BOSTON, February 4—At a time when Immigration and Customs Enforcement(ICE) agents have been sighted across the city terrifying workers and detaining them at grocery stores and subway stations, members and friends of Progressive Labor Party joined together to tell ICE, “Stay out of our community!”
Immigrants welcome, racists, never!
Five of us met after work in the center of a Boston neighborhood to sell CHALLENGE and distribute leaflets in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole about the ongoing fascist attack on immigrants. Once upon a time, this neighborhood was a key destination for Irish and Greek immigrants settling in Boston. Today, 25 percent of the population is Latin, and over 10 percent are not U.S. citizens.
We chose a busy corner in front of the local community center, shouting chants such as, “Smash racist deportations, working people have no nations!” There was a local nonprofit distributing food to workers nearby, and we made sure each of the nonprofit workers got a copy of our flyer. We also discussed with them how we can begin distributing food to immigrant workers who are so terrified of ICE that they have stopped going to work or to the grocery store.
This is part of a new Progressive Labor Party (PLP) campaign to fight racist deportations in our local area. President Donald Trump has a hit list of cities for ICE to raid which includes Boston. Our campaign will focus on organizing workers in the neighborhood to fight back against ICE agents. We will hold social events, hold regular CHALLENGE distributions, and support families as needed with regards to intimidation by ICE.
We plan to have a protest in March to show our solidarity and support to our immigrant working class brothers and sisters. We plan to coordinate our agitation with other Boston neighborhoods as well as members of the Boston Teachers Union to protect the identities of Boston school children and their families.
As it stands now, Boston is a Sanctuary City and our schools and city are supposed to be safe from ICE. But it is clear we can’t depend on these formalities or liberal politicians. The safety that we have enjoyed so far was fought for by workers and students during the last Trump Administration, and if we want to keep these victories, we will need to keep fighting while building the movement for communism.
Our leaflet, which was written collectively, focuses on building an understanding of how both Democrats and Republicans and all capitalists are using racism against Black and brown newly arrived immigrants to divide and conquer workers and pit workers against each other. The only solution is multiracial unity focused on destroying the capitalist system and replacing it with communism. It has never been as important for the PLP to take a leadership role in winning workers—we have a world to win!
