United States
Workers, Unions Must Defend Haitian Immigrants
Attacks on Haitians in Ohio are part of a long term project to divide the working class and blame immigrants for the capitalist crisis.
Julia Wallace and Carmin Maffea
September 20, 2024
LEFT VOICE
Photo: Jesse Costa/WBUR
This 2024 presidential campaign has been fueled by right-wing rhetoric that has left both parties fighting over who can be more pro-fracking, pro-police, pro-Israel, and particularly anti-immigrant. This is exemplified by Donald Trump and JD Vance’s disgusting targeting of Haitian immigrants, accusing them of eating people’s house pets –claims that are reminiscent of anti-Asian tropes about Chinese people eating dogs and cats. These false claims are meant not only to agitate for harsher anti-migrant legislation but also to give political sanction to attacks on migrants and Black people by painting them as subhuman.
Far-right sentiments such as these have always held prominence in the capitalist system and are woven into the DNA of the imperialist core that is the United States. However, these radical right-wing sentiments have been growing in prominence with the rise of Trumpism and the Far Right, characterized by a series of political attacks on migrants, reproductive rights, and trans rights.
The feeding and broadcasting of right wing sentiments such as this has had the very effect it intended to. Just as minstrel images of Black people perpetuated ideas that Black men were rapists to agitate lynch mobs against them, the anti-Black and anti-migrant lies perpetuated by Trump has agitated acid attacks against Haitian people and the mobilizations by the Proud boys.
This rhetoric plays on the anti immigrant sentiment in the Black community particularly of Black people born in the US as well as anti Black sentiments in the Latino immigrant community. The attack on Haitian immigrants is connected to a greater anti-Black agenda.
Trump, for instance, has received some increased support in the Latino community and Black community, with groups like Latinos for Trump and the ADOS movement and these attacks on Haitians appease both those groups.
It is not only racial bigotry against Black people that fuels these attacks, but also serves an anti working class agenda. Immigrants are workers with no rights in the US. Never before in the history of imperialism has the problem of migration taken on such a scale as a global problem for the working class: hundreds of thousands of Black, brown, and ethnically diverse workers who find themselves and recognize themselves and recognize the shared tragedy of having to to cross borders to new Babylons to feed with their bodies and souls, the cheap labor force that drives imperialist cities. They are Haitian workers, the most precarious, the most oppressed in UPS warehouses in New York and other major cities.
Historical Attacks on Haiti
Attacks on Haitians aren’t exclusive to migrants entering imperialist nations, but are simply the latest in a series of racist reactionary attacks against the spirit of the Haitian Revolution itself.
The motto “L’Union fait la force” or unity creates strength, is a motto that embodies the Haitian revolutionary spirit. It was the guiding sentiment that inspired the slave revolts in Saint Domingue that eventually led to a revolution of enslaved Black people. With the success of the revolution, Haiti became not only the first Black republic but the first state to permanently ban slavery.
By supporting other revolutions in South America, rescuing enslaved people on transport ships, and making Haiti a safe harbor for revolutionaries and enslaved Africans as a free republic, Haiti served as a specter to the slavocracy and colonizers of the world and a beacon of inspiration and support to enslaved Black people around the world. The Haitian revolution showed that African slaves could successfully fight for their freedom, but more importantly, that such revolts could become revolutions. With the revolutionary spirit of Haiti serving as the vanguard of revolutionary progress, reactionary forces have always sought to crush or undermine that spirit, in a process that continues to this day.
To “recognize” Haiti’s independence, France, with the support of the United States and Thomas Jefferson ordered Haiti to pay 150 million Francs or face a French Naval fleet sent by Charles X. After capitulating, Haiti (being a new and small nation) was forced to take out loans from French banks with large interest rates. In today’s numbers the repayment cost the young nation about 20-30 billion dollars and took 122 years to pay off.
These economic attacks were furthered after the US took control over Haiti’s public finances following a near 20 year long, brutal, military occupation that ended in 1947.
Ten years after this occupation and strangulation of public finances came the pro-US military dictatorships of first Francois Duvalier, aka “Papa Doc,” and then his son Jean-Claude Baby doc. These regimes were characterized by their brutal repression of political opponents, especially communists, and acted as a strategic pro-US Caribbean enclave for the United States in its pursuit to crush the gains of the Cuban revolution. Papa Doc for example accrued 50 million dollars in foreign aid during his dictatorship, even as infant mortality rates skyrocketed and the average Haitian life expectancy shrank to just 40 years.
When ‘Baby Doc’ was ousted by a general strike in 1971, a major blow to US imperialism, the US refused to relent in its imperialist reactionary attacks on the island. A series of Agrarian reforms, which reduced tariffs on US imports, were forced on Haiti by Ronald Reagan, then made harsher by Bill Clinton. These reforms undermined Haitian farmers and forced them to abandon their farms. US agencies were fully aware that this would undermine the Haitian economy and exacerbate poverty as they were implementing these policies.
Migrants coming into the United States from Haiti are primarily coming to escape from imperialist-made crises that were implemented to crush the spirit of the revolution. The attacks on Haitian migrants in the US is the continuation of that reactionary response by utilizing the anti-Black and anti-migrant sentiment abundant in the growing far right populist movement.
In these racist attacks, it’s not just Haitian Migrants being attacked, it is also Non-Haitian Black people. This shows that the more the political elite and the right agitate for attacks on the ‘other,’ they are fueling reactionary movements against all of the working class and oppressed, and therefore, our struggles are inherently intertwined not only for our safety and our rights but for our total liberation.
It is important that working class people, Black, Brown, immigrant, and those born in the US actively reject such jingoism. The same tactics for one group one day will be used for another the next. Meanwhile it is the capitalists that increase their profits off of our backs. It is the capitalists taking our jobs, not immigrants. It is the imperialists that force people to leave their homes and immigrate to the US. Borders drive down all workers’ wages. Uniting all workers and oppressed people against bigotry and for higher wages and further political self organization have made the international workers movement stronger and will make us a fighting force.
The Democrats and Republicans vow to attack immigrants crossing the US/Mexico border. While the Republicans use the outlandish rhetoric of “eating pets,” the Democrats are more nuanced and speak about stopping drug dealers. But their aims are the same: to intimidate and divide the working class, and to keep immigrants in the shadows and from organizing for their own rights, or further still, from uniting with workers born in the US.
That is why we must embrace the motto “L’Union fait la force” in the legacy of the Haitian revolution as we build a greater one that is socialist and international.
Fight the Right Through Workers’ Organization
Despite all their rhetoric on fighting the right, the Democrats are showing exactly how they intend to “ fight the right,” which is to do nothing. Proud Boys are marching in the streets and the Democrats are asking for more money for their campaign. They are also catering to right-wing Republicans, bragging about the two hundred who have agreed to vote for Harris. It is clear they have no intention of fighting the Right and we should not rely on them. We, as working class and oppressed people, keep us safe. When hundreds of Zionists, transphobes and other violent bigots descended upon the UCLA campus it was not the police who protected the encampment but the students, workers and community members. The next day thousands mobilized and forced the police, sheriffs, and bigots to retreat into the early morning. As a response UAW 4811 went on strike across the University of California.
Our unions need to mobilize resources to defend immigrant rights as worker’s rights. Unions should take this up as the UAW 4811 took up the issue of Palestine and defending students and workers on its campuses. Instead, leaderships are giving millions of members’ union dues to the Democrats and Republicans. As both parties claim to represent workers, both parties locally and nationally attack the working class, our living standards and right to organize and unionize. To defend ourselves from bigoted attacks requires both the mobilization of the working class, including putting our unions to the services of oppressed people, but further still, to organize ourselves as working class and oppressed people politically into our own political party. A working class party that fights for socialism. In this political form we can develop politics, strategy, and organization to fight for our own interests and our class enemies.
Julia Wallace
Julia is a contributor for Left Voice and has been a revolutionary socialist for over ten years. She served on the South Central Neighborhood Council in Los Angeles and is a member of SEIU Local 721. Julia organizes against police brutality and in defense of LGBTQ, women, and immigrants' rights. When she's not actively fighting the patriarchy, white supremacy and/or capitalism, she enjoys many things: she loves Thundercat, plays ultimate frisbee and is a founder of the team, "Black Lives Hammer."
Carmin Maffea
Carmin is a revolutionary socialist from New York
This 2024 presidential campaign has been fueled by right-wing rhetoric that has left both parties fighting over who can be more pro-fracking, pro-police, pro-Israel, and particularly anti-immigrant. This is exemplified by Donald Trump and JD Vance’s disgusting targeting of Haitian immigrants, accusing them of eating people’s house pets –claims that are reminiscent of anti-Asian tropes about Chinese people eating dogs and cats. These false claims are meant not only to agitate for harsher anti-migrant legislation but also to give political sanction to attacks on migrants and Black people by painting them as subhuman.
Far-right sentiments such as these have always held prominence in the capitalist system and are woven into the DNA of the imperialist core that is the United States. However, these radical right-wing sentiments have been growing in prominence with the rise of Trumpism and the Far Right, characterized by a series of political attacks on migrants, reproductive rights, and trans rights.
The feeding and broadcasting of right wing sentiments such as this has had the very effect it intended to. Just as minstrel images of Black people perpetuated ideas that Black men were rapists to agitate lynch mobs against them, the anti-Black and anti-migrant lies perpetuated by Trump has agitated acid attacks against Haitian people and the mobilizations by the Proud boys.
This rhetoric plays on the anti immigrant sentiment in the Black community particularly of Black people born in the US as well as anti Black sentiments in the Latino immigrant community. The attack on Haitian immigrants is connected to a greater anti-Black agenda.
Trump, for instance, has received some increased support in the Latino community and Black community, with groups like Latinos for Trump and the ADOS movement and these attacks on Haitians appease both those groups.
It is not only racial bigotry against Black people that fuels these attacks, but also serves an anti working class agenda. Immigrants are workers with no rights in the US. Never before in the history of imperialism has the problem of migration taken on such a scale as a global problem for the working class: hundreds of thousands of Black, brown, and ethnically diverse workers who find themselves and recognize themselves and recognize the shared tragedy of having to to cross borders to new Babylons to feed with their bodies and souls, the cheap labor force that drives imperialist cities. They are Haitian workers, the most precarious, the most oppressed in UPS warehouses in New York and other major cities.
Historical Attacks on Haiti
Attacks on Haitians aren’t exclusive to migrants entering imperialist nations, but are simply the latest in a series of racist reactionary attacks against the spirit of the Haitian Revolution itself.
The motto “L’Union fait la force” or unity creates strength, is a motto that embodies the Haitian revolutionary spirit. It was the guiding sentiment that inspired the slave revolts in Saint Domingue that eventually led to a revolution of enslaved Black people. With the success of the revolution, Haiti became not only the first Black republic but the first state to permanently ban slavery.
By supporting other revolutions in South America, rescuing enslaved people on transport ships, and making Haiti a safe harbor for revolutionaries and enslaved Africans as a free republic, Haiti served as a specter to the slavocracy and colonizers of the world and a beacon of inspiration and support to enslaved Black people around the world. The Haitian revolution showed that African slaves could successfully fight for their freedom, but more importantly, that such revolts could become revolutions. With the revolutionary spirit of Haiti serving as the vanguard of revolutionary progress, reactionary forces have always sought to crush or undermine that spirit, in a process that continues to this day.
To “recognize” Haiti’s independence, France, with the support of the United States and Thomas Jefferson ordered Haiti to pay 150 million Francs or face a French Naval fleet sent by Charles X. After capitulating, Haiti (being a new and small nation) was forced to take out loans from French banks with large interest rates. In today’s numbers the repayment cost the young nation about 20-30 billion dollars and took 122 years to pay off.
These economic attacks were furthered after the US took control over Haiti’s public finances following a near 20 year long, brutal, military occupation that ended in 1947.
Ten years after this occupation and strangulation of public finances came the pro-US military dictatorships of first Francois Duvalier, aka “Papa Doc,” and then his son Jean-Claude Baby doc. These regimes were characterized by their brutal repression of political opponents, especially communists, and acted as a strategic pro-US Caribbean enclave for the United States in its pursuit to crush the gains of the Cuban revolution. Papa Doc for example accrued 50 million dollars in foreign aid during his dictatorship, even as infant mortality rates skyrocketed and the average Haitian life expectancy shrank to just 40 years.
When ‘Baby Doc’ was ousted by a general strike in 1971, a major blow to US imperialism, the US refused to relent in its imperialist reactionary attacks on the island. A series of Agrarian reforms, which reduced tariffs on US imports, were forced on Haiti by Ronald Reagan, then made harsher by Bill Clinton. These reforms undermined Haitian farmers and forced them to abandon their farms. US agencies were fully aware that this would undermine the Haitian economy and exacerbate poverty as they were implementing these policies.
Migrants coming into the United States from Haiti are primarily coming to escape from imperialist-made crises that were implemented to crush the spirit of the revolution. The attacks on Haitian migrants in the US is the continuation of that reactionary response by utilizing the anti-Black and anti-migrant sentiment abundant in the growing far right populist movement.
In these racist attacks, it’s not just Haitian Migrants being attacked, it is also Non-Haitian Black people. This shows that the more the political elite and the right agitate for attacks on the ‘other,’ they are fueling reactionary movements against all of the working class and oppressed, and therefore, our struggles are inherently intertwined not only for our safety and our rights but for our total liberation.
It is important that working class people, Black, Brown, immigrant, and those born in the US actively reject such jingoism. The same tactics for one group one day will be used for another the next. Meanwhile it is the capitalists that increase their profits off of our backs. It is the capitalists taking our jobs, not immigrants. It is the imperialists that force people to leave their homes and immigrate to the US. Borders drive down all workers’ wages. Uniting all workers and oppressed people against bigotry and for higher wages and further political self organization have made the international workers movement stronger and will make us a fighting force.
The Democrats and Republicans vow to attack immigrants crossing the US/Mexico border. While the Republicans use the outlandish rhetoric of “eating pets,” the Democrats are more nuanced and speak about stopping drug dealers. But their aims are the same: to intimidate and divide the working class, and to keep immigrants in the shadows and from organizing for their own rights, or further still, from uniting with workers born in the US.
That is why we must embrace the motto “L’Union fait la force” in the legacy of the Haitian revolution as we build a greater one that is socialist and international.
Fight the Right Through Workers’ Organization
Despite all their rhetoric on fighting the right, the Democrats are showing exactly how they intend to “ fight the right,” which is to do nothing. Proud Boys are marching in the streets and the Democrats are asking for more money for their campaign. They are also catering to right-wing Republicans, bragging about the two hundred who have agreed to vote for Harris. It is clear they have no intention of fighting the Right and we should not rely on them. We, as working class and oppressed people, keep us safe. When hundreds of Zionists, transphobes and other violent bigots descended upon the UCLA campus it was not the police who protected the encampment but the students, workers and community members. The next day thousands mobilized and forced the police, sheriffs, and bigots to retreat into the early morning. As a response UAW 4811 went on strike across the University of California.
Our unions need to mobilize resources to defend immigrant rights as worker’s rights. Unions should take this up as the UAW 4811 took up the issue of Palestine and defending students and workers on its campuses. Instead, leaderships are giving millions of members’ union dues to the Democrats and Republicans. As both parties claim to represent workers, both parties locally and nationally attack the working class, our living standards and right to organize and unionize. To defend ourselves from bigoted attacks requires both the mobilization of the working class, including putting our unions to the services of oppressed people, but further still, to organize ourselves as working class and oppressed people politically into our own political party. A working class party that fights for socialism. In this political form we can develop politics, strategy, and organization to fight for our own interests and our class enemies.
Julia Wallace
Julia is a contributor for Left Voice and has been a revolutionary socialist for over ten years. She served on the South Central Neighborhood Council in Los Angeles and is a member of SEIU Local 721. Julia organizes against police brutality and in defense of LGBTQ, women, and immigrants' rights. When she's not actively fighting the patriarchy, white supremacy and/or capitalism, she enjoys many things: she loves Thundercat, plays ultimate frisbee and is a founder of the team, "Black Lives Hammer."
Carmin Maffea
Carmin is a revolutionary socialist from New York
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