Hundreds Blast Deporter-in-Chief at White House

WASHINGTON, DC, April 5 — Today over 400 workers and students marched over three miles from D.C.’s Mt. Pleasant neighborhood to the White House, condemning President Barack Obama as the “Deporter-in-Chief.” Demonstrators called for a halt to all deportations. Several individuals whose families had been separated by deportations pledged to camp out on Obama’s doorstep until deportation orders for family members were reversed.
A local planning committee led by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network included students from area universities, immigrants’ rights organizations, and a PLP member. Several PL’ers participated in the march, distributing 400 May Day leaflets as well as copies of the 2013 May Day issue of CHALLENGE containing some sharp articles on immigration. They called on marchers to join the upcoming May Day march on April 26 in New York. PL’ers made many new contacts. Afterwards several marchers came to a dinner at the PL’ers’ home to discuss continuing the struggle.
The march was inspiring. It created a spirit of solidarity and power that determined fightbacks can build. It overcame the fear and isolation that we often experience. But the march also reflected the ongoing challenge of divisions within the working class over racism. The march included mainly Latinos with a few whites and fewer blacks. Despite an effort to reach out to black workers and youth, the march failed to include a significant group outside the Latino community, a weakness that must be overcome.
Fortunately, there is also a surging multi-racial, anti-racist movement led by PLP that clearly points out that all forms of racism hurt all groups of workers by destroying the solidarity needed to fight and defeat the capitalist class. Racist divisions in the working class also give capitalists the maneuvering room afforded by super-profits reaped from the super-exploitation of black and Latino sections of the working class.
The strategic insight that racism hurts all workers has not yet penetrated the mass movement adequately in the U.S. or elsewhere. Consequently, the bosses still hold the trump cards in the class struggle. But this can be reversed!
PLP will bring ALL workers together on May Day to fight back as a class against racism and the capitalist system as a whole. This approach must be reflected in all organizing efforts. Bring black and white people to immigration rights events; bring Latinos and whites to fights against racist murders by the police, and unify the working class to topple capitalism, the root of all modern oppressions.