On January 25, Donald Trump reiterated his commitment to building a border wall – despite the fact that this immense structure will have severe consequences, including dividing indigenous communities that live on both sides of the border, preventing animals from freely migrating, and potentially causing flooding in both the United States and Mexico. And with Latinos making up about 27 percent of the construction industry’s workers, it’s very likely that if the border wall is built, some of the backbreaking labor will fall to the same people he intends to keep out of the country. This means that Latinos will play a role in inflicting serious damage to their own communities. And on Wednesday, Rev. Jesse Jackson drew similarities between Latinos building the border wall to “blacks building slave ships.”
According to NBC, during a Hispanicize chat moderated by Claudia González Romo of UNICEF, Jackson called for solidarity between communities of color. Citing a letter that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sent César Chávez in the 60s, Jackson stated that the African American and Latino communities fight is one and the same. “When we close ranks on common interests, we win. When we don’t, we lose,” he said.
At the Hispanicize event, he made one thing clear about African Americans and Latinos: “We are each other’s future.”