The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) is the 12,000-member-strong organization of immigration lawyers. Several friends of PLP have been participating for several years in local chapters and at the national conventions, working in a mass professional organization which is led by liberals in the ruling class.
At the 2011 AILA convention, thousands of immigration lawyers were suckered by Obama’s top immigration cop’s announcement that his Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and attorneys would use “prosecutorial discretion” to stop deportations of non-criminals. Instead, racist round-ups and deportations increased to its highest level yet. Prosecutorial discretion meant that the ICE might be nice in a few instances, but that fascist attacks on immigrants would get worse.
Meanwhile, the leaders of the AILA welcomed prosecutorial discretion and convinced themselves that taking whatever crumbs the government gives is better than fighting back harder against racism. These leaders let Obama publicize his new policies from their convention. Now, after a year of “prosecutorial discretion,” it is clear that asking Obama to use more “discretion,” means pretending to fight but really just begging for mercy.
This year the same thing is happening again. During the 2012 AILA convention, Obama announced “prosecutorial discretion” to give “deferred action” to younger immigrants. (See next issue) “Deferred action” means postponed deportation.
Once again, the immigration lawyers’ leaders are acting as if it is a gift from god. But the promise of “deferred action” is dangerous. The young immigrants will have to identify themselves (endangering their relations) and pass a security clearance. Even then, they will only receive a letter saying the government won’t try to deport them right away and a work permit for two years. If things work out, they will have a “chance” to join the army and fight in the Middle East. No one knows what will happen if Romney gets elected or if Obama changes his mind. No legal residence or citizenship is included, or even mentioned in the new proposal. The government can still deport each applicant and their families whenever it chooses!
At this year’s convention, the sellout past president offered an “open forum” promising urgent discussion on how to combat anti-immigrant legislation in states like Alabama and Arizona. Not surprisingly, the audience microphones were turned off and no questions were allowed. The main guest speaker was the racist attorney general of Utah, who demanded that the audience write letters to congressmen, organize “lobby” days at state capitols and ask big business to help immigrants, the same useless tools that haven’t worked for years. The Utah attorney general bragged that his state’s law is “anti-immigrant lite.”
Meanwhile, two speakers from community activist organizations didn’t show up, possibly because they were uninvited by the organizers. Later, at a general membership meeting, one attorney demanded that the microphones be turned on in the sessions and that open discussion be permitted, instead of just increasingly top-down dominance by leaders whose only answer is voting.
This year, after years of struggle in the organization, many immigration lawyers protested their leaders’ kiss-up approach to the Obama administration. One group voted to demand that the leaders stop begging for crumbs and start fighting harder for better laws.
But fighting for “better” capitalist laws instead of crumbs like prosecutorial discretion cannot help in the long run. This is because the world economic crisis means that the United States and each of its international competitors are fighting each other in a downward spiral in which all workers suffer more, racism increases and the capitalist system can’t easily pretend that the government is there to help the people. Liberal misleaders must promise improvements, even as things get worse and people see the truth.
This problem for the rulers was evident in the speeches of the sellout convention leaders. The president-elect admitted her shock that “prosecutorial discretion” increased deportations. She admitted that she was “speechless” and “couldn’t explain it” and that “prosecutorial discretion” had turned out to be an “empty promise.” She was frozen in her role as sellout liberal leader, like a deer caught in the headlights, because she admitted spending months “giving ICE (the immigration police) a chance” to make prosecutorial discretion help immigrants. But Obama used it to do the opposite. She claimed that Obama would “really really keep his promise” with the new deferred action policy despite his racist lies about prosecutorial discretion throughout last year.
This is important for our class because it shows the weakness and fear that liberal leaders have when their pathetic begging approach cannot deliver. Hundreds of immigration lawyers and millions of immigrants now see that immigration law in the Obama era is filled with empty promises. The so-called “liberal” system can be exposed for what it is — an increasingly fascist engine to increase the threat of deportations and force everyone to work for less, with the undocumented at the bottom.
As workers come to understand this, these liberal leaders can be rejected. Immigrants’ and citizens’ unity can battle the development of fascism now by mass protesting in the immigration courts, at the detention centers and at the border, in a movement which has the revolutionary destruction of capitalism and its politicians as its goal and the creation of an anti-racist, sharing communist society as the result.
The revolutionary alternative is important to consider right now, because the other alternative is clear: voting or begging the bosses to make their cops be nicer is like asking your prison guard to treat you better in the death camp. If you think it might happen, you may have already lost the fight.
Making AILA fight harder and avoid liberal traps is a long, hard job. The rulers are presently in almost complete control of the organization. One of our weaknesses has been lack of regular work in local chapters to bring more of our political ideas to the members and bring those members closer to PLP. Increasing activity on the chapter level will involve more members in discussing how liberal reformist leadership helped the Obama administration make things worse for immigrants this past year.
Countries’ borders are born in capitalist wars with no regard to workers’ interests. Whichever capitalist army is stronger decides where the border is. Workers are an international class. We have no borders.PLP's communist answer to the bosses' exploitation of immigrant workers and all workers is: smash all borders!
PHOENIX, ARIZONA, June 23 — About 2,000 people attending the Unitarian convention boarded buses this evening for the 7-mile trip from the Phoenix Convention Center to “Tent City.” That’s the jail where fascist Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio houses people awaiting trial, including those he hands over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation.
The prisoners, swept up by the sheriff’s department that practices racial profiling, are tortured by brutal guards, exposed to extreme heat, insufficient and rotten food, and lack access to sinks, toilets and medical care. Women who go into labor are handcuffed.
The demonstrators, who came to Phoenix from 530 Unitarian Universalist (UU) congregations in 50 U.S. states, were among the 3,700 participants in the 2012 UU General Assembly (GA). They stood in 100 °F (38 °C) heat for over two hours to show solidarity with the prisoners.
A 17-year-old member of the youth caucus said that, from her vantage point, she could see 20 or 30 hands reaching out from a narrow window in one of the jail tents. They waved constantly, she said, and we waved back. We could tell they heard us, because when we got louder, they waved faster.
The loudest chant of the evening was “Tear It Down,” in response to a speech by Pablo Alvarado of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. At the jail and during a workshop at the GA, Alvarado called for UUs to fight against “the Arpaios in your communities.”
In particular, he urged UUs to organize their congregations (and ally with other churches and organizations) to oppose “immigration holds.” These are 48-hour periods during which local police keep people in custody who would otherwise be released, because they suspect them of being undocumented. During the hold, an ICE agent shows up to interview the prisoner. As of now, Homeland Security requests that police agencies do these holds, but they are not required to do so, nor do the feds pick up the tab.
Communists are participating in and helping lead these struggles, while we point out that ending racist attacks on immigrants requires a revolution to smash capitalism and the national borders its profit system requires. PLP members and friends, who are active in a number of UU congregations, distributed 940 copies of CHALLENGE at the GA. After receiving a copy of the paper, one delegate to the GA came back and took 20 additional copies to distribute at a workshop.
This “Justice GA” was held in Phoenix to protest Arizona’s racist, anti-immigrant law, SB 1070. The Unitarian church, self-described as “progressive” and “liberal,” has a long history of participating in movements against war and racism and for civil rights. Like unions, community organizations, and other religious denominations, its leadership is anti-communist, tied to the capitalist system by a thousand political, economic, and ideological threads.
For several decades the UU leadership has been pushing the idea that white people (most UUs are white) are responsible for racism (even though history shows that racism was created by capitalism.) Therefore, they say, in order to unite with blacks and Latinos against racism, white people must undergo training to understand and reject their “white skin privilege.”
Furthermore, they say, whites must accept a subservient role in the anti-racist struggle, basically doing what they are told to do by black and Latino leaders. (Of course, if the black and Latino leaders are communists or otherwise don’t agree with reformism and non-violence, the UU leaders says whites must NOT follow them.)
At this General Assembly, the UU leadership hired an organization called the Catalyst Project to conduct this training, in workshops “geared toward white people.” The workshop leaders deflected calls for multiracial unity against racism, and talked about “dismantling racism,” as if that could be accomplished without smashing capitalism with communist revolution. Communists and others, including a group called the Unitarian Universalist Multiracial Unity Action Caucus, pointed out that segregation is segregation; no matter how “progressive” it is made to look.
Most UUs at the GA support — at least for the moment — the “white skin privilege” theory. But, at the congregational level, when it comes to actually fighting against particular aspects of racism, most see that unity is the only way to go. Our job as communists is to involve more people in class struggle and help win them to multiracial unity against capitalism. We will fight alongside our fellow UUs, learning from them, teaching them, and winning them to join the fight for communism.
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Papal Bull on Slavery
A new wrinkle introduced by the leadership at this Unitarian General Assembly was a resolution to reject the “Doctrine of Discovery (DOD},” at the request of unspecified “partner organizations.” The DOD, also known as the “Doctrine of Christian Discovery,” was first promulgated by the Catholic Church via a Papal Bull in 1452. The DOD said that when Christian explorers “discovered” lands occupied by non-Christians, they could claim them for their countries, enslave the non-Christians, and seize their property. In 1823 the U.S. Supreme Court cited the DOD in support of seizing lands from Native Americans. Since then, U.S. court decisions have built upon that case.
The DOD is obviously a piece of racist crap, and the delegates voted overwhelmingly to support the resolution, although most had never heard of it prior to coming to the GA. That’s unusual in UU circles — more typically, things are studied for a year or more before being accepted or rejected.
The leadership clearly orchestrated things to get this resolution passed right away, for reasons yet to become evident. The resolution certainly came accompanied by language blaming ordinary white Christians for the actions of popes and capitalists, and it diverted people from what was supposed to be the main goal of the Justice GA — to engage more UUs in the struggle to oppose racist attacks on immigrants.
NEW YORK CITY, July 1 — Electricity provider ConEd has locked out over 8,000 workers as it tries to maximize its profits by freezing workers’ wages and “modernizing” pensions. As we go to press workers are picketing around the clock against the bosses’ use of 5,000 managers as scabs. One of them has already gotten burned.
UPDATE, July 3 — Oakland kkkops and school security officers invaded Lakeview Elementary School at 4 this morning, arresting two occupiers and ousting the rest (more next issue).
OAKLAND, July 1 — The occupation of Lakeview Elementary School has continued for 16 days (see CHALLENGE 7/4/12). Tonight, more than a hundred occupiers, parents, students and supporters held a “16 Candles” community potluck and a screening of The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman.
Here are the demands the occupation has made on the Oakland Unified School District:
Superintendent Tony Smith must reopen all five closed schools or resign;
Keep all neighborhood schools open;
Stop union-busting attacks against the Oakland Education Association and other school worker unions;
Repudiate the crippling debt and interest payments imposed by the state of California on the Oakland school district after the district went into receivership;
Fully fund quality public education for all.
PLP in the Mix
Progressive Labor Party is participating in the occupation and organizing support for all actions. During extensive debates over the five demands, we are learning from others. Some parents and teachers are focused on short-term goals but agree with our broader analysis. For example, PLP members and others have argued that Superintendent Tony Smith is not our main target; whether he resigns or stays, attacks on public school students and teachers will continue.
The likeliest path for winning reform demands is not through sympathetic school board members, but by mobilizing workers and parents through the occupation. In any case, the only long-term solution to the perpetual crisis in education worldwide is a communist revolution. Only then will schools serve the needs of the working class.
Growing Militancy
A daily People’s School at the occupied Lakeview site offers classes for children on social justice, science and gardening, art (including posters), as well as exercise and free meals. There has been a lot of discussion and planning about how to organize the school, which is running well—despite threats by the Oakland School Police Department (OSPD) to evict the occupiers for trespassing.
Even as the occupation movement fights to reopen the five closed schools, many involved also want to inject a new style of education within these buildings. The teaching group is working hard to develop alternative curricula that help kids become critical thinkers about capitalist society. Their goal is education based on equality and the development of all students to their full potential, with a shared responsibility for the well-being of the collective.
While PL’ers understand that this goal cannot be fully realized under capitalism, we see glimmers of communist consciousness in working with teachers, parents and activists at Lakeview. We’ve learned that running a school is hard work, with many opportunities to learn, teach, and take action.
Children from the People’s School recently led a march and mobilization of more than 250 to the school site. (See photo.) The march was built by the continuing Lakeview occupation and resulting media coverage, along with activism by Occupy Oakland and mass leafleting at the school and in surrounding neighborhoods. PLP posters about capitalism and communism caught the attention of many, as did our chant: “For Education and Kids to Grow, Capitalism Has Got to Go.” The following week we joined a rally at the Oakland Board of Mis-Education.
We distributed many CHALLENGEs at these events, mostly through agitation but some to individuals we’ve met through the struggle. The headline “Wanted for Racist Murder” (7/4/12) struck a nerve in Oakland. One non-profit group mobilized the Board of Education meeting to protest the OSPD’s racist treatment of students, and in particular the school police murder last year of 20-year-old Raheim Brown, Jr. outside Skyline High School while he was attending a dance. In May, Skyline student Alan Blueford, 18, was gunned down by Oakland city police a month before he was set to graduate.
Students and organizers were interested in the CHALLENGE reports of other cop killings in New York. At the rally, an Oakland parent summed up one aspect of the education system: “Public schools are a farm team to prepare young adults for the prison system.”
A Lose-Lose Proposition
PLP sees capitalist education as part and parcel of the ruling-class effort to marginalize the working class of the future, especially students from the poorest neighborhoods. While we are fighting now for multi-racial unity and equality in the schools and curriculum, we need to create a revolutionary communist movement to destroy the capitalists’ institutions that control education, culture, media, and work.
The bosses use schools to impose social control to make capitalism as natural as the air we breathe. Institutional racism takes the form of segregated schools and revolving-door buildings and teachers. After the capitalists have guaranteed that these schools will fail, they move to close them, leaving black, Latino, and immigrant children with long bus rides to a new school.
In a period of capitalist economic crisis, students are channeled into an economy with little opportunity for upward mobility. A few might make it to professional or tech jobs, but most end up in non-union, low-wage jobs, the informal economy, prison, the military, or on the unemployment line. Racist education policies further stratify the future working class into competing subgroups while blaming dropouts for their failure to succeed in the capitalist economy. For the working class, the bosses’ schools are a lose-lose proposition.
WASHINGTON, DC, June 28 — Over 60 protestors including bus drivers, transit riders, workers from other unions, and Occupy activists rallied and picketed outside the board meeting of the DC Metro transit system. The rally demanded cancellation of the planned fare hike for riders and the racist pay freeze and benefit cuts for the predominantly black workforce. Chanting, “lower fares, higher wages, make the bosses pay”, demonstrators condemned the bosses for putting the cost of the system on the backs of the working class.
The transit system makes billions of dollars for the businesses (like the Verizon Center, the Nationals’ baseball stadium, and dozens more law firms and big office buildings) located near subway stops. It makes economic activity possible in the city as a whole. So why shouldn’t the real estate developers, big businessmen, and banks pay for something that makes profits for them? Because they run the government and will do everything they can to maximize their profits at our expense.
Metro is trying to play off riders against the union, blaming the wages, pensions and benefits of workers for the fare hikes, and then turning around and telling Metro workers that they should support the fare increase so they can be paid. But even under capitalism, most transit systems don’t rely on the farebox for their operating costs. In D.C., 70% of the operating costs of the system come from fares, a national record!
At the rally today, several Metro workers took their first step in getting involved in conscious class struggle. All of the Metro workers as well as most of the other demonstrators received copies of CHALLENGE, learning more about the long-term struggle for revolution that will take from the bosses everything that the bosses have stolen from the labor of our class. All of the demonstrators were pleased to see the unity in life shown by the rally, and pledged to continue the struggle together.
