cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/24038

A heroic mass uprising is underway in Minneapolis and is now expanding to other parts of the country. For weeks, communities have organized relentless neighborhood mobilizations against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) terror. This struggle reached a new peak on January 23, when over 50,000 workers, students, and community members brought the city to a standstill, while thousands of others around the country mobilized in solidarity. Schools were transformed into sanctuaries, and the collective power of a city shutting down sent a message: No business as usual while ICE murders and kidnaps immigrants with impunity.

The demand to Abolish ICE is no longer just a slogan. It’s a living fight in the streets, and the question of a general strike to fight back against capitalist state violence is in the air and in people’s consciousness.

But to actually kick ICE out of Minneapolis, and abolish the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), we need even stronger and broader actions, scaling the fight up toward a national offensive against the state-sanctioned killers that roam our streets. Key to this escalation is mobilizing in our workplaces. Unions, with their millions of members and strategic power to halt business as usual, must enter the fight.

The Rank and File Is Showing the Way

The community mobilization against ICE in Minnesota has truly been inspiring. Communities have organized everything from neighborhood ICE watches and response networks to reclaim city blocks, to grocery distribution systems, to teacher networks to escort children to school. Local diners have opened their doors to act as makeshift medic hubs. It’s clear that, learning from 2020, folks will not allow armed government militias to occupy their city and terrorize their neighbors with impunity.

Communities, recognizing under capitalism one of our strongest tools comes from withholding our labor, brought the city to a standstill on January 23, including transit workers, teachers, nurses, and service workers. As we’ve noted, “In one CWA local, 86 percent of workers refused to work on Friday. Starbucks workers across six stores — four unionized and two not — walked off the job, forcing their stores to close.” These actions spread around the country with tens of thousands joining Minnesota’s call to mobilize.

Meanwhile, we have seen small glimpses of actions on a local union level around the country. For example, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) local 23 has extended solidarity to the struggle in Minneapolis. In California UAW local 4811, who held the statewide strike for Palestine in 2024, has now endorsed Friday’s call for a strike. Unions are a key way the working class organizes its power. And as part of this fight against ICE, we need to demand our unions take action.

Unions around the country should follow the lead of those in Minnesota, organizing strikes and mobilizing their members in the streets building toward a national general strike. Unions could also play a vital role in community self defense. They could help with distributions of food and supplies, and organizing pickets to prevent ICE from entering workplaces.

Fighting inside our labor organizations is a key way to organize the working class, not only to fight for bread-and-butter improvements in our workplaces, but to fight against the ongoing violence the capitalist system inflicts on our communities.

We have seen examples of this globally in the fight against the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Workers in Belgium, Barcelona, and the US have refused to load arm shipments for Israel. Dockworkers shut down ports in Italy and brought the country to a standstill with strikes and blockades. As we see imperialist violence abroad and repression at home, our unions are key places for us to organize ourselves to fight back, and we will need this type of militancy to win.

The Union Leaderships Are Missing

Yet as the anger of the rank and file grows, the response of the largest union leaderships has been disappointing, to put it mildly. The United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) president Shawn Fain recently put out a statement saying in moments like these “the labor movement must not be silent” and that “killing of peaceful protesters like Alex Pretti threatens our rights and our Constitution.” But the call was surprisingly reserved in light of the current state of affairs.

Strikingly, Fain’s statement contained no mention of immigrants, ICE, or Trump at all. It also contained no call to action, even in light of growing calls for a national call for a strike, including another one-day strike this Friday. This statement comes from the same man who has floated the idea of pushing for a general strike in 2028. It raises the question: what are we waiting for?

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) President Claude Cummings Jr. also released a statement after Pretti’s killing. While it at least ended with “get ICE out of Minnesota,” it made no mention of immigrants or Trump whatsoever. Further, in recent discussions, CWA leadership has been publicly preoccupied with the “legality” of calling a strike. This fixation on legalistic procedure over the mortal danger facing members is a clear example of the union bureaucracy’s role within the Integral State: prioritizing the maintenance of “order” and bourgeois legality over the urgent, militant defense of the working class.

The response from Pretti’s own union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), shows similar efforts of bureaucratic containment. Their initial statement was stunningly tepid, urging “restraint” and “peace and calm,” and basically saying “our silence right now doesn’t mean we don’t care.” After sustained public outcry, the AFGE did release a stronger statement demanding the resignations of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller.

While this shift is notable, it remains within the framework of appealing to other state actors for accountability through an “independent investigation,” “bipartisan congressional oversight,” etc. It does not translate into a call for the independent, mass action that the moment demands. Union leaderships should have been organizing their members and building toward a general strike from the moment their member was murdered in the street.

The Labor Bureaucracy Wants Stability

These responses show how the actions of some of our union leaderships help maintain the status quo and bourgeois hegemony. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s analysis of the “Integral State,” Matías Maiello explains that the ruling class maintains power through both force (dictatorship) and ideological control (hegemony). The union bureaucracy is a critical agent in this project:

The statization of mass organizations and the expansion of bureaucracies within them is one of the fundamental elements, with its double function of ‘integration’ to the state and fragmentation of the working class. … The workers’ bureaucracy has been (and is) the advance detachment to ‘organize’ bourgeois hegemony within the organizations of the proletariat.

In practice, the bureaucracy’s role is containment. Their material position — negotiating with bosses and the state — aligns their interests with “stability.” They issue statements to channel rage, but refuse to mobilize the members’ real power in a way that could escape their control and fundamentally challenge the system.

This is similar to the role of the Democratic Party, which is also attempting to manage the explosive demand to abolish ICE. As this movement grows, Democrats at all levels are calling for arresting lawless ICE agents. Some, like Senator Ed Markey, go as far as to call for abolishing ICE. This rhetoric is an attempt to co-opt the militant movement, taking on the demands of the rank and file to present the Democratic Party as a more progressive option. The Democrats are hoping that statements and critiques are enough to channel the anger of the masses back into the Democratic Party.

It should not be lost on us that Democrats have voted for billions in ICE funding again and again. President Obama himself is known as the “Deporter and Chief” for holding the record for deportations under his administration. The double-speak so many Democrats must now navigate lays bare the contradiction in trying to fight ICE as part of a capitalist party that helped create ICE, along with the entire deportation apparatus.

Take Back Our Unions, Build Independent Power

We cannot wait for the bureaucracy to take the lead. We must take back our unions to make them fighting organizations of the working class. This means democratizing them through the creation of militant rank-and-file assemblies that can recall union officials and set a fighting agenda for the union.

It also means expelling cops and ICE agents from our unions — no unity with the armed agents of our class enemy. At the same time, we must mobilize our independent working-class power by putting our collective weight behind the call for a national strike to drive ICE out of our communities. This means organizing meetings and assemblies in every workplace to spread the action. We should push our unions to follow the lead of those organizing in Minneapolis to fight back against ICE, DHS and the entire repressive state regime.

Finally, we need to break with the politics of containment. The Democratic Party and the union bureaucracy are two sides of the same strategy of management and fragmentation. A party of capital will never be on our side, regardless of what progressive language it tries to disguise itself in. Our strength is our independent political organization as the working class.

The fighting example of nurses, dockworkers, and the mobilized communities of Minneapolis shows us the only way out: militant, democratic, class-struggle unionism that connects the struggle against ICE at home with the struggle against imperialism abroad.

The post Why Aren’t the Largest U.S. Labor Unions Calling a General Strike Against ICE? appeared first on Left Voice.

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