-SEIU-USWW, a labor union of immigrants and people of color vow to resist border militarization
The Largest Service Workers Union in California’s Border Region Rejects Trump’s Manufactured Crisis
February 15, 2019
SAN DIEGO – SEIU United Service Workers West denounces Trump’s attempt to circumvent the Constitution, undermine the rule of law, and collectively punish border communities by continuing to lie about a non-existent border crisis.
As a union that represents janitors and service workers who call the borderlands home, we reject the president’s continuous attacks on our communities. Border residents know that the southern border is a place of hope and opportunity—not a place of confrontation, hate, and out-of-control militarization. Trump is manufacturing a crisis in one of the safest, most vibrant places in our nation to fulfill a campaign promise based on hate and fear.
Border communities have already endured 700 miles of walls built in our towns, neighborhoods and even backyards. We know firsthand that there is no national security crisis at the border, only the one that exists in Trump’s mind.
Walls and hyper-militarization don’t make our communities and working families safer, but they do hurt the millions of people who call the southern border region home, endanger the environment, threaten jobs and our economy and are a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars.
The border region is not a war zone where military-style enforcement takes precedence over the rights enshrined in the Constitution. We need policies that revitalize our communities, not militarize them. With his emergency declaration, Trump has once again sent a loud and clear message that he only cares about his racist agenda and not about the wellbeing of working families.
USWW recommits to resist the reckless abuse of power and authoritarian tendencies of the Trump administration and we stand firmly with border communities in our joint struggle to revitalize and not militarize the borderlands.
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