Build the Broad United Front vs. Trump and Fascism
StatementNovember 12, 2016Reference: Berna Ellorin, ILPS-US, berna.ellorin@gmail.com
Build the Broad United Front vs. Trump and Fascism
A Call for Unity and Action
The International League of Peoples Struggles in the US (ILPS-US) congratulates and is inspired by the sheer hundreds of thousands that have taken to the streets immediately following the announcement of the Presidential win of Donald Trump. This indicates the people in the United States are not paralyzed by our fear, nor are we willing to tolerate fascism and state repression. We must organize to ensure this fight back movement is sustained and advanced.The electoral results unmask the gravity of the social and economic crisis in the United States, the deep-seated slave-owner mentality still dominant with the ruling class, and the gains of the divide and conquer tactics unleashed on by the people in the USto blur and diffuse the reality of class struggle and to protect the wealthiest in this country.While it is understandable that oppressed communities in the US are concerned and fearful of the fascism, heightened racism and xenophobia in store with a Trump presidency, the people must work to unite in collective action not only for our defense, but for our liberation from a rotten global and domestic system that as it decays, becomes more repressive and divisive. This includes organizing a movement to fight back and undo a Trump presidency.The working class, including the working class whites, and oppressed peoples of the US, have long felt the brunt and burden of a system that continuously denies us security, livelihood, jobs, development, peace, and justice. While the people grow more desperate, the ruling class, with the government and corporate media as their tools, plays with us like chess pieces, pitting usagainst each other, creating fake enemies based on race and religion for the people to direct their class anger towards, while hiding the real cause of class exploitation and national oppression in the US—the crisis of the monopoly capitalist system itself and its adherence to neoliberalism.The face of neoliberal attacks in the US appears not only as the dominance of the Wall Street, outsourcing of jobs and major industries, austerity measures and harmful cutbacks in the public sector, but as militarization, police terror, mass incarceration, deportation, displacement, raids, and other forms of state repression as well. While undocumented workers, Black people, Chicano and Latino people, indigenous peoples, Muslims and Arabs face harsh discrimination and repression by the state, the entire working class in the US, of which these communities are integral to, faces rising hardship, joblessness, homelessness, hunger, lack of access to healthcare, education, and social services. It is this very class oppression against us that must unite us.The reality of a Trump presidency and its aggravation of the worsening crisis in the US provides excellent conditions for organizing a broad united front against Trump and fascism, as well as bold collective action. The work of uniting and organizing the broadest ranks of those impacted by neoliberalism is onewe must duly undertake in order to defend our communities and build a viable mass movement that can change the status quo.History shows us it is the parliament of the streets, not the parliament of the state, that determines change.Let us also be inspired by the solidarity of those rising up every day in countries attacked by US imperialism through wars of aggression, military occupation, counter-insurgency, and neoliberal economic subjugation. From the mothers and fathers laying their bodies in front of military tanks, to those braving the water cannons and police batons aimed at the picket lines, to those engaged in armed struggle in the countryside, those amongst the poorest in the world standing up to the biggest corporations and mercenary armies to defend their lands, peoples growing resistance worldwide remains undaunted by reactionary state power, as must ours.