PHOTO: ADRIAN C. GARCIA
The current administration of Donald Trump stands for re-election. What does it mean for us?
We find ourselves in a coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 people in the United States. Scientist say that by January 1st the death toll would be around 410,000. And we find that we are a high percentage of essential workers not by choice but by necessity and a high percentage of those infected and dying from those infections.
For generations, our community has suffered under economic and political oppression. We have also had heroes from our community attempt to lead on many fronts of struggle. Yet, despite our efforts for equality over the decades and the millions that marched for immigration reform, the immigration crisis has only worsened.
We have seen immigrant children in cages; asylum seekers deported or forced to go to Mexico where families are vulnerable to corrupt officials and cartels – suffering theft, rape or violence; and immigrants documented or undocumented living in the United States under constant threat of harassment and potential arrest by immigration authorities or police authorities.
Across the country, we have all faced police brutality, which is why it is so natural for us to support and be a part of Black Lives Matter.
As a minority, we are sometimes not cohesive because we have different nationalities with very different political and economic experiences. And like other minorities in the United States, we have class differences. We therefore have many currents influencing the members of our community. We have elected and non-elected (self-declared) or organizationally imposed leaders, activists, intellectuals and academics speaking for us or telling us what we want and need.
The question we face is not just an election between the Democrats and Republicans or one personality against another. NO! We should not be fooled. No, tacos de carne asada or a few jobs for some people or promises that are never kept. We are tired of promises of “incremental change” or of being persuaded to have faith in a system that does not work for us.
We are tired of being tired! We want and desperately need real change. We need to build a political movement that has the task of building an independent political party and hammering out a political program with our allies. A political program having steps toward real solutions.
The movement that is being formed to resist evictions, for safety at work, livable wages, economic reconstruction, healthcare, education, immigration reform, reconstruction of the state apparatus to serve working class communities like ours with a new economic policy and a political infrastructure that flows from it.
However, today we face an urgent political crisis.
We cannot accept children in cages, death due to the pandemic or to deportations. We cannot guarantee that the Democrats will address these questions in any other way than the neo-liberal program based in austerity to ensure the wealthy keep their riches.
We know what Trump will do. There will be more suffering in our community with Trump’s re-election.
Let us unite and defeat Trump! Let us build an independent political movement.
