US Politics in an Age of Uncertainty

by Lance Selfa

  The Democratic Party has failed, on a national level, to present any coherent or principled opposition to Trump’s initial policies. While governors of the predominantly liberal states with substantial immigrant populations, like New York and California, have rhetorically postured against the federal government, a new round of deportations has commenced with little actual outcry beyond immigrant-rights activists. A new movement in defense of immigrants will need to hold Democrats and their auxiliaries accountable when they are complicit or silent, put massive pressure on them to take public stances against Trump and Republican immigrant-bashing policies, and block Trump and the Republicans by all means at their disposal. At the same time, this new movement will need to retain complete independence from the Democratic Party, resisting its multifaceted capabilities to coopt, divide, and demobilize social movements.

  How have immigrant-rights activists responded to this assault?

  One of the first responses took place before Trump even assumed office. Across the country, student activists began organizing to get their school administrations to declare themselves “sanctuary campuses.” While the definition of “sanctuary” varies, it generally involves the campus administration making a public declaration to refuse to comply with immigration enforcement on the campus, to not share student information with federal immigration agents, and to keep campus police from collaborating or assisting in any form of immigration policing.

  Perhaps the most impressive response since the inauguration was the airport protests following the executive order imposing a travel ban on Muslims. Immediately after the ban was announced, an estimated one hundred people had arrived from the banned countries and were detained at various airports across the country. In an amazing display of opposition to the ban, and in support for those detained, tens of thousands of people converged at airports across the country on short notice, from San Diego to New York City, to confront overzealous ICE agents and demand that detainees be released. The outpouring undoubtedly cajoled a group of federal judges to overturn the order in a matter of days.

  To defend undocumented workers, immigrant-rights activists across the county have returned to the strategy that was developed after previous waves of repression unleashed by the Bush administration in the wake of the May 1, 2006, protests and in Arizona in 2010. Namely, they are forming, or reactivating, “emergency response networks” to mobilize rapidly to protest and protect immigrants being targeted.

  In Arizona, for instance, when Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos was detained during her “check-in,” a group of about two hundred activists affiliated with the long-standing immigrant-rights organization “Puente Movement” quickly gathered at the Phoenix offices of ICE. For several hours, until they were physically repressed by the Phoenix police, they blocked federal vehicles attempting to leave with Garcia de Rayos. In other parts of the country, similar networks are forming or reconnecting and conducting legal workshops and civil disobedience trainings, establishing communication networks, and setting up other strategies to intervene on behalf of targeted people and communities.

  Scattered immigrant-rights marches have been organized in different parts of the country. Where immigrant-rights organizations have some continuity and connection to the labor movement, such as in Milwaukee, the actions have been impressive. On February 13, 2017, for instance, a crowd estimated at thirty thousand marched through the Latino-majority south side of the city in response to the call for “a day without an immigrant,” and for people not to work, shop, or go to school. This protest also directed its message of opposition to Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, a Trump partisan who has stated his intention to volunteer local police to assist in federal roundups. These actions show the possibility for larger and coordinated mass actions as organizations and networks take shape. The dominant slogan that has emerged from these protests—“No Ban, No Wall, Sanctuary for All!”—shows how a new generation of activists is making the convergence of struggle against Islamophobia and a reinvigorated anti-immigrant right.

  The last time immigrants were attacked in such a frontal manner was back in 2006, with the Sensenbrenner-King Bill. That provoked mass marches and work shutdowns called “A Day Without an Immigrant.” How does today’s situation compare with that response?

  What happened in 2006 was very important, and worth recalling. The House of Representatives approved the reactionary Sensenbrenner-King Bill in December 2005, named after congressmen James Sensenbrenner from Wisconsin and Peter King from New York. Its provisions would have turned twelve million undocumented immigrants and anyone who aided them into felons. Millions of immigrant workers, their families, and supporters were pushed into opposition, flocking to protests called by small groups. Since no national structure existed, few were prepared for the size of the protests. Nevertheless, organizations were created and grew significantly during this period.

  Following a mass protest of twenty thousand people in Washington, DC, at least three hundred thousand protesters took to the streets of Chicago on March 10, 2006. This was the largest protest in Chicago history, and it shut down the city as workers left their jobs and students walked out of schools to join the human streams that jammed several city blocks. Entire families marched together, and the vast majority had clearly never been to a protest in their lives.

  After Chicago, the dam broke. Mass protests of immigrant workers took place in more than fifty cities within two weeks. About 150,000 people crowded onto Denver’s streets, 50,000 marched through the streets of Phoenix, and over 30,000 took to the streets in Milwaukee. In Atlanta, more than 80,000 protesters heeded a call to not go to work. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, 5,000 people came out to oppose anti-immigrant legislation; 15,000 marched across the Brooklyn Bridge in New York; 3,000 took to the streets of Fort Smith, Arkansas; and thousands more clogged the downtowns in a constellation of other cities and towns across the country. The turnout reached new heights in Los Angeles, where over one million people transformed the downtown area into a human sea, every open space commandeered by the otherwise hidden workforce of the city’s vast street-level economy.

  These demonstrations also inspired student actions. Sons and daughters of the Latino working class shut down schools across the country in protest against anti-immigrant racism. In California, tens of thousands of students walked out of classes across the state. In Dallas, four thousand walked out of school, with another two thousand in El Paso, three thousand in Las Vegas, and a thousand in Aurora, Illinois. In Tucson, a thousand middle-school students walked out of their schools, showing that many young teens were keenly aware of what’s at stake and were making their voices heard.

  Some union organizations also got on board, joining with the National Council of La Raza and other civic and religious organizations calling for a day of protest. On April 9, 2006, half a million more came out in Dallas, one hundred thousand in San Diego, and twenty thousand in Salt Lake City. Protests also sprouted in smaller towns and in rural regions. Three thousand people converged on the small agricultural community of Garden City, Kansas. Thousands more turned out in South Bend, Indiana; Portland, Maine; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; and Lake Worth, Florida.

  On April 10, protests continued in ninety-four cities. Half a million came out in New York City, thirty thousand in Boston, and ten thousand in Madison, Wisconsin. More than fifty thousand came out in Atlanta, and an equal number in Phoenix, ten thousand protested in Boston, and another ten thousand in Omaha. The protest movement culminated in the call for a general strike and economic boycott on May 1, 2006, when an estimated two to three million people left their homes, work, and schools to participate in the single largest protest action in US history. In response to this popular outpouring of opposition, the repressive bill was killed.

  Many of the immigrants’ rights organizations that were developed during the mass marches, strikes, and boycotts of 2006 have disappeared or were dismantled after the successful election of Obama and the Democrats in 2008. With Democrats in power, man
y believed some form of immigrant legalization was imminent. When it didn’t materialize—and when the persecution persisted and intensified—the largest organizations, which were aligned with the Democratic Party, organized little public opposition.

  This included liberal membership groups, nongovernmental organizations, labor unions, church groups, and think tanks. With the exception of DREAM activist networks, which went against the stream and intensified their activism, including repeated sit-ins at Democratic Party offices, disruption at several of Obama’s speeches, and other high-profile actions, the opposition demobilized under the Democrats and has yet to recover. Nevertheless, some of these groups are once again emerging and coalescing. It will also be important that the veteran organizers in the unions and on the left who played a pivotal role in the mass movement of 2006 bring their experience and organizational networks back onto the field of struggle.

  In 2017, the Trump administration is determined to terrorize immigrant working-class communities and to undermine opposition as much as possible. It’s worth recalling that George W. Bush authorized a national campaign of workplace raids in the weeks following the mass actions in 2006, which set back the movement as people understandably retreated from the streets in fear.

  How has the labor movement responded to the attack on immigrants? What should labor militants be demanding from their unions?

  Unfortunately, there has been no substantial, positive response from the national leadership of labor. Shamefully, the AFL-CIO leadership under Richard Trumka has set the wrong tone for labor, bending to Trump instead of resolutely, on principle, opposing his policies. Trumka recently met with Trump—hat in hand—claiming a desire to “work with him,” especially on renegotiating trade deals and immigration. Trumka also appeared on Fox News right after Trump’s first address to Congress, stating that the speech, in which Trump declared his intention to publish a list of immigrant “criminals” as part of his larger war on immigrants, “was one of his finest moments.”

  He further went on to congratulate Trump for including “legal immigrants” as well as “undocumented immigrants” being “used to drive down wages.” Aligning himself with Trump, he concluded, “We partner with him to write the rules of immigration, absolutely.” Cozying up to Trump and trying to align unions with his anti-immigrant project will be a poison pill for organized labor. Trump’s criticism of “free trade” isn’t that it is unjust for workers; rather, he believes trade rules can be “improved” so that they are less regulatory, provide even fewer rights for workers, and give even more power to corporate profiteers. Any immigration policy that this president presides over will be designed to oppress immigrant workers more, to further isolate them, to stoke more racism, and to widen the divides in the working class along racial and national lines as part of a larger strategy to weaken and break unions.

  The organization and incorporation of immigrant workers, documented and undocumented, is essential to rebuilding labor unions in this country. Unions have been in a state of perpetual decline and represent the lowest percentage of workers in modern history. The failure to take a consistent stand to combat the anti-immigrant policies embedded in both capitalist parties has allowed for the current recycling of right-wing reactionaries into the highest echelons of government. To reverse course, unions will need to build on previous gains made in defending and organizing the immigrant workforce.

  In California, the state that boasts the largest immigrant worker population, immigrant workers have been the fastest growing segment of organized labor over the last few decades. Nationally, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has become the largest and fastest growing labor union in the United States, claiming a membership of 1.9 million, with immigrant workers accounting for two-thirds of that figure. In the Midwest and South region, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union now represents over 250,000 workers, nearly half of them Latino immigrants. Unions and locals at the state and regional levels will need to take action, in some cases despite their own leadership.

  Right now, we are witnessing the largest migration in human history, with over sixty million people in flight from their countries. Why has this happened?

  War and violence have played a role. As previously mentioned, the US-led “War on Terror” has had a major destabilizing impact on the Middle East, displacing millions in the region. In Mexico and Central America, the US-led “War on Drugs” has amounted to the militarization of the drug trade. Regional policies pushed by Washington, such as Plan Mérida Initiative (in Mexico) and similar efforts in Central America, have allocated billions of dollars of military support and equipment to repressive state regimes to supposedly fight drug cartels, but in practice are also used against the population.

  In Mexico, over 100,000 people have been killed as a result of the conflict since it began in 2006, and 25,000 have been “disappeared,” including the missing forty-three students from Ayotzinapa, Guerrero.1 According to the Mexican think tank Parametria, over 2 million people have been displaced. In Central America, a study conducted by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center estimates that over 850,000 people have been displaced by state repression and drug-war violence from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

  Even larger numbers are displaced by the economic logic of world capitalism. Global economic integration along neoliberal lines—where corporations write the rules of trade, investment, and regulation in their own interest—has destabilized laboring classes internationally. As a predictable result, labor itself has become internationalized. By 2013, an estimated 231.5 million people migrated and took up residence in a foreign country. If that number was the population of a country, it would be the fifth-largest in the world, roughly larger than the population of each of the remaining 189 other countries. In the United States, the Pew Research Center estimates that forty-two million residents, primarily workers and their families, were born in another country. This number has more than doubled over the last three decades.

  Displaced workers that cannot be absorbed within their own national economies as a result of corporate-led trade policies have been compelled to cross boundaries into foreign labor markets where they can find work. This has altered workforce demographics internationally, from Qatar to the Dominican Republic, from Japan to the United States. The end result of US-led free-trade policies exported south has been destructive for the laboring classes of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean nations, dislodging millions of small agricultural producers and urban workers made redundant through skewed competition, “debt-servicing,” privatization of state industry, and the downsizing of the welfare state.

  Migration has flowed in reverse through these same channels from poorer to richer capitalist nations, as workers follow the profit streams that translate into disproportionate job creation or opportunities in other nations. Once drawn into US labor markets, undocumented workers are regulated not by the “invisible hand of the free market,” but by immigration enforcement and employers themselves.

  Most recently, thousands of Haitians have been entering Mexico with the hopes of crossing into the United States. Haiti, a country where three-quarters of the people live on less than two dollars a day, has been wracked by US-led military intervention and destabilizing economic policies. For example, the US government passed the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act of 2006 under the existing Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act. This policy gives garments manufactured on the island duty-free access to US markets. As a result, US-based corporations such as Levi Strauss, Haneswear, Nautica, Dockers, and others have relocated production to the island to take advantage of lower wages alongside the corporate tax breaks, with assembled garments now comprising 90 percent of the country’s exports. These companies, with the support of the State Department operating through the Haitian embassy, helped block a planned minimum-wage increase from being implemented in the garment industry in 2009, which would have tripled the minimum wage
of $1.75 a day to over $5 a day. As a result of pressures placed on the Haitian government, including the threat of capital flight, the garment industry was exempted and limited to an increase of only $3 per day.

  After the great earthquake of 2010, which devastated the already poor country, the lack of significant and meaningful international aid further accelerated an exodus of migrants from Haiti. Many went to Brazil, while others flowed into Tijuana, hoping to apply for a type of refugee status under a humanitarian parole provision granted after the earthquake. Then, in September 2016, the Obama administration reversed its policy, denying Haitians entry and vowing to deport them if they entered the country without authorization. By Trump’s inauguration, over five thousand Haitians were still languishing in the Mexican border region, largely housed in privately run shelters, since the Mexican government of Enrique Peña Nieto has ignored their plight.

  What should the left agitate for in terms of demands in the short term as well as in the long term?

  In the immediate term, the left will need to stand shoulder to shoulder with all those willing to struggle to defend targeted communities, and the undocumented immigrant workers, students, and their family members facing arrest and deportation. This will likely require a higher level of militancy and confrontation with emboldened and empowered agents of the state.

  In the current social environment, politically polarized along class, racial, and generational lines, a mass opposition to Trump and the right has already emerged and has quickly situated itself to the left of the Democratic Party. Millions of people have already registered some form of action against or discontent with the reactionary turn in US politics and the ideological bankruptcy of the Democratic Party. In the first two months of Trump’s presidency alone, there has been some visible convergence between anti-Trump, feminist, and pro-immigrant sectors of the protest movement. This will have to be strengthened and expanded if there is to be any substantial challenge from the left to the scale of the attacks yet to come.