Shop organizations and unions are essentially political organizations of workplace and co-worker defense, integrated with the economic organization of production. Under conditions of fascism, there is an ever greater need for labor orgs to dedicate forces that can rapidly report on and respond to Fascist offensives at the workplace, or during production, most significantly ICE raids and DHS activity in general. These workplace defense units (composed of co-workers at a point of production), along with neighborhood defense units (composed of tenants, neighbors, and home-owners at a point of residency), campus defense units (composed of faculty, staff, and students at a point of education), and broad community defense units (rapid-response across an entire geographic area), all must form part and parcel of community-wide rapid-response networks that can be centralized at the level of report-making (ICE Watch), and at the level of coordination among distinct orgs and units.
Working drivers, and drivers in general, are becoming more and more targets of ICE and our Fascist Government. It is much harder to control the mobility of tens of millions of people, each with distinct vehicles, and traveling throughout entire geographic areas, than it is hundreds of thousands traveling via air, and in a select few vehicles. So now the U.S. is attempting to find ways to further restrict, bureaucratize, and even criminalize driving through various bills, offensives, and the constant surveillance of traffic via Flock cameras. Of course, immigrants, in particular undocumented or “illegal” immigrants, have been the main victims of the offensive on drivers, but caught in these attacks have been citizens patrolling ICE, or even just bystanders in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whether it be truck drivers, taxi/rideshare drivers, delivery drivers, or those just driving to work or to stores, federal and state governments are finding more reasons to stop people, and when they do, want to ensure a swift punishment in the form of kidnapping, or straight up execution. We recall here the DoorDasher who fled into her customer’s house to escape capture from ICE, and the murder of Renee Good as she used her vehicle to defend neighbors. In Tennessee, a recent slate of bills would criminalize undocumented commercial drivers, require ICE to be called at traffic stops where individuals cannot prove their citizenship, limit driver’s licenses to those who can pass an untranslated English test, and one bill would go so far as to create a state-level “centralized immigration enforcement” agency within the TN Department of Safety and Homeland Security, the same department responsible for driver’s licenses.
Although some drivers have what could be called a ‘workplace’ where they coalesce more or less consistently and frequently, all drivers are largely positioned throughout communities, around commercial and residential areas, and thus have a much greater scope than the average, stuck-in-place worker. At the same time, driving is a basic form of mobility that is required for the majority of people to go to work, school, or to buy the commodities they need. Working drivers are thus in a unique position in which we can simultaneously defend fellow drivers and the community as a whole through patrols, reports, direct action, and emergency mutual aid, both on- and off-the-job. By effectively organizing working drivers around anti-fascism, we can combine the principles of workplace/co-worker defense with community rapid-response to establish both a sword and shield for the defense of working drivers, drivers in general, and the community as a whole.
Workplace response networks can be centralized across entire geographic labor sectors through New Labor Committees/Worker’s Circles, and coordinated bilaterally or multilaterally with other sectoral organizations of the working class and oppressed masses. Multilateral operations would require the formation of geographic-based coordinating committees, coalitions, or popular assemblies, the principles of which should be espoused collectively by constituent organizations.
With our geographic and industrial principles of organization, Gig Worker Committees will begin integrating themselves with or establishing community rapid-response networks by ensuring ICE and other Fascist activity we encounter is reported on, and assigning the least vulnerable of our forces to take on rapid response positions in the cases of direct observation, direct action, and emergency mutual aid, in coordination with other anti-fascist community, workplace, and neighborhood orgs.
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