Only the International Working Class Will Save the Working Class
PASADENA (USA), February 24— City Council chamber was packed. Anti-ICE activists came for an agendized city policy about federal immigration enforcement. They circulated a petition and handed out buttons. The regular anti-genocide activists distributed signs comparing ICE and the Israeli military. Some environmental activists, too.
City Council was late, as usual.
An ICWP comrade distributed twenty copies of Red Flag. Then she went up front and gave a short impromptu speech. “The same capitalist system attacks immigrants in the US and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza,” she explained. “And destroys the environment for profit.
“We say ‘solo el pueblo…” she continued. Others chimed in: “Salva el pueblo.” Only the village saves the village. “Only the international working class saves the working class,” the comrade concluded.
Applause. “That was good,” friends said.
Pitfalls of Reformism
The meeting began. A city official reported on Chicago and Los Angeles resolutions to prevent ICE and US Border Patrol from using city property to stage kidnappings. He claimed that Pasadena already prohibited police from aiding ICE. People were glad to hear that a proposed resolution would take that a step further.
Then came public comment. Anti-ICE legal observers described situations where Pasadena police had, actually, helped ICE. And impeded anti-ICE protests. Speakers demanded to know where were the city funds that had been promised to families victimized by ICE kidnappings.
Another speaker spoke for the “ethical investment policy” campaign. They want Pasadena to divest pension funds from corporations involved in surveillance or the Gaza genocide. She noted that Flock shares license-plate data from traffic cameras with other agencies. ICE uses it to monitor and target protesters.
Several speakers objected to a provision of the resolution that seemed designed to rein in civilian legal observers. Council members denied that intent, but many were skeptical.
Especially after Mayor Gordo said, “Two legal observers were killed in Minnesota, and we don’t want that to happen here. Observers need to be trained.”
Many were outraged. “What an exercise in victim-blaming!” a friend commented.
City Council passed its resolution. Some saw this as a limited victory. “We can’t obstruct the federal government from enforcing federal immigration laws,” the vice-Mayor admitted.
But a reform victory like this can quickly turn into a political defeat.
The resolution was openly intended to foster “regular communication between police and community representatives.” The mayor said that federal policy is “intended to set a tone that is divisive, that pits our police officers and even members of this council and our community against one another. We can’t allow someone else to tear that apart,” he concluded.
Capitalism itself pits the working class against the cops and politicians who serve their oppressors. Communists fight for class consciousness. For class struggle. Against the mayor’s dangerous and phony all-class unity.
Anti-ICE legal observers know from their own experience not to trust cops. And one could see the USA rulers’ patriotism wearing thin. A quarter of the audience in City Council chambers refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
Only Communist Revolution Can Destroy Fascism
Today we are reliving last century’s debate within the international communist movement. Do workers defeat fascism through a “united front” with supposedly benevolent (or “lesser evil”) capitalists? Or by mobilizing for communist revolution to destroy fascism’s capitalist roots?
In 1934, communists bet on a “united front” with Roosevelt and Churchill. But the Allies held off on launching a second military front against Nazi Germany until the Soviet masses had already beaten back the Wehrmacht. Meanwhile Churchill created an artificial famine in Bengal that killed up to three million people.
And with Germany defeated, US imperialism continued spreading fascist terror from Palestine to Greece to Iran to the Philippines to Guatemala. And in the US South.
Workers need communist revolution. We are not the only ones who see that. The ICWP collective here recently recruited two new members. With their help, we expect to expand our May Day contingent and our party collective.
Read more about the history of fighting fascism here