces of cannon, advance without making a retrograde step, singing; this song was worth all our republican songs.”  That was the November 1803 march on Le Cap. On December 31 the final declaration of Independence was read. This struggle led to the first victory against slavery. The slaves’ courage and confidence in the working class is a lesson we should all learn from. J

As part of the ruling class’s plan to step up racist terror against all workers, Barack Obama — whose election as the first black President supposedly signaled an era of a sharp decline in racism — has set a goal of deporting 400,000 immigrant workers in 2010, an all-time high. This increase in ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) terror represents a steady trend over the last eight years — a 132% increase in spending on immigration enforcement and a 142% increase in deportations. That totals over 2.6 million racist deportations, two thirds of which (1.7 million) were non-criminal deportations.

Representing the clearest form of U.S.-style fascism, these raids are designed to intimidate Latino workers, both documented and undocumented, in order to drive down wages and further disorganize the working class. In one brazen example of the anti-working class nature of these raids ICE thugs — spurred on by the company — raided Smithfield Pork’s North Carolina plant in 2007 to break a workers’ unionizing drive. To drive the point home, seven months later they raided the local neighborhoods. Since then workplace and neighborhood raids have been common. Prior to the 2010 immigrants’ rights march in Washington, D.C., Obama had ICE raid D.C. area restaurants and neighborhoods to intimidate Latino workers.

Deadly Immigrant Prisons

At any one time, ICE imprisons around 32,000 immigrants to await deportation. In January 2009, of the 32,000 inmates 18,690 had no criminal conviction. ICE uses 363 detention sites nationwide to handle its massive prisoner load. With no judge to appeal to, and nothing forcing authorities to press charges, immigrants can remain imprisoned for a very long time. In 2009, one prisoner had been jailed for over five years!

A 2009 Amnesty International report described conditions in these prisons as beyond the bounds of international human rights standards and even below ICE’s “official” deplorable “guidelines.” Despite most prisoners being non-criminal offenders, inmates are handcuffed, shackled and forced into overcrowded cells. Frequently a thousand miles from their homes, inmates have no immediate rights to a phone call or a lawyer, sometimes leaving their families not knowing their whereabouts for months.

Many complaints have been filed regarding the non-existent medical care at these facilities. Amnesty International even noted that from 2004-2009, 74 prisoners died in ICE custody due to the hellish “health” conditions. In Arizona, pregnant women are shackled to their beds during and after childbirth. Many don’t even find out what happened to their children until days after giving birth and are not allowed to nurse them until many months later.

Anti-Immigrant Hysteria Builds
Deadly Racism

The anti-immigrant hysteria stoked by the media and politicians to support the massive ICE terror operation has led to increases in anti-immigrant, anti-Latino hate groups and violence. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported that from 2003-2007, when CNN’s Lou Dobbs began his racist anti-immigrant rants, hate crimes against Latino workers rose 40%!

This increase in racism and violence has been encouraged by a criminal injustice system that doesn’t view murders of Latino workers as a crime. Four teenagers who brutally beat to death 25-year-old Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, PA in 2008, while shouting racist slurs, received only misdemeanor convictions. A month later, when Jeffrey Conroy stabbed Marcelo Lucero to death on Long Island, he was acquitted of murder charges, receiving only a first-degree manslaughter conviction. The trial revealed that Conroy and his friends had regularly engaged in racist attacks on Latino workers.

In May 2010, Seattle police brutally beat a Latino man while shouting racist epithets, only stopping when they realized he was “not the guy they were looking for.” Despite the incident being videotaped, no charges were filed against the officers. Later that month Border Patrol agents murdered Anastasio Hernandez with a taser in San Diego. In June a Border Patrol agent in El Paso, TX shot and killed 15-year-old Sergio Huereka while he stood on the Mexican side of the border. INS has shown no intention of investigating or charging any of these officers.

No Borders for Bosses’ $,
Only For Workers

Under capitalism, investments and those that control them are free to travel throughout the world seeking workers to exploit. Only the working class is bound within national borders and severely punished for moving to find work. Capitalists control national borders in order to control the working class.

Capitalists use racist immigration laws worldwide for similar purposes. In the U.S., Latin American workers are targeted; in France it’s workers from Northern Africa; in Germany it’s Turkish workers; in China it’s workers from Southeast Asia. In all cases these bosses’ laws are used to drive these populations further underground, making them easier to exploit. The end result is a divided working class and super-profits for the bosses as they use anti-immigrant racism to drive down all wages.

Capitalists punish immigrant workers, but it’s their system that creates the conditions forcing workers to search the globe for work. European imperialism destroyed African economies with over 200 years of theft. Yet now the European countries complain that African workers looking to escape mass poverty at home are migrating to Europe. The mass immigration of Latino workers to the U.S. began 30 years ago as U.S.-led neo-liberal economic policies destroyed the economies of Latin American states and the livelihoods of millions of Latino workers.

Anti-Immigrant Laws Attack all Workers

Racist terror has been the preferred weapon of choice for the U.S. ruling class in its struggle to keep workers divided and oppressed. Immigration laws are designed to terrorize not just immigrant workers but all super-exploited workers, who now have to fear police round-ups or being beaten or murdered by racist thugs.

The new immigration laws passed under Clinton further institutionalize and intensify the fascist U.S. police state, the world’s most oppressive, with over 2.6 million prisoners. Obama has cleverly used workers’ outrage at Arizona’s efforts to massively arrest Latino immigrants in order to build support for his fascist Dream Act.

The Act would force immigrants to turn themselves into the police for cataloguing with the “promise” of college. But since most can’t afford tuition, they’d be headed for the military to become cannon fodder for imperialist wars.

And even the “promise” of citizenship is
phony — 4,000 vets were deported last year, with
another 4,000 slated for this year.

The bosses’ hope the Dream Act will both build nationalism among immigrants while maintaining the capitalists’ carefully-cultivated system of anti-immigrant racism. Obama’s actions make it clear that he wants both the Dream Act and intensifying police terror.

Workers have taken to the streets by the hundreds of thousands in the U.S. to voice their opposition to this new Apartheid but, like Bush, Obama has shown that his allegiance lies with ruling-class exploiters, not with workers. Racism is capitalism’s lifeline, its source of super-profits and its primary weapon against the working class. Still, U.S. workers could learn from the international fight-back against anti-immigrant racism. In France undocumented immigrant workers struck for nearly nine months to gain “legal” status. In China migrant workers have shut down auto and electrical plants over low wages and horrific conditions.

But reforms can’t solve workers’ problems. Whatever reforms workers might win are taken away when capitalist crises impel bosses to maintain profits at workers’ expense. Only by building the PLP to eventually lead a communist revolution will workers be able to live in dignity, not in fear. Only then will we be able to smash all bosses’ borders and unite as one international working class.J

Sources:

^[1]  America’s Voice, “Obama Administration Immigration Deportations Exceed Bush’s Record,” 5/20/10.

^[1]  Center for Immigration Studies, “Immigration Raids at Smithfield,” 7/09.

^[1]  AP, “21 People Arrested During Immigration Raids at Area McDonalds,” 3/26/10.

^[1]  Washington Post, “Raids Throw Shadow Over Immigration Reform Rally,” 3/22/10.

^[1]  Global Detention Project, “United States Detention Profile,” 3/09.

^[1]  Amnesty International, “Jailed Without Justice: Immigration Detention in the USA,” 3/09.

^[1]  NPR, “Fresh Air,” 12/10/09.

^[1]  Amnesty International, “Jailed Without Justice: Immigration Detention in the USA,” 3/09.

^[1]  New America Media, “Pregnant and Shackled: Hard Labor for Arizona’s Immigrants,” 1/26/10.

^[1]  NPR, “All the Rage,” 4/1/10; SPLC, “’Patriot’ Groups, Militia Surge in Numbers in Past Year,” 3/2/10.

^[1]  The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, “Confronting the New Faces of Hate: Hate Crimes in America 2009,” 6/09.

^[1]  NYT, “Guilty Verdict in the Killing of Long Island Man,” 4/19/10.

^[1]  Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “Videotaped ‘Stomping’ Dominates Seattle Top Cop Selection,” 5/9/10.

^[1]  NBC San Diego, “Illegal Immigrant Shot with Taser Dies,” 6/1/10.

^[1]  MSNBC, “Mexico Slams Border Patrol Shooting of Teen,” 6/10/10.

^[1]  Time Magazine, “Arizona’s Next Immigration Target: Children of Illegals,” 6/11/10.

^[1]  USA Today, “Hispanics Flee Arizona Ahead of Immigration Law,” 6/9/10.