End U.S. Military and Economic Support
for Dictators and Right-Wing Coups
Share Vaccines with the World
Say No to Biden & Congress’ Drive
for Global Capitalist Empire & Militarism
On any given night, over 70 million people around the world, including millions of children, do not know where they’ll lay their heads to rest. They have no idea if they will find sanctuary or hostility. They are doing what all working and unemployed people would do here: trying to find a way to survive, have shelter and food, and security. Their suffering is enormous.
Bosses’ attacks on migrant workers meant to bring down all workers’ wages
The Trumpist Republican Party is aggressively organizing using open racism and fear tactics to turn workers against migrants. In Louisiana, Rep. Valerie Hodges, a rich business owner and right winger is whipping up the usual lies claiming immigrants have stolen LA tax dollars and that thousands of undocumented people are stealing public services. Hodges’ real aim is to lower the wages and benefits of all workers. As Salvador Longoria, a New Orleans attorney and advocate for Latino immigrants, puts it: Hodges’ bill “wouldn’t be the first time legislation was passed to affect the undocumented communities yet ended up having an unintentional secondary affect on other communities.” “It’s going to screw the native born population too,” Longoria said. “It’s going to affect everybody across the board.”
Immigrants are the ones ripped off, as they pay billions in federal state and local taxes and are denied any benefits, while the super-rich individuals and corporations pay little or no taxes at all. You cannot get much crueler than denying food stamps, stimulus checks, and social security to the very workers who keep this country fed in the middle of a pandemic that has disproportionately affected migrant workers and their families. The businesswoman Hodges, who routinely opposes all workers’ rights and votes against raising the minimum wage, is the definition of a parasite. Now she wants to cut workers’ ability to claim tax credits for dependents.
Meanwhile the Democrats are capitulating to the right on migration. The truth is Biden is just as responsible for the horrific conditions of dictatorship, starvation, war, unemployment, fear, and climate chaos that has driven people around the world from their homes. Now Biden is calling for the construction of more detention camps for children on military bases.
Workers in U.S. will not thrive by turning their backs on workers under attack abroad
We should work to unite all forces opposed to this inhumane situation, but we especially need to talk with other workers about the source of this crisis. The right wing is busy telling workers of all nationalities that being “tough” on immigration will save their jobs. Many Democrats play along. They also play along with the deception that U.S. wars and sanctions advance the interests of U.S. workers when they’re only carried out to advance the interests of a few bosses, bankers, and war profiteers.
Unfortunately, too many in the progressive movement are buying into Biden’s imperialist policies which only differ in name from Trump’s “America First” policies. Happy to be rid of Trump, many are willing to adopt a false idea that we can have prosperity while ignoring the uninterrupted war, sanctions, and financial strong-arming that the U.S. inflicts on countries around the world. Many echo the lies and propaganda of the government because they’re coming from Biden’s mouth rather than Trump’s. The history of fascism’s rise to power shows how many liberals failed to provide an alternative and in fact were complicit in the development of fascism because they put the winning of one limited objective or another above the entire class struggle. To win workers over to their rightful place in the global class struggle, we must foster an understanding based on class interest, not just morality.
U.S. economic and military policies force people to leave their homelands
The first thing to clearly explain is that migrants are fleeing their homelands because the U.S. government is sabotaging, bombing, or starving their country in order to protect or enlarge the profits of super-rich corporations. We are part of the global working class. When the U.S. destroys a country that is raising wages or providing social benefits to its workers, it will inevitably bring down the conditions here as well. If any group of workers are paid less because of racism, religious bigotry, gender oppression or national origin, the wages of all workers will be lower.
Many migrants are from Honduras, especially here in New Orleans. We must remember that it was the Obama, Biden, Clinton administration that organized and supported the right-wing coup in 2009 that overthrew the elected government of Manuel Zelaya, just as it was instituting progressive social reforms. To this day Biden funds, militarily trains, and supports the brutal right-wing austerity government of Juan Orlando Hernández which has pushed more than 67% of Hondurans into poverty. People do not want to leave their countries; U.S. economic and military policies force it on them.
The goal of every capitalist administration, without exception, is to boost the profits of banks and corporations. This is why both Republicans and Democrats have a love fest around growing the military budget, dropping bombs and imposing arrogant deadly sanctions around the world. They are opposed to any country, be they socialist or merely aiming to free themselves of imperialist plunder. Whether Bolivia, Venezuela, North Korea; whether in Africa, Asia, or Europe, any government that uses its budget for social benefits is the enemy.
The U.S. government calls countries like Israel democratic as they carry out genocide against the Palestinian people. They are in league with the monarchy of Saudi Arabia as they bomb school buses full of Yemeni children. The U.S. aids the government of Columbia as they massacre hundreds of social leaders and trade unionist every year. They prop up the dictatorship of the Jovenel Moïse in Haiti so that Nike and other companies can keep paying workers $3 a day. They spend billions of our tax dollars to crush peoples’ efforts to win a better life for themselves, while they support phony “movements” devised by oligarchies to rob the people and deliver them into the clutches of imperialism. They oppose independence, sovereignty, and self-determination because the imperialist International Monetary Fund and World Bank, dominated by the U.S., NATO countries, and Japan, demand repayment of loans before one child gets a container of milk. They oppose indigenous socialist power in Bolivia so that Elon Musk of Tesla has all the lithium this billionaire desires.
The Republicans as well as Biden and his Democrats stand for the growth of the U.S. empire on behalf of a capitalist class whose control over world production is becoming shakier and shakier by the day. As millions in the U.S. are unemployed and hungry, Biden is building up Space Force and preparing new missile systems, including nuclear weapons. Despite the pandemic, he has not let up on any of the brutal sanctions that prevent one third of the world’s population from accessing the food, medicine, and other basic items they need to survive.
Organize workers to fight back against capitalist attacks on our migrant brothers, sisters, siblings
For progressives to refuse to see this as part and parcel of capitalism—to turn away from this reality—is to be complicit in the injustice. It does not mean dropping important domestic struggles, it means not being deceptive about Biden, and weaving together issues that affect the working class so that in the process of organizing, a U.S. worker begins to understand that they and a Honduran worker share a common enemy.
It is fantasy to expect the government to be persuaded by moralism: clearly, the horror of children in cages has not moved them to action. We have to join the resistance. We have to demand freedom and full rights for migrants. This means organizing to unite the working class to oppose the filthy rich who are putting our lives and the whole planet in danger. United we can put an end to the immense misery they cause.
