Join fight for amnesty for all immigrants in the US! – The Militant

[….] U.S. Border Patrol officers were surrounded and confronted by some 50 people provocatively blowing whistles and shouting and filming them. Alex Pretti, a nurse and U.S. citizen who was part of the provocation, was shot and killed by federal agents.

Video shows Border Patrol agents try to push Pretti away. Then he moved to get between the agent and a woman they had pepper sprayed, and he was thrown to the ground and pummeled. As one agent appears to find and take a gun from Pretti, another shouts “gun,” and others start shooting. Pretti was shot 10 times and died at the scene.

The liberal media paints Pretti as a saint, and Trump officials immediately stuck a “domestic terrorist” label on him and accused him of being there to “massacre law enforcement.” Both sides prevent working people from drawing the necessary lessons in order to build an effective response. First, Pretti was not at a protest, but a confrontation organized to interfere with the Border Patrol agents.

Much has been said about Pretti’s Second Amendment right to bring a gun into a protest. But experienced, conscious working-class leaderships go out of their way to avoid giving the capitalist state and its agencies an excuse to victimize fighters in struggle. There is a perfect example that working people could draw from. That is, the example of the Minneapolis Teamsters struggles in the 1930s, where the leadership took away weapons from trade unionists going into combat with the cops.

These frequent confrontations, as well as peaceful vigils at makeshift memorials, are taking place in neighborhoods across the Twin Cities.

The same day the shooting occurred the Minnesota National guard was activated and is now on the streets.

And true to form, the following night antifa thugs, who have a continuity here dating back to the violent actions that ended up destroying the protest movement around the death of George Floyd in 2020, smashed up the front glass windows of a hotel where ICE agents are said to be housed, painting “F–k ICE” graffiti on the walls. This is a blow to efforts to build the kind of mass movement needed.

The ICE arrests and brutality are an attack on workers’ rights — documented and undocumented. But how workers and our unions can make progress needs to be debated out.

Join fight for amnesty for all immigrants in the US! – The Militant