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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Major Conference on ‘Class at the Border: Migration, Confinement and (Im)mobility’

The Working-Class Studies Association will hold a major conference, centered on the theme “Class at the Border: Migration, Confinement and (Im)mobility” hosted by The Center for the Study of Inequality,  Social Justice and Policy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY from June 6-9, 2018.

The conference will explore “how an explicit recognition of class can deepen our understanding of the structures and ideas that divide individuals, communities, societies, and nations across the globe. Presentations for this conference will consider how walls, borders, and other dividing lines–of both the material and figurative variety–are constructed, upheld, resisted, and dismantled.”

The program for the conference will feature more than three dozen roundtables, workshops and sessions on a broad range of sub-topics, including “Geographies of 20th- Century American Working-Class Culture,” “Globalization, Global Justice, and Populism,” “Race and Class in the South,” “The Future of Working- Class Movement-Building” and “Working-Class Cultures of Resistance,” to name just a few. For an updated program schedule, click here.

One comment on “Major Conference on ‘Class at the Border: Migration, Confinement and (Im)mobility’

  1. Victor on

    Democrats are driving a polarization over immigration that will probably backfire.

    Liberals are confusing support for a humanitarian DACA with support for open borders.

    Democrats are officially not in favor of open frontiers but the discourse on the left has finally arrived at a place where it amounts to tacit support for it.

    If you oppose the Wall, ICE enforcement, the use of administrative law, detention and deportation, then in essence you support open borders.

    If you think there should be very few restrictions on family reunification (chain migration), that risk of absconding should be ignored and that everyone who is eligible for asylum should receive it (no quotas) and be resettled, then in essence you support open borders.

    DACA negotiations have collapsed because Democrats and the far right are colluding to undermine them. The far right with bad faith proposals and Democrats with a no compromise stance given that the courts have suspended Trump’s DACA repeal action.

    One can understand Democrats’ defense of the diversity lottery and some family reunification rules, as well as an unrestricted path to citizenship for Dreamers and many other previous immigrants, but Democrats have adopted a take it or leave it attitude, even though they are the party in congressional minority.

    Once DACA arrives to the Supreme Court immigrants may be left with very few protections. Democrats are gambling with time and with immigrants’ interests.

    The fact that the Obama administration (with the exception of DACA) had legislative, fiscal and administrative policies regarding immigrants that were similar or even identical to Trump will always explode in the face of Democrats when trying to pin Republicans with accusations of abuse and lack of sensitivity.

    The left has arrived at a place where opposition to police brutality is confused with opposition to all police enforcement and opposition of ICE brutality is confused with opposition to all immigration enforcement.

    At the same time, the left wants vigorous federal enforcement of civil and voting rights laws and LGBT rights, ADA, labor law, abortion rights, consumer law, privacy laws, environmental laws, freedom from religion, etc.

    Gun rights and freedom of religion don’t get the same defense and are tacitly opposed. So are some aspects of freedom of expression and association.

    In other words, the rule of law is to be applied selectively.

    Liberals talk about human rights, but countries of origin and transit have a duty to respect the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

    And it is a legitimate question to ask if parents risking their children’s lives are doing it for the children or for themselves.

    The notion that Mexico is such a bad country that everyone deserves to leave is itself racist in the dual forms of white supremacist thinking and white saviorism.

    When the right talks about alternative facts and fake news these are the kind of issues they talk about.

    One can understand that Trump’s comments over immigrants are problematic, but he is being smart about making those comments in contexts where the facts can easily be interpreted as favoring his position. His conflation of all immigrants with gang members is meant to provoke liberals into defending gang members. This is what he has done for two years and it seems to keep working. Trump is pushing for cynicism because cynicism only favors the right.

    The left is increasingly complicit in pushing cynical views about how government works.

    ICE and the Police are conflated with overall brutality. People only have rights but no obligations. International law only applies to the United States.

    The right of people to look for democracy and a better life doesn’t include domestic citizens. The opinions of domestic citizens are reduced to racism if they don’t support policies that are tantamount to open borders even though nobody openly talks about open borders.

    Reply

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