immigrant rights activists Call for Labor Day Weekend of Actions

 thanks to: jdiaz001@student.ucr.edu

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Re: Call for Labor Day Weekend of Actions

Many of you fellow immigrant rights activists have met, have networked, and have made our network of circles much more tighter over the past few months. If you recall one of the goals in the call of the Gran Paro Americano 2006 was to "connect the dots," in my eyes, this goal has been realized much more than many of us imagined. Concomitant with the developments in DC, we have worked on structure, there have been regional conferences on the East Coast, Midwest, the Northwest, the South, the Southwest, and even in the cradle of the movement, the West Coast. We have even seen the compromisers try to connect with each other, but have become divided on the amnesty question; we have not cleaved, because we have stayed the course to the best of our ability based on our points of unity.  Recently, they have even changed their tune, "no bill would have come out between the Senate and House that would have been satisfactory to any of us." We were saying this months ago.  It wa
s they, namely Eliseo Medina, the head of SEIU, who was recently praised at the National Council of La Raza's Convention in Los Angeles, for pushing the S2611 compromise, in effect, resurrecting HR4437.  Furthermore, because it is obvious that none of us in the Movimiento are anti-labor, in this spirit, we hope that in the near future they can take responsibility for their compromising lapse, and we can work together to gain full legal citizenship for all of our undocumented brothers and sisters, not a mere portion of them. In essence, we cannot compromise our position, because it is where our unity lies. To note, the AFL-CIO and National Day Labor Organizing Network have announced their willingness to fight for full and immediate citizenship, collaboratively.  

Currently, the immigrant communities are becoming increasingly incensed, and over the next few weeks will become enraged; it is our responsibility to facilitate, again, the means through which this rage is channeled, peacefully. The March 25th Coalition in Los Angeles was part of the decision-makers process at a national conference in Chicago on April 22, 2006, as a result the decision was made to undertake national actions on Labor Day, we are keeping our commitment to this well-timed action.  We encourage our friends and allies to mobilize to the streets on Labor Day weekend in the "Gran Marcha Laboral 2006" for all "Immigrant Workers" and for "Full Legalization/Immediate and Unconditional Amnesty," for "Dignity, Peace, and Respect."  And, of course in light of the recent developments in which more raids and detainments are permissible by the President, and as he saddles up the powers through which to execute them, this call is apt and sensible.  It is there

fore appropriate to take the revolution back to the streets, to prompt and or further shape the national debate in terms of the immigration reform question. This is what is expected of us, and this is what we do.

To identify a few conditions we only need to look at Chicago, a few weeks ago there was a march of 30,000 folks on the streets against the raids spearheaded by Sin Fronteras. Our immigrant communities are dejected by the hollow promise of this so-called pathway to citizenship given them by corporate-driven Somos America (the new US civil society pioneers), which has resonated in vain. All that was delivered was mass confusion, this is now clear among the immigrant communities.  Immigrants and their advocates remember that they voted with their feet and voices alongside us during the spring for full citizenship, not to become a pawn in the neo-bracero labor pool. Furthermore, at my behest, on July 30th, the National Immigrant Solidarity Network conference attendees in DC unanimously, voted to institutionalize May 1st as an International Labor and Economic General Strike against Empire-the source of international migration- this was a gallant and charged decision that we should

 begin discussing as well as strategizing for in the long term. In the short term however, the same attendees also commissioned and endorsed mobilizations of Labor Day along with the other hundreds of organizations that embrace our points of unity, specifically the immigrant rights movement's primary unwavering principle, full, unconditional, and immediate amnesty for all undocumented immigrants who contribute more to our country than they take out.  

Everyday we hear of more and more cases of deportations. Angeles del Desierto a border rescue organization has expand its activities from leaving water, food, and clothes, and looking for lost immigrants crossing in the East San Diego County corridor, and or frozen and or bloated bodies in the snow and or sweltering heat, to collecting clothes and smuggling them across the border to deportees in Tijuana who were taken from their homes as far away as Las Vegas, NV, swathed only in pajamas or underwear, or naked. This is an immoral act of psychological terrorism on our immigrant communities.

Therefore, during our upcoming march in Los Angeles, we will highlight the growing national case of Elvira Arellano, a single mother and an undocumented immigrant now in a Methodist Sanctuary Church in Chicago under orders of deportation.  We will also draw attention to the present case of a mother in Oxnard, CA, with a US-born child, as well as a US-born physically challenged and wheelchair bound husband, who like Miss Arellano, has also received deportation orders.  It follows then that women immigrant rights leaders from the San Gabriel and San Fernando Valleys, Oxnard, East Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, Orange County and San Diego, CA, will march on September 2, 2006 in Downtown Los Angeles to demand a stop to deportations of all undocumented immigrant mothers, in support of all their children and family unity, call for a moratorium on all deportations and detentions until immigration reform is approved, and demand a full and immediate legalization for all 12 million un
 documented immigrants.

We can claim these to be isolated cases, similar to the "roving raids" of the summer of 2004 in the Inland Empire, CA, during which hundreds of individuals were deported in a pair of days, and in response, my colegas in Estamos Unidos, along with the Pomona Valley Latino Roundtable and Libreria del Pueblo, united to form a coalition that in five days organized a 10,000 person strong march that stopped the raids dead in their tracks; but we cannot.  It is now a much larger panorama; this is a program that the extreme right, along with the Bush Regime, has undertaken to move us to a fascist state, where not only the immigrants but also every so-called documented individual will be exposed to unprecedented subordination and extreme racism.  Everyday on the home front we see the constitution being challenged in localities from San Bernardino to Hazeltine, from Costa Mesa to New York City where thousand of Pakistani men were deported post 9.11, displacing their partners and ch

ildren who have had to find alternative means of survival since then.  We are under state persecution; it is not coming, it is here.    

On the international front, if Calderon prevails in Mexico, we see Fox-light and underpinnings of the Bush Program surface.  If the illegal war continues in Iraq, we see a rise in blinded immigrants seeking enjoinment into the military to "earn" citizenship; they usually go to the frontlines.  The financial system is drained by the costs of war and the immigrant becomes the natural scapegoat and blamed for an unstable economy.  And immigrant repression is not isolated to the Americas; Greece and its neighbors, despite years of peace, have failed to sweep the landmines in the desert that divides them.  Immigrants must cross this desert to reach an island to enter Greece.  Those that survive the environmental elements, are not maimed or killed by an explosive, must then board a small ship and attempt to cross the mine riddled sea before reaching a Grecian island and on to the mainland.  Even after years of renewing their work visas every six months they are never allowed ci

tizenship; much work still needs to be done. In France, the middle-class has been hiding immigrant children who identify themselves as French citizens, because their immigrant parents have been ordered to a mass deportation since July 4th, 2006. Italy's conditions are just as grave.  As long as we have the current regime in power, this will continue.  We can no longer afford to differentiate and cleave the current movements that threaten our well-being. Ask any immigrant, "After you earn citizenship, what will you do?" A high percentage will respond, "I am going after Bush."  They may have a shot at him sooner, on October 5th, there is a massive action to oust the Bush Regime by the "World Can't Wait," personally, I laud and support these efforts and encourage all others to do also.  October 7th is another day that the European Social Forum has called for a day of action, perhaps against detention centers; we have yet to get the word.    

But for now, we peel ourselves from those shows we got addicted to this summer, put aside the petty differences in our local areas, and galvanize our immigrant communities again during September. Inside information coming out of some certain Senators' offices is that they will be attempting to streamline something during September, we must be ready and able to respond.  Let's begin by hitting the streets September 2nd through the 4th, so that on September 5th, when the Senators, who will be returning from their break, open their morning papers, they see that we are at it again; that the people are again on the streets struggling for full, immediate, and universal amnesty/legalization. We had a marathon funeral march for HR4437 during the month of March 2006, which culminated in Los Angeles, where we put the nails in the coffin on the draconian HR4437 bill, and prompted the Senate to go in another direction. All of us across the nation should be proud of our hard work a
nd success.  And on May 1st, we stopped Empire for 24 hours, sending the message loud and clear that we were not settling for anything but full legalization, that immigrants are the backbone of our economy, and that without them it would collapse. Soon thereafter, Bush was forced to move away from his "plan" and come to the birthplace of the Minuteklan in Orange County and assert that it was virtually impossible to deport 12 million undocumented  folks, and that they should go down this "path to citizenship." But are we satisfied with that dead end road?  No, we are not done yet.  

We still demand:

Yes to full legalization/amnesty for all 12 million undocumented immigrants
Yes to a moratorium on ICE raids till all are legalized
Yes to the expedited reunification of families
Yes to full civil rights and liberties
Yes to full worker's rights
No more border fencing  
No to criminalization
No to any guest worker program
No to the displacement of families
No to the militarization of the border
No to any detentions and deportations
No to "HR4437" or copycats like HR4437-light, "S2611"
No to increased enforcement along the border or interior

Therefore, join us on September 2nd as we hit the streets in Downtown Los Angeles, at Olympic and Broadway Avenues, at 12pm, to City Hall. We march for  the immigrant worker, for their dignity, peace, and respect, but most  importantly for full legalization/amnesty for all 12 million undocumented folks. In Los Angeles and beyond, we also march to end the raids and the psychological attack on our communities, and the displacement of our families.
 
We also call for a moratorium on any raids until a just and fair immigration reform is realized. This time we remain adamant and clear on our message and demands as we push it and them further into the inter/national spectrum.

Stay strong in the struggle,

Jesse Díaz, Jr.

March 25th Coalition Action Committee Chair
Organizing Meetings are at La Casa del Mexicano
2900 Perdo Infante Privada
Wednesdays at 6:30pm

For more information: 213.471.3187



Jesse Diaz, Jr.

ASA.NIMH Minority Fellow
Criminology & Race and Class Inequality

University of California, Riverside

Sociology Department,
Riverside, California 92521

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Take Action to End the US War in Iraq! - http://declarationofpeace.org/

 

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for updated Mexico & Lebanon news see -   http://www.democracynow.org/

 

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amnesty international

 

 http://web.amnesty.org/pages/lbn-230806-feature-eng

 

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First-hand information gathered by recent Amnesty International research missions to Lebanon and Israel points to an Israeli policy of deliberate destruction of Lebanese civilian infrastructure during the recent conflict...

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