Wednesday, June 5, 2019

Trump's Xenophobic Assault on Immigrants is all a Smokescreen


Economic refugees fleeing decades of US capitalism's policies in Mexico and Central America
Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

American border officials arrested over 144,000 migrants in May according to the Associated Press today.  “The arrest tally was 32% higher than April's, the most during President Trump's tenure, and the biggest in 13 years. Of those detained, over 132,000 had illegally crossed the border and over 11,000 were considered "inadmissable" at US ports of entry, per the Washington Post. Meanwhile, CBP officials say more than 100,000 migrants have been detained and holding cells are maxed out. "We are in full-blown emergency, and I cannot say this stronger: the system is broken," says acting CBP Commissioner John Sanders.”  Source  

It appears Trump is outdoing the notorious deporter in chief Obama when it comes to ethnic cleansing.

Meanwhile, immigrant children, in actuality, economic refugees, victims of decades of US imperialism plundering Mexico, Central American nations and the rest of South America, have been assaulted sexually abused, and have died in the custody of US security and custom agents after being ripped literally from their parents hands. Yet I read there are 36,000 homeless in Los Angeles. More veterans die through suicide than combat. Thousands of US senior citizens cross the border to Mexico in the South and Canada in the north to get access to affordable drugs. These are not aspirin for a headache, they are life saving drugs.

Parents are taking on the student debt of their children who borrowed to get an education that is free in many countries. Millions of Americans are in debt slavery.  The US has more people in prison than any other country. Nationally, there are now more than eight times as many women incarcerated in state and federal prisons and local jails as there were in 1980. Two-thirds of women in prison in the United States are women of color. Women of all races use drugs at approximately the same rate, but women of color are arrested and imprisoned at much higher rates. In New York State, 91% of women receiving prison sentences for drug crimes are women of color, although they make up only 32% of the New York state population.

Over 80% of girls in juvenile detention had run away from home and over half had attempted suicide. *

Meanwhile, Elon Musk wants to spend the money he has stolen for the working class to send people on trips to Mars and Jeff Bezos, the waster that runs Amazon wants instead to spend the wealth he stole from workers on having people float around space in capsules returning to Earth when they miss a pint at the pub I guess.

The Predator in Chief is in the UK talking about opening up the National Health Service to US corporations as if the market based US health care system is anything to boast about and the life expectancy of white people in the US, an historically privileged group is falling which begs the question: what on earth is happening on the ground. And we are supposed to be worried about immigrants.

Around the world there is a growing movement against the market and capitalism which threatens all life on this planet and here in the US, the offensive against workers and the middle class is reaching unbearable levels as US capitalism can no longer afford to maintain even the slightest semblance of the so-called American Dream as it can no longer, in the words of Lyndon Johnson, afford “Guns and Butter. The butter has melted.

The movement when it really takes off ion the US will not be pretty, it will be violent, and the US capitalist class remember, is the most violent of all of them. A brief glimpse in to the history of this country will reveal that pretty quick

We cannot avoid this scenario but there is reason for optimism. I am convinced with every bone in my body that the US working class will rise to the occasion. Will try to resolve the crisis and the horrors of capitalism that we are facing. In my opinion, US working class history shows this. From the great struggles to build the trade unions, the 1877 uprising, Flint occupations, labor wars and the centuries old genocidal wars against the native population which so far have failed to destroy them and their culture and the centuries of slave revolts and the great black revolt of the 60’s, the revolutionary wave and women’s movement that followed, the US working class will rise to confront the task history has set for us.

The information on the prisons and women is from the ACLU.

* These figures are from the ACLU. I could not see the date on the site but U guessed around 2005 a little more perhaps. So they may need updating. But this doesn't alter the obvious, that capitalism is devouring, eating away at the good and potential greatness that is possible. It has to be confronted.

US society is
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