France - August 26th, 2019

Testimonies of members from the collective La Chapelle Debout and the movement of Black Vests on their struggle for immigrants’ rights
In this rotten capitalist system of exploitation and oppression:

WE ARE ALL IMMIGRANTS

When the Yellow Vests mass struggle broke out in France, in mid-November 2018, a key sector of the French and European working class stood up: the ‘Black Vests’, immigrant and undocumented workers who have been fighting for their rights within European imperialism itself for years. This super-exploited, oppressed and marginalized sector of the working class raises the same demands for decent life as the whole of the exploited in France. Thus, they recognize as their own the combat that for weeks has cornered Macron’s government.
From the ‘International Worker Organizer’, we interview two comrades who are part of this movement of the Black Vests and immigrant workers “without papers” (undocumented), who are over-exploited in the worst conditions by the French imperialists. They are members of a group called La Chapelle Debout (La Chapelle neighborhood Standing) that fights for the rights of immigrant workers, such as having papers and against deportations. These comrades talked about this fight that they have been carrying out.
This group emerged from the occupation of Jean-Jaurès High School in Paris in 2016, a few weeks before the generalized struggle against the El Khomri Law, the labour flexibility bill and the destruction of the workers conquests such as the 35 hours of work per week approved by decree by the government of the Socialist Party of Hollande. On this occasion, about 150 immigrants occupied the high school building, together with the members of the collective, after having spent weeks in an improvised camp around the subway station Stalingrad, where immigrants and refugees of several nationalities, mainly from Black and Middle Eastern Africa were harassed and attacked by the police.
The first struggle actions of the collective La Chapelle Debout were protests in the municipalities to demand papers for all immigrants. But from these protests, they usually left empty handed. Then they decided to go one step further in their struggle and began to take protest actions at the doors of companies that use labour from paperless workers, paying miserable wages, making them work under conditions of slavery, threatening to hand them over to the police and all kinds of abuses. They have identified not only the government as responsible for the situation of the thousands and thousands of undocumented workers and youth, but also the capitalists who take advantage of the situation of immigrant workers, blackmailing them to super-exploit them in the worst conditions.
One of these companies is ELIOR, which provides food services, table service, cleaning and other types of services. It is a large French multinational company, which has multi-million dollar contracts in France and in other countries such as England, Spain, Italy and the US. It even serves the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence. The enslaver employers of this company use and used the undocumented workers’ labour and subjected them to the worst conditions. It provides services for European states using “non-regularized” labour, which these same states pursue and imprison. This single fact proves that this brutal overexploitation of undocumented workers is done with the consent of imperialist governments.
Another of the companies against which this group has protested is Air France, the French airline that the French government uses to deport immigrant workers. When Air France workers went on strike in 2018 over wage increases, La Chapelle Debout sympathized with them.
One of the standards of the collective La Chapelle Debout is solidarity between workers in struggle and the unity of their ranks. They fight for the Black Vests and the Yellow Vests to carry out a common struggle. The interviewed comrades pointed out that there are conditions for this, since the Black and Yellow Vests have the same demands for decent work and housing conditions, etc. This was demonstrated on all occasions when both movements converged, as in the marches against police violence. In addition, the racist and nationalist elements within the Yellow Vests are minority and only seek to manipulate the movement for their purposes.
The Collective claims that its struggle is primarily against French imperialism and criticizes the French left for not being part of this fight.
They also organize fights for the freedom of their fellow prisoners, such as Imad, who was arrested this week at a police checkpoint and sent to one of the infamous "Immigrant Detention Centers."
At the end of this interview, the comrades thanked the solidarity of the revolutionary workers of Zimbabwe and South Africa who have sent endorsements of organizations and labour leaders of those countries to the press release of the Black Vests on the occasion of the occupation of the Pantheon in Paris.
Long live solidarity and internationalism among the exploited of France and the colonial and semicolonial world!
For the unity of all workers, natives and immigrants, who fight for a decent life, against the government and the imperialist regime of the transnationals and banks that oppress us from France to Latin America, from England to the tormented Africa, from the United States to Middle East slaughtered and occupied!

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