Political solidarity, class unity: What’s the connection?

Ever since the Donald Trump/Elon Musk administration took the reins of power in late January, it has declared a class war on college campus activism, foreign students, trans people, migrants, federal workers and others. This may be a different kind of war from the ongoing genocide that U.S. imperialism and its settler-colonial, Zionist partner Israel has been carrying out against the Palestinian people. Nevertheless, it is still a class war. And it makes class solidarity even more important.

This reign of terror did not begin with the current administration. But it certainly has accelerated since the prior “Genocide Joe” administration demonized the pro-Gaza, pro-Palestine student encampments that spread across the country, falsely charging them with being “antisemitic.”

Before the 2024 election, students faced tremendous repression from campus administrations from Columbia University to University of California Los Angeles. Brutal police and pro-Zionist repression took place, shutting down many encampments. Students also faced expulsion or being doxxed for expressing solidarity with the people of Gaza and for demanding that the U.S. stop arming Israel. These include Tufts University Ph.D. Fulbright scholar Rümeysa Öztürk and recent Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil who face illegal deportation by the Gestapo-like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

A call for unity between college students and migrants in New York, April 11, 2025. (WW Photo: Toni Arenstein)

It is no wonder that while at protests, many students cover their faces or avoid having their real names made public due to heavy surveillance by the police and other repressive agencies.

Not only pro-Palestine student activists face deportation for their political beliefs, but foreign students in general face having their visas revoked, followed by deportation. Over 600 international students have had their visas revoked by the U.S. State Department, some for just being charged with misdemeanors. (The Guardian, April 10)

An injury to one is an injury to all

Trump has also declared a witch hunt on migrants, regardless of their legal status. Migrants can and have been physically removed from their jobs and schools by ICE. Many of them have been deported without any due process to ICE detention centers, the U.S. prison in Guantanamo and to a notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador.

Migrant workers — vital to many arteries of the economy, especially the food industry — have been viciously and falsely labeled as “criminals and rapists” by the xenophobic, misogynist and white supremacist Trump.

When Trump singles out any sector of the working class, such as student activists and migrants, his entire administration seeks to both isolate those sectors and to weaken class solidarity, solidarity that is desperately needed. It is a glaring warning that no sector of the working class is safe in terms of having or maintaining any basic democratic rights. To repeat, this is a worldwide war, be it political, economic or military, that extends way beyond the “borders” of the United States.

Just ask the people of Palestine, Yemen, Lebanon, China, Iran, Greenland, Panamá, Venezuela and South Africa abroad. Just ask federal workers, migrants, students and the trans and disabled communities at home.

Building internationalism or international solidarity is key to pushing back the divide and conquer tactics of the Trump administration, not relying on the impotent Democratic Party with its aim of duping the U.S. population into voting them back into the White House in 2028.

The enemies of the global working class, including in the U.S., are not just Trump and Musk as individuals but the capitalist class dictatorship led by the billionaire plutocrats, whose interests they and other right-wing politicians represent. The working class and its organizations must extend political solidarity beyond those individuals under immediate attack but also generally toward the superexploited working class that produces all the wealth in capitalist society.

Workers World is in complete solidarity with any effort being made to build broad political unity. A prime example is the call by the Within Our Lifetime pro-Palestine group in New York City for the upcoming Palestinian Prisoners Day on April 17.

It reads in part: “When we say ‘Free Mahmoud, Free Them All,’ we don’t just mean all of the students in ICE detention. We mean every last Palestinian prisoner from the U.S. to Palestine, from Mahmoud [Khalil] to Shukri Abu Baker and Ghassan Elashi of the Holy Land 5 to Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, to the 10,000 Palestinians in the occupation’s prisons.”