LCLAA to campaign among Latinos against GOP’s Project 2025

LCLAA

WASHINGTON—Labor’s Council for Latin American Advancement, the AFL-CIO constituency group for Latino workers and their families, will campaign among Latinos, alerting them to the specific dangers they face from Project 2025, the monstrous radical right Republican platform crafted for that party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

LCLAA, the Service Employees, and five other organizations will send out hundreds of volunteers to publicize the damage from the project, which is the real Republican platform. LCLAA also put together a 15-page bilingual primer for Latino voters on the project’s threats.

The “Defendiendo Nuestro Futuro” or “Defending Our Future” campaign will feature door-to-door canvassing, focusing on labor rights, environmental issues, education and health care access, LCLAA says.

“This extreme plan poses serious risks to the Hispanic community, affecting education, healthcare, and immigration, with significant consequences for states with large Latino populations,” LCLAA says in introducing its primer. The project could lead to “the destruction of our communities,” LCLAA warns. The primer is available at https://www.lclaa.org/project-2025.

The first campaigners, from Poder Latinx, began on September 3 with 70 canvassers in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Washington, California and Texas. It plans to train dozens more, including 150 canvassers by Election Day in Mecklenburg County (Charlotte) in swing state North Carolina.

There are an estimated 36.2 million Latino/Latina voters nationally, many in the swing states, notably Arizona and Nevada. Federal data show Latina growth everywhere. They’re now 10% of Georgians.

LCLAA and its fellow campaigners emphasize the project’s specific damage to Latinos includes Medicaid cuts, voter roll purges and threats, eliminating protections against discriminatory firings, ending federal procurement preferences for businesses owned by people of color, abolition of the Department of Education, restricting visas to highly skilled – read “white Northern European” – applicants, ending environmental safeguards, shrinking the social safety net, and more.

All are in that enormous document crafted by the extremist Heritage Foundation. And all are “key issues for Latino voters who will have a decisive role in the presidential elections,” LCLAA says.

Right-wing Texas Republican officials aren’t waiting for Trump’s election to institute the project’s goals regarding immigrants and voting.

Instigated by corrupt Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton—after a lie on Fox that undocumented migrants were registering to vote–law enforcers raided the homes of many Latino voter registration advocates. And Trumpite Gov. Greg Abbott gleefully announced the state purged more than a million people from its voting rolls in the last three years.

Those anti-Latino actions led the heavily outnumbered Texas Senate Democratic Caucus to ask the Biden administration’s Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation of the raids and purge.

Worse The two actions “have a disproportionate impact on Latinos and other communities of color, which is sowing fear and will suppress voting,” State Senate Minority Leader Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, said.

“Based on media reports and complaints by fellow Texans, we have serious concerns that some recent actions” by Paxton “and other state leaders may violate federal civil rights and voting laws,” they wrote.

Sounding the alarm

The AFL-CIO and individual unions, including independent unions such as the National Education Association and the Service Employees, have been sounding the alarm over the extremist positions in the Project 2025 ever since Heritage released it.

Heritage also listed its authors, headed by two top officials from the prior Trump regime, and including former Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin Meese III. They form a veritable

who’s-who of ideologues ready to step into key offices and impose their hegemony should convicted felon and former president Trump win the White House this fall.

Trump is trying to run away from Project 2025 as more revelations occur about its extremism, including outright abolition of government worker unions. But with all the Trumpites contributing to it and his prior enthusiastic endorsement, it’s become a campaign albatross.

Still, “there’s not enough information” about how that Republican platform “has really, really troubling ideas on issues that really matter to the Latino community,” says Vanessa Cardenas, executive director of America’s Voice, an immigrant rights organization which will also send out campaigners. For example, “up 30% of people enrolled in Medicaid” are Latinos, a summary says. “Many could be affected by proposed caps in the program” which the project advocates.

Other specific harms to Latinos which LCLAA says come from Project 2025 include:

• “The promotion of mass deportations not only destabilizes mixed-status families, including U.S. citizens but also creates a climate of fear and uncertainty in Latino communities. This policy threatens to tear families apart and disrupt the social fabric of entire neighborhoods.” Both occurred during the Republican Trump regime.
• Funding cuts for schools and elimination of pre-school education aid. The project demands the GOP cancel student debt repayment, thus “severely limiting access to quality education for Latino children. These cuts undermine the foundation of learning and development, leading to long-term disadvantages for students.”
• “Cuts to overtime pay and threats to food security place Latino families in increasingly precarious situations, making it harder to cover basic needs like housing, groceries, and utilities.” The GOP, including the project, wants to limit overtime pay and cut food stamps.
• Abortion restrictions and bans in Project 2025 have a disproportionate impact on people of color, especially those without the money or transportation to get to pro-abortion states.
• Increased discrimination due to “removal of federal tools used to enforce civil rights protections.” Their end “increases the risk of racial discrimination and social injustice. This rollback of protections threatens to undo decades of progress toward equality and fair treatment under the law.” The project also proposes killing the longtime executive order banning discrimination in awarding federal contracts.
• Elimination of public sector unions, along with eliminating federal civil service protections and even jobs. Both are upward pathways for Latinos and other workers of color in the job market.
• Letting teenagers perform dangerous jobs. Deep-red Iowa already approved a law to let extremely young teens operate dangerous machines, such as combines.
• Banning unions from the Homeland Security Department. That includes reversing the unionization of the nation’s 45,000 Transportation Security Officers—the airport screeners. Their union, the Government Employees, just won them large and long-overdue raises.

“LCLAA is providing this concise analysis of key points that will directly impact our community,” it explains in its report. “Read this analysis and join us in opposing these draconian measures designed to revert our communities to a time when they were disenfranchised and sidelined, minimizing our contributions as a people. This project seeks to take us back to an oppressive era that we must not return to.”

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CONTRIBUTOR

Mark Gruenberg

Award-winning journalist Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People's World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but tough when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.