No borders in workers’ struggles

The following statement was released by Workers World Party 2016 presidential candidate Monica Moorehead and vice presidential candidate Lamont Lilly on Oct 7.

We salute with full solidarity those gathered at the Encuentro en la Frontera/Encounter at the Border in Arizona, Oct. 7-10. We salute the School of the Americas Watch for its bold decision to bring the struggle here from its 25-year righteous outcry at the gates of Fort Benning, Ga., in opposition to catastrophic U.S. “interventions” in Central and Latin America.

Side-by-side with you, we are fighting to end the racist persecution of migrants and refugees, and to end U.S.-led and U.S.-backed imperialist war and policies forcing people to flee their own homelands.

This action, at this brutally militarized border, dramatizes the bloody connections between U.S. military aid and training of repressive security forces; forced migration of workers, particularly from Central America and Mexico; racist U.S. immigration laws and for-profit ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] prisons entombing immigrants; the monster prison-industrial complex targeting Black and Brown people; and the ongoing murderous assault of state police terror against people of color.

We denounce the violently racist proposals and words of Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, who incites despicable mob thinking and vigilante action with his call for a wall to fortify the already unjustly imposed border on lands stolen by the U.S. from Mexico.

The U.S. spends trillions fortifying the repression of workers and oppressed people at home and in other countries. With Plan Merida, a “security cooperation” agreement, the U.S. gave Mexico billions to supposedly “fight drugs.” The money intensively armed state police to arrest and murder protesters, including teachers and students. We say: “No to Plan Merida! Money for drug rehabilitation, not war and repression!”

Furthermore, we demand justice for the families of the Ayotzinapa 43 and all those killed and disappeared by the murderous U.S.-backed Mexican government, especially the murdered and missing women of Juárez. We are pained by the continued U.S.-backed war of aggression in Colombia and stand with all those in resistance to imperialism and those fighting for peace in that beleaguered nation.

We denounce Hillary Clinton, Democratic Party candidate for U.S. president, who was chief engineer of the 2009 coup against democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya when she served as Secretary of State. Clinton has blood on her hands for the ensuing loss of Honduran lives, the targeted killing of women, and the political assassinations of Garifuna Nation leaders, union members and other activists, including environmental leader Berta Cáceres and LGBTQ leader Walter Tróchez.

What was Clinton’s cold-blooded answer to a question about the forced “child migrant crisis” coming out of Honduras? She called for the deportation of these children, whose families had to send them alone to the U.S. to escape killings she had set in motion. She said: “Tell them the journey is too dangerous.”

For 60 million people and counting, the “dangerous journey” of forced migration is happening worldwide because of U.S.-driven neoliberal economic exploitation, imperialist wars and capitalist-driven climate change. These assaults have bludgeoned and destabilized countries in Northern Africa and the Middle East, particularly countries like Libya, Syria and Iraq, which are seeking to remain independent of U.S. control.

We denounce the xenophobia and Islamophobia that has sprung up in the wake of these migrations. We are in solidarity with all migrants, and especially the Muslim community.

We say: End forced migration! Reparations for all refugees from Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America/Caribbean!

We say: Full rights for the undocumented! No borders in the workers’ struggle!

No militarized borders! No to U.S. imperialist interventions!

Black Lives Matter everywhere! Stop police terror from the U.S. to Mexico!

No to Trump’s racism, no to Clinton’s war machine! Build the movement for revolutionary change!