Trump and his MAGA regime have launched vicious attacks almost daily against immigrants, foreign-born students and many other vulnerable sectors of society. As New York City transit workers, it is in our direct interest to actively defend the victims of these attacks, not least because we also are in the crosshairs. Recent mass layoffs of federal workers and Trump’s threats to pull funding of MTA projects are just a taste of what’s to come, as America’s racist rulers strive to preserve their sick profit system at home and imperial domination abroad.
Right now, our own union, Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 is weak, divided and isolated. As the bosses continue to undercut our jobs, wages and working conditions, we have every reason to prepare for our own defense by linking up with others under attack. If government forces succeed in attacking immigrants and pro-Palestinian protesters and getting away with it, they will only be emboldened to attack us. Transit workers defending those targeted today by the government would not only improve their chances against the witchhunters, but also help our union break out of its isolation and increase our fighting capacity.
Columbia University grad student Mahmoud Khalil, kidnapped and shipped off to an ICE holding pen in Louisiana; union construction worker Kilmar Abrego Garcia, abducted and deported directly to El Salvador’s “terrorist” mega-prison; doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, grabbed by cops on a Boston sidewalk, shackled and whisked off to another Louisiana dungeon. The U.S. ruling class wants to terrorize the population by searing these acts and images into our minds. They want to silence pro-Palestine activists and to force immigrant workers into the shadows, in order to make all of us work harder and suffer even more.
The government’s mounting ICE raids, deportations and anti-immigrant hysteria should be a wake-up call to NYC transit workers. Thousands of us are immigrants or the daughters and sons of immigrants, who know firsthand how precarious our rights are in this country. From the moment the TWU first organized this city’s subway and bus workforce, the union had to fight for its survival against the bosses’ anti-immigrant attacks, then aimed largely against Irish and Italian workers who were not citizens.
Transit Workers for a Fighting Union (TWFU) calls on all our union brothers and sisters to demand: Freedom for Khalil, Öztürk and all victims of political repression! Pro- Palestine activists were some of the first and foremost victims of Trump’s regime, which picked up right where Biden’s Democrats left off in supporting Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians. The carnage in Gaza ignited campus protests against Israeli and U.S. war crimes. Student protesters then had to deal with a tsunami of Zionist lies smearing them as anti-Jewish, which has since turned into a government witchhunt against student activists, professors and even the universities themselves.
The connection between cracking down on pro-Palestine protesters and attacking unions was made clear at Columbia. One day before contract negotiations were set to start, the administration expelled and fired Grant Miner, President of Student Workers of Columbia/UAW Local 2710. Brother Miner is a Jewish Ph.D. student who was prominent in campus protests against the war in Gaza. In addition to Miner, Columbia hit 22 student activists with expulsions, suspensions and taking away their college degrees. We say: Reinstate Grant Miner and all suspended, expelled and victimized pro-Palestine students!
Local 100 transit workers also need to condemn the recent actions of TWU International President John Samuelsen, who has backed the bosses’ and Zionists’ attacks on pro-Palestine protesters at Columbia. After students protesting genocide in Gaza took over Columbia’s Hamilton Hall last spring, Samuelsen went on Fox News to threaten legal action and slander the protesters, who in fact let a couple of TWU-represented custodians leave the building unscathed within 30 minutes. More recently, Samuelsen howled that one of “his members” was allegedly harmed during a pro-Palestine protest at Barnard College.
Nothing about this adds up: Seriously injured subway and bus workers have a hard time even getting a union rep on the phone, yet our union’s International President rushes to highlight the trauma supposedly felt by two union members. He did so to add his voice to the sinister bipartisan campus crackdown on pro-Palestine activists and civil liberties in general. Samuelsen’s actions feign concern for his “blue collar” members while actually trying to drive a wedge between workers and students fighting for a just cause. For someone who claims that Irish revolutionary socialist James Connolly is one of his heroes, Samuelsen has been acting more like a supporter of British and U.S. imperialism.
Transit Workers for a Fighting Union is committed to building a completely new leadership for the TWU, one that doesn’t make backroom deals with the bosses and their politicians, but rather fights for our members and the entire working class. We seek to link up with other unions—like TWU Local 241 at Columbia, TWU Local 264 at Barnard, SWC- UAW Local 2710 and others—and overcome artificial divisions in order to prepare ourselves for hard defensive struggle.
We demand:
- Hands off all pro-Palestine activists!
- Down with ICE raids and anti-immigrant attacks!
- Defend free speech and civil liberties!
- An injury to one is an injury to all!