An ad hoc group with which I am involved has begun work to support creation of Workers immigrant defense committees. A Facebook page where you can sign-up to help is here.
Additional facilities for internet support will be posted shortly, and social organizers, computer programmers, and world citizens who would like to help are urged to join the Facebook group.
A draft version of a program for the Defense Committees has been prepared and is available at the Facebook page and below:
Workers Immigrant Defense Committees Basis of Unity
All fellow workers in the U.S., Europe, and in all countries where immigrants and refugees are threatened are urged to organize ‘Workers Immigrant defense committees’ in each city or town on the basis of the following program”
1/ Our committees are based explicitly on the ‘International socialist principal that in todays global world workers must be able to work and live with full rights in any country without hindrance’.
To this end – and for all workers to secure their social, political, and economic rights – the unity of native-born and immigrant workers is essential. We seek to recruit both immigrant and native-born workers to our committees.
2/ These committees should seek to block any and all attacks on the freedom, rights, or lives of immigrants and refugees, including by demonstrations, picketing of deportation centers and offices, and by blocking the seizure and deportation of immigrants by
A) Massing people in areas where such seizures are, or are expected to be taking place;
B) Picketing at the offices of state organizations involved in the deportations;
C) Providing legal assistance to immigrants threatened with deportation or mistreatment by authorities;
D) Preparing local educational campaigns to explain in clear simple terms the international socialist position for defense of immigrants;
E) and considering other creative tactics to defend all immigrant workers.
3/ Our work is founded on both our feelings for fellow immigrant workers, and on the immense scale of the refugee crisis.
A 2015 UN report states that there are 63.5 million refugees compelled to flee impoverished and warfare riddled countries. This is the largest number of refugees in human history, many of them mistreated, brutalized, or sent back to the dangerous or impossible conditions they have fled from.
Refugees can be found on every continent and in every part of the world. It is an undeniable fact that the same governments whose illegal wars of aggression and other interventions turned millions of our fellow workers into refugees now seek to brutalize and bar them.
Tens of millions of current refugees are Moslems fleeing the societies rendered non-functional by U.S government-led military invasions, interventions, and use of Jihadist proxies in the Middle East and NorUth Africa, with over one million left dead.
Large numbers of anti-war Americans opposed, and continue to oppose these wars but their words have so far been unheeded.
At the same time U.S. and European governments which collaborated in the illegal Middle Eastern and African wars are interning large number of such refugees in intolerable conditions, and baring others from entry and sending them back to the horrific conditions they are fleeing.
From Latin America still more millions seek to escape the poverty, instability, and oppression imposed by U.S.-state backed governments, and economic conditions sponsored in large part by the U.S.-state and Wall Street.
Still more refugees are found in Asia, seeking to reach countries such as Australia, where they are turned away to drown in the sea or interned in camps before being sent back.
To promote the creation and functioning of the local Workers immigrant defense committees, maximum use of the internet and social media should be made, including issuing the calls for creation of the committees, committee sign-up forms, and ‘Quick alerts’ to call out committee members
