By ERWIN FREED
Immigrant workers continue to find ways to survive and build new communities. Now, in the face of ICE becoming the largest federal law enforcement agency, the question is posed for all of us—how can militant workers build movement organizations capable of mobilizing a real defense of immigrants?
A current tactic is that of “Rapid Response Networks.” These networks can take many different forms. Some versions are more in line with the goal of building a movement that can connect immigrant self-defense with the broader labor movement, while others tend to miss opportunities at building mass actions and collective organizing.
Perhaps the most common type of “Rapid Response Network” is a collection of groups and individuals who maintain a phone line for people to report ICE and other immigration activity. Ideally, reporting ICE sightings allows at-risk community members to avoid potential contact with La Migra. Although Rapid Response Networks of this type have value, they are short of what is politically needed to defeat the whole deportation machine. They generally do little to create the types of broad and democratic grassroots organizations that are capable of politically empowering immigrant and non-immigrant workers.
These networks also have the unfortunate structural tendency toward solidifying “leadership” based on who has access to resources (phone lines, activist lists, ability to “staff” lines 24/7)—usually some non-profit or collection of non-profits—rather than who might be most committed to the struggle and articulating strategic ideas that are coherent and developed collectively.
At the same time, it should be recognized that mass reporting methods of this type are already prevalent in many immigrant communities. Facebook groups, WhatsApp threads, and even phone trees where people report ICE activity were common well before Trump. These existing and emerging networks are one place to look for potential class-struggle leadership in working-class immigrant communities.
Deportations and immigration policy are fundamental parts of capitalist class rule. Police harassment, cruel detention centers, and constant uncertainty all work to make undocumented workers nervous about fighting back. Working-class leaders are targeted with raids, arbitrary arrest, and often torture. These methods of subjugation are then used to discipline the rest of the working class when it gets too unruly. Every worker’s wages, benefits, and political rights are inseparable from the legal, political, and social conditions for non-native-born workers.
Unity between workers and immigrants is on the order of the day. Unions must begin dedicating resources to not only running campaigns against deportations but giving real working-class support to immigrant communities. Formations based on deep, person-to-person organizing—like the community defense watches in Los Angeles—provide a skeleton and a model for what the working class can create. Neighbors in that city are collectively organizing themselves to join their community members watching for and quickly demonstrating against ICE presence. These concrete experiences show the possibility of organizing rapid mass mobilization response committees that combine organized labor, immigrant community activists, and the broader social movements—all of which have much overlap.
In moments like these, demands such as “open borders” and “papers for all” can become rallying points to move forward. Connecting broader political demands with deportation defense, community patrols, and mass, on-the-ground, political education campaigns are some of the tools we have to building a real fightback to police terror. ICE’s strength comes from lawlessness and secrecy; ours comes in our numbers and social position. Workers and students must understand that their fates are tied in with the undocumented community.
If driven forward through enthusiastic coalition building, principled separation from Democratic Party control, and actively organizing behind the immigrant working class, these community defense efforts can fundamentally shift the terrain of class struggle in the United states. Student walkouts against school members’ immigration arrests point the way for broader struggles. Heroic and important examples of high school students leading their entire schools in walkouts show the embryo of the movement that we need.
Unfortunately, the labor movement has been frustratingly hesitant in this moment of ruling-class onslaught. At a time when all unions should be calling for a general strike in defense of public-sector workers, there are only harsh words and symbolic actions. Millions of rank-and-file workers are looking for the opportunity to mobilize and organize for a better world. All over the country, non-immigrants are showing that they are willing to put themselves at risk in defense of their immigrant neighbors.
Unions can make use of this enthusiasm for struggle. Organizing union participation in defense of immigrants will largely depend on shop-floor discussions on the current situation. It is at this level where clear connections can be made between local ICE activity, the national situation, and the ongoing attack on working-class living standards.
Just as important as shop-floor discussions is movement organization. There is a need for inspiring events to which workers who are interested in learning more about the struggle and getting involved in it can go. Every new escalation from Trump, every capitulation by the Democratic Party, every new excess by ICE demands urgent forums, discussions, and mobilizations. Building campaigns around specific deportation cases like that of Imam Ayman Soliman, the former chaplain at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, who was granted political asylum in this country, can become moments of clear unity in struggle between thousands and potentially millions of people. Trade unionists can bring these cases to union meetings, raise money for defense funds, and stand in political solidarity with detainees. Importantly, they can connect with other locals and community networks and begin to mobilize in the streets, with picketing and other forms of collective public action.
Maintaining this level of mobilization and organization is not easy, but it is necessary. If the current vanguard of the working class in the United States is capable of combining these sectors and energizing these struggles, the possibilities are endless. Rank-and-file school, industrial, health, logistics, and every other sector of essential workers have extraordinary power in this society. Despite all of the attempts to displace workers with automation and lean production methods, nothing moves and nothing is made without human labor.
A labor movement capable of taking strike action in defense of immigrants is a labor movement with rich internal discussions and some level of democratic functioning. It will take enormous pressure from the ranks to push the unions into motion, and a fundamental transformation in their current organizing methods to go on political strikes. However, this is the surest of pushing back the tide of ICE terror. The point that labor action is not only necessary but possible must be made at every opportunity in the shop floor.
The moment is ripe—as many thousands are yearning to fight back—and the need is urgent. Trump’s overextended political and repressive measures are taking the blindfolds of bourgeois culture halfway off. Experiences in working-class organizations of struggle can reveal the full reality—both the rot of capitalist society and the endless capacity of workers to run things in a better way.
Photo: San Francisco protest: “We are not criminals; we are workers!” (Creative Commons)