NEW YORK, Feb. 25—Tonight more than 100 union members and immigrant rights activists met to discuss how workers can combat President Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportations. The rulers are whipping up fascist anti-immigrant hysteria in preparation for wider wars and further attacks on citizens and immigrants alike. Building a fighting movement based on international solidarity, smashing all borders, and taking on local and federal police can build the base of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party on many levels. This was one of dozens of meetings taking place across the area as workers and youth organize to fight back.
The head of the 28,000-member, mostly Muslim, NY Taxi Worker Alliance (NYTWA) opened the program describing how the migrant crisis has been caused by U.S. imperialism, through wars, poverty/sanctions, gangs and/or climate crisis. She described how NYTWA went on strike and shut down JFK International Airport during Trump’s first term when he announced his Muslim travel ban. More than 700 taxis refused to move, choking off the airport as thousands more activists rushed to JFK to oppose, and defeat the ban.
A leader of the United Auto Workers (UAW) spoke next about how legal-aid attorneys and legal service workers walked out and shut down the court system to stop ICE agents from patrolling the hallways looking for immigrants who were there on official court business, also during Trump’s first term. These strikes succeeded in keeping ICE out of the courts. A Service Employees International Union (SEIU) member described how 30 percent of all healthcare workers and 20 percent of home healthcare workers are immigrants and how these threats will affect far more than the immigrant workers being targeted.
The big contradiction here is that while many workers in many unions are open to defending immigrants and taking on Trump, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) leadership and most major unions are politically and financially tied to the Democratic Party that has paved the way for the fascist attacks on migrant workers. The big contradiction here is that while many workers in many unions are open to defending immigrants and taking on Trump, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) leadership and most major unions are politically and financially tied to the Democratic Party, which has paved the way for the attacks on migrant workers (see glossary on page 6). The Democrats built up the deportation apparatus that Trump used to deport our working-class siblings. Big liberal fascist President Barack Obama still holds the record for “deporter-in-chief.”
UAW President Shawn Fein, who was praised as a militant reformer, is supporting Trump’s tariffs and wrote in the Washington Post of his willingness to work with the new Fuhrer. And despite numerous plane crashes and the firings of thousands of federal workers, the AFL-CIO leadership has yet to call a national action in response. They don’t want us in the streets, they want us trapped in the voting booths and keep this violent system intact.
By taking this fight to our unions and mass organizations, on our jobs and in our schools and communities, we can help workers break away from this treacherous leadership and get on the road to revolution.
