Dump the Dems to Defend Immigrants

Trump’s anti-immigrant blitz is sweeping Chicago. Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez was gunned down, and over a thousand people have been arrested since early September. Armed Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers march in Millennium Park and boat down the Chicago River, Feds rappel down from helicopters onto a rooftop to terrorize apartment residents in the middle of the night. From hardware stores to homeless shelters, suburban factories to public schools—there’s nowhere the Feds aren’t treading.

Those protesting this offensive have shown no lack of determination, braving pepper balls, tear gas, rubber bullets and arrest at the Broadview processing facility. But these protests are small, isolated and liberal-dominated.

This clearly needs to change. Trump is ramping up the concentration of force on his side, as the National Guard waits in the wings. To have any chance of holding him off, our efforts must focus on bringing out the organized working class, which has the social weight to give some real heft to the defense of immigrants—and every reason to take up that defense. Workers across the city have been taking it in the teeth, and it will be impossible to change that as long as a large portion are forced into the shadows. The struggle to defend immigrants must be fused with the fight for better living standards for all.

But this has not happened. Why? Trade-union leaders are too busy seeking favors from City Hall or Trump himself to cause waves, and Chicago’s left is too busy finding common cause with justly hated liberals, above all “Mayor 6%” Brandon Johnson. He promised to make Chicago work for working people—and didn’t. Instead, he’s laying off city workers and taxing us to death to balance the books for the LaSalle Street bankers and bosses who pull his strings.

Liberal Democrats like Johnson helped whip up the anti-immigrant backlash with their response to the migrant crisis, dumping thousands of Venezuelans in the resource-starved ghettos and barrios—setting migrants and black and brown Chicago at one another’s throats for a shrinking pool of jobs, housing and schools. Betrayals like these drove workers rightward. Tired of seeing their living standards plummet and resenting liberal preaching about how they were the problem, workers went for Trump.

Today, Johnson is making a lot of noise about opposing ICE operations in the city, and the left is eating it up. But calling on the Dems to stop deportations, prosecute the Feds and close Broadview is a complete dead end. The Dems don’t give a damn about defending immigrants. Pritzker’s proclamations are a lot of hot air—his state troopers have mobilized to defend ICE at Broadview. Like Johnson, he’s upset Trump is stepping on his turf.

Johnson, desperate to boost his approval rating, issues executive orders that (don’t laugh)…direct the racist Chicago Police Department to protect immigrants. If you think this is going to work out well for immigrants, we have a bridge we’d like to sell you. As for the suggestion that state and local officials will prosecute federal agents, any eighth grade civics teacher would give it a big red “F.”

Association with the liberals makes it impossible to win workers to defend immigrants. The only way to do so is by showing them that this is vital to defending themselves. Exhortations to show empathy will go nowhere. Moreover, workers scared shitless and keeping their heads down won’t be moved to action by calls on the Dems to fight. To stop the Feds from treading further, the left must dump the Dems.

Immigration: A Working-Class Answer

The current push to round up immigrants is the product of the social decay of U.S. imperialism. Trump is tearing up what’s left of the old liberal order because it no longer serves the ruling class in maintaining its grip on the globe. The ruling class can no longer afford to absorb millions of immigrants, and the deportation drive also serves the purpose of sowing terror as Trump overhauls the economy and liberal institutions. Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign is about forcing the entire working class into submission.

The Dems bleat about Trump’s excesses, worried that his methods are too disruptive to business, but they fundamentally share the understanding that what is needed right now is to shore up U.S. imperialism. This is why what pushback they offer is all about turf, the Constitution, due process, etc. How the capitalist politicians on both sides of the aisle respond to immigration is always dictated by their class interests. They open the spigot and flood the labor market with immigrants when the capitalists need more labor and shut it when they need less.

A steady supply is always available because imperialist pillage drives immigrants from their homelands. Those let in are pressed into service as a cheap pool of vulnerable labor and a convenient tool to divide the working class. It isn’t about which capitalist party is in power (right-wing Republican then-governor Bruce Rauner signed off on Illinois’ “sanctuary state” law and Democrat Barack Obama was “Deporter-in-Chief”) but what best serves the ruling class at a given time. The size of the pool of cheap immigrant labor is debatable among the country’s rulers, but its maintenance is never in question.

Workers don’t have a built-in interest in having more immigrants in the country, contrary to what the left argues. They also don’t have an interest in supporting deportations. Their interest lies in ensuring the best conditions for immigrants. The view that more immigration is inherently progressive leads the left to stand at attention and declare that “we’re all on the same side” whenever the liberals say that “immigrants are welcome here.” But we are not on the same side.

The welcoming Democrats are nothing more than recruiters of immigrant labor for brutal exploitation by the bosses. They won’t defend immigrants because, like the Republicans, they represent a ruling class bent on squeezing immigrants and workers in general to stop its downward slide. Declaring Chicago a “sanctuary city” is not about keeping immigrants safe, but keeping them in a degraded status. The left will only be able to make headway in the defense of immigrants if it rejects the “sanctuary city” scam and fights to mobilize labor independently of, and against, the Democrats and Trump alike.

Mobilizing Labor Power Will Take a Fight!

To date, the left’s efforts to connect the defense of immigrants to working-class struggle have been entirely insufficient even when directly posed, like in the months-long Mauser strike. The heavily immigrant workforce, represented by Teamsters Local 705, walked off the job in June, demanding an end to abysmal work conditions and protections against ICE workplace raids. The liberal-aligned union leaders, though, have not waged the battle to win. They have not mobilized the 17,000 members of Local 705 getting shafted by UPS, much less other trade unionists, in a show of labor strength on mass picket lines. Nor have they dispatched organizers to unionize other non-union Mauser facilities nationally and immigrant workers throughout the city. The strike could have been the launching pad for working-class defense of immigrant Chicago and shown the way to truly make the city welcoming to immigrants—by putting the union in charge of safety and establishing the right to resume the strike in response to ICE roundups.

But instead of charting such a path, the left has limited itself to expressions of solidarity without doing anything to challenge the union bureaucracy’s losing strategy, which is dictated by what is acceptable to the Democrats they view as allies. This is made explicit at Mauser rallies, where liberal politicians are trotted out to pledge their “support” in a con game to prevent any real fight. Johnson visited the picket lines to proclaim that “ICE agents do not get to run amok” and “disrupt and destabilize our communities and our workplaces.” All this professed love from the Democrats has proved entirely worthless from the moment it was uttered. The Mauser bosses have not budged and are now moving to shut down the struck plant altogether, and ICE is running amok throughout Chicago.

The Teamsters bureaucrats are far from alone in trying to rehabilitate the mayor in the eyes of working people. The CORE leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) holds up Johnson’s brief stint as a teacher and a union organizer as proof that he is on “our side.” But he turned in his union card to take over City Hall and now answers first and foremost to the landlords, bankers and bosses of Segregation City. How did the teachers fare with their new contract under Brother Johnson’s administration? It looked pretty good on paper, but it was all smoke and mirrors. In what can only be described as a highly cynical ploy by the CTU tops and City Hall, this contract was not even fully funded for the first year. But teachers were strung along just enough to ensure the leadership’s re-election, only for Johnson to ax 1,400 jobs! If this is how he treats his own (former) union, everybody else better watch out.

Such “partnership” with Johnson undermines the defense of the unions, just like it undermines the defense of immigrants, and is counterposed to linking the two struggles against the class enemy. Giving a pass to the union bureaucrats who lock arms with the Democrats, as many left groups do, or otherwise failing to provide an alternative course of working-class struggle only perpetuates the problem.

To Build Black and Brown Unity, Give Brandon the Boot!

Black Chicago got its first taste of Fed occupation last week when agents rampaged through a South Shore apartment building and tore the place apart. But there is little pushback from the black population, and few black people are at the demonstrations. Why?

The divide between black and brown Chicago is wider than it was when Johnson took office because of how he handled the migrant crisis. What did the left do? Call for empathy for the migrants while blaming the “backwardness” of black people who objected to immigrants being dumped in their neighborhoods. The Revolutionary Communist Party went so far as to poster Hyde Park with such diatribes. As for Freedom Road Socialist Organization, they rallied behind Johnson on the totally liberal basis that as a black mayor he represents the black masses. But he doesn’t. Black Dems like Johnson, who often come from the better-off layer of the oppressed black population, are enforcers for the white ruling class. This is evident in his handling of the migrant crisis. After all, he could have housed the immigrants in millionaire’s mansions. But then he would have been out of a job.

Black Chicago should defend immigrants because doing so is crucial to their own defense, let alone to make any strides in the fight for black liberation. Things are certainly not looking up right now. Trump’s reactionary attacks on liberal DEI programs—which themselves fuel racial divisions—have only thrown suspicion on the accomplishments of black people and painted targets on their backs. Black unemployment is on the rise in the city and nationally. The mobilization of the National Guard—and Johnson’s salute to the local police in response—promises more racist cop terror.

In the face of the turmoil, black people have every reason to link their struggle to that of other sections of the working class, who all share a common enemy. Defending immigrants is particularly important at the moment because every success of the ruling class on this front will be used to further throw back black struggle. Whenever the authorities launch mass roundups, it’s never long before black people are in their sights. Immigrants and the rest of the working class must likewise fight to smash the segregated setup that keeps black people at the bottom, which is the main club used by the bosses to drive down everyone’s conditions. Once again, this approach is incompatible with clinging to Johnson.

We don’t want to see more leftist youth spin out of politics from disillusionment once the reality sets in that their efforts are not bearing fruit. The struggle to defend immigrants must be put on a firm and consistent working-class basis and the fight for the same strategy extended into the labor movement. This is the only way forward. Dump the Dems!