Progressive union leaders are ditching ordinary Americans as they embrace illegal migrants in Los Angeles, just eight months after voters elected a president who declared his solidarity with ordinary Americans.
“In the labor movement, we were built on this word, and that word is ‘Solidarity,’” union leader Liz Shuler announced Monday at a raucous rally on Capitol Hill, adding:
Solidarity is what our brother David Huerta was showing up for last Friday, when he stood up for [illegal] immigrant workers in his community [Los Angeles] and when he was legally exercising his constitutional rights … That’s why I’m here, bringing the voices of 15 million working people in the AFL-CIO standing strong together to … end these unjust ICE raids right now! Ahora! [Today]
The arrested migrants “are our neighbors, our co-workers, these are people who are looking for a better life and are contributing to our economy,” Shuler told HuffPost.
But Americans’ wages are forced down when migrants can cross the border into Americans’ workplaces, just as strike breakers cross a picket line by striking workers at a workplace.
David Huerta is the head of the SEIU-United Service Workers West, which includes many illegal migrants. He was arrested during Friday’s chaotic blockade of a federal building in Los Angeles and faces several years in jail. He said in a Friday statement:
Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals. We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice. This is injustice.
Hellbound and Down 