Workers don’t need license to fight back!

NEW JERSEY—Led by undocumented workers and youth, 200 protesters demanded what governor Phil Murphy had promised last year but (like the racist opportunist he is) never delivered: the basic access to drivers’ licenses. This protest exposed the hollowness of liberal politics and the potential for a workers’ movement with international communist influence. Progressive Labor Party fights for the idea that a system that uses borders, a ruling-class creation, to rob and terrorize workers deserves to be abolished.
Racist Murphy had preyed on the legal capitalist-created torment of undocumented workers and youth. He had made the point of licenses for the undocumented working class a part of his election campaign; today 500,000 in New Jersey alone still live under the threat of deportation every time they are stopped by the police for driving while undocumented. These workers refused to accept Murphy’s lies.
A PL’er talked  about their experience of crossing from Mexico into the U.S with their family, highlighting the repressive nature of the U.S. border patrol. They finished with the chant “Las Luchas Obreras, No Tienen Fronteras!/The Fight Of The Workers, It Has No Racist Borders!” The hundreds of workers present embraced the chant.
Working inside the Cosecha Movement
The march, organized by the Cosecha Movement, gathered workers from ten cities in Columbus Park, in the city of Trenton. From there we marched from this mostly Black, Latin, and Asian  neighborhood to where the politicians have their offices. This is the fourth and largest march that the Cosecha Movement has organized in Trenton since January, 2018, and shows the determination of the workers to escalate our fight against the capitalists and their state government to win this much needed reform!
Workers have drive for mass antiracist movement
Cosecha is a national U.S. grassroots organization that is coordinating reform campaigns around the needs of undocumented workers. The organization hopes to win workers to eventually unite around a nation-wide strike to achieve citizenship reform, which many workers believe will provide them with permanent protection from racist deportation.Marches are growing in numbers, with collective leadership. For this march, more families with children from more cities came. Taking inspiration from what a small but militant group of workers from New Brunswick contributed to the last march, more youth participated in preparation for and during the march and rally. Workers in each of the different cities made and sold traditional tacos, coordinated local festivals, partnered with various cultural events, organized yard sales, donated clothing, and held countless gatherings in homes and churches from June to September to raise funds.
These organizing activities encouraged new workers to come with us. And with the funds raised from these activities, we acquired six buses for workers from the different cities to converge at the rally in Trenton.
Politicians turn away workers, workers turn towards CHALLENGE
At one stop along the march, a mother gave a compelling speech: “Today I, because of [drivers’ licenses] I am here, because my son needs treatment and I have to travel to another state. I want all of you to grow conscious that this is a need. Not for luxury. Because it is a necessity.”
When we finally arrived at the state house, some politicians walked past and ignored the rally., and workers began chanting, and jeering at them.
The workers’ decision to take to the streets is a political victory - a literal step forward. In turning to the masses and youth in preparing for the struggle, the workers built the confidence to physically assert their growing power on the streets. And yet this is only a glimpse of what a small group of construction, agricultural, cleaning, household, factory, and professional workers, undocumented, documented, and citizen workers are able to collectively achieve.
Along the way, more than 400 CHALLENGEs in English and Spanish were sold or distributed, along with a pamphlet about the need to read and engage in discussion about solidarity with other workers’ struggles, including the need to smash racist borders.
Getting on the road to revolution
The exposure to communist ideas in CHALLENGE is key. No laws or politicians, or even a nationwide strike like Cosecha calls for, can provide “permanent protection” and/ or end the anti-immigrant racism capitalism relies on, no matter how many millions of workers might support it. Workers live in a dictatorship of capitalism- what reforms we do win are ultimately taken back when it suits the capitalists. However, when communists participate in these mass reform movements, which attract other strong working class fighters, these relationships can powerfully develop class consciousness.
Workers united across the world as a class by one party - PLP - are capable of transforming these energies for reform into a revolution for workers’ power. We do it by struggling for these reforms while introducing communist politics to the workers we meet, and showing the futility of attempting to reform capitalism.
Liberalism: main danger to working class
Liberal politicians, on the other hand, attempt to deceive workers into believing capitalism can be reformed, while channeling their struggles into the opposite direction- support for one or another sector of the genocidal, imperialist U.S. ruling class.
In 2009, liberal Deporter-In-Chief Barack Obama failed to pass a comprehensive immigration bill, which he promised within his first 100 days in office. Militant reform struggles led by “Dreamers” - undocumented youth fighting for access to higher education - began exposing Obama’s hypocrisy and empty promises.
By April 2011, Obama’s approval rating suffered drastically among Latin workers (Gallup 12/2014).
In June 2012, Obama signed into law the immigration executive order Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
By the end of 2014, the nature of liberals like Obama’s service to the bosses’ increasingly fascist system was even clearer. While breaking deportation records, Obama’s administration illegally awarded a one billion dollar contract to Corretions
Corporation of America (now known as  CoreCivic) “to build a massive detention facility for [immigrant] women and children seeking asylum...In 2015, the first full year [of the contract], CCA — which operates 74 facilities — made fourteen percent of its revenue from that one center while recording record profit” (America’s Voice, 10/12).
Today, the declining U.S. imperialist bosses’ reliance on the private prison industry continues to grow while the bosses’ latest mouthpiece, Donald Trump, has terminated DACA.
While the bosses’ plans for undocumented youth in the U.S. are unclear at the moment, communists in PLP will continue to learn from, struggle with, and forge international fightback by bringing workers together from across Cosecha and other movements, and continue to advocate our own plans and fight for nothing less than workers power - communist revolution!