Hundreds of immigrants have been deported around the country after President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 for the first time since World War II. Using a centuries-old wartime law to target alleged members of a Venezuelan gang (Tren De Aragua), the new administration continues to arrest, detain, and deport more and more people while the bourgeois media focuses on legal battles against the administration that will take months to resolve.

On Thursday, March 20, President Trump, accompanied by a group of schoolchildren seated at prop desks, signed an executive order effectively crippling the Department of Education. The Trump administration has always intended to reduce learning opportunities for the working class by privatizing education and making it available only to those who can pay for it. We must call this order what it is: a fascist attack on the poorest, most disabled and marginalized groups of the working class to keep them impoverished, immiserated, and vulnerable to exploitation.

Cincinnati Socialists and the people of Cincinnati stand in solidarity with the Black and immigrant populations in our city.

Children are meant to learn, not earn. Free quality public education should be made available to every child no matter their race or socioeconomic status. Attacks on public schools serve to widen class divisions, limit access to quality education to a privileged few, and reduce public education to nothing more than job training for working class children.

Sonya Massey should still be alive. Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Timothy Thomas, Sam Dubose, Tortuguita, Dexter Reed Jr., Elijah Hadley, and countless others should still be alive. We should honor all of them in the struggle against racist and classist state violence.