Vol. 71/No. 13      April 2, 2007

By Eddie Beck  
NEWARK, New Jersey—From responding to factory raids by la migra to mobilizations by students on campuses against chauvinist forces, the Young Socialists are joining fellow workers, students, and others in the fight for legalization of all undocumented immigrants across the United States.

On February 6, YSers joined students at the University of California in Los Angeles protesting the presence of rightist Minutemen on campus. Despite the short notice, several hundred students came to the action, reported Michael Ortega, the YS organizer in Los Angeles.

YS members in New York joined a similar demonstration at New York University in lower Manhattan on February 22 to protest against a “game” called “Find the Illegal Immigrant,” organized by the NYU College Republicans.

In Freehold, New Jersey, immigrant day laborers recently won a court settlement that drops local restrictions on their ability to seek work. They are now fighting a proposed town ordinance that would impose penalties on those renting to undocumented immigrants.

YS members joined 300 protesters in Freehold on March 5 as councilman Marc LeVine apologized to a public meeting for racist comments he had made online that branded Latinos as “promiscuous.”

“I just want them to treat us like we’re human, give us papers, and let us go to college,” José Retes, 13, a student in Freehold, said in an interview.

On March 10, Young Socialists in Chicago joined 1,000 people at a rally there to mark the one-year anniversary of the 100,000-strong action in the city, the first of many mass mobilizations last spring demanding legalization of immigrants.

Those proletarian actions showed the U.S. working class has been politicized. This was graphically demonstrated last May Day, when over 2 million workers across the country downed their tools, in the first nationwide strike, to place political demands on the government.

“We are building and joining these actions to demand legalization of all immigrants now, an end to the raids and deportations, and dropping the ‘identity theft’ and other charges against the workers arrested at Swift and in other recent raids,” said Christian Castro, a garment worker and YS organizer in Chicago.

“All the arrested workers should be freed! This is a life-and-death question for the labor movement in this country, for the unity of the working class and for mutual defense with its allies,” he said. “We can’t rely on the Democrats, Republicans, or any other capitalist politicians. We have to keep our eyes on the ranks of the working class who are saying: ‘We are workers, not criminals!’”

Ben O’Shaughnessy contributed to this article.
 
 
Related articles:
700 protest ‘migra’ raid in Massachusetts
Protesters in Freehold, New Jersey, condemn anti-immigrant measure  
 
 
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