ALL OUT FOR MAY DAY!

On May 1 workers the world over will again march on May Day, the day of international working-class solidarity. It arrives when the workers of Europe have mounted a big strike wave, with the Greek workers turning out in millions for one-day general strikes against government austerity measures. Meanwhile, militant mass struggles continue to boil in Nepal and India; over the past period workers of Iran, Thailand, Kyrgyzstan and elsewhere have also shed blood in broad popular struggles against tyranny. Yet wherever they live and struggle this May Day, the need for the workers to organize themselves into an independent class force is being driven home. Take the situation in the United States:

The Obama-led attacks on immigrants

While the racist Tea Party and others are working to stir an ugly anti-immigrant mass movement and must be fought; it is the Obama government which has power, and it is brutally using this power against undocumented immigrants. For example, last year the number of deportations was a record 387,790, more than under Bush.

But this is not all. Obama also supports the reactionary Schumer-Graham “comprehensive immigration reform” framework, a framework designed to increase the exploitation of immigrant workers, and which will increase the number of families torn apart by ICE raids. This proposal includes: 1) Bolstering “border security and interior enforcement,” which would include requiring a police-state biometric Social Security card for all legal U.S. workers, citizen and immigrant. 2) Planning for “circular migration,” or “creating a process for admitting temporary workers”---in other words they want to bring back something like the notorious bracero program. 3) Awarding green cards to highly educated immigrants in certain fields, but treating other undocumented people as criminals. They would have to “admit they broke the law,” perform unpaid “community service,” and pay fines in order to get a green card, after years of waiting. And Shumer and Graham unite with the anti-democratic demagogues in demanding that “these people (their words!) be proficient in English.”

The Obama Administration's deportations policy already drives undocumented workers into the shadows, and if his immigration reform ideas are turned into law this will worsen. The capitalist class loves this because they can treat the migrant workers as semi-slaves, which acts to drive down the conditions of all workers.

Imperialist war

The workers and poor of Afghanistan and Iraq are being murdered and oppressed by U.S. troops, as well as by reactionary, undemocratic governments, and right-wing oppositions like the Taliban. And after a million Iraqis have died as the result of a blatantly imperialist war to dominate Middle Eastern oil resources, “our” government has now escalated the slaughter in Afghanistan, and expanded it into Pakistan. With the summer offensive not yet started, the murders of innocent Afghans are more than double that of this time last year; while Obama has become the world’s chief assassin with his drone attacks. The fact that the U.S. has installed and props up an Afghan government of fundamentalists, warlords, and other anti-democratic scoundrels gives lie to the claim that this is some kind of “good war.” Instead, it’s part of U.S. imperialism’s maneuvering for power and influence in Central Asia.

Mass impoverishment

At the beginning of this Great Recession the Democrats and Republicans united to hand Wall Street trillions of dollars, but they plead poverty when it came to relieving the plight of the masses. And today, with 30 million workers either unemployed or underemployed, 40 million people on food stamps, and the number of home foreclosures continuing to rise, Obama still has no serious program for jobs and relief. Furthermore, he's “color blind” about the fact that Black and other national minorities are being most economically devastated of all.

Meanwhile, the employers have been recovering their profits by slashing wages and benefits, speeding up their reduced workforces, and ignoring safety. The latter combination is exhausting and injury-causing, and inevitably becomes capitalist-organized murder: On April 5, 29 West Virginia coal miners were murdered in this way; while over 5000 workers are killed on the job yearly, with Latino construction workers being the most disproportionate victims.

Organize the resistance struggles!

A quarter million people have marched and rallied for immigrant rights so far this spring. The Tea Partiers and neo-Nazis have been confronted by strong counter-protests. Mass protests against Arizona's new racist “brown code” law have erupted. Anti-war protests continue. Temple University nurses and others walked out on strike March 31, which has been followed by several other strikes. There have been demonstrations of students and workers against tuition hikes and budget cuts. And struggles against the worsening conditions in workplaces, homelessness, foreclosures, and environmental ruin continue.

On May Day we hail all of these necessary, self-sacrificing, and often exciting struggles. Yet we also know that they remain modest. A more powerful movement against the Obama-led assault on immigrants must be built. With the working people of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, being decimated by “our” government, the anti-war movement must be built further. And with millions of workers wanting to fight back against economic ruin but most of them without organization (while those in trade unions are continually betrayed by leaders who oppose a class struggle policy) the need to organize is again obvious.

As we march on May Day, let us commit ourselves to further organizing all of these present struggles of the oppressed, and to forging them into a united struggle against the capitalist class enemy. Let us carry forward the class movement that gave rise to the great U.S. general strike for the 8-hour day that began May 1,1886.

Stop Obama’s ICE raids and deportations!

Full rights for all immigrants now!

U.S. imperialism get out of Afghanistan and Iraq!

Make the rich pay for the capitalist economic crisis!

Workers and oppressed peoples of the world unite!

Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee, April 27, 2010

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March on May Day, fighting holiday of the world’s workers!

Meet Saturday, noon, May1 at Judkins Playfield, behind St. Mary’s Church, 611 20th Ave. So.

March sponsored by El Comite Pro-Reforma-Migratoria y Justicia Social & Washington Immigrant Rights Action Coalition.

The current situation is more like a building conflict than anything else.

The odds of that law passing are still pretty slim. Maybe it'll happen. It's hard to tell, but, generally, during economic downturns, the majority opinion turns against immigrants, especially undocumented immigrant workers.

This reform sounds like a do-nothing law -- most of those rules already exist. The main point is that it'll put people on the path to citizenship.

1) that kind of provision built the existing wall

2) there's already a guest worker status

3) they already do this, giving visas to skilled workers

4) English is a new thing in this generation, but they did have a law that said you have to take the naturalization test in English.

All that stuff can pass, and it won't mean much, because it's all been passed before. The real point is "amnesty" or legalization of people who have been here a long time.

The last legalization was in the mid 90s. Usually, the undocumented worker population was mostly stuck in ethnic economies, but with such a long waiting period, and with many young people coming of age without papers, we're starting to see undocumented adults who live speaking English.

So do you take these long-term residents, and young people who don't know enough Spanish to thrive elsewhere, and deport them? Or do you legalize them and let them carry on with life?

Also, I would hardly call the current situation an Obama-led assault. It was the Bush administration that kicked ICE raids into gear. Those have abated, it seems.

The big problem right now is the AZ law and increased collaboration between local, state, and federal police. Another problem are these checkpoints where people get their cars impounded. These are all problems at the local and state level.

It’s not a question of the majority opinion turning against immigrants during economic downturns, but of the capitalist class, now led by the Obama Administration, using the current capitalist economic crisis to further put the squeeze on immigrant workers, and thereby all workers.

And I think that what is going on must be seen as an Obama-led assault. Not only is the Obama Administration deporting more people than Bush ever did, but the Democrat-controlled Congress has given a record budget to the DHS, most of which goes to immigration enforcement.

Moreover, your defense of the reactionary Schumer-Graham plan doesn’t hold water. For example, it would build MORE walls and fences, add MORE immigration cops, and FURTHER militarize the border with Mexico. (Hence, even more people would die in the deserts and mountains trying to evade all of this.) And you just pass over the question of a fascistic national I.D. card.

Meanwhile, the path to citizenship would be so lengthy, costly and filled with high hurdles that many migrants would shun it for fear that if they made one misstep they would be deported. Meanwhile, those who embarked on it would have to meekly enslave themselves for many years with the Feds always breathing down their necks. They would be second-class people.

The “path to citizenship” in the Simpson-Rodino Bill (signed by Reagan) was bad enough (it took something like seven years, cost a lot of money, left la migra breathing down your neck, etc.) But the McCain-Kennedy and Senate Compromise bills of 2006 were much, much worse; and the Obama-supported Schumer-Graham plan is still worse!

Yesterday Obama said that his administration is not going to push for a (reactionary) reform bill until next year (when the Republicans will no doubt have picked up several more Congressional seats). But whenever the Washington barrel of hissing snakes come up with a bill it will be inhuman. Therefore our path to humanity must be to wage the proletarian class struggle against it.

Full rights for all immigrants! (We seem to agree on this much, at least.) And I hope that you march on the streets tomorrow, May Day.

Of course we know about how The Global Satanic Government's (The CIA) 9-11 Attacks effect on US Foreign Policy especially in The Middle East and of course we know about The effects of the Global Satan Worshipers of Langley, Virginia (The CIA) 9-11 Attacks on Establishing a Post 9-11 Draconian Police State in Amerikkka aka The USSA (Formerly known as The USA). But it seems little is said about the effects of The CIA's 9-11 Attacks on Immigrants and Immigration Policy in The Post 9-11 Police State USSA. Or about the Post 9-11 "Need to Secure Our Borders from The Terrorist Threat" Salespitch used by Those who continue to Manipulate and Deceive Amerikkka into believing that Immigrants are somehow related to Terrorist Activities. The truth is that the Real Perpetrators of the 9-11 Attacks aka The Real Terrorist are not only The REAL CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER TO AMERICANS but also to Immigrants via their Post 9-11 War on Immigrants.

The raids with the guns seem to be declining, but "desktop raids" where people with fake SSNs are being targeted seem to be happening.

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EVEN WITHOUT ARIZONA'S LAW, FIRINGS AND WORSE FACE IMMIGRANT WORKERS

By David Bacon

New America Media, 4/30/10

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=b58e5b4e8b5bcfbc1e4dd5cf56ce4792

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (4/20/10) -- While the potential

criminalization of undocumented people in Arizona continues to draw

headlines, the actual punishment of workers because of their

immigration status has become an increasingly bitter fact of life

across the country.

In the latest move by the Department of Homeland Security,

475 immigrant janitors will soon be fired from their jobs in San

Francisco. Weeks ago, DHS went through the employment records of

their employer, ABM, one of the largest building service companies in

the country. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm of DHS

sifted through Social Security records, and the I-9 immigration forms

all workers have to fill out when they apply for jobs. They then

told ABM that the company had to fire 475 workers who were accused of

lacking legal immigration status.

ABM has been a union company for decades, and many of the

workers have been there for years. "They've been working in this

industry for 15, 20, some as many as 27 years in the buildings

downtown," says Olga Miranda, president of Service Employees Local

87. "They've built homes. They've provided for their families.

They've sent their kids to college. They're not new workers. They

didn't just get here a year ago."

Those workers are now faced with an agonizing dilemma.

Should they turn themselves in to Homeland Security, who might charge

them with providing a bad Social Security number to their employer,

and even hold them for deportation? For workers with families, homes

and deep roots in a community, it's not possible to just walk away

and disappear. " I have a lot of members who are single mothers whose

children were born here," Miranda says. "I have a member whose child

has leukemia. What are they supposed to do? Leave their children

here and go back to Mexico and wait? And wait for what?"

Miranda's question reflects not just the dilemma facing

individual workers, but of 12 million undocumented people living in

the United States. Since 2005, successive Congressmen, Senators and

administrations have dangled the prospect of gaining legal status in

front of those who lack it. In exchange, their various schemes for

immigration reform have proposed huge new guest worker programs, and

a big increase in exactly the kind of enforcement now directed at 475

San Francisco janitors.

President Obama, condemning Arizona's law that would make

being undocumented a state crime, said it would "undermine basic

notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans." But then he

called for legislation with guest worker programs and increased

enforcement.

While the country is no closer to legalization of the

undocumented than it was ten years ago, the enforcement provisions of

the comprehensive immigration reform proposals have already been

implemented on the ground. The Bush administration conducted a

high-profile series of raids in which it sent heavily armed agents

into meatpacking plants and factories, holding workers for

deportation, and sending hundreds to federal prison for using bad

Social Security numbers. It set up a new Federal court in Tucson,

Arizona, called Operation Streamline, where dozens of people are

sentenced to prison every day for walking across the border.

After Barack Obama was elected President, immigration

authorities said they'd follow a softer policy, using an electronic

system to find undocumented people in workplaces. People working

with bad Social Security numbers would be fired. As a result, last

September, 2000 seamstresses in the Los Angeles garment factory of

American Apparel were fired, followed by a month later by 1200

janitors working for ABM in Minneapolis. In November over 100

janitors working for Seattle Building Maintenance lost their jobs.

Ironically the Bush administration proposed a regulation that

would have required employers to fire any worker who provided an

employer with a Social Security number that didn't match the SSA

database. That regulation was then stopped in court by unions, the

ACLU and the National Immigration Law Center. The new

administration, however, is implementing what amounts to the same

requirement, with the same consequence of thousands of fired workers.

Meanwhile, the Operation Streamline court is still in session every

day in Arizona.

"Homeland Security is going after employers that are union,"

Miranda charges. "They're going after employers that give benefits

and are paying above the average." While American Apparel had no

union, it paid better than most Los Angeles garment sweatshops.

Minneapolis janitors belong to SEIU Local 26, Seattle janitors to

Local 6 and San Francisco janitors to Local 87.

President Obama says sanctions enforcement targets

employers "who are using illegal workers in order to drive down wages

-- and oftentimes mistreat those workers." An ICE Worksite

Enforcement Advisory claims "unscrupulous employers are likely to pay

illegal workers substandard wages or force them to endure intolerable

working conditions."

Curing intolerable conditions by firing or deporting workers

who endure them doesn't help the workers or change the conditions,

however. And despite Obama's notion that sanctions enforcement will

punish those employers who exploit immigrants, at American Apparel

and ABM the employers were rewarded for cooperation by being

immunized from prosecution. Javier Murillo, president of SEIU Local

26, says, "The promise made during the audit is that if the company

cooperates and complies, they won't be fined. So this kind of

enforcement really only hurts workers."

ICE director John Morton says the agency is auditing the

records of 1,654 companies nationwide. "What kind of economic

recovery goes with firing thousands of workers?" Miranda asks. "Why

don't they target employers who are not paying taxes, who are not

obeying safety or labor laws?"

Union leaders like Miranda see a conflict between the

rhetoric used by the President and other Washington DC politicians

and lobbyists in condemning the Arizona law, and the immigration

proposals they make in Congress. "There's a huge contradiction

here," she says. "You can't tell one state that what they're doing

is criminalizing people, and at the same time go after employers

paying more than a living wage and the workers who have fought for

that wage."

Renee Saucedo, attorney for La Raza Centro Legal and former

director of the San Francisco Day Labor Program, is even more

critical. "Those bills in Congress, which are presented as ones that

will help some people get legal status, will actually make things

much worse," she charges. "We'll see many more firings like the

janitors here, and more punishments for people who are just working

and trying to support their families."

Increasingly, however, the Washington proposals have even

less promise of legalization, and more emphasis on punishment. The

newest Democratic Party scheme virtually abandons the legalization

program promised by the "bipartisan" Schumer/Graham proposal, saying

that heavy enforcement at the border and in the workplace must come

before any consideration of giving 12 million people legal status.

"We have to look at the whole picture," Saucedo urges. "So

long as we have trade agreements like NAFTA that create poverty in

countries like Mexico, people will continue to come here, no matter

how many walls we build. Instead of turning people into guest

workers, as these bills in Washington would do, while firing and even

jailing those who don't have papers, we need to help people get legal

status, and repeal the laws that are making work a crime."

For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org

See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and

Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008)

Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008

http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002

See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US

Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)

http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575

See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border

(University of California, 2004)

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html

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David Bacon, Photographs and Stories

http://dbacon.igc.org