Our Picket Lines Cross Any Border: Statement of Solidarity With the Migrant Caravan
We, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with the migrant caravan of Central American refugees organized via Pueblo Sin Fronteras and its allies, and unequivocally denounce the actions of the U.S. government to terrorize those attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. We call on all labor organizations, anti-capitalists, and people of conscience to mobilize, agitate, and organize in support of the caravan and the rights of refugees and migrants.
November 25th’s attack epitomized the inhumanity of borders. Hundreds, from the very young to the elderly, had assembled for a peaceful demonstration. Frustrated after weeks of traveling and still more waiting to exercise an internationally recognized legal right to asylum, some decided to run for the border. Border patrol responded with tear gas, a chemical weapon banned in warfare, indiscriminately targeting asylum seekers (including infants and children). This is not an invading army, as the US President so gleefully characterizes migrants fleeing gang violence and impoverishment – it is families, desperate people seeking a sliver of justice in an unforgiving world.
We recognize the modern border as the living embodiment of a false community, where the nation-state is held up as the common cause of all peoples born under its thumb. The common experience of dispossession that the working class of all countries knows is buried under the worship of the flag, the constitution of slaveholders and landowners, and the pursuit of corporate liberties. It is on this basis that we are asked to believe that it is in workers’ interests, in the name of democracy and freedom, when the U.S. government intervenes in Central America on behalf of business: the training and subsequent backing of military leaders who led a 2009 coup d’état in Honduras; the staging of a 1954 coup in Guatemala on behalf of the United Fruit Company; the backing of right-wing death squads across the board – to name only a few instances.
We know that working people of the U.S. have no country to fight for – our loyalty must be to the dispossessed of all the world, no matter their nationality. However much the capitalist class tells us that our fight is with our neighbor, the stranger in a foreign land seeking refuge, we know that the true opponents of peace and justice sit in corporate suites and political offices here at home.
Our orientation is at once both ethical and strategic: ethical, in that we believe in the capacity of humanity to realize a truly global community without poverty or war, that no one should be left behind because of where they were born or how far they have traveled; strategic, in that global supply chains are so integrated and interlinked as to make the struggle of workers in one sector and region part and parcel of a struggle in all other parts. On both of these fronts, we believe that an injury to one is an injury to all.
We seek a world without walls or borders, where exploitation and oppression are extinguished. We oppose a regime where capital enjoys freedom of movement to exploit as it wishes, while labor faces militarized frontiers that entrap the great mass of humanity in pens and cages. We affirm that the police and law enforcement are the enemies of a free society, that the caravan represents the hope and collective action of masses of people yearning for sanctuary, and that we will work to become powerful enough that, in a day soon to come, what happened this Sunday (11/25) will never be seen again.
Solidarity Forever,
Tampa Bay DSA – Steering Committee (Author)
Central Florida DSA – Steering Committee
Orlando DSA – Steering Committee
Miami DSA – Steering Committee
Charleston, SC DSA – Steering Committee
Asheville, NC DSA – Steering Committee
Eugene, OR DSA – Coordinating Committee
Space Coast, FL DSA – General Body
DSA Southern Caucus – Steering Committee
New Orleans DSA – Local Council
University of South Florida Students for Justice in Palestine
Metro Atlanta DSA – Steering Committee
Twin Cities DSA
(If you are interested in your organization signing onto this statement, please send an email to dsa.tampa@gmail.com.)