Students Debate Politics in Growing Sanctuary Struggle

QUEENS, NY, April 2—Following Trump’s election, LaGuardia Community College students, faculty, and staff began mobilizing to begin a Sanctuary movement. The Trump administration is increasing its’ racist and sexist attacks on the working class. They are bringing us ever closer to world war. We have to increase our efforts to organize a multiracial working class to fight back. A sanctuary movement is a good start. Let’s also make it a step on the road to a world run by the working class, communism.
The threats against immigrants, Muslims, women, and transpeople were on the minds of the more than 100 people who gathered in December. Many were politically active for the first time. At least 40 percent of students at LaGuardia Community College were born in other countries, 57 percent are female, and 86 percent are “non-white.” Even more are the children of immigrants, and many are Muslim.
Link Sanctuary Fight to Capitalist Inequality
From this initial meeting, groups have been mobilized to learn and train others about legal protections, find resources for students and family members struggling with immigration status, develop a rapid response network, integrate lessons into syllabi, and to connect with community organizations. Many of the workers and students involved in these efforts want to link the sanctuary fight to the bigger problems of capitalism, such as racist police terror, poverty, health care, education. As we build this sanctuary movement, we should expose and organize to destroy the whole capitalist system.
The college administration’s response has been to pull many of the leaders into an ad hoc committee, now dubbed LaGuardia Rising, to work with attorneys to find “suitable responses.” Staff and faculty have been told that the word “sanctuary” is a call to illegal actions, leaving many worried about their jobs.
Nevertheless the Sanctuary Coalition, a loosely connected group of committees and individuals who are dedicated to resistance, are working in parallel to train anyone who is interested about resources and basic protections for immigrant students, build a rapid response network, and disseminate information.
Town Hall: Whom Do the Cops Serve?
A town hall meeting brought in hundreds of community members in mid March, students are visiting classes with the support of faculty to educate other students, and students reached out with a table at the college Club Fair to build the movement. Many at the college are mobilized.
Some leaders are working with the administration, who assured the community that Immigration Customs Enforcement would never be allowed into classrooms: If ICE personnel come to campus with judicial warrants, college security will get the students instead. What’s the difference if you are picked up by ICE or brought by college security to ICE? At the most recent Town Hall meeting, some students discussed working with the police. This is a trap. The cops serve the billionaire bosses. They protect the bosses’ property and profits.
The concern is deep and sincere, but the movement is riddled with contradictions. Questions abound. Should students hide their immigration status to protect themselves and their families, or should they boldly declare themselves undocumented as a political action? Are students who are already registered as DREAMers at risk? Should Sanctuary activists work with the college administration? As we build this anti-racist and anti-sexist movement, questions will be answered and issues will be resolved. We invite everyone fight against anti-immigrant racism to  the Progressive Labor Party’s May Day march on April 29th (see the ad on page 8).