Vol. 71/No. 20      May 21, 2007

Working people and other opponents of police brutality should promote and join the protest called for May 17 in Los Angeles to demand justice over this assault and press the demands of May Day: legal residency for all immigrants and an end to police raids and deportations. At a May 8 public hearing on the attack, attended by an overflow crowd of 200, dozens of those injured by the cops testified and many called for the firing of LAPD chief William Bratton.

A May 5 protest in Houston condemned the Los Angeles police riot. Similar actions are needed around the country.

Millions across the United States were outraged when they watched on TV how riot cops teargassed, clubbed, and fired rubber bullets at the crowd and at journalists covering the event. Many working people, especially Blacks, have been at the receiving end of the LAPD’s long record of brutality—emblemized by the savage 1992 beating of Rodney King—and can readily identify with immigrant workers speaking out today. The video images of the MacArthur Park attack will “reopen old wounds, regrettably,” said Police Commission president John Mack, whose job is to whitewash the cops. The capitalist rulers have reason to be worried that incidents like this one can help spur more African Americans and others to join a struggle that is not just for the foreign-born but for all working people.

The movement to end raids and deportations and win legalization of the undocumented is not a Mexican, Central American, or Latino movement, nor is it primarily about immigration. It is a working-class movement. Its main goal is to improve the living and working conditions of millions of superexploited workers, for which legalization is a precondition. Achieving such a goal is in the interests of all toilers.

The working-class mobilizations for the legalization of undocumented immigrants—including 400,000 nationwide on May Day this year and 2 million a year ago—have scared the U.S. rulers. Over the past year they have tried various means to push back this struggle, from increased factory raids, to convictions and jail time for "identity theft," to attempts to divert the fight toward reliance on Congress. These attacks have targeted workers involved in the struggle for legalization and other resistance to the bosses’ antilabor offensive.

The goal of the U.S. capitalists is not to drive out most of the undocumented. To the contrary, the bosses draw millions from around the world into their factories and fields because they need them as a source of superexploited labor.

The purpose of immigration laws and police is to maintain such a pariah layer, at best as "guest workers."

At the same time, the massive influx from abroad strengthens the ranks of the capitalists’ own gravediggers—the working class. Foreign-born workers have become more integrated into the proletariat of the United States and politics in this country.

To undercut this threat to the bosses’ interests, the government has stepped up police operations and other efforts to try to keep immigrant workers fearful, underground, segregated into their own barrios, isolated from the rest of their class. But the opposite is happening.

The example of solidarity, courage, and militancy set by workers in the battles for legalization and for an end to the raids and deportations shows how a working-class vanguard is being forged in the United States. The actions today by these workers—the biggest obstacle to the drive for exploitation and plunder by the ruling class in the most powerful imperialist country—are the most important development for workers and farmers around the world.
 
 
Related articles:
Outrage spreads over L.A. cop riot
Protest called in Los Angeles May 17
Brutal attack on May Day rally backfires
May Day actions show working class stronger in U.S.
Third Swift worker in Iowa convicted for 'identity theft'
Chicago bus driver won't drive cops, joins May 1 march
'We're workers, not criminals! Legalization, not deportation!'
Roundup of May Day actions in U.S.  
 
 
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