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Editorial: Biden’s ICE = gestapo Workers have no Borders!
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- 25 May 2023 712 hits
While the Joe Biden administration has ended the use of Title 42, a public health law that was perverted to stop migrants from claiming asylum in the U.S., the criminal abuse of immigrant workers at the border with Mexico continues unabated. Liberal racist Biden is following in the lethal footsteps of open racist Donald Trump and deporter-in-chief Barack Obama. The crisis of capitalism that displaces workers from their homes is only getting worse. Whoever gets elected as the next capitalist stooge in the White House won’t change that hard reality. Only communism—a new society run by and for the working class—can end this mass misery.
Breaking his campaign promise to create a humane border, liar Biden has instead accelerated deportations by adding a transit ban. His new policy requires proof that a migrant has tried and failed to get asylum from a country they passed through en route to the U.S.—in most cases Mexico, where the bosses refuse to provide safe conditions or a reasonable path to legal residency. Any migrants breaking this bogus rule can be deported summarily and blocked from reentering the U.S. for five years. These workers are forced into lives of utter instability and daily degradation, all for the ‘crime’ of trying to survive. The recent death of an 8 year old Honduran migrant girl, seeking ayslum on the Texas border after being denied medical assistance is just one of the many racist horrors committed by the liberal fascists on a daily basis (NBCnews.com, 5/19)
The cages Obama built are still full of migrant workers and families, with more than four thousand people a day booked into immigration detention centers (Washington Post, 5/19). Undocumented workers are sorted for immediate deportation or bused to inhumane conditions in mass shelters. They sleep on police station floors with no beds in Chicago, or in “respite centers” without showers in New York (Chicago Sun Times, 5/1). Terrorizing migrants coerces them to take jobs with low wages and to accept potential pathways to citizenship that enforce loyalty to the bosses, often by joining their military.
As the bosses’ profit system crumbles all around us, the international working class continues to bear the brunt of its failure. The migrant crisis is part of a broader crisis of global capitalism. Sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry and the war in Ukraine have made the situation even more desperate for the working class.
We, the communists of the Progressive Labor Party, affirm that workers have no borders. We must fight back against racism, nationalism, and the bosses’ brutal attacks against migrant workers. In unity with the international working class, we are building an international communist movement that will smash the bosses’ borders with communist revolution.
Workers uprooted by capitalism
Immigrant workers have been uprooted by the misery generated by capitalism–by unemployment and hunger, by criminal gangs in league with the bosses, by the violence perpetuated by this ruthless system. In countries like Guatemala, El Salvador, Venezuela, and Honduras, workers have long been struggling under extreme poverty. Over the last three years, with jobs lost to the COVID pandemic and living standards eroded by inflation, conditions have gone from bad to horrific.
The working class in the U.S. has not been spared. In New York City, the world’s greatest center of wealth, half the population lacks adequate income to meet basic needs (Citizens Committee for Children of New York).
To divert workers from the reality of the disaster of the profit system, the bosses are criminalizing poverty and displacement. Their targets are the homeless or those forced to make a dangerous trek across thousands of miles to find work. These are the people that capitalism deems most expendable. The racist rulers have sent the message, and the most racist elements of the working class are following their lead. Jordan Neely was murdered on a New York subway for demanding food. To protect the real estate developers’ profit margins, people without homes are refused shelter in liberal-run cities where hundreds of thousands of apartments sit empty (City Limits, 11/17/22). In fact, there are 28 vacant homes for every homeless person in the U.S. (United Way, 3/28).
Bosses’ economy depends on undocumented labor
Capitalists ignore borders every day. They freely span the globe to fight their wars and to exploit workers and raw materials. They use borders to restrict or expand the numbers of migrant workers allowed into their countries, as their shifting economic needs demand. Meanwhile, workers are held prisoner by these arbitrary dividing lines, and used as cheap labor and cannon fodder in the bosses’ wars.
Even as the bosses attack immigrant workers across the globe, they cynically rely on undocumented labor to extract profits. Whole sectors of the U.S. economy would fall apart without undocumented labor: “The vast majority (96.7%) of Mexican undocumented workers are working and contributing to the economy and are vital to critical American industries including agriculture (11.5 percent of the workforce), construction (6.7 percent), and the tourism and hospitality sector (3.4 percent)” (New American Economy Report, 3/8/2021).
One hallmark of capitalism in crisis is rising fascism, as the bosses seek to scapegoat certain workers for the system’s spiraling failures. Trump and his billionaire backers built a movement on attacking immigrant workers. Now that Biden and his band of liberal Democrats and their own billionaire backers find themselves pathetically unable to alleviate the crisis, they are out-Trumping Trump in their racist anti-migrant attacks. The bosses can’t admit that capitalism cannot possibly serve workers’ needs. As the world spins toward global war, they will become increasingly vicious and organized in their assaults.
One international working class
The capitalist bosses have carved up the world through war and genocide. They build nationalism to enlist the working class to defend the lines that imprison and divide us. Every national border has been drawn with workers’ blood. By keeping workers fighting each other, the ruling class ties us to their thieving, murderous rule. The time has come to erase the bosses’ borders and to unite the international working class. The time has come to smash racism, sexism, and nationalism–to smash capitalism itself.
PLP knows that migrant workers are a critical element in this fight. They have deep knowledge of the horrors of capitalism from their own experience. They possess unlimited potential to turn their collective power to endure into a force for revolution. We must unite with migrant workers wherever we are.
Workers everywhere, on all sides of all borders, suffer from the exploitation, incompetence, and brutality of capitalism, from its callous indifference to human life. Communism means abolishing all nations. It means serving one world, one Party, one international working class. Join us!
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MAY DAY ... Oaxaca: Hoist red flags with working-class pride
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- 11 May 2023 748 hits
On May Day, as part of the mass march of Section 22 of the teachers union of Oaxaca, 15 workers hoisted the red flags of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and chanted revolutionary slogans.
We distributed 2,000 flyers with the slogan “Communist May Day,” electoral democracy is bosses’ dictatorship, highlighting the deceitful essence of the capitalist class’s electoral democracy. We attacked the bootlicking political parasites of the pro-bosses’ parties that support this criminal capitalist system that oppresses the working class throughout the world.
We also called on workers to join our revolutionary communist party, PLP, to make revolution and build communism, a new society without bosses that serves the needs and interests of the international working class.
We enthusiastically wore caps imprinted with the PLP logo. Young men and women carried a banner that invited workers and students to “Destroy capitalism!” and “Fight for a communist world!”
Our slogans resounded in unison during the march and in the main streets of the Historic Center of Oaxaca City, drawing the attention of teachers and other workers who were witnessing the mega-march. The slogans that we chanted with energy and great enthusiasm were: “This march is not a celebration, but a struggle and a remonstration”, “May Day is a Workers’ Day”, “The proletarian struggle is not parliamentarian”, “Electoral democracy is bosses’ dictatorship”, “The only path to freedom is workers’ dictatorship”, “Fight, win, workers to power”, “Government and bourgeoisie, the same crap”, “Who are we? The communists from PLP ”, “The workers’ struggles have no borders.”
At the end of the march, we had a get-together where we discussed our participation in this commemorative march of the international working class, and we agreed on activities to give continuity to the revolutionary process outlined by our revolutionary communist party, PLP.
My first May Day: ‘I was in the right place’
This past Saturday I marched in my first May Day parade, arriving to shouts of “rain or shine baby, rain or shine!” It was incredible to move down Flatbush Avenue as a unit in our red ponchos shouting “who are we? PLP!” I joined the Progressive Labor Party this past August, after seven years of working alongside and learning from Party members in countless struggles with the NYC Department of Education. Throughout those struggles we got some wins, but I came to realize, first, that under capitalism our wins could only be temporary, and second, that the working class was fully capable of running things themselves. Listening to the Kingsborough students describe their fight back against their racist administration reinforced my belief that I was in the right place. Today I read a quote from a worker who was protesting the tragic murder of Jordan Neely in the NYC subway–a predictable tragedy under a system that casts people struggling with mental illness to the streets to fend for themselves. When asked why he was protesting the worker responded “I kind of felt hopeless. I just wanted to be in community with other people and not feel so helpless.” For me, the community that can make the change we need is PLP.
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Rutger striker: ‘incredibly powerful’
This was my first May Day celebration! Despite the inclement weather, the spirits were high and I loved getting to meet a legion of new comrades. After a long and tough year, it felt great to celebrate the wins and remember those we have lost. This year was full of firsts for me, my first year working “full-time” as a “part-time” worker, my first strike, and my first full-time union job offer (with real benefits)!
Worker power is stronger than ever, and the number of unions, strikes, and community organizing keeps growing across the United States. Taking a moment to remember that we are all in this fight together is
what May Day is all about.
Even in the rain, the feeling of solidarity was pulsing through the crowd. It was incredibly powerful to hear from fellow workers fighting for justice and equality throughout the country and the world. Our experiences of oppression and injustice in a global capitalist system may be different, but our chains are linked, and we can only lift the hammer of revolution to free ourselves through solidarity.
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Pace of capitalist crises increases as banks collapse
New York Times, 5/5–A cluster of regional banks scrambled on Thursday to convince the public of their financial soundness, even as their stock prices plunged and investors took bets on which might be the next to fall. The tumult brought questions about the future of the lenders to the fore, suggesting a new phase in the crisis that began two months ago with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, and was punctuated on Monday by the seizure and sale of First Republic Bank…The trading was a reminder that the crisis may yet continue, belying predictions that the situation would be calmer after JPMorgan Chase came to an agreement with government officials to acquire the ailing First Republic. Regulators agreed to assume billions of dollars of potential losses lurking on First Republic’s books, and JPMorgan’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, declared immediately after the acquisition that “this part of the crisis is over.”
India’s bosses use old recipe of tribal violence to control workers
Al Jazeera, 5/7–At least 54 people have reportedly been killed and some 23,000 people displaced, most of them sheltering in army camps, in ethnic violence in India’s northeastern state of Manipur, according to military officials. On Sunday, the army said it had “significantly enhanced” its surveillance in violence-affected areas, including the Imphal Valley, through aerial means such as drones and the deployment of military helicopters.
The unrest in Manipur state erupted on Wednesday after a protest march organized by the Kuki tribal group sparked clashes with the Meitei non-tribal group, resulting in widespread damage to vehicles and properties. Authorities on Thursday issued “shoot-at-sight” orders and called military reinforcement to quell the violence that opened a new faultline in the state with a checkered history of ethnic violence. Internet connection was cut off after violence broke out on Wednesday and a curfew was imposed in nine out of the 16 districts.
The Meiteis…Hindu community, which is based in the state’s capital city of Imphal, forms more than 50 percent of the state’s population of 3.5 million, as per India’s last census in 2011. The Naga and Kuki tribes…two mostly Christian tribes form around 40 percent of the state’s population, and enjoy “Scheduled Tribe” status, which gives them land-owning rights in the hills and forests.
U.S. control of Guyana expands as oil profits flow
Reuters, 4/27–Exxon Mobil Corp and its partners have approved a $12.7 billion investment for their fifth and most expensive offshore oil project in Guyana, the U.S. firm said in a statement. The project called Uaru will produce up to 250,000 barrels of oil and gas per day…The decision coincides with Exxon considering whether to expand its holdings in Guyana through an auction of oil blocks set for July. Exxon and partners Hess Corp and CNOOC Ltd control all production in the South American nation, which according to consultancy Rystad Energy is set to leapfrog the United States next decade as one of the world’s largest offshore producers. “Our Guyana investments and unrivaled development success continue to contribute to secure, reliable global energy supplies,” said Liam Mallon, president of Exxon’s oil and gas producing business.
Cuban rulers rule out May Day march - again
BBC, 4/30–Every year hundreds of thousands of people are bussed in from across the island to fill Havana’s Revolution Square on International Workers’ Day. It is the first time since the 1959 revolution that the celebrations have been cancelled for economic reasons. In recent weeks long queues have formed at petrol stations, with drivers often waiting for days. Cuban authorities have traditionally mobilised huge resources to ensure the success of the May Day parade, transporting workers en masse to Havana. Before this year, the event had only ever been cancelled in 2020 and 2021, because of the Covid pandemic.
By Langston Hughes (1938)
‘Chant for May Day’
by Langston Hughes (1938)
To be read by a Workman with, for background, the rhythmic waves of rising and re-rising Mass Voices, multiplying like the roar of the sea. WORKER :
The first of May:
When the flowers break through the earth,
When the sap rises in the trees.
When the birds come back from the South.
Workers:
Be like the flowers, 10 VOICES :
Bloom in the strength of your unknown power, 20 VOICES :
Grow out of the passive earth, 40 VOICES :
Grow strong with Union,
All hands together—
To beautify this hour, this spring,
And all the springs to come 50 VOICES :
Forever for the workers! WORKER :
Workers: 10 VOICES :
Be like the sap rising in the trees, 20 VOICES :
Strengthening each branch, 40 VOICES :
No part neglected— 50 VOICES :
Reaching all the world. WORKER :
All workers: 10 VOICES :
White workers, 10 OTHERS :
Black workers, 10 OTHERS :
Yellow workers, 10 OTHERS :
Workers in the islands of the sea— 50 VOICES
Life is everywhere for you, WORKER :
When the sap of your own strength rises 50 VOICES :
Life is everywhere. 10 VOICES :
May Day! 20 VOICES :
May Day! 40 VOICES :
May Day! 50 VOICES :
When the earth is new, WORKER :
Proletarians of all the world: 20 VOICES :
Arise, 40 VOICES :
Grow strong, 60 VOICES :
Take Power, 80 VOICES :
Till the forces of
the earth are yours 100 VOICES :
From this hour
