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By CHRISTINE MARIE
On No Kings Day, more than five million people took to the streets to reject the drive toward authoritarianism and its figurehead, Donald Trump. The June 14 actions came on the heels of similarly powerful displays in April and May.
Yet, despite these growing mobilizations, our plate is still overflowing with unresolved defense cases in which Palestinian and other international students, as well as immigrant workers and their labor organizers, remain imprisoned or in waiting for trials with onerous sentences. Trans youth and disabled people still wake daily to fears of loss of medical support and, of necessity, take up a thousand individual struggles to protect their rights in schools, health care, sports, and housing. Professors, teachers, and health and social service workers must be poised each day to protect students, patients, and the underserved from being swept up by ICE or deprived of services.
Recently, the far-right head of the U.S. Senate Committee on Crime and Terrorism, Josh Hawley, began a dramatic and public McCarthyite investigation into political organizations and immigrant services providers in Los Angeles, accusing them of “funding violence.” These organizations include Union del Barrio, CHIRLA, and the Party of Liberation and Socialism. Federal hearings by his committee could lead to serious charges that could be used to threaten all protest organizers. Similarly, the maintenance of felony charges against California SEIU President David Huerta was meant to put fear in the hearts of union leaders who want to defend their members.
We must be attentive to this list of victims of political persecution and understand that winning each individual case is a key component of a successful national resistance strategy. If these cases are subordinated to any of the many other political and economic fights we are undertaking, it will be at the peril of the working-class movement.
Utilizing our most powerful tools to decisively win these touchstone cases is a critical task and one that should be embraced by every organizing pole—especially by the unions. In Connecticut, labor activists recently demonstrated just how possible it is to advance this perspective inside key unions. On June 8, the CT Civil Liberties Defense Committee (https://www.ctcivillibertiesdefense.org) held a demonstration endorsed by the Connecticut Education Association, the Hartford and New Haven Federations of Teachers, the CT Congress of Community Colleges SEIU 1973, several AAUP chapters, Unite-Here Local 217, GEU UA Local 6950, Unidad Latina en Accíon, Hartford Deportation Defense, and other working-class organizations. Each of these endorsing organizations embraced a list of demands that included “Free Mahmoud Khalil, Drop All Charges against Rumeysa Ozturk, Return Kilmar Abrego Garcia and all CECOT Prisoners, Stop Deportations, Stop Attacks on Queer & Trans People,” along with slogans advocating protecting and funding our schools, universities, health care and social services.
The endorsements were built on debate inside these unions, including one at the state convention of the CEA that affirmed union solidarity with Mahmoud Khalil. Speakers from the CEA and other education unions on the platform on June 8 made it clear that they believed that the unions must take the lead, not only in the economic battles, but in the defense of our rights to protest and in defense of immigrant and other oppressed community members. This development is in line with the launch of Labor for Democracy, a formation that includes at least 14 national unions aligning themselves with these critical defense cases. The CT Civil Liberties Defense Committee is planning to deepen their defense of these victims with a state educational and organizing conference in September. This local experience and model must be enriched by the work of labor militants the country wide. An Injury to One is An Injury to All!
Top photo: No Kings rally in Hartford, Conn., on June 14. (Mark Mirko / Conn. Public) Below: June 9 rally in Los Angeles calling for the release of SEIU leader David Huerta. (Mario Tama / Getty Images)