Why the Pro-Palestinian Movement Is Featured at Some Immigration Protests

At a protest in St. Louis on Wednesday called “March to Defend Immigrant Rights,” participants chanted, “From Ferguson to Palestine, occupation is a crime!” invoking unrest in Ferguson, Mo., over police brutality in 2014 and Palestinian freedom.

The scene encapsulated how the left’s decades-long embrace of intersectionality — the concept that all oppressed people are linked — gives the protest movement large numbers of supporters but also can create a cacophony of messages.

The forces stirring action on the streets this week have been led by labor groups. And many protests, including those in Los Angeles, have continued to focus on workplace raids. But the voices at other protests are mixed, an echo of the wide array of progressive forces that have animated every anti-Trump protest this year.

Those earlier actions have been coordinated affairs, planned in advance for weeks by large groups like MoveOn and Indivisible, which have helped keep actions focused on concerns like cuts to Medicaid and Social Security, the power of billionaires and immigration policies. But in this week’s spontaneous actions, the many interests from the broad base of anti-Trump activists came to the fore, including more explicit support for racial justice, Palestinian freedom and socialist politics.

“In this moment we must all stand together,” said Becky Pringle, the head of the National Education Association, the largest individual union in the country and one of the groups that sprang into action as the protests emerged in Los Angeles.

Local chapters of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a Communist Party offshoot of the Workers World Party, have also played a leading role, working with local leftist groups to post information about new demonstrations from California to Maine.