Protest at the U.S. border:

"Let Them In!"

December 3, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From a member of the Revolution Club, Los Angeles:

Thousands of migrants are amassed at the U.S./Mexico border—forcibly held on the Mexico side in an arena in Tijuana. These are people who have had to flee for their lives and livelihood because of what this system has done, devastating their home countries.

Last Sunday, November 25, there was a protest on the U.S. side called by different organizations in support of the caravan, with the demand: Let Them In! This coincided with a protest of migrants demanding that the asylum process be speeded up, so they aren’t stuck in limbo indefinitely. When people decided to make a run for the border, this protest was attacked by the Border Patrol—throwing tear gas at these migrants, including small children and babies!

Refuse Fascism and the Revolution Club were there at the San Ysidro U.S./Mexico border as part of the protest, just a few feet away from the entrance to the U.S. About 500 people marched about a mile from a local park to the San Ysidro port of entry. We marched and chanted and brought the message of Revolution, the battle plan for revolution in the pamphlet How We Can Win—How We Can Really Make Revolution and the urgent need to drive out the Trump/Pence regime. We arrived at the port of entry and all 500 chanted “Let Them In!” We rallied there for about 30 minutes and marched back to the park. The people at the front of the protest announced that about 500 migrants were at the border demanding answers about why the U.S. had them just waiting in Tijuana in what are unlivable conditions. By the time the protest dispersed, we had confirmation that 500 migrants were at the entrance demanding to be let in. We could see about five military choppers from a distance hovering over the port of entry area. We decided to go over there and check out the scene.

When we arrived at the port of entry, it looked like something out of a crime scene. The streets were closed and all you could hear was the sound of helicopters and the Border Patrol making announcements about shutting down the border.

I was running with a contingent from Refuse Fascism. We brought our giant “Trump/Pence Must Go” banner and walked around. We didn’t know exactly what was happening, but we could see that all entrances to Mexico were shut down. Every time we looked up, we could see their military choppers with someone in there holding a machine gun. There were armored vehicles rolling up and down the streets. We walked around with the banner and did agitation at different corners around the different entrances to Mexico. We distributed a lot of materials to people who were outraged by what was happening. At one point, we had about a dozen people around us hearing our agitation and taking materials. At that point, our agitation was brought to a halt because we heard three loud “BOOMS,” and everyone started running to the port of entry yelling “That was tear gas!” We saw the smoke from the tear gas rising in the air. It was a chaotic scene.

We saw the photos of women and children dodging tear gas canisters—people who are fleeing the hell that the United States has made in Honduras and all across Latin America, who walked thousands of miles to apply for asylum—who now found themselves in the middle of a battlefield—confronted by riot police, helicopters with machine guns, and soldiers.

One person who has experience going to the border for the last decade said that he had never seen anything like this before in terms of its militarization. These people had machine guns—they looked like they were ready for war.

All this needs to be exposed. I'd never seen anything like this.

People need to understand that what we’re seeing is a fascist response to an unresolvable contradiction of this system—that the way this system functions, it continues to create unlivable hellholes, and it has no solution for this. They need to understand that, for all its strength, this is a strategic weakness for this system, and that there is a strategy to overthrow it.

All of this points to why getting out the film of the new talk by BA, Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution, is so key to changing that. Organizing people around the talk gives people the understanding of the way out and gives them a way to work to overthrow and tear down this system, which not only erects these illegitimate borders between the different parts of humanity but reproduces horror after intolerable horror as part of its basic functioning.

People who had walked thousands of miles to apply for asylum were confronted by riot police, helicopters, machine guns, and soldiers. Border Patrol threw tear gas at these migrants, including small children and babies! (Photo: AP)

Revolution Club and Refuse Fascism support the migrant caravan at the U.S./Tijuana border.