If you live in the Boston area, you’ve probably heard today’s news that a Boston University student bragged on social media that he had essentially gotten ICE to raid a local car wash. The human toll was predictable. Nine people’s lives, and the lives of their families, will be badly disrupted whether any of them are ultimately deported or not.
There’s much that one can say about the unethical nature of the student’s actions—and many onlookers are doing so to be sure. With some even posting that we don’t do that kind of thing in Boston. Like we don’t kick people when they’re down. And would that admonition were true, but in point of fact plenty of Bostonians kick people when they’re down. Just like plenty of people do so everywhere else. We’re not special in that regard.
Maybe moral suasion will change the mind of the BU kid in question one day. Maybe he’ll come to believe that what he did was not cool and try to make amends with the families whose lives he may have helped ruin. But I doubt it.
Because what we’re seeing here is just the latest example of someone on the political right who has a different worldview than those of us who are on the political left committing what he thinks is just and, yes, moral act. In his worldview, the civil offense of being an undocumented immigrant is a “crime” and anyone who breaks any US immigration laws is an “illegal” who should be immediately deported. He is inclined to blame many of the political and economic problems America is facing on immigrants and believes that our political, economic, and (what he would consider to be) “cultural” problems will be solved by driving immigrants away.
Those of us on the left believe that the political and economic problems that most working people face in the US are the same problems that people face the world over. And all these problems stem from the same source: a tiny elite with too much money and power, the billionaires.
So in the American left, we seek to “punch up” against that elite to attempt to draw down power to make our country more politically and economically democratic … and allow other countries, particularly those in Central and South America, to finally have a chance to do the same. Understanding that if we succeed, immigration would likely slow to a trickle because people’s home countries would no longer be looted and pillaged on the regular by giant companies from the US and they wouldn’t have to immigrate here to survive anymore.
Meanwhile, people like our BU friend do indeed “punch down” against the struggling immigrants who are actually the natural allies of working Americans in our just fight against the rich and powerful.
Thus, the answer to the problem of a conservative student ratting out people—who did literally nothing to harm him and may have even washed his car, if he has one—to the contemporary version of a secret police is fundamentally political.
If the left builds a strong enough political movement, then we will be able to change federal law to make minor immigration infractions back into the mere clerical matters they have typically been for long stretches of US history. We can then work hard to build a new international understanding based on the idea that human beings should be at least as free to move around the planet as money typically is.
If you think that what this BU kid did was reprehensible and you want to make it impossible for him to pull such a destructive stunt ever again, then I hope you join the ranks of what is looking to be an ascendant left. The same left that just got a young socialist immigrant elected as mayor of America’s largest city—and may now vie for control of the corrupt and decrepit Democratic Party at the national level or perhaps pivot to form a powerful new party capable of sweeping both corporate-dominated major parties off the political stage.
Because that’s the only thing that’s going to stop characters like the BU snitch from committing far worse crimes against humanity, if allowed to proceed unchecked: democracy in the service of humanity prevailing over authoritarianism in the service of the elite.
In short, don’t get mad … organize!
Apparent Horizon—an award-winning political column—is syndicated by the MassWire news service of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism.
