VIVA MAY DAY!

OWS unites with immigrants & working class

By Teresa Gutierrez
New York

Imagine being in Dallas on what seems to be a normal day.

But the city is empty. There is hardly anyone in the streets, offices, apartments or restaurants. No cars, trucks or taxis are moving.

It sounds like the opening of the latest disaster movie.

But this unfortunately conveys the reality of what has happened to the immigrant community in the U.S. today.

More than 1 million workers have been deported from the U.S. since the 2008 presidential election.

It’s as though almost all of the city of Dallas, with a population of 1.2 million, had been emptied out.

The overwhelming reality that more than 1 million undocumented workers have been deported in this short period casts a gloomy shadow over the annual worker and immigrant May Day demonstrations in this country.

Every immigrant in this country has been touched by these massive deportations.

Add to that the racist and repressive anti-immigrant legislation that has swept the country, and the result is overwhelming terror directed by the capitalist system against this super-exploited sector of the working class.

This alone speaks to the importance of the May Day demonstrations taking place across the country.

Furthermore, the systemic racism and violence toward people of color, exemplified by the killing of Trayvon Martin, plus the ongoing and deepening crisis in jobs, housing and education, makes the need for workers and oppressed people to take to the streets on May Day even more decisive.

Welcome developments in New York

This is why developments in the organizing efforts for May Day in New York this year are so welcome. These developments also provide important lessons, many of which will require further analysis on May 2 and beyond.

Over the last several months, a grouping within the Occupy Wall Street movement has met hundreds of times to discuss getting involved with May Day. The discussions and deliberations in these meetings exemplify how much the events that erupted on Wall Street last September signify that a movement has been born in this country.

How long this movement will last and where it will go remain to be seen.

But a movement of primarily young people has definitely occurred. At its core is the desire to break with everything that Wall Street represents. It is a very anti-capitalist movement.

While the Occupy Wall Street May Day grouping is not at all homogeneous, in the end one voice resonated the strongest. That voice was wonderfully oriented to the working class. It did not want to make mistakes with immigrants, especially the undocumented, who the OWSers recognized had revived May Day nationally in this country in 2006.

It was not easy, it was painful, and it was frustrating. It was and is fraught with contradictions and shortcomings.

But in the end all roads led to a united May Day in New York.

At each turn, the OWS May Day grouping was open to decisions made by those who had been organizing annual May Day marches, even if that was not their first instinct to do so.

In early January, for example, a rich discussion took place on the call for a general strike for May Day. Many in the immigrant rights movement, such as those represented by the views of the May 1st Coalition for Worker & Immigrant Rights, would politically like to call for a general strike. Who could not desire that workers hold back their labor in light of the attacks on the working class here and around the world?

But did the correct and appropriate conditions exist? Would workers come out in a massive way, or would the “general strike” be just a tiny grouping of activists and a few workers?

In the end most agreed that the call for a general strike needed genuine teeth to make it a reality and was not appropriate in New York in the current climate.

Another discussion was around permits. OWS feels strongly about not applying for permits, an honorable position. Other organizers expressed their responsibility for representing a vulnerable population that, should there be a confrontation, would not just spend the night in jail but could be deported.

Organizers from labor and immigrant rights groups explained that we could not consciously put the undocumented in harm’s way. This should not be interpreted to mean that immigrants are fearful or not militant. But it was clear that this was more an issue of privilege, especially by white youth. That swayed the OWSers to agree to apply for permits.

What is of note in this entire process is the question: Can the unity and rich working relationship that has been established by sectors in the labor, immigrant and OWS movements strengthen and grow? Is it possible to build on these relationships to take the class struggle further in this country?

Can the anger and disgust against the capitalist system shown by youth in the OWS movement expand and broaden to become a bigger threat to the ruling class?

All this remains to be seen.

What’s needed to threaten the 1%

One of the outstanding limitations of the Occupy Wall Street May Day grouping in New York City has been in terms of representation. The vast majority of the people in the meetings have been white.

New York is overwhelmingly a Brown and Black city. New York is a city of the oppressed.

In order for a movement to really expand, be successful and become a real threat to the 1%, it must get the issue of racism correctly. Solidarity and unity with oppressed people is not just important. It is decisive, especially in the belly of the imperialist beast.

What could frighten and threaten the 1% more than youth who hate capitalism and are Black, Brown, Asian and white?

There is one thing that would threaten them a bit more. And that is when those multinational youth are in unison with the working class.

This is why it is a welcome development that this year in New York sectors from the labor movement prevented there being two separate May Day demonstrations. The rank and file and others in the unions have pushed enough so that even the Central Labor Council of the city has endorsed the Union Square May Day rally, which has been hosted by members of the May 1st Coalition since 2005.

It was in fact the slogan put forth by one of the OWS youth — originally from Bolivia — that many unions rallied around. That slogan is: “Legalize, organize and unionize.”

This slogan, if implemented in a massive and real way, could be extremely important in advancing issues for the entire working class in this country.

The question on the table — the elephant in the room — is: Can the unity and solidarity galvanized for May Day 2012 take another big step forward after May 1?

Which way will that unity go? Will it be derailed into the dead end of the 2012 elections? Will it dissipate, or will it take a Woodstock turn?

Or can an element stay united to wage a real fightback against capitalism?

The only way that undocumented workers can win legalization is if the movement continues to be united, in the streets and militant. The only way that U.S.-born workers can end the rising unemployment and stop the banks from foreclosing on their homes, the only way young workers can cancel their student debt or go on to college, the only way we can stop racist and police terror — is if we remain in the streets, independent from those tied to the capitalist system.

Gutierrez is a member of the Secretariat of Workers World Party.

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