TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12
(the day the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments on DACA)
Walkout and stay out, strike, march, protest! Shut down schools, universities, workplaces and cities — no ‘business-as-usual’ until Trump is defeated and DACA is saved.
DETROIT, MICHIGAN:
11:30am Rally and March at Clark Park
SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA:
5:00pm Protest at UC-Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza (Bancroft + Telegraph, Berkeley)
On Tuesday, November 12, 2019, the United States Supreme Court will hear Donald Trump’s lawyers argue that Trump has the right and exclusive power to end DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). They will also hear from lawyers who support DACA. The pro-DACA lawyers can make brilliant arguments against the unilateral right of Trump to end DACA, but as things stand now, the Supreme Court will rule that Trump has the right to end DACA whenever he wants. Whether DACA is saved or ended will not be determined by what the Supreme Court rules. It will be decided by who has more power: our immigrant rights movement committed to bringing Trump down and saving DACA, or Trump and his rabid racist anti-immigrant supporters. Our movement is bigger and has more popular support, but desperately needs leaders who are fighting to win. Immigrant, Latina/o, black and other minority youth, starting with high school students, must step forward and lead our movement for us to win. We are poised to get Trump to resign or be removed. The public impeachment hearings that will begin on Wednesday, November 13, 2019 provide the vehicle to get Trump out. But those hearings alone will not succeed in ousting Trump. We need the movement, calling for Trump to go and DACA to stay, to take to the streets. We need mass militant actions to win. If Tuesday, November 12, 2019 is a day of high school walkouts across the nation, we can win.
We Know How to Win. The Immigrant Rights Movement of 2006 Provides Us with the Lessons of How to Win.
In 2006, former President George W. Bush tried to get a law passed to prevent the Catholic Church from giving aid to its undocumented parishioners. High school students walked out, marched, and rallied to stop the Bush legislation from passing. To act, the students had to defy their principals, the police, and in some cases their parents. Latina/o, immigrant, black and other progressive students climbed locked fences that surrounded their schools and marched for miles and miles to other schools to get other students to walk out. The courage of the high school students inspired millions of Latina/o, documented and undocumented immigrants to leave their jobs, homes, and neighborhoods to join marches that shut down big cities across America. The mass actions not only defeated the anti-immigrant efforts of President Bush; they gave birth to a New Immigrant Rights and Civil Rights Movement, which cleared the way for America to elect its first black President and for DACA to be instituted.
Unfortunately, all the aspirations and power of our movement were channeled into electoral politics. Our movement lost its independence, became dispersed and receded. The election of Donald Trump revitalized our movement. On January 21, 2017, the day after Trump’s inauguration, millions of people across the country and all over the world marched and rallied against Donald Trump. And when Trump initiated his racist anti-immigrant Muslim travel ban a few weeks later, we took over airports and defeated Trump’s first anti-immigrant racist attack against our communities. But once again our movement stalled and lost its momentum. The 2018 march on Washington was much smaller and was focused on getting the vote out for Democratic candidates in the midterm elections. Trump was strengthened by our movement’s demobilization. Trump has strengthened the white nationalists and racists. But his attack against DACA is an overreach. His attack on DACA is an attack against immigrant youth. We benefit from it and it falls on us to defend it. We can win if we fight.
We will hear from some politicians that the way to protect DACA is to get the vote out for the Democrats. But we can’t afford to lose DACA for a day, a week or a month. If Trump succeeds in eliminating DACA when the Supreme Court gives him the green light, we could lose DACA for several months. Many of our lives will be ruined and Trump will be re-elected.
Our Movement to Save DACA is the Movement to Impeach Trump
Nothing could energize or promote the success of the effort to impeach Trump more than a revitalized, youth-led, militant immigrant rights and civil rights movement taking to the streets and ending business-as-usual. We can force Trump to resign or be removed. Our fight to save DACA can focus the movement for Trump’s impeachment on what really matters, the real reason for his impeachment and removal, his racist attacks on immigrant youth and communities, the crimes against humanity at the border, separating children from their families and holding them in cages. Mass mobilizations will force Trump to have to rethink carrying out his attack against DACA. If we mobilize our tremendous power, we can demoralize his racist anti-immigrant movement.
This is the perfect time for us to to step forward and get our movement back into fighting form. If we – high school and middle school students – walk out, march now, we can inspire our communities to march and demonstrate in numbers so large that we shut down cities across the nation. So many people hate Trump and can’t wait to see him go. The fact that the impeachment hearings are getting underway is moralizing movement activists. They have been waiting for leaders to free them from passivity and give them a chance to get to Trump out. We must be that leadership.
If we get Trump to resign or get him removed and we save DACA, we can make our vision for America become real. We will have the power to free the children held in cages on America’s borders and the families held in concentration camps. The real and symbolic border wall will fall. America will be free to become an equal, just, humane diverse, united America. We can open our borders, eliminate ICE, and stop the deadly mass attacks of white nationalists on our schools, shopping malls, synagogues, mosques etc. If we fight we can preserve American democracy and prevent our nation from becoming a dictatorship. We hold the key to the future of this nation; it is time for us to act.
