KEARNY, NJ, January 18—A  multiracial, multi-generational crowd of antiracists and communists gathered on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to protest the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention death camps, where 21 workers have died in the past year. Progressive Labor Party and friends seized the day by sharing our ideas with working-class fighters and putting communist tactics into practice.
Incarcerated workers in New Jersey have been protesting their imprisonment and fighting back against the inhumane conditions of the rulers’ for-profit jails. Members of the working class from the Congo, Haiti, Honduras, and all worldwide are being forced to live cramped on top of other workers with rats, improper medical care, and all-around neglect. Our class is also experiencing the effects of capitalism in crisis with a raging pandemic to boot. It is the fight of all workers–Black, Latin, Asian, Arab, and white to smash these cages built by both Small Fascists like Donald Trump and the multiracial coalition of Big Fascists like the U.S. President Joe Biden.
Keep communist politics primary
For the last few years, members of PLP have actively fought alongside workers from Movimiento Cosecha to smash the racist division between undocumented and documented workers. With Covid-19 hitting Black and Latin communities at an alarming rate, the struggle and fight have only intensified. In NJ, ICE death camps have the highest rate of Covid-19 in the country (NJ.com, 6/21) and deportation flights have been linked to the confirmed spread of Covid-19 in more than 11 countries (CIDRAP, 1/19). (See article, page 5).
When PLP heard the call that Anti-ICE organizers planned to protest these conditions on MLK Day, we jumped at the opportunity. The plan was to take a heavily trafficked truck route, but as soon as we arrived there were already cops dressed in riot gear. Plans to occupy a large bridge with a small number of workers made our group feel unsafe and put the optics of militancy over building working-class power. We all agreed to talk to workers involved in organizing the event to collectively and dialectically decide a new course of action.
Build confidence in the working class
We knew we were in the presence of friends when one Black worker said, “The reason ICE exists and Martin [Luther King Jr] was killed are connected–CAPITALISM.” We found some faces in the crowd of workers that we met at previous antiracist protests in the summer around the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, two Black workers murdered by kkkops.
As a way to unite struggles, one PL’er chanted, “Citizen and undocumented, same enemy same fight, workers of the world unite!” After a series of speeches, one organizer said while there were fewer protesters than expected, police retaliation was still a possibility. We planned to see how far we could go along the route and keep making communist politics primary.
We marched on the sidewalks along the truck route, shared CHALLENGE with truck drivers, and shouted “worker” as a substitute for “people” in chants. Those marching paused for us to make small speeches about the relationship between racist state terror and the profit system. The bosses divide workers by super exploiting and criminalizing some sections of our class while using the threat of deportations and police to keep us in line. Of course, no worker is free until all are free. We are proud to call ourselves “workers.” The “people” in the ruling class are our exploiters who will one day be smashed by a communist revolution.  Many workers appreciated this. In response, we gave them CHALLENGE.
Not pro-worker, just nationalist
On his first day in office, Big Fascist Joe Biden signed an executive order halting “most” deportations for 100 days. The same day, antiracist fighters in Portland, Oregon were tear-gassed and terrorized by fascist pigs for hurling rocks at both ICE and U.S. Democratic Party facilities (ABC News, 1/21).
Days later, Biden instructed the U.S. Justice Department to stop contracting with private prisons but exempted ICE. Meanwhile, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who gave supporters of Small Fascist Trump moral support earlier in the day, before they stormed the U.S. Capitol, successfully sued the halt in deportations (Time, 1/26).  
Contrast this with Biden silence on the U.S. ambassador to Guatemala William Popp, a previous appointee of Trump, endorsed the violent repression of more than 9,000 migrants at the hands of Mexican and Guatemalan bosses' police forces (Bangkok Post, 1/23). The Biden administration said they would refuse these workers fleeing hurricane-stricken Honduras. They will only afford some concessions for the documented and undocumented workers that are already present domestically, but not the ones that are currently fleeing their homes due to U.S. bosses’ imperialist crises.
Biden doesn’t care about workers in the U.S. or internationally. His goal is to convince workers that their loyalty lies with the U.S.bosses, and not with our class brothers and sisters who risk their lives crossing their deadly borders. Biden will use nationalism disguised as multiculturalism to build a war-ready nation to fight U.S.’s imperialist rivals China and Russia. PLP says turn this imperialist war into a class war to smash all borders.
 Hate nationalism? You might be a communist
When workers refuse to identify with any of the bosses’ nations and make the choice to unite around our class’s common interests, we are showing other workers what it takes to build communism. PLP is an international, communist party that’s committed to fighting racism, sexism, and exploitation in our neighborhoods, schools, and jobs. The class struggle may reveal a communist inside all of us! Join PLP to join the fight!