The Trump administration’s decision to mobilize and deploy 4,000 members of the National Guard and 700 Marines to Los Angeles is disturbing and absolutely unjustified. It is an attempt to stifle dissent through military force — something which has no place in a democracy — and a signal that if we wish to preserve our democratic freedoms, working people will have to be prepared to defend them through action in the streets, in our workplaces, and at the ballot box. Furthermore, it is clear that the administration is seeking to create physical conflict during immigration raids in order to justify a military response.

Protests against raids by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), including the mass protests in Los Angeles over the past several days, have been overwhelmingly peaceful, especially considering the deliberatively provocative behavior of ICE agents. At a protest in Chicago last week, according to an eyewitness, “When [federal law enforcement] came on the scene, they gave no orders. They didn’t ask anybody to disperse. They didn’t give any instructions. They just immediately began using their batons to push.”

According to the lawsuit filed by the State of California against Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hesgeth, ICE agents in Los Angeles “engaged in military-style operations” which included “sealing off entire streets around targeted buildings and using unmarked armored vehicles equipped with paramilitary gear.” The Los Angeles Police Department was also deliberately provocative, showing up to the peaceful protests in riot gear and paramilitary equipment, shooting journalists with rubber bullets, and arresting David Huerta, the president of SEIU California.

The recent ICE raids in Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere have targeted workplaces, reinforcing the reality that although Trump tries to portray all immigrants as criminals and terrorists, the overwhelming majority are workers. As our union and the rest of the labor movement have learned over the past half-century, the real purpose of immigration enforcement is to maintain a permanent underclass of workers afraid to stand up for their rights — which drags down wages and working conditions for all workers.

Deliberately provoking violence and then using the response to justify massive military crackdowns on civilian protest is one of the ways that democracies slide into authoritarianism. We know from the experience of other countries where the working class has defeated authoritarian governments that the labor movement, with our power to stop work, has an important role to play alongside mass mobilizations in the streets. If we prize our liberties and wish to maintain our rights, the labor movement and working people more broadly must denounce the unconscionable use of the U.S. military against our own people and prepare to engage in widespread nonviolent resistance if it continues.

Carl Rosen
General President

Andrew Dinkelaker
Secretary-Treasurer

Mark Meinster
Director of Organization

By UE Officers | Photo Courtesy of ueunion.org | UE News Reuse Policy

The post UE: Military Response to Immigration Protests a Step Towards Authoritarianism first appeared on Labor Today.

The capture of all three branches of the US government by insurrectionary forces and the “peaceful” transfer of power to a Trump Musk government is only the beginning of a fascist take-over. This is a government that supports and is based on the end of bourgeois democracy and a dictatorship. The rapid decline of US capitalism and imperialism economically and globally is leading directly to Trump and a fascist movement which includes tariff trade war, growing threat of world war and mass repression and fascism internally.

Trump using “shock and awe” will immediately free his fascist and racist supporters from prison and they will be organized and funded by fascist billionaires to target, crush and murder Blacks, Brown, Leftists and unionists. Trump and his fascist supporters including Turning Point US will remove 60,000 Federal workers in all departments of the capitalist state and replace them with his fascist supporters like Musk to implement his transformation of the present capitalist state into a fascist capitalist state.

As in Nazi Germany, Trump has put in place the Capitalists themselves in his proposed cabinet to administer the state for the elimination of unions, the privatization of all public education from k-12 to universities, privatization of public services and public healthcare and the complete privatization of Social Security and Medicare. This fascist government will launch mass immigration raids to deport millions of immigrant workers and arrest thousands of political activists including the hundreds of thousands who have mobilized against the US supported and funded genocide in Gaza, the pogroms in the West Bank and destruction in Lebanon. We need to build a united front against fascism and deportation and fight in the unions to form defense committees for all immigrant and undocumented workers and their families.

Internationally besides threatening to invade Panama, Venezuela and Cuba are also targets. The Trump Musk government will escalate the support of fascist regimes around the world from Argentina with Millie to Italy and Germany with the AfD. This agenda is supported by the largest capitalist billionaires in the world from Musk, Bezos, Thiel, Ellison and David Sacks. They will also move to support a military coup and dictatorship in Korea. The fascist supporters of Yoon are calling on the incoming Trump government to give full backing of Yoon’s criminal declaration of martial law and for him to crush the working class and all opposition.

The central fightback to this fascist government will come from the working class and the trade unions who are target number one since as institutions they have real power. The trade union bureaucracy instead of preparing for a fascist government is telling workers to rely on the Democratic party to defend our rights and living conditions. This is dangerous and ludicrous.

We need to prepare for a general strike against any effort to create martial law here and impose a direct fascist rule. Unlike the fightback in Korea, the US union bureaucrats are paralyzed with fear and do not want to mobilize the working class for action but that is exactly what is needed and critical.

We call on all organizations and those who want to build a mass working class united front to join together and prepare for the coming battles. Trump 2 will not be Trump 1 and the denialism and American exceptionalism is a dangerous and costly illusion.

The post UFCLP: Time For a United Front Against Mass Deportations and Fascism first appeared on Labor Today.