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HOW WE CAN DEFEND OURSELVES IN THE NEW TRUMP ERA  
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Bill Fletcher, Jr., Dave Zirin
November 7, 2024
The Nation
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_ The labor organizer Bill Fletcher says that, to protect our
constitutional democracy, “the union movement needs to become an
anti-fascist movement.” _

Bill Fletcher, Jr., Franklin & Marshall College

 

Bill Fletcher Jr.
[[link removed]] is one of the
most revered political organizers of the last 40 years and
a _Nation _editorial board member. He’s been an activist since his
teen years and joined the labor movement after college when he worked
as a welder in a shipyard. He has worked for and with numerous unions
and was the founder of Black Workers for Justice. Fletcher is also the
former president of TransAfrica Forum and the writer of several books
of both nonfiction and fiction. I spoke to him about how we can defend
ourselves during the Trump Restoration.

_—Dave Zirin_

Dave Zirin: YOU HAVE WORKED WITH AND ORGANIZED IMMIGRANT LABOR FOR
MANY YEARS. TRUMP SAYS HIS INTENTION IS TO DEPORT 10 TO 20 MILLION
UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS—DEPENDING ON THE SPEECH THAT DAY. THE SHEER
AMOUNT OF VIOLENCE AND NUMBER OF FAMILIES THAT WOULD BE DESTROYED IS
UNFATHOMABLE. THE ECONOMIC COSTS WOULD ALSO BE CATASTROPHIC. IS THIS
REAL? IF SO, HOW DO YOU EVEN BEGIN TO BUILD RESISTANCE TO THAT?

Bill Fletcher Jr.: We should take everything that he’s raised
seriously. That’s where I want to begin, because I think among the
left, as well as Trump supporters, a lot of people didn’t take him
seriously. They kept saying, “Oh, he’s never going to do that.
It’s just a campaign thing.” And I think, as the saying goes,
“When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first
time.” So I take it very seriously.

In the mid-1930s, there was a major repatriation of Chicano and
Mexicano citizens of the United States, and they were basically forced
to leave. The numbers range from 1 to 2 million people. And many of
these people left “voluntarily,” because they were basically
forced out of their homes, they were not given jobs, and so on. And
the Depression was being blamed on them. So it has already happened.
It could definitely happen again. Now, this time, there’s a number
of different possibilities that include a combination of legal and
extralegal violence. We could have a strengthening of ICE. We could
have perhaps a federalizing of the National Guard for a number of
things. And we could have vigilantes assist in the repatriation.

The second thing that we’ve got to keep in mind is that the
discussions, particularly in the last couple of months, about moving
against immigrants have not been limited to the undocumented.
They’ve been using a term that European fascists have been using:
“remigration.” They’re talking about ethnic cleansing. They’re
talking about denaturalizing naturalized citizens. I doubt that
they’re talking about moving against Mrs. Trump, but they’re
talking about denaturalizing people. So, there’s a possibility that
there could be legal and extralegal violence that’s used to carry
this out. Now, while it’s always possible that this is just a
blowhard speaking, we shouldn’t assume that. One of the things we
need to do very quickly is start building legal protection, as well as
organizations, to support immigrants, but we also need to contemplate
massive action. For instance, on May Day 2006, there was the Day
Without Immigrants,
[[link removed]] as
you may remember. And that was eye-opening for many people. We may
need to plan something very much along those lines. We’ll need the
union movement to throw down a massive “stay away” on this that is
at least a day and maybe more to make the point of the relationship of
immigrants to the larger society. Now, when it comes to immigrants,
one way where things get complicated is that the capitalist class is
very divided on the issue of immigrants. There are many in the
capitalist class that absolutely want to ensure that migration
continues, both legal as well as undocumented migration, because of
their workforce needs. This could complicate matters for Trump, but we
just don’t know.

DZ: I WANT TO TRY TO PUT SOME MEAT ON THE BONE OF WHAT YOU JUST SAID.
TAKE LANGLEY PARK, RIGHT IN PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY. IT IS ONE OF THE
MOST DENSELY POPULATED AREAS OF SALVADORAN IMMIGRANTS. FOR THE PEOPLE
OF LANGLEY PARK AND PEOPLE AROUND LANGLEY PARK ORGANIZATIONS
LIKE CASA DE MARYLAND [[link removed]], WHAT’S STEP ONE IN
TERMS OF DEFENDING THE COMMUNITY FROM OUT-OF-STATE POLICE OFFICERS
LOOKING TO, AS THE FASCISTS AND TRUMPISTS PUT IT, “REMIGRATE”
THEM?

BF: I think every neighborhood with a substantial number of
immigrants is going to need the equivalent of a neighborhood watch,
and people are going to have to be on the lookout for both suspicious
legal or extralegal forces that may be coming into the community. And
also be prepared to mobilize, much like the unemployed councils did in
the 1930s when people were being evicted from their homes. The
unemployed councils would show up and they’d move people’s
belongings back into the house after they were evicted. We’re going
to need that level of mass organization. We also are going to need to
have legal teams that people can call as soon as they know that
something is happening. And one of the things we should assume that
would be needed is to essentially gum up the courts. You’ve got to
fill the courts with lawsuits.

DZ: LET’S TAKE IT TO LABOR. YOU’RE SO EXPERIENCED IN THIS FIELD.
WHAT DO YOU EXPECT FROM ORGANIZED LABOR IN THE MONTHS AHEAD IF
ANYTHING?

BF: I expect three things. One thing is that some people will go
radio silent, and you will hear nothing from them. A second thing will
be the “cover your ass” element. These will be the people that
will do something much like what happened after January 6 with
Congress, where various congressional people ran to Trump to try to
play nice. You’ll have some leaders that will try to cut their own
deal with Trump or the administration to make sure that their sector
and their union does not get touched. And the third thing will be
those who will resist. And I think that many of those will be the
usual suspects. That is, there are unions that have fought hard around
immigration, immigrants, attacks on immigrants like UNITE HERE, the
Service Employees International Union, the Painters, and a few others
that have been out there fighting for, organizing, and supporting
migrants. So you’ll have a split. I think it’s going to be very
hard for the National AFL-CIO to build the right kind of consensus.
But here’s the punch line: The union movement needs to become an
anti-fascist movement, and the idea that anti-fascism is partisan is
irrelevant and absurd.

There is a particular threat to constitutional democracy. And in that
situation, there are only two sides. There are no three sides in this
one. And the union movement needs to take up the banner of
anti-fascism. And that will mean that there will be some unions and
some union leaders that are going to try to take a pass. But that’s
what we have to do. One of the projects I’m involved in is something
called Standing for Democracy [[link removed]].
One of our objectives is to fight to make the union movement an
anti-fascist movement. I think all good progressives and leftists that
are active in the trade union movement need to take up that banner.
There is a global alignment of unions and union federations that’s
emerged over the last 18 months that’s quite explicitly
anti-fascist. We need to be part of that.

DZ: YOU MENTIONED THE UNEMPLOYED COUNCILS EARLIER, AND I’M REALLY
GLAD YOU BROUGHT HISTORY TO BEAR ON THIS, BECAUSE MANY FEEL LIKE
WE’VE NEVER FACED ANYTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE. IN ONE RESPECT,
THEY’RE, OF COURSE, CORRECT. BUT THIS ALSO IS NOT NEW, RIGHT? SOCIAL
JUSTICE FIGHTERS OF THE PAST, PARTICULARLY IN MARGINALIZED
COMMUNITIES, HAVE FACED CONDITIONS SIMILAR TO THIS, HAVE THEY NOT?

BF: Yes, we have faced this in the past. Speaking from my own
personal experience, in 2014, I and some other people started really
raising the hell about the danger of right-wing populism. There were
groups that have been raising this for years, there’s the Political
Research Associates and the Anti-Klan Network and so on. But in my own
experience, I really started to see the danger, and I was confronted
continuously with denial: “Oh, you’re exaggerating things. The
real danger is neoliberalism,” and “You’re distracting
people.”

And then Trump got elected. And when Trump got elected, another weird
thing happened: Some people on the progressive side started to believe
what Trump was saying. Things like there being no Russian interference
in the election or that Trump was a passing phenomenon, and that the
real problem were people like the Clintons and other centrist
Democrats. These were people who, years earlier when the Tea Party was
rising, denied that the Tea Party was actually a movement. They talked
about how it was an astroturf phenomenon; it was all created by these
rich people and there was no mass base to it. And people were ignoring
that there was this monster from the deep that was emerging. This was
very, very real. Then all of a sudden in the last year, people started
talking very widely about the fascist threat. And I was glad to hear
it, but it was like, “Hey, where the hell have you been for the last
period of time?”

The danger we face right now is that there’s going to be paralysis.
People are going to feel very overwhelmed by the threat we’re
facing, and many people are not going to know what to do. They’re
going to be trapped in despair, and we can’t afford that

Right now, what we need to be realizing is that we got our asses
kicked, and now we need to build a counteroffensive. And it’s not
going to be easy. We have seen the monster. The monster from centuries
of racial settler-colonialism, the monster from centuries of misogyny
has emerged from the deep. It has swung its tentacles. It has been
knocking the mess out of us. It is here. It is not imaginary. And so,
we’ve got to figure out what to do. That’s more of what people
like you and I and others need to be talking about in the coming
weeks. Not rushing to do stuff like having a demonstration just to
have a demonstration, but to develop a real strategy of a
counteroffensive. How do we take these folks on? Where did we win and
lose in this last election cycle, and what conclusions do we draw from
that? Many of these victories by the Republicans were very slim, so we
shouldn’t just throw ourselves on a knife and commit seppuku.

I think there’s going to be people that blame this all on the
economy, and I’ve seen it already. They’re going to be saying,
“If the Democrats had spoken more about the economy, this wouldn’t
have happened,” leaving aside a very interesting fact that a lot of
people have ignored, which is that even in places where the results of
Biden’s economic policies were working, [this] did not necessarily
result in people moving away from MAGA. Because we’re not just
dealing with an economic phenomenon. We are dealing with revanchism:
reaction and grievance turned up to a scale unimaginable in the recent
past.

DZ: NO, IT’S A GREAT POINT. AND ANYBODY WHO SEES THIS PURELY IN
ECONOMIC TERMS IS NOT GETTING THE FULL PICTURE OF WHAT’S HAPPENING.
THERE IS A REVANCHIST MASS MOVEMENT IN THIS COUNTRY THAT IN MANY
RESPECTS HAS CREATED ITS OWN REALITY. YES, FOR MANY IT WAS ABOUT
FEELING HARDSHIP AND INFLATION DURING THE BIDEN YEARS. BUT IT’S ALSO
ABOUT A MASS OF THE POPULATION CHOOSING TO ACCEPT THE ALTERNATIVE
REALITY THAT TRUMP HAS CONSTRUCTED. BECAUSE AS I’VE HEARD YOU SAY
MANY TIMES, “A KEY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE LEFT AND RIGHT IS THAT THE
LEFT HAS TO TELL THE TRUTH AND THE RIGHT, TO SURVIVE, MUST EMBRACE
LIES” LIKE TRUMP’S BLOOD LIBEL OF IMMIGRANTS AND SAYING THAT IF
YOU DON’T ELECT HIM WE’LL HAVE A GLOBAL RECESSION, WHICH IS
EXACTLY WHAT HE SAID IN 2020.

YOU MENTIONED THE UNEMPLOYED COUNCILS. THE PERSON WHO I LEARNED ABOUT
THEM FROM IS ALREADY POSTING ONLINE THAT HE’S GETTING HIS PASSPORT
RENEWED. WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THE PEOPLE WHO RIGHT NOW FEEL LIKE THEY
HAVE TO LIVE ANYWHERE BUT HERE? WE BOTH KNOW THAT THERE ARE TRANS
PEOPLE AND PREGNANT PEOPLE WHO MAY _HAVE_ TO LEAVE TO GET CARE. BUT
WHAT ABOUT EVERYONE ELSE FILLING OUT TRAVEL VISAS?

BF: I understand that feeling. My sister has said to me that she will
help me get out, because she’s really afraid for my life. I think
that her fear is entirely realistic. We are walking into very unknown
territory. But I would say to people that what we need right now is to
build organization. As long as we’re able to do that, we should do
that and not disappear. Now, if someone has a medical issue or a
psychological issue that makes it impossible for them to be active, I
get that. There’s going to be some people that are going to say,
even at my age, which is 70, “Bill, you should just go to South
Africa. You love South Africa, go there. Retire there.” And I get
that; I’m just not ready to do it now. And I think that we need to,
to the extent possible, build the counterattack. I remain stupidly
optimistic that we can actually do it, but it’s going to necessitate
a broad front. And I’ll tell you, for me personally, I’ve had it
with purists. We have to be willing to unite broadly. I’m interested
in working with people who are interested in winning, and I think we
can.

_DAVE ZIRIN is the sports editor at The Nation. He is the author of
11 books on the politics of sports. He is also the coproducer and
writer of the new documentary Behind the Shield: The Power and
Politics of the NFL [[link removed]]._

_Copyright c 2024 THE NATION. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without permission
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* democracy
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* Fascism
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* Labor
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* unions
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* class
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* organizing
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* Immigration
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