PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MD, Feb. 25 — When Karl Marx said “Workers of the World, Unite!” he was declaring that the borders between countries were bosses’ tools to divide workers. Communists call for the abolition of all borders as part of unifying the working class worldwide. Nowhere was this goal more needed than at today’s racist town hall meeting, (organized by “People for Change” and “Help Save Maryland”). It was designed to launch a grassroots movement of black and white people to attack immigrants, especially undocumented workers, blaming them for the effects of the economic crisis of capitalism that all workers are facing. PLP’ers and friends declared, “No way!”
We came early and passed out flyers entitled “Stop Racist Attacks on Workers with Militancy and Multiracial Unity,” freaking out the organizers who expected no opposition and wildly threatened to have us arrested by “the police ringing this area.” This assumption that the police would protect them shows how the capitalist system supports these kinds of disgusting racists. As U.S. rulers face increasing competition they are paying for their wars on the backs of the workers – and dividing workers by winning blacks and whites to attack immigrants helps keep all workers from seeing who their real enemy is.
We also distributed a flyer called “10 Myths about Immigrants” that refutes the lies that undocumented workers don’t pay taxes, “bring disease,” “are criminals” and are a drain on educational and health resources. The truth is that undocumented workers pay more taxes than others and are horribly underpaid and exploited. They are closer to the condition of exploited slaves in the 19th century.
The panel consisted of black and white speakers whose program is already enacting racist policies in the public policy arena (see Box). Roy Beck from Numbers USA is a lawyer who specializes in helping businesses get rid of undocumented workers. In his campaign D.C. mayoral candidate Leo Alexander scapegoats undocumented workers for the lack of jobs for low-income black workers. A former social worker on the line-up spoke of having been fired from her job for refusing to help immigrant women with babies get food stamps.
We interrupted her speech, demanding to know “Did she want those babies to starve?” A lawyer explained the “rights” citizens have to turn in undocumented workers to the Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) and encouraged the audience to do so. The last speaker was from Help Save Maryland, whose sole purpose is to sow hatred for undocumented workers and lobby for racist laws against them. They are even proud of being on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of extremist groups!
The 50 people in the meeting hall included six journalists and 12 politicians. Our members peppered the panel with sharp questioning, led off by a PLP’er who boldly condemned the panel, declaring, “I have worked my whole life to bring black and white people together, but this meeting feels like a Ku Klux Klan meeting.” The racists heckled her, but we demanded that she be allowed to speak. A panelist told her that she should take her “illegal immigrant” friends and go to Central America and make a revolution, to which she hotly responded that she’d be pleased to make revolution anywhere!
Our questions and comments exposed the lies that problems of taxes, criminality, bad schools and poor health care were because of undocumented workers, and demonstrated that the capitalist system and Wall Street were to blame, not the Latino workers the racists wanted to blame and deport.
A black friend declared that what the anti-immigrant speakers were saying about Latinos was exactly the type of racist statements made about her during the Civil Rights era. She was particularly shocked at the depth of anti-immigrant hatred espoused by the black people in the room. The organizers, she said, were trying to scare people with undocumented workers as the bogeyman.
To fight back against this fascist organizing we cannot rely on the leaders of liberal mass organizations like CASA de Maryland that limit their struggle to reforms and working within the system. Our friends in CASA tell us not to confront these racists but to work with “friendly” politicians, even though this strategy is already failing badly. These liberal politicians, from Obama down to local leaders, push anti-immigrant legislation to help the bosses divide and rule. They can be even more dangerous than the open racists because they can deceive workers about their good intentions as they sign the laws that further attacks on our class brothers and sisters.
We can win through communist organizing and relying on workers to understand that their interests lie in fighting for a communist future of equality that can be won only by a united, anti-racist, working class. We can advance by fighting racist cutbacks in health, education, and jobs, through door-to-door campaigns, and by educating our base and the broader masses that such struggles can make gains only by identifying the capitalist class and state as the enemy, not our brother and sister workers regardless of their status, ethnicity, “race,” or place of origin. J
Bosses’ Anti-Immigrant Attacks in the Washington, D.C. area
• Banned Maryland driver’s licenses for undocumented workers.
• Stopping special educational services for undocumented (read Latino) children — Prince George’s County just laid off 120 parent/community liaison/translation workers!
• Using “E-verify” to stop undocumented workers from getting jobs or setting up bank accounts in Maryland and the District of Columbia —
major lobbying and campaigning underway!
• Eliminating in-state college tuition for undocumented families — done in Virginia, under consideration in Maryland.
• Eliminating health care for undocumented workers except for the emergency room.
• Eliminating food stamps and welfare payments for families with an undocumented parent — even when the children are citizens.