Popular sign at Women’s March

_{by DSA's Immigrants’ Rights Committee}

Let us be clear.  The shut down of the U.S. government on January 19  was due to a dispute over spending because Donald Trump ordered the end of the the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The proposed spending bill assumes the end of DACA and demands a vast increase in spending on the border, including a wall.  At present the  critical issue  is restoring DACA.  Note: restoring.  We had a DACA program that protected the lives of some 800,000 young people who came to the U.S. as children.  Trump created this crisis and the Republicans are using the crisis to promote their anti-immigrant agenda.

New Challenges for Social Justice Organizations

Bob Wing and Max Elbaum

The wake-up call is right there in the front page headline of the Dec. 11 New York Times: "Poll Has Trump Gaining Ground on Terror Fear."

Prior to the tragic burst of terrorist murders in Egypt, Beirut, Paris and then San Bernardino, California, significant aspects of U.S. politics were beginning to move in a positive direction. Pressure from #BlackLivesMatter and Raise the Wage campaigns was forcing issues of racism and economic inequality to the forefront of public debate. Climate change denialism was increasingly on the defensive. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign was giving voice to a broad anti-corporate agenda. And the Republicans seemed to be lurching so far to the right that they might self-isolate or split.

Reuters

By Jim Shoch

There's no way around it; the Democrats suffered another "shellacking" (President Obama's description of the 2010 election results) in the recent congressional midterm and other elections. The Republicans will likely pick up nine Senate seats and 16-19 House seats and captured numerous governorships and state legislative chambers, with gains in all cases especially large in the conservative South (although a number of minimum wage and marijuana legalization initiatives did pass in various states). What explains these mostly depressing developments?

It's important to be clear that the election outcome was not the result of any sharp right turn by the electorate. Exit polls showed that the voters actually agreed more with the Democrats than the Republicans on most important issues. And Republican candidates advanced no positive legislative agenda; their only unity was opposition to Obama. Thus, the Republicans can claim no conservative policy mandate.

by Harold Meyerson

The winner in  last Tuesday's mind-boggling defeat of Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor wasn't just David Who? (Actually, David Brat.) It also was gridlock — for the remainder of this congressional session, and the next one, and probably for a number of years beyond that.

Brat's victory is almost certain to push the Republican Party to the right on the very issue that will cement the Democrats' hold on the White House: immigration. It's not that Cantor's alleged squishiness on the undocumenteds was the only issue in play; there were many reasons why Brat prevailed. One of them, surely, had to be voters' almost pan-ideological revulsion at the congressional leadership. Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, also attacked Cantor for his consistent defense of Wall Street. "All the investment banks in New York and D.C. — those guys should have gone to jail," Brat said at a tea party rally last month. "Instead of going to jail, they went on Eric's Rolodex, and they are sending him big checks."

Next Steps in Immigration Reform

As talk of  immigration reform dominated the new Congress, Duane Campbell conducted separate interviews with DSA Honorary Chair Eliseo Medina (former secretary treasurer of SEIU and former Executive Board member of the United Farm Workers) and immigrant rights activist Alma Lopez.

 From November 12 until December 2, 2013, Medina and hundreds more participated in a Fast for Families, setting up tents on the Washington Mall to engage the nation and Congress in issues of immigration reform. Politicians, union leaders,  community activists, and faith leaders, from Jim Wallace of Sojourners to Barack Obama, stopped by to talk, listen, and provide support. Medina fasted for twenty-two days, taking only water. 

Here, Medina explains the need for broad coalitions and public education.--Ed.

By Duane Campbell

During the last year there was substantive unity between immigrants’ rights groups, community groups, religious groups, and major parts of organized labor in the effort to craft a comprehensive immigration reform bill.  Now, with the amendments and passage of Senate bill SB744 at the end of June, this unity is challenged.   The draft of SB744 by the Gang of Eight was always a compromise. There is, for example, a redesigned guest worker program, a new special status for H-1B hi-tech workers, enhanced border enforcement, an extended period of time required for application for legal status, and more.

Conservative Republican forces in the Senate amended the bill to achieve a massive   $46 billion expansion of border control and enforcement.  The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, a network of grassroots community groups of which DSA is a member, sharply criticized these  developments. The Dignity Campaign and Presente (a new on-line group that claims to speak for the Latino community) has called the bill unacceptable, while the big Washington D.C. lobbying groups such as the National Council de La Raza continue to support the bill.