Los Angeles, June 7 — When President Obama showed up here today to give a fund-raising speech to the people he really represents — the wealthy of this city and the fat-cat donors of the Democratic Party — he was met by 150-200 protesters, mostly young Latino college students. Many came to the U.S. with parents and relatives in search of a way out of the desperate poverty in Central America and Mexico. A group of us PLP members joined our friends from immigrant rights groups at the rally, to protest an administration that is working 24/7 to detain (jail) and deport an all time high number of immigrants, 1.7 million, in the last four years.
These anti-immigrant policies and actions have prompted anger and demonstrations around the country against the “Deporter-in-Chief” as rally organizers labeled him. But it’s important for workers in these groups, and all workers, to understand that it isn’t just about Obama’s policies or his friends — it’s built into the bosses’ system.
The hangover from the recent capitalist crisis of 2007-2008 has left the U.S. with several million new U.S.-born jobless piled atop the mountain of workers who were already unemployed before the crash. These workers roam the streets and “job fairs” looking for work. By the tens of thousands they enroll in schools hoping to upgrade the sales value of their labor power. Often the only result is debt from student loans.
Yet capitalists, from the biggest corporate manufacturing bosses to the smallest subcontractors, will not and cannot put them to work. The law of maximum profits leads the bosses to look for the lowest costs and wages, and these young workers are unwillingly competing with workers in China, Brazil or Bangladesh for the lowest costs and most dangerous working conditions.
The real purpose for borders is to divide the working class and build racism. All bosses and their capitalist governments are free to export capital the world over wherever and whenever it buys the cheapest labor and resources. They are free to exploit the workers in any area of the world, any time, free to murder innocent people in imperialist wars, free to poison the earth, to lie, spread famine, disease, poverty, push sexism, patriotism, and nationalism.
And that’s why Progressive Labor Party turned out for this protest, because we reject this idea, and believe our young friends can be won, through our communist ideas, to see that capitalism has never, and can never, work for the great majority of us that sell our brains and strength for a wage.
Join us in Progressive Labor Party to put an end to the plague of capitalism. Fight for a communist world without borders.