More and more, ‘they’ are ‘us’

Bill Knight column for 11-21, 22 or 23, 2019

Labor for decades has led by example when it comes to solidarity, unity and empathy, and in recent months that attitude – maybe expressed best in the centuries-old saying “There, but for the grace of God, go I” – has extended not just to other unions, but other people, too.

During the recent strike by the Chicago Teachers Union, the Teamsters honored strikers’ pickets. IBT’s Chicago Local 705 president Juan Capos said, “Teamsters don’t cross picket lines. Today it’s them; tomorrow it’s us.”

In Texas, more than a dozen unions were part of an AFL-CIO delegation to El Paso in recent days, bringing a message of support for immigrant working families there. Federation Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler said, “We’re here to demand an end to the politics of division and hate that are fueling economic inequality and violence.”

Such feelings have grown beyond organized labor, too.

Marine Gen. Jim Mattis – President Trump’s Secretary of Defense for two years before resigning over various disagreements with the President – last month recalled his emotions after August’s El Paso massacre targeting Mexicans killed or wounded 46 people.

“You know, on that day, we were all Hispanics,” Mattis said. “That’s the way we have to think about this. If it happens to any one of us, it happens to all of us.”

A current attempt by the Trump administration to deny citizenship to immigrants who may need – or COULD need – public assistance also is challenging working Americans to see themselves in others’ situations.

Trump is proposing a new and more severe interpretation of the “public charge” regulation, making it difficult for needy immigrant families to use public assistance such as SNAP food stamps, health care, and Medicaid without risking their legal status.

Trump’s other anti-immigrant attacks have included the notorious travel ban for Muslims, denying entry to people traveling through Mexico, scuttling the refugee resettlement program, trying to kill the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Dreamers) and Temporary Protected Status programs, intentional slowing of applications for visas for people who want to move here, and signing the ludicrously named “safe third-country” pacts with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras – three of the most dangerous nations in the world.

For regular working Americans coping with unemployment, most realize their layoffs weren’t because of undocumented immigrants “stealing their jobs,” but corporate decisions moving work overseas or sacrificing jobs in consolidations or other shutdowns.

A federal court in Chicago last month blocked the “public charge” policy scheduled to take effect in mid-October. Judge Gary Feinerman, whose decision mirrored similar rulings in California, New York and Washington state, said, “The balance of harms and the public interest favor the grant of a preliminary injunction.”

Ultimately, of course, the case may go to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority thanks to Trump’s appointments of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. So the fight is far from over.

Plus, if Trump’s stricter regulation were applied to everyday Americans – who increasingly need government help, whether jobless benefits, housing help or even Earned Income Tax Credits – millions of people could have their citizenship revoked or be deported as “public charges.”

A 2015 study from the University of California at Berkeley researching state and federal spending on non-elderly public assistance programs – including Medicaid, SNAP food stamps, and Temporary Aid to Needy Families – said almost 60% of that spending goes to working families. (Also, tens of thousands of members of the armed forces need food stamps.)

More and more, “they” are “us.”

And as the late Paul Wellstone, the progressive Senator from Minnesota, famously put it, “We all do better when we all do better.”