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Millions Fill the Streets to Defend Immigrant Rights
by Andrew Pollack / April 2006 issue of Socialist Action
newspaper
Seemingly
overnight, a mass movement of immigrants demanding their rights has sprung
up in the United States. It is mass in the real sense of the word, bringing
millions into the streets—striking workers, students walking out of
schools, grandparents, babies in strollers, all with their relatives and
neighbors in tow.
The
movement is, in fact, rooted in decades of discrimination and exploitation—heightened
in recent years by racist vigilantes and repressive legislation. Most importantly for its future
potential, it is also rooted in past organizing, especially in the workplace,
by immigrants demanding the recognition justly earned from hard work for
little pay and in the face of discrimination and constant threats of deportation.
At
actions around the country, immigrants expressed in signs and speeches their
determination to gain the respect due them. They also demonstrated
resentment at their ill-treatment by politicians claiming they are security
threats, and confidence in their eventual
success,
summed up in the universal cries of “Si, se puede” (“Yes, it can be
done!”).
The
biggest march so far has been that of a million on Saturday, March 25, in
Los Angeles. As with many actions during this upsurge, it was the largest
around any issue in the city’s history. And as at other demonstrations,
marchers carried U.S. flags to show their insistence on being treated
equally here, as well as flags of their countries of origin to show pride
in their roots.
The
great majority of the marchers were from Mexico and Latin America or U.S.-born
descendants of people from the region, though immigrants from other parts
of the world also took part.
The
rally was organized by a coalition of unions, clergy, and immigrant rights
groups, and heavily publicized in the Spanish-language media. Key organizers
included vetrans of the 1994 movement against Proposition 187, which would
have denied services to undocumented immigrants, and even of the Chicano Moratorium
of 1970.
One
participant in the L.A. march describes its size this way: “An hour before
the march had officially begun ... the crowd extended across a number of
city blocks. Those taking the subway had to wait for three or four trains
before they could get on ... it took the march flooding into the two broad
flanking streets to allow the hundreds of thousands of people to move towards
City Hall....
“One
of the routes away from the march led demonstrators to the top of a hill,
from which [they could see] down another street full of hundreds of thousands.
I heard person after person gasp in amazement—hundreds of thousands of poor
immigrant working-class people together to make a political statement—they
were seeing their own power.”
That
power was proven the following Monday. Whereas the House had passed a
repression-only bill, calling for a wall across hundreds of miles on the
border and declaring every undocumented worker a felon, the U.S. Senate
Judiciary Committee felt compelled to propose a bill that mixes repression
with a “guest worker” program.
The
Senate committee version also added provisions to allow eventual
legalization of some of the undocumented, after paying heavy fines and
waiting many years—provisions which in no way met the demands of the
marchers, but showed nonetheless that the heat was beginning to be felt.
Marches
and walkouts nationwide
The
first action in this still-mounting wave of protest took place on Tuesday,
March 7, when around 50,000 marched in Washington, D.C. (we add the day as well
as the date of these actions to stress that most were on weekdays, when
participating meant not going to work).
That
Friday, March 10, over half a million marched in Chicago—a march that
showed the central role of the labor movement in this upsurge. Workers told
their bosses the day before in shops around the city that they wouldn’t be
coming to work on Friday—so many in fact that hundreds of bosses,
recognizing the inevitable, gave them the day off. (In one shop, 300
workers
were fired for walking out, but were rehired as a result of worker and
community pressure.) The Chicago
march drew Irish, Polish, Korean, and other immigrants as well as
Hispanics. One Polish immigrant told the press: “This is a ridiculous
bill. I don’t understand how it got
as far as it did, and they’re trying to make this a law—and then at this point
it’s a police state.”
Another
worker’s statement echoes what’s been heard around the country: “Most
people don’t realize how much work we do. We are putting up all the
buildings and cooking all the food. Today, they’ll understand.” Thus, a popular slogan appearing in
every city has been “No somos criminales. Somos trabajadores!” (“We are not
criminals. We are workers!”)
To
get across this point, the theme “A Day Without Latinos” has been adopted
in many cities (after the movie, “A Day Without Mexicans,” in which bosses
find out that they can’t function when workers disappear). Milwaukee’s “Day Without Latinos,” on
Thursday, March 23, brought out a Latino population that has almost doubled
in the last 10 years. The swelling of Latino communities in small and
mid-sized cities around the country helps explain the breadth of this
month’s upsurge. Thus, for instance, in Milwaukee, writes Christopher Fons
in mrzine, while “the community's 12% Latinos have been virtually invisible
in the dominant media … Latinos have created their own institutions, including
radio, newspapers, entertainment, and businesses of all types.”
Such
communities’ increasing self-awareness made turnout particularly strong in
cities where they’ve faced attacks from local politicians’ putting forward their
own bills to restrict immigrant rights—including such vicious attacks as
denying immunizations for kids, prenatal care for women, and even all health-care
services.
In
Atlanta, 70,000 workers left work to attend a rally on Friday, March 24,
protesting both federal legislation and a bill passed by the Georgia State House
that would deny services to undocumented adults and impose a five percent
surcharge on wire transfers. Other
recent marches included:
•
Denver: 150,000—including many from nearby Pueblo. Marchers, already angered at the
constant hate spouted on local right-wing talk shows, denounced a proposed ballot
initiative banning the use of state funds for the undocumented.
Among
the leading forces in Denver is SEIU Local 105, which represents many janitors
in the city’s downtown high-rises. Also prominent was the Colorado Catholic
Conference, a leader of which said, “People were calling us, saying, ‘Can
we go with our church?’”
•
The day after the giant Los Angeles march on March 25, the United Farm Workers
brought thousands of its members to L.A., busing them in from small agricultural
towns in Northern California and Oregon.
•
Phoenix: 30,000, the largest rally ever in that city, which ended at the
office of Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, co-sponsor of a bill giving the
undocumented five years or less to leave the country.
•
Boston: 2500, with prominent participation of Jobs with Justice and SEIU,
and a heavy Irish component. Media
reports of other actions—and these are certainly underestimates—include
thousands on March 22 in Providence, R.I., Pittsburgh, and San Francisco; Tucson,
400 to 800, and Trenton, N.J., 1200, on Tuesday, March 24; Charlotte, N.C.,
and Sacramento, Calif., several thousand each on March 25; and thousands in
Detroit on March 26.
In
New York City, on April 1, more
than 40,000 marched across the Brooklyn Bridge. One marcher carried a sign
reading, "I cleaned up Ground Zero" (at the World Trade Center).
The
April 1 New York action was mostly organized by local politicians and
churches, but the city’s most heavily immigrant unions are at the center of
mobilizing for the local component of what promises to be another huge nationwide
wave of protest on April 9-10 (in which churches and community groups are
also very involved). These actions are scheduled to occur in over 70
cities, and labor is playing a leading role.
[APRIL
9—As we go to press, according to initial reports, as many as 500,000
marched earlier today through downtown Dallas, while 75,000 to 100,000 marched
in San Diego, 30,000 in St. Paul, 7000 in Miami, and 4000 in Birmingham,
Ala.]
At
the center of New York’s coalition are SEIU Local 32BJ (whose mostly-immigrant
custodial workers are in bargaining now with their residential building
bosses) and health-care union 1199. Also involved are UNITE-HERE, AFSCME DC
37, and the Committee of Interns
and
Residents. Laborers. Local 1199 has already placed its staff in key organizing,
media, and logistics roles, and participating unions have trained hundreds of
stewards to spread the word.
The
New York meeting to organize for April 10 involved 200 people and included
many Chinese, Korean, and South Asian community activists. The unionists involved
are also leaders in the city’s Dominican and Puerto Rican communities.
May
1 may be yet another peak in this rolling wave of mass action: the week
after the huge L.A. march, its organizers—and the Spanish-language DJs who
played a key role in building the march—called for nationwide demonstrations
and consumer boycotts on Monday, May 1.
The bills that provoked the upsurge
The
bill arousing the greatest anger is that which passed the House last year,
sponsored by James Sensenbrenner, which would declare every undocumented worker
a felon, and would make it a federal crime for anyone—doctor, nurse, teacher,
social worker, priest, etc.—to provide assistance of any kind to an undocumented
worker.
The
bill would also permanently bar all undocumented persons—including 1.6 million
children—from the United States, with no provision for amnesty or re-entry,
inevitably leading to the separation of families. It would also deny them
all emergency health-care and driver’s licenses and allow their indefinite
detention by border agents.
Some
from both parties in the Senate are trying to play soft cop, backing a
“compromise” that would include
“guest-worker” and future citizenship provisions—similar to the proposals
of the Judiciary Committee mentioned above. On April 7, the Senate adjourned
for a two-week recess after acknowledging gridlock on voting for a
“compromise.”
But
the attempt at a “compromise” was not welcomed by many of the recipients.
One organizer responded: "We would
rather that the Congress pass no immigration bills, rather than a guest-worker
program that would send millions home."
L.A.
organizer Javier Rodriguez got it right when he told Pacifica Radio’s
“Democracy Now!” program that guest-worker proposals (which are backed also
by President Bush) would just regularize what’s been going on since 1986,
i.e. the presence of millions of workers with no rights.
Who’s
building the movement?
Clearly,
the Catholic Church has been a big factor in the organizing, with local
clergy working with community groups in cities around the country. The United States Catholic Conference of
Bishops launched an immigrants’ rights campaign last year. In Los Angeles,
Cardinal Roger Mahoney said that if federal legislation makes it illegal to
assist the undocumented, he would instruct his priests to disobey the law,
inspiring some California towns and cities to declare themselves a
"sanctuary" for undocumented immigrants should that prove
necessary.
Many
have likened the Sensenbrenner bill’s provisions targeting those who aid
the undocumented to the 19th century Fugitive Slave Act, which
required whites to turn over escaped slaves to the authorities.
The
growing evangelical movement among Latinos has also played a role, with the
National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, with 18 million members,
twisting the arm of the 30-million-member National Association of
Evangelicals to issue a statement supporting “immigration reform.” Latino evangelical
groups have also been working in local labor-community coalitions.
The
Spanish-language media played the most immediate role in turning what could
have been demonstrations of a few thousand into a genuinely mass movement.
The role of radio DJs in L.A. has been widely cited, with constant
promotion of the marches and the devotion of hours of air time normally given
over to music to discussion of the issues involved.
The
Spanish print media also did their part. L.A.’s La Opinion, the country’s
largest circulation Spanish daily, had a huge front-page headline the day
before the march reading, “Todos a la calle!” (“Everyone into the
streets!”), with detailed maps of the march route. But at the center of the coalition were
veteran activists drawing on the lessons of decades of battles against
racism and exploitation. This includes veterans of Chicano, Puerto Rican, and
other liberation struggles, many of whom have gone on to play leading roles
in heavily-immigrant unions. These veterans ensured that the message being
disseminated through the churches and the media became the focus of talk on
every street-corner, every doorstop, every workplace—and every school.
Student walkouts
The
day of the rally in Chicago, thousands of high school students walked out
of school. One senior told the local papers: “We’re supporting our parents
and our parents’ parents, who came here and worked hard.” The day before
the huge L.A. rally, several thousand students walked out. "They are
saying we are terrorists, when the economy is based on immigrants,"
said
one. Said another, "It was my dad's and grandfather's sweat and tears
that built the city of Los Angeles. People like them did things no one else
wanted to do because they wanted me to have a better future."
In
addition, many students, born in the United States, know that proposed
legislation would actually separate them from their parents if they get
deported. The Monday after the huge
march, 40,000 students across Southern California staged walkouts, blocking
traffic on freeways, and converging in front of Los Angeles City Hall. The
city’s first Latino Mayor,
Antonio
Villaraigosa, addressed the crowd and was met with chants of, “Hell no, we
won't go!” when he asked them to go home.
Students
marched from school to school, pulling out their comrades. In some cases,
their efforts were initially frustrated when the administration “locked down”
the schools (a frequent expression in the media, the same one used to describe
prisoners put under more secure guard), but students then climbed over
fences. The protests were organized with all the high-tech skills and flair
you’d expect, through mass e-mails, fliers, instant messages, cell-phone
calls, and postings on myspace.com and other sites.
In
at least a couple instances cops attacked students with nightsticks and
pepper spray. School officials reacted with suspensions, monitoring of
movements between classes, and encouraging discussions and on-campus
rallies instead of walkouts. However many teachers and even some
administrators supported and even encouraged the walkouts, and some staff
members were reported to have marched alongside the youths “to ensure their
safety” (perhaps just a smart way to avoid getting disciplined themselves
for leaving work).
Some
government agencies were also shut down in Orange County by protesting
students. Over 3000 students walked out of schools in other cities across California.
In Santa Ana, 200 cops invaded working-class Mexican neighborhoods to
squelch student protests.
Six
thousand walked out in San Diego at the end of a week of walkouts, and
walkouts also occurred in LasVegas, Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, Dallas and
Houston. By the end of the month
walkouts were even being reported in isolated towns in upstate New
York. Three times during the
following week mass walkouts occurred in the metropolitan Washington, D.C.,
area. Northern Virginia students
said many faculty members were supportive. "One of our vice principals
said he was really proud of us," said one, and a Montgomery County,
Maryland, student reported that many teachers left their classrooms and
clapped to show support.
Labor’s role
The
mass workplace walkouts at the center of the biggest actions are due not
only to spontaneous anger, but are also the product of years of organizing
on the job, as well as the leading role played by union activists in
community affairs. For instance, one of the key organizers in Chicago, Jose
Artemio Arreola, a custodial worker and executive board member of SEIU Local
73, has been active in the city’s Mexican advisory council.
In
the same city, the United Electrical Workers, UNITE-HERE, and other unions
have been involved in organizing struggles and contract battles at largely-immigrant
shops. Out of these struggles emerged Accion Chicago, a labor-community
coalition. A similar labor-community
coalition, the New York Civic Participation Project (El Proyecto de Participacion
Civica de la Ciudad de Nueva York), arose after joint struggles engaged in
by community groups and unions, and others arose around the country in the
wake of joint work to build the 2003 Immigrant Worker Freedom Rides initiated
by the AFL-CIO. Since that march activists in these coalitions have participated
in local struggles ranging from protecting driver’s licenses for immigrants
to winning back pay stolen by bosses.
And
big contract struggles of mostly immigrant workers are going on right now,
most prominently the nationwide hotel contract campaign (for the first time,
all major hotel contracts expire in the same year, thanks to a strategic
plan on the part of UNITE-HERE).
Such
struggles also draw strength from the changing workplace demographics that
are the result of one tool in the bosses’ offensive against labor since the
late 1960s. Employers have closed plants that had been predominantly staffed
by white, Black, and Latino workers, and reopened them elsewhere (or
sometimes even in the same place) with newer immigrants, at
lower
wages and without unions.
Despite
all the talk of de-industrialization and the new service economy, there are
still millions of manufacturing workers—increasingly immigrant—in every region
of the country. In response, some unions, although not nearly quickly or
massively enough, have been organizing newer immigrants, in both manufacturing
and services. In fact, the dispute about
the
pace of organizing was one issue in the (nonetheless unjustified) split in
the AFL-CIO.
A
typical example of the problems facing undocumented workers arose at the
height of the March upsurge: Workday Minnesota reported that the United
Food and Commercial Workers was forced to appeal to community groups for
immediate financial assistance for laid-off members, many of whom were, for
lack of documents, ineligible for unemployment. This is an all-too common occurrence—even
though, despite the common and mistaken assumption, most undocumented
workers have taxes taken out of their paychecks that go to fund just such
benefits.
Some
unions—most notably SEIU—have fallen for the McCain-Kennedy trap, though
the AFL-CIO has come out strongly against guest-worker programs, arguing instead
for full rights for all regardless of status. In an op-ed in the New York Daily News the day after the Los
Angeles march, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson said
that “all
immigration
reform proposals currently circulating in the halls of Congress fail to
protect even the most basic rights of immigrant workers and their
families.” “We must reject guest
worker programs,” she said. “Because these workers are wholly dependent on
host employers for both their livelihoods and legal status, guest workers
are ripe for exploitation.” Instead, she
called
for “a path to permanent residency for immigrant workers already here,” as
well as
enforcement
of workplace standards and laws, including wages and safety.
A
Federation statement earlier in the month also demanded paths to
citizenship for all current
undocumented
workers: “There is no good reason why any immigrant who comes to this
country prepared to work, to pay taxes ... should be denied what has been offered
to immigrants throughout our country’s history, a path to legal
citizenship. ... A permanent
two-tier
workforce, with ... second-class ‘guestworker’ status, would be repugnant
to our
traditions
and our ideals.”
Chavez-Thompson
also pointed to the horrendous conditions facing undocumented workers: the
constant threat of deportation, being cheated out of wages owed, and their
concentration in the most dangerous jobs.
(This
is an increasingly tragic reality: Almost every day an immigrant worker
dies at a construction or other unsafe jobsite somewhere in the country.
Yet instead of enforcing the law, Washington has actually had immigration
agents pose as OSHA inspectors to lure
undocumented
workers to meetings where they are then arrested and deported—a program
which was cancelled during the middle of the current upsurge.)
And
she pointed out how denial of the rights of the undocumented pulls down
standards for all workers. In a statement on immigration the Federation
highlighted the example of industries where the undocumented work side by
side with those with papers, saying the Department of Labor “determined the
poultry industry—which is nearly half African American and half
immigrant—was 100 percent out of compliance with federal wage and hour
laws.”
After
the Senate Judiciary Committee’s action, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney praised
them for not taking the House’s repression-only approach, but still warned against
guest-worker programs, which he said "cast workers into a perennial
second-class status and
unfairly
put their fates into their employers' hands." The Federation has also exposed the role
of the IMF and World Bank, and such agreements as NAFTA, in destroying jobs
and services in other countries and requiring emigration, and denounced the
arbitrarily low number of visas provided annually.
Despite
their weaker position to this point on proposed legislation, however, it is
the SEIU and other Change to Win (CtW) affiliates, and not yet the AFL-CIO,
which are at the center of the April 10 activities—which is not surprising
given their heavily-immigrant memberships.
From
what’s been said at meetings in New York and Hartford, Conn., it appears
many in SEIU are distancing themselves from guest-worker programs as well—a
development that will certainly be furthered as the movement builds and the
millions in motion increasingly reject such “gifts” from liberal politicians.
In fact, the NYC coalition for April 10, in which SEIU plays a prominent
role, includes among its demands “a path to citizenship, not a temporary guest-worker
program.”
Division among the bosses
The
different versions of immigration “reform” reflected in the various bills
in Congress arise from a division within the ruling class about how many immigrant
workers are needed and under what conditions. Overlaying this debate is
racist, paranoid rhetoric about undocumented workers being potential terrorists
and the need to control “our” borders
against
security threats.
But
when everyone from Bush to Kennedy comes out for “guest-worker” programs,
it’s clear the majority of the ruling class is not likely to support the border-control/repression-only
approach of the House bill. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association
of Manufacturers opposed that bill because it would starve them of workers
to exploit.
The
Wall Street Journal described a split in the Arizona congressional
delegation, some wanting tight border control and criminalization of the undocumented,
others pointing to the need for millions of workers for their state’s
booming construction and service industries (one delegation member recalled
fondly growing up on his parents’ ranch and how their Mexican employees had
to go back and forth across the border).
But
as the movement builds we mustn’t forget the many repressive measures
contained within even the most liberal Senate versions. And more generally
the movement can best build and grow by staying independent of politicians,
staying in the streets, and deepening ties between workplace and
community. The citywide coalitions
building these actions can
branch
out and build local, democratic affiliates in every immigrant neighborhood
where daily discussions are going on over these issues—and support groups
in other working-class neighborhoods.
In
doing so, immigrant workers will provide an inspiration for others involved
in momentous
battles—from
Katrina victims fighting to regain their homes and jobs to autoworkers fighting
against the destruction of everything they had won since the 1930s.
Because
of the fate they share with immigrant workers, unions that do not have
predominantly immigrant memberships must also mobilize and speak out in defense
of immigrants’ rights. A good place to start would be for those unions with
members who would be compelled to rat out immigrants under the Sensenbrenner
bill—health-care workers, teachers, etc.—to adopt pledges of noncompliance.
These unions can also stand side by side with immigrants being threatened
by the racist violence of fascist militias like the Minutemen
“border-patrol” group.
And
for workers still claiming that immigrants take “our” jobs, we can point to
the need for a shorter workweek and public works to create jobs for
all. Liberals are once again
claiming that economic studies “prove” that immigrants deprive “native” workers—especially
Blacks—of jobs, ignoring the fact that it is the bosses who were behind the
plant shutdowns that threw millions of Black, and white, workers into the
streets.
The
New York Times (April 2) cited a study by Steven A. Camarota of the Center
for Immigration Studies, which found that immigrants are a majority in only
four of 473 job classifications—stucco masons, tailors, produce sorters, and
beauty salon workers.
And
even in these categories, native-born workers account for over 40 percent
of the workforce.
According
to The Times, undocumented immigrants make up 4.9 percent of the U.S.
workforce, and are concentrated in just a few industries—such as farm labor
(24% of the workers), cleaning (17%), construction (14%), and food
preparation (12%). In manufacturing, 9% of the workers are undocumented. In
many heavily-immigrant industries, Black and Latino
workers
work side by side—from food processing in the South to health and home care
anywhere in the country. Some Black
activists have already organized to show solidarity at immigrant events
(see The Black Commentator for more arguments on this score). This is a new civil rights movement,
based on the power of the mass mobilizations of the oppressed,
especially
an oppressed nationality—undocumented Latino workers who are intimately
connected to the "legal" Latino community.
The
mass character of the movement qualitatively changed the confidence of
those who previously were afraid to protest because of fear of deportation.
It will have a similar effect on legal workers, who have been getting the
shaft in every direction and live in fear that if they strike, their plants
will be closed. There are 11-12
million undocumented immigrants in the
U.S.—the
vast majority, workers. If ever there was a time for the rest of the
working class to join a struggle, this is it. Both union federations must mobilize
to help lead the defense of their immigrant brothers and sisters, to fight for union wages, and to
organize the unorganized.
With
immigrant workers in the vanguard, drawing confidence from the recent
actions, these
mobilizations
can have a profound effect on the broader working class, demonstrating that
labor's power is in the streets and at the point of production. A "Day
without Latinos" will eventually become a "Day or Week or Month
without Workers."
A
promising sign that this movement will continue to build is the inspiration
drawn by many immigrants from struggles back home, as the entire continent
of Latin America has been in struggle against the same ruling class seeking
to criminalize them here. And March was
also
a month of mass workers’ strikes and rallies around the world—in France,
England, South Africa, Iran, and elsewhere. Workers around the world are echoing
immigrant workers in the United States: “Si, se puede!”
Stop
all attacks against immigrants! Stop the criminalization of immigrant
communities! No to
Sensenbrenner
and Kennedy/McCain anti-immigrant legislation! No human being is illegal!
End
all deportations! Full labor and civil rights for all! No to all "guest
worker" programs! End the militarization of the border! Repeal NAFTA!
Stop the U.S. plunder of Latin American economies!
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