Neighbors Defend Neighbors From Racist Propaganda.

Heather Sandoval and Richard Mellor

We can assume that these two white dudes are not your standard white liberals. They are truckers that were held up due to a demonstration against the police murder of Antwon Rose. It seems they couldn't move for three or four hours.  Given the fanning of racist flames by the fascist in the White House and the tension this can create in society, it is the norm that these guys would have just sat in their trucks perhaps moaning about black folks causing trouble again.  Racism is used to keep us apart, a divide and rule tactic that weakens all of us while having catastrophic consequences for its victims.

It is not unrealistic that on arriving at a protest of mainly black folks and not knowing what it was about that two guys like these (the beard on the right is quite impressive) might be a little cautious or afraid to venture out. But they got out and asked people. They did the right thing and they understood what and why and as the interview shows, they had strong feelings and sympathy for the protesters.

This is an example for all of us. Imagine the feeling of solidarity the people protesting must have felt as these guys approached and asked them what was going on, watched the video of the shooting and clearly understood why they were there. It is actions like these that have to be magnified, have to be repeated all over the country. We will all be safer, our children will all be safer and it will start a process that will flow over to all aspects of life as so many people in this country are under attack and falling in to poverty and despair.

Trump's disgusting attacks on immigrant and Latinos in particular adds to the tension in society which is the goal of course.  A reader informed us that he was walking home and passed by a Latino man and his young daughter out on the sidewalk escaping the heat inside. He said good evening and he could sense that  there was a little caution and tenseness in the air, something he attributed to him being a white man with a baseball cap. Perhaps the Latino man, who was Mexican, was not sure what was going to be said. Was he going to be hostile?  Nasty? Did he hate immigrants? He said that he has noticed this in the community with the rise of Trump and his racist taunting. This tension is a direct result of a conscious state policy.

Our reader made some comment about a great victory for Mexico in the World Cup, beating the Germans. This was well received and they talked about soccer and the man introduced his young daughter  who was playing alongside him.

The tension can be expected to rise with Donald Trump referring to Latino's and immigrants as "infesting" the US and, as the Nazis' did with Jews, engaging in public propaganda events in order to terrify the public.  He has called them murderers and criminals.

We should think hard about this image (left) and what it must be like for Latinos and particularly Mexicans in our communities at this moment. They are being demonized, talked about by the most powerful politician on the planet like they are dogs, or better still, rats. Trump, who has never worked but been given everything  uses the term “infested” to describe their presence here although they work so very hard.

To portray the Latino worker as a parasitic being is to insinuate that killing and abusing them is not a crime, but a necessity. Images of MS13 gang members have many times been used by the Trump administration as interchangeable with undocumented workers and asylum seekers. Never mind that MS13 originated in Los Angeles in the 1980s, or that members are primarily native born and prey on Central American workers who are easy targets for extortion and human trafficking.

It is time for American workers to wake up and to stand up for our neighbors friends and our co-workers. Most immigrants are poor, working class people. They are our class allies in the struggle for a better life and a future for our children. Most of them come to the US because they are forced to out of necessity like the Irish, Germans and others did before them.  We have to consciously challenge this divisive racist strategy and the truckers in the video took a small but important step in doing that.

See also: Children in cages. The roots of this vicious, cruel crime.
Undocumented Workers Are Not The Enemy Of Labor
Proposals for action to defend the children against the Trump regime.