Simi Valley, CA – While Republican candidates debated at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Sept. 16, enthusiastic protesters took to the streets chanting “Dump Trump!” This was the second of the Republican primary debates. Among the many topics of the debate was immigration. Many Republicans are calling for not only the deportations of the 12 million undocumented in the U.S. but also their citizen children. Donald Trump has been leading the right-wing attacks on immigrants, calling for a border wall, while the other candidates are taking up his proposals. Republican candidate Ben Carson said that after deporting immigrants he would allow them in on “a guest worker program primarily in agriculture.” Trump is still leading and gathering support among the right wing. If elected, there will be more attacks on immigrants, more deportations and more militarization at the border – including the widespread use of military drones.

Over 100 protesters gathered at the entrance to the Reagan Library. Protesters came from all over the area. Many had traveled over 50 miles from Boyle Heights and Camarillo. A delegation of Centro CSO (Community Service Organization) made the journey to denounce Trump and his racist attacks. The majority of protesters were Chicano and Mexicano immigrants.

Longtime activist Carlos Montes said, “The Chicano community came out to denounce Trump and the Republican racist agenda.” They waved Mexican and Aztlan flags and held signs and banners reading “Dump Trump,” “Legalization for all,” and “Who's the illegal, pilgrim?” Protesters chanted, “Dump Trump,” and “We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us!”

Speakers from Mecha, Centro CSO, the Brown Berets and the Raza Unida Party addressed the crowd. Across the street, a few counter-protesters showed up, and a few people shouted obscenities from cars.

Anastacio Sarabia, a Roosevelt High School student who travelled from Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles said, “I hate that the Republicans are being stereotypical about Mexican immigrants that we are criminals and rapists. I also can't believe that Donald Trump wants to deport 1 million immigrants a month. The protest had a good turnout. We got a lot of support from our people – we also outnumbered Donald Trump's people. Our message was Donald Trump should stop the deportations and all racist comments he gives the people about us immigrants.”

Sol Marquez, who organizes for Legalization for All, says “We need to understand that Donald Trump isn't necessarily anti-immigrant. His wives and parents are immigrants. Trump is strictly against Mexicans and Chicanos – for what we represent in U.S. history and for the mere fact that we are growing stronger and louder in voicing our demand for not only legalization, but for full equality.”

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While the corporate-controlled media is singing praises of Ronald Reagan for “restoring confidence to America,” millions of Americans and millions more around the world have been forced into poverty and war as a result of his policies.

Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, at a time when the U.S. empire was reeling from blows abroad and here at home. The 1970s saw an Arab oil boycott to protest U.S. support for Israel; the liberation of Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique from U.S. supported Portuguese colonial rule and, most significantly, the victory of the Vietnamese people against the world’s greatest military power in 1975.

Here in the United States, the economy was plagued by high inflation and unemployment. Workers hit the picket lines and oppressed nationality communities organized to defend and expand the victories of the 1960s. A new generation of revolutionaries arose from the African American, Asian American, Chicano, Latino and Native American people’s struggles, as well as a student movement that challenged U.S. imperialism.

The monopoly capitalists had already begun a turn to the right under President Carter by bringing back registration for the draft, beginning the deregulation of industries and putting limits on the affirmative action programs – programs which were originally designed to reduce inequality in education between oppressed nationalities and whites. Under Reagan, the United States made a bid to restore the economic and military power of its heyday after World War II.

One of the biggest changes was in the economy. Under Reagan, income taxes for the rich were slashed while social security taxes, which mainly fall on working people, were raised. One of Reagan’s first acts was to break the air traffic controllers’ union, signaling an all-out war on organized labor. Reagan also continued the process of cutting back government regulation of business, especially in the financial sector.

The United States under Reagan launched a huge military build-up and increased U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe. Reagan also began to step up U.S. intervention and attacks on progressive governments by trying to overthrow the Sandinistas government of Nicaragua and by invading Grenada. The United States trained Latin American police, military and paramilitary terrorists in torture and assassination and freely gave aid to repressive governments in El Salvador and Honduras. In Afghanistan, the CIA funneled aid to the reactionary and brutal forces.

Here at home, Reagan began the process of undoing many of the reforms started during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and which were expanded due to people’s struggles in the 1960s. As governor of California, Reagan was the first to impose tuition on students at state colleges and universities. His anti-environmental stance was legendary, with his infamous secretary of the interior James Watt. The anti-immigrant movement grew under the banner of ‘English-only.’ Pat Buchanan, the administration’s communications director, remarked that AIDS was “nature's revenge on gay men.” Last but not least, Reagan introduced the ‘Christian right’ to the halls of power in Washington D.C. as they unleashed vicious and often violent attacks on women’s right to choose.

This is not to say that there were no victories in the people’s struggle under Reagan. In the Middle East, the United States was forced to withdraw from occupying Lebanon after hundreds of marines were killed in Beirut. Local workers’ struggles such as that by Chicano cannery workers in Watsonville and the fight of meatpackers in Minnesota were able to win wide community support. And Jesse Jackson’s historic 1984 run for the presidency galvanized many African Americans and progressives to action.

But all things considered, the Reagan presidency was a setback for the struggle for peace, justice and jobs. The gap between the rich and the poor widened and homelessness exploded in cities across the country under Reagan. Workers’ wages, after adjusting for the rising cost of living, were lower at the end of the Reagan presidency than they were at the beginning. The flight of U.S. corporations overseas accelerated, hitting African Americans particularly hard – in the 1980s the average income of blacks in the Midwest fell almost 20%. Deregulation of the economy opened the doors to corporate greed and fraud, leading to the great stock market crash of 1987 and the savings and loan crisis a couple of years later. Tax cuts for the rich tripled the federal debt from less than $1 trillion when Reagan came into office to almost $3 trillion eight years later.

CIA funding of reactionary, feudal forces in Afghanistan sowed the seeds of Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, while Reagan’s military build-up and interventions, often in violation of international law, put the United States on track to occupy Iraq. Reagan’s rise to power also marked the end of the New Deal tradition of reform in the Democratic Party that began under Franklin Roosevelt. In response to Reagan, the Democratic Leadership Council moved the Democratic Party to the right, leading to the Clinton presidency – known for its embargo of Iraq, welfare ‘reform’ and promotion of Wall Street.

While politicians from George Bush on down try to raise the banner of Reaganism and reaction even higher, we have to learn from and gain inspiration from the millions who fought Reagan and his policies for the causes of peace, justice, equality and socialism.

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Make no mistake about it, John G. Roberts, Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court, is a clear and present danger to your rights. He’s a right-wing corporate lawyer with a reactionary agenda. Everyone concerned about what is fair and just should object to his confirmation by the Senate.

The stakes are high. In the years ahead, there is no doubt that the Supreme Court will make decisions on a lot of big issues that effect our lives, including reproductive rights for women, the rights of gays and lesbians, the criminal justice system, voting rights and our democratic rights in general.

Anyone who doubts the importance of the Supreme Court and its decisions should think back to presidential race of 2000 when the Court handed the White House to a Texas governor who lost the election.

Some Democratic Party politicians and a lot of the media pundits are saying it’s too early to take a stand against Roberts because not enough is known about his record. In fact there is more than enough evidence to indict this character.

Roberts started his career as a corporate lawyer. He attacked the rights of workers injured on the job. He then went on to the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Sr. He wrote legal briefs attacking reproductive rights and the voting rights of African Americans and other oppressed nationalities. What’s he done lately? As a federal judge he voted against any real legal process for those held at the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay. This is no small matter. Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are tortured. Some prisoners were just kids. And along comes Roberts, puppet of the Bush administration, who says that neither the Geneva Convention nor the Bill of Rights applies to the detainees.

Everyone knows that right-wing politicians are determined to overturn Roe vs. Wade – the Supreme Court decision that acknowledged abortion rights – and this vital issue will take center stage in the Roberts confirmation process. John Roberts and his supporters are trying to muddy the waters and make it seem like he is a fair-minded man with an unclear position. That’s a lie. He wrote a legal brief saying Roe vs. Wade should be overturned. No serious person can say that his decisions on the bench would do anything other than erode reproductive rights.

The Republican Party and the right wing generally understand what John Roberts is about. That’s why they are preparing with millions of dollars and a media campaign, along with whatever political capital they can muster, to get his nomination through the Senate.

And consider this: No one on the Supreme Court is getting any younger. Bush might well get another chance to nominate yet another justice. The battle over Roberts will shape and inform the fight over future nominees.

In the final analysis, anyone who is appointed to the Supreme Court is going to serve the rich and powerful. It’s anything but the people’s court. That said, standing up and saying no to Roberts is a rejection of injustice and an affirmation of the rights that all oppressed and working people are entitled to. Whether it is abortion rights or anything else that matters, society’s really big issues are going to be settled in the streets, by our collective action and determination to win. We can’t let Roberts, Bush or their backers turn us around or turn the back the clock.

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