[Marxism] Bush responds to immigrant protests with wave of deportation raids

[Joaquín Bustelo <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

        Reports indicate that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has
launched a series of nationwide workplace raids supposedly targeting the
German company IFCO Systems but in reality victimizing hundreds of Mexicans
and other immigrants whose only crime is to work for a living. 

        This action by the Bush administration is the government's response
to the massive wave of immigrant protests demanding legalization for
undocumented workers that has swept the United States in the last month.

        In the most massive outpourings since the civil rights and antiwar
movements of the 1960s, immigrants have demanded their right to be accepted
as part of U.S. society. And after years of having our sisters and brothers
stigmatized by the politicians and their media megaphones as disease-ridden,
job-stealing, tax-cheating, school-budget-busting, wage-lowering terrorist
"illegal aliens," the entire Latino community --Mexicans, Guatemalans,
Cubans and Argentines, "legal" and "illegal," citizen and noncitizen,
Democrats, Republicans and Independent, have risen up in a splendid display
of unity and solidarity with a clear message: ¡BASTA YA! 

        Enough! No more victimization, no more demonization, no more
discrimination, no more deportations!

        This response by the Bush administration is a massive provocation
against an oppressed people that has finally stood up to fight a regime of
racist discrimination as odious as the apartheid regime of South Africa or
the Jim Crow system of the U.S. South. 

        The Latino community is no longer willing to accept being treated as
a silent minority, good for every kind of stoop labor from building roads to
harvesting crops to raising children, but denied the right to drive, the
right to a fair day's wage for our labor, the right to an equal education
for our children.

        The Latino community, which with massive discipline and unity has
carried out a political upheaval in U.S. society with few historical
parallels, will know how to respond to these provocations.

        All working people should be on alert to join in support of the
actions that our community will launch in response to these attacks.

Joaquín


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