We Can’t Wait for 2028: Shawn Fain Must Call for Labor Action Against Trump and U.S. Imperialism

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/19000

On January 3, the U.S. bombed Caracas and kidnapped Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Days later, on January 7, ICE murdered legal observer Renee Nicole Good in cold blood in Minneapolis, following the deployment of 2,000 ICE agents to the city.

Class struggle in the U.S. has reared its head in the past few days, with over 1,000 actions called in response to Trump’s attacks. Labor has a pivotal role to play in uniting these interconnected struggles, to strike boldly at the heart of imperialism and all of Trump’s militarism with the strategic labor power of the working class.

In response to the political situation, five United Auto Workers (UAW) locals — following the lead of UAW Local 4811, who issued a statement last week — released a statement on January 9, calling on the UAW leadership to oppose U.S. intervention in Venezuela:

The invasion of Venezuela is intended to enrich oil companies and financial interests eager to exploit the Venezuelan people. For the working class, it will bring only suffering: death, destruction, and plunder of natural resources in Venezuela; and billions diverted to war instead of healthcare, housing, and schools in the United States.

The statement then calls on the UAW leadership, and all other labor unions, to demand an end to intervention, withdrawal of U.S. actors, and the release of Maduro.

This statement by the union locals points to an important contradiction in the UAW. The leadership of the union, headed by president Shawn Fain, is nominally one of the most progressive in the country. In 2023, it made history with its stand-up strike against the Big Three Auto companies and called for a ceasefire in Gaza. In 2024, UAW Local 4811 in the University of California system went on strike to protest the repression of pro-Palestine protesters, a historic act of labor solidarity with anti-imperialist struggle. This past year, Fain has been calling for a general strike in May 2028, and rhetoric about a general strike — how it might be coordinated, when it was done before — has become increasingly mainstream in recent months.

But the working class can’t afford to wait until 2028.

The time for an anti-imperialist labor movement is now. Attacks on the global working class, from Minneapolis to Caracas, are mounting. In the center of imperialism, the U.S. working class has a special role to play in the fierce anti-imperialist defense of our working class siblings in nations across the Americas that very well could be the next targets of Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine.”

For too long, union leaders have told us that we should only care about U.S.-born workers and bread-and-butter issues. Union leaders, from Shawn Fain to Sean O’Brien, have capitulated to Trump’s tariffs and become increasingly chauvinistic. Eric Blanc’s article “Want to Stop ICE? Go After Its Corporate Collaborators” explicitly separates the fight against ICE from the labor movement, uplifting a strategy of contained “pressure campaigns.”

But this political moment demands that we reject labor chauvinism and the siloing of movements. For a working class that saw ICE murder someone in the same week that our government invaded Venezuela, it is clear that allowing imperialism to go unchecked only strengthens the apparatus of state violence within the United States. Instead, the working class needs to get organized to use the power of the strike now to make political, class-based demands: Hands off Venezuela and Latin America! ICE out of our cities!

You might also be interested in: The Time for An Anti-Imperialist Labor Movement Is Now

From the heart of imperialism, we must reject complacency and complicity, looking to the inspiring examples of the general strike in Italy for Palestine and the experiences that have shaped the working class of the United States, from the George Floyd uprisings to the Palestine movement, to the shift in general consciousness as a result of the pandemic. We must forge an anti-imperialist labor movement that has the power to go beyond isolated union statements such as those of the UAW locals and the PSC, though these are steps in the right direction, towards labor action and a general strike. These initiatives require the self-organization of the rank-and-file, and should make demands of, but not rely on, the bureaucratic leaderships of our unions.

Critically, the rank-and-file of the UAW and all other unions must assertively reject the chauvinism of their leaderships. Instead, we have the task of becoming profoundly, unremittingly, and thoroughly internationalist. We need to support the anti-imperialist working classes across the Americas and the world, coordinate our forces, and grow our class power into one that has the possibility of organizing a continental general strike for the protection of the Venezuelan people and for the expulsion of U.S. imperialism in Latin America. Only international working class unity can bring the imperialist, capitalist ruling class that oppresses us to its knees.

The post We Can’t Wait for 2028: Shawn Fain Must Call for Labor Action Against Trump and U.S. Imperialism appeared first on Left Voice.

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