Against Constitutional Illusions, Down With ‘Know Your Rights Trainings’ Up with Militant Community Defense!
The following is a guest article from our sister organization, PDX Revolutionary Study Group
With the beginning of the second presidential term of arch reactionary Donald Trump we have seen an understandable proliferation of fear and apprehension at the ever increasing attacks on the people, migrant people no less than any other group. With this we have seen a re-commitment to migrant defense by leftists of a variety of types and some segments of radical liberals. Unfortunately, with this we have also seen a re-embracing of various constitutional illusions in the form of “know your rights trainings”. This well-meaning, but reactionary, conception posits that under the deeply reactionary liberalism that reigns in our country there are meaningful rights which if only invoked, like a magic charm, will protect the masses from the attacks of the capitalist state.
Before getting into the meat of the issue at hand we should begin by defining our terms. Comrade Lenin explains:
Constitutional illusions are what we call a political error when people believe in the existence of a normal, juridical, orderly and legalized—in short, “constitutional”—system, although it does not really exist.
– Constitutional Illusions 1917
So, a constitutional illusion is when there is a claim made that there exists legal protections and juridical remedies to the problems and troubles of the masses. Downstream of this political error is the belief that if laws were only changed, “reformed,” then there would be a reprieve from oppression and exploitation which the laboring masses have suffered under since ancient times.
In, the context of this article, this looks like the constant sharing of “know your rights” information which many honest people really believe would protect migrants, in any way, from raids of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) if they are determined to make a arrest. The reality could not be farther from this. Already way back during the administration of Deporter in Chief Obama we have seen that this is simply not the case. ICE agents have busted down people’s doors, arrested and deported citizens, violently arrested the masses in front of their families, and otherwise terrorized the people. The laws of the bourgeois state restrain it only when it chooses. When it violates our rights, often flagrantly and on camera, we are told to look to courts and other bodies of the capitalist state to discipline itself.
The only protections that exist are those compelled by revolutionary action. Derek Chauvin, the cop who murdered George Floyd, would never have gone to prison if the working masses of this country did not rise up in a wave of revolutionary violence that left a police precinct torched and brought tens of thousands into the streets to clash with their oppressors. The law did not put Derek Chauvin in prison, their fear of the masses put Derek Chauvin in prison. Similarly, quoting laws will not stop ICE if they have decided to make an arrest.
Nearly 100 years ago the Mexican Repatriation Act of 1929 led to the deportation of up to 2 million Mexican people. A century of law changes, legal protections, new administrations, and know your rights trainings later and we are still facing mass deportation. It is a bipartisan matter. Whether it is arch reactionary Trump or the “progressive” Obama, who deported 344k people in just one year of his presidency. Both of the major factions of the bourgeois state support mass deportation. Appeals to them or their courts find no purchase. Only militant community defense offers hope to the migrant masses.
Does this mean that quoting laws at ICE agents will never work? No, but we must be clear why it works. Not because the law protected you, but because the expected backlash for a particularly egregious instance of abuse protected you. This is why witnesses and filming increase the odds of quoting a law working, and do so far more than a greater knowledge of the law. However, even if occasionally effective because of the fear of further angering the masses, quoting laws is never a reliable way to keep safe and it is irresponsible to claim that it is.
A positive program for the struggle of migrant workers largely escapes the scope of this article, but we can point towards some of the characteristics a proper strategy would entail. Whether written in law or not, the protections that exist are the ones that are militantly defended. As a result, it might look like self-defense coalitions springing up in which neighbors keep an eye out for each other and mobilize to physically block a raid, very much like an organized eviction defense. We see embryonic examples of this in the Boyle Heights neighborhood in Los Angeles, where Union del Bario has been organizing to do exactly this.
On the other hand, teaching people some legal quotes and sending them out will not defend them and the false confidence might actually harm them, but building them into a combative movement with proper organizational forms will offer them defense. Exposing the abuses of immigration enforcement and policy while incorporating greater numbers into an increasingly militant struggle against capitalist imperialism at large and its crimes against migrant workers in specific. The only value we expect to get from knowing the reactionary legal system is to expose how they don’t even follow their own laws. Beyond that, bourgeois law is a paper tiger.
Against Constitutional Illusions of Legal Protections Against ICE!
Forward the Militant Movement of Migrant Defense!
Revolution is the Only Solution!