Unions in California are completely different from these in different places.
Greater than any state in our troubled nation, their ranks are stuffed with folks of colour and immigrants. Whereas unions have all the time been tied carefully with the struggles of civil rights, that has change into much more pronounced within the years since George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis.
Within the subsequent nationwide soul-searching, unions have been compelled to do a little bit of their very own. However the place that dialog has largely damaged down for normal society beneath the stress of President Trump’s right-wing rage, it took maintain within unions to a a lot higher diploma — resulting in extra management from folks of colour, typically youthful management and undoubtedly an understanding from the rank and file that these are organizations that combat far past the office.
Which is why the arrest of David Huerta, president of SEIU-USWW and SEIU California, by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Friday goes to have a significant affect on the approaching months as deportations proceed.
“They have woke us up,” Tia Orr informed me Saturday morning. She’s the manager director of the 700,000-strong Service Staff Worldwide Union California, of which Huerta is a component, and the primary African American and Latina to guide the group.
“And I think they’ve woke people up across the nation, certainly in California, and people are ready to get to action,” she added. “I haven’t seen that in a long time. I don’t know that I’ve seen something like that before, and so yes, it is going to result in action that I believe is going to be historical.”
Whereas unions have voiced their disapproval of mass deportations because the MAGA risk first manifested, their would possibly has not gone full drive in opposition to them, taking as an alternative a little bit of a wait-and-see method.
Properly, of us, we’ve seen. We’ve seen the unidentified masked males rounding up immigrants throughout the nation and delivery them into life sentences at torturous overseas prisons; we’ve watched a 9-year-old Southern California boy separated from his father and detained for deportation; and Friday, throughout Los Angeles, we noticed an nameless military-style drive of federal brokers sweep up our neighbors, relations and pals in what appeared to be a haphazard and intentionally merciless manner.
And for these of you who’ve watched the video of Huerta’s arrest, we’ve seen a middle-aged Latino man in a plaid button-down be roughly pushed by authorities in riot gear till he falls backward, and appears to strike his head on the curb. Huerta was, in response to a tv interview with Mayor Karen Bass, pepper-sprayed as properly. Then he was taken to the hospital for therapy, then into custody, the place he stays till a Monday arraignment.
U.S. Atty. Invoice Essayli wrote on social media that “Federal agents were executing a lawful judicial warrant at a LA worksite this morning when David Huerta deliberately obstructed their access by blocking their vehicle. He was arrested for interfering with federal officers … Let me be clear: I don’t care who you are—if you impede federal agents, you will be arrested and prosecuted. No one has the right to assault, obstruct, or interfere with federal authorities carrying out their duties.”
I’ve coated protests, violent and nonviolent, for greater than 20 years. In one of many first such occasions I coated, I watched an iconic union chief, Invoice Camp, sit down in the midst of the highway in a Santa go well with and refuse to maneuver. Police arrested him. However they managed to do it with out violence, and with out Camp’s resistance. That is how unions do good hassle — with out worry, with out violence.
Huerta understands the foundations and energy of peaceable protest higher than most. The union he’s president of — SEIU United Service Staff West — began the Justice for Janitors marketing campaign in 1990, a bottom-up motion that in Los Angeles was principally powered by the immigrant Latina girls who cleaned industrial workplace house for wages as little as $7 an hour.
After weeks of protests, police attacked these Latina employees in June of that yr in what grew to become generally known as the “Battle of Century City.” Two dozen employees have been injured however the union didn’t again down. Ultimately, it gained the contracts it was in search of, and equally as essential, it gained public assist.
Huerta joined USWW a couple of years after that incident, rising the Justice for Janitors marketing campaign. The union was and has all the time been one powered by immigrant employees who noticed that collective energy was their greatest energy, and Huerta has led a long time of constructing that fact right into a sensible drive. He’s, says Orr, an organizer who is aware of the way to deliver folks collectively.
To say he’s a beloved and revered chief in each the union and California basically is an understatement. You’ll be able to nonetheless discover his bio on the White Home web site, since he was honored as a “Champion of Change,” by President Obama. Inside hours of his arrest, political leaders throughout the state have been voicing assist.
Maybe extra importantly, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, talking for her 15 million members, issued an announcement.
Huerta “was doing what he has always done, and what we do in unions: putting solidarity into practice and defending our fellow workers,” she stated. “The labor movement stands with David and we will continue to demand justice for our union brother until he is released.”
Comparable statements got here from the Teamsters and different unions. Solidarity isn’t a buzzword to unions. It’s the bedrock of their energy. In arresting Huerta, that solidarity has been supercharged. Already, union members from throughout the state are planning to collect Monday for Huerta’s arraignment in downtown Los Angeles.
In the meantime, Stephen Miller, the Santa Monica native and architect of Trump’s deportation plans, has stated the raids we’re seeing now are only the start, and that he want to see 1000’s of arrests daily, as a result of our immigrant communities are stuffed with “every kind of criminal thug that you can imagine on planet earth.”
However in arresting Huerta, the battleground has been redrawn in methods we don’t totally but admire. Little question, Miller may have his manner and the raids is not going to solely proceed, however improve.
But in addition, the unions will not be going to again down.
“Right now, just in the last 14 hours, labor unions are joining together from far and wide, communities are reaching out in ways I’ve never seen,” Orr informed me. “Something is different.”
Rosa Parks was only a girl on a bus, she identified, till she was one thing extra. George Floyd was simply one other Black man stopped by police. Till he was one thing extra.
Huerta is the one thing extra of those immigration raids — not as a result of he’s a union boss, however as a result of he’s a union organizer with ties to each folks in energy and folks in worry.
The approaching months will present what occurs when these two teams resolve, collectively, that backing down is just not an possibility.
