Notes on Migrant Defense Work in New Jersey

When Resistencia en Acción started its campaign for a municipal resolution in favor of the ITA back in June, we were hoping not only to pass a pro-ITA resolution in Princeton, but to re-ignite what had begun as a statewide movement in favor of such resolutions. At least a dozen municipalities had passed pro-ITA resolutions before Princeton did, and I’m happy to say that a statewide pro-ITA movement has in fact taken off in New Jersey since late summer.

How much of this was our doing, and how much a matter of independent activist energy, I don’t know, but since then, among municipalities, Edison and New Brunswick have passed resolutions, and Montgomery has issued a proclamation. Among counties, Essex and Hudson counties have issued unanimous resolutions through their Boards of County Commissioners, and I’d like to think that more county resolutions are forthcoming.

I certainly wish our progress was faster, but there’s no denying that this is progress. Essex and Hudson are the third and fourth most populous counties in New Jersey, respectively, with a population of 1.5 million between them from a statewide total of 9.3 million. Essex County is home to Newark, the state’s most populous city (312,000), and Hudson is home to Jersey City, its second-most populous one (292,000). A state legislature and a pair of gubernatorial candidates that ignores all of this (as they all have) is basically spitting in our faces, while greenlighting fascism.

An informative article on the Hudson County vote has this to say:

Lily Benavides, a Green Party write-in candidate for the state governor race, traveled from Morris County for the meeting because she said she “had to be here.” She added that people can be relieved with this “safeguard,” but there’s still a lot of work to do.

The preceding passage explains why I wrote Benavides in on my mail-in ballot yesterday, and sent it off without further ado. Benavides is the most unambiguously anti-fascist candidate out there, certainly the most dedicated one, and the only candidate, with one exception, that I ended up voting for. The minor exception was County Clerk, where I voted Democratic simply to reward the non-partisan professional competence of this particular clerk. For every other slot, I wrote in “NOTA,” the standard abbreviation for None of the Above. From governor to town council, it was the most worthless slate of candidates in recent memory.

Another aim of Resistencia’s Princeton campaign was to persuade the mayor and Council to work with us in developing something like a plan for dealing with ICE incursions. There has, to the best of my knowledge, been little or no progress on this front, thanks largely to the inertia of the mayor and Council, who’ve been content to rest on their laurels since August after passing the pro-ITA resolution. That act of noblesse oblige seems to mark the limits of their efforts.

Meanwhile, I’ve spent the weekend in West Orange, in north Jersey, where the local PTA seems to have forged an active alliance with Resistencia’s equivalent organization here, DIRE. If you walk around town, you see these little lawn signs stuck in the grass on public property, advertising an Immigration Resource Hub, care of West Orange PTA’s Advocacy group. The hub lists resources for migrants, including (among other things) links to Know Your Rights material and a Rapid Response number.

Lawn sign at Stagg Field, West Orange, New Jersey (photo: Irfan Khawaja)

Though I only happened to see the signs on public property, nothing prevents homeowners from putting them on their own lawns, just like any other lawn sign. If you can advertise the name of the contractor who built your patio, or your favorite school board candidate, or “I Stand with Israel,” you can surely advertise a QR code that gives the SOS number for a pro-migrant Rapid Response team. I wish more people did.

In Princeton we were told with a straight face by our mayor that doing even this much would be an unacceptable “interference” in federal law enforcement operations. Meanwhile, the West Orange PTA–a bunch of public school parents and teachers–has managed to do what our supposedly enlightened, avidly self-congratulatory town has not. The lesson here is that the West Orange PTA is what self-government looks like, particularly when the official version lapses into default.

I was born in Jersey City and grew up in West Orange, so I’m gratified to see these places taking a stand, however conventional, against ICE. But the Jersey suburbs are the Jersey suburbs, steeped in privilege, entitlement, and ignorance, and just when you find yourself gratified by what you see, you run into something that feels like a slap in the face.

I happened to be visiting someone who’d hired a Spanish-speaking contractor to do some work around their house. “It is amazing to me,” this affluent homeowner complained about the contractor, “that these people have been in this country for so long, and don’t know a word of English. English is not such a difficult language to learn. How can a person reach adulthood in this country and fail to learn it?”

The complainant is a Democrat, a militant defender of all things Blue, who’s been in shock for the last several years that the country inexplicably failed to embrace such obvious shoe-ins for president as Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris. Shocked, shocked that no one has embraced these phony sociopaths in their pant-suited odyssey of opportunism and power lust. Meanwhile: can’t understand why a Spanish-speaking day laborer hasn’t devoted his ample free time to go out and learn even a word of Our Native Tongue.

I went out to talk to the guy myself. Though I started the conversation in Spanish, he insisted on responding in broken English. Turns out he knew “a word” of English. More than “a word.” Indeed, he knew more English than his critics knew Spanish. Which raises the question: how can people reach adulthood in north Jersey, living all their lives among Spanish speakers, and not know a fucking word of Spanish? No buenos días, or buenas tardes, no hola, no adiós, no gracias, no hijo de puta, y ningún otra palabra de la lengua. Nada.

I don’t know, but they can. Then they complain with a straight face that those other people lack the get-up-and-go to learn what it takes to get by in life.

This is what we’re up against in the migrant defense space: people, including H1B visa holders, who have zero idea what it means to be a Central American or Caribbean migrant in this country. No idea who they are, no idea why they left, no idea what they went through, no idea what their lives are like, no idea what they’re up against–and no desire to learn. Just: “Here’s some money off the books, fix my house, and make it the prettiest on the block. And try not to get deported while you’re at it. That’d be a hassle. Because then I’d have to find another cheap laborer to take your place.”

If ever you wonder how fascism has made such rapid inroads in our politics, that’s why. If the rank-and-file of the so-called opposition party consists of rich, spoiled, privileged, entitled, ignorant-on-principle assholes, it won’t be an opposition party. It’ll be a party of entitled assholes who can’t be bothered to lift a finger for anyone, because they’re too worried about their lawn, their patio, and their property values, along with their next ironic-ass trip to Cancun. These are people who, apart from self-indulgent sessions of sporadic hand-wringing, couldn’t possibly conceptualize the state-sponsored terrorist campaign that nibbles at the edge of their treesy universe. Their cluelessness is our collective liability. Until we find a fix for it, expect devolution, then disaster, alongside whatever progress we make.