Labor's Gotta Play Hardball to Win!

Showdown on West Coast Docks: The Battle
of Longview
(November 2011).
click on photo for article

Chicago Plant Occupation Electrifies Labor
(December 2008).
click on photo for article
May Day Strike Against the War Shuts
Down
U.S. West Coast Ports
(May 2008)
click on photo for article
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May 2017
A Call on NYC Labor to
Mobilize
Against June 10 Anti-Muslim Hate Rally

Internationalist contingent in protest outside I.C.E. jail
in Manhattan on February 26 "day without immigrants."
(Internationalist photo)
From the Internationalist Group,
Class Struggle Education Workers and
Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas (Class Struggle
International Workers)
Sisters and brothers:
New York City is a union town, where a quarter of all
workers are members of a labor union. New York City is an
immigrant town, where over 40% of the entire population
was born in another country. We have enormous potential
power. Workers – black and white, Latino and Asian, Muslim
and Jewish, born here or abroad – make every wheel turn.
Nothing moves without our labor.
But now we are all being targeted by outright fascists
and violent race-hate groups of the “alt right,” who have
announced they will hold a vicious Muslim-bashing action
on June 10 at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan. They claim
the purpose is to oppose the imposition of “sharia law,”
an entirely made-up threat. The real and obvious purpose
of this “dog whistle” is to attack all Muslims. As recent
events show all too clearly, this is a real and present
danger to all working people.
It is crucial to bring out the power of New York’s
multiracial working class and opponents of racist,
anti-immigrant bigotry, to shut down the fascists and
their June 10 provocation.
Fascist rallies are not exercises in free speech, they
are staging grounds for lynchings. That stopping fascist
provocations is a matter of life and death has been shown
yet again by escalating racist terror in recent weeks:
- On May 13, “alt-right” fascist leader Richard Spencer
led a mob of hundreds rallying to “save Confederate
monuments” in Charlottesville, Virginia. Imitating the
German Nazis, they marched with flaming torches, while
waving the Confederate battle flag of the slave-owners
and KKK.
- A week later, on May 20, African American student
Richard Collins was murdered by an “alt-right” fascist
at the University of Maryland, in what has widely been
described as a lynching.
- On May 25, nooses – a threat of lynching – were found
at one of the main terminals in the Port of Oakland in
California. ILWU longshoremen walked off the job in
protest.
- On the same day in New York, racists including
Islamophobe Pamela Geller, immigrant-bashing provocateur
Milo Yiannopoulos and fascists wearing body armor and
helmets staged a rally against CUNY for allowing
well-known Arab American rights activist Linda Sarsour
to give a commencement speech. The fascists violently
assaulted counter-protesters.
- On May 26, less than a month after a race-hate rally
was held in Portland, Oregon, a fascist who had
prominently attended it murdered two men and seriously
injured a third for standing up to him as he screamed
anti-Muslim insults and death threats against two young
women on a train.
NYC’s powerful labor movement must not stand by while
fascists try to bring their racist terror to our town.
Fascists are the deadly enemies of the working class. They
would smash the unions and pave the way for an unfettered
corporate dictatorship. They seek to obliterate the most
basic rights of everyone opposed to racism, of women, gays
and lesbians, of students and youth. They are a threat to
us all.
The city government and Democratic Party won’t stop them.
Democratic mayor De Blasio has declared 170 “deportable
offenses” for which NYC will collaborate with I.C.E.
immigration police. He is opposing City Council bills to
widen “sanctuary city” limits on cooperation with the
I.C.E. His “broken windows” policy causes the arrest of
over 100,000 people a year, setting up thousands of
immigrants for deportation. And the NYPD alerts I.C.E.
about immigrants’ court appearances.
The fascists, Muslim-bashers and anti-immigrant racists
feel they have a green light for terror with Republican
Donald Trump in the White House. But don’t forget that
Democratic president Obama deported over 5 million
immigrants (8 million if you include those stopped at or
near the border), a record number.
In Portland, Oregon, eight area unions, including several
construction workers unions, the Carpenters regional
council and statewide teachers federation, have passed
motions calling to bring out labor against the threat of
reactionary racist forces. This coming June 4, Portland
labor activists are mobilizing to stop a fascist
provocation only nine days after last week’s double
murder. That should spur NYC labor to use its power to
shut down the June 10 Muslim-bashing event.
Already in February, Teamsters Joint Council 16 set an
important example when it demonstrated at JFK airport in
defense of Muslims. The Taxi Workers Alliance shut down
airport service to protest Trump’s Muslim ban. In strikes
and organizing drives from Verizon and Spectrum Cable to
B&H Photo and AT&T Mobility, NYC workers have
fought back in defense of our rights.
Now is the time to bring out the united power of the
working class in a massive labor/immigrant mobilization to
stop the fascists here in New York on June 10. ■
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