Archive for the ‘Immigration’ Category

By Jordan Flaherty, Contributing Writer for AnaiRhoads.org

Three months ago, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law the notorious SB 1070, a bill that put her state at the forefront of a movement to intensify the criminalization of undocumented immigrants. 

Since then activists have responded through legal challenges, political lobbying, grassroots organizing and mass mobilizations. More than a hundred thousand people from across Arizona marched on the state capitol on May 29. Today, hundreds more have pledged to risk arrest through nonviolent direct action. These are the public manifestations of a widespread struggle happening in this state. The organizations leading this fight offer a template of inspiring and strategic action for people around the US who want to join in resistance to these policies.

A Rogue State

Yesterday, Federal District Court Judge Susan Bolton issued a preliminary injunction against sections of Arizona law SB 1070, which is scheduled to go into effect today. The judge put a hold on some of the most outrageous parts of the bill, such as language that mandates racial profiling by officers. However, Judge Bolton left much of the rest of the law intact, including sections that specifically target day laborers.

For Arizona activists, the legal ruling represents – at best – a small respite. “It’s not a victory, it’s a relief,” says Pablo Alvarado of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON). “We’re putting a band aid on a wound.”

Alvarado and the organizers with NDLON are part of a broad network of national organizations and volunteers who have joined with local organizers to fight not just against this unjust law, but also against a general climate of anti-immigrant hatred. “Arizona is a rogue state,” says Alvarado. “We’re going to use every single means that we have at our disposal to fight back.”

Puente Arizona, a Phoenix-based organization that describes itself as a human rights movement working to “resurrect our humanity,” has formed Barrio Defense Committees in neighborhoods across the city. Emulating the structure of groups founded by popular movements in El Salvador, the community-based structure work to both serve basic needs, and also build consciousness and help bring people together. The committees host regular “know your rights” trainings and ESL classes, and are organizing Copwatch projects. “We ask the community to unite and organize themselves,” says Puente activist Diana Perez Ramirez. “And we are just there to support that.” More than one thousand people have joined these neighborhood organizations so far, with more joining every day.

Puente has made use of volunteers from across the US, utilizing national support to help with local organizing, and initiating direct action with the support of out of town allies like The Ruckus Society, Catalyst Project, and various chapters of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). They have issued calls to action including a Human Rights Summer (modeled after the civil rights movements’ Freedom Summer) and “30 Days for Human Rights,” a month of actions culminating in mass civil disobedience today, the day SB 1070 will become law.

Just after midnight, as the law took effect, the first protest of the day began. Nearly 80 people blocked the intersection at the entrance to the town of Guadelupe, a small – one square mile – Native American and Latino community just outside of Phoenix. Residents and elected leadership in the town have a history of public criticism of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has been one of the main public faces of SB 1070, and most of the protesters (and all of the organizers) were from the community. Holding signs declaring their opposition to the new law and leading chants against police brutality, activists declared that Arpaio’s officers are not welcome in their town – a point they made concrete by physically blocking the main road leading in. The stand off against police lasted more than an hour, before protest leaders in consultation with the town’s mayor decided to open the intersection. Several more actions are planned for throughout today, and Arpaio has threatened mass arrests.

Working Proactively

The Repeal Coalition, a Flagstaff- and Phoenix-based grassroots organization, was formed in 2007. The group came together because they saw a vacuum in the immigrants’ rights movement in Arizona. “Some of the left here were not being very audacious,” explains Luis Fernandez of the Repeal Coalition. “The positions in the public debate ranged from ‘kick them all out,’ to ‘get their labor and then kick them out.’” The Repeal Coalition has staked out a position of calling for the elimination of all anti-immigration laws, declaring, “We fight for the right for people to live, love, and work wherever they please.” With this call, says Fernandez, “Now we can have a real debate.”

When the coalition was founded, organizers brought in labor activists to advise them on how to build an organization along similar models to those that have built strong unions, utilizing house calls, neighborhood mapping, and group meetings. Although they are an all-volunteer group with little to no funding, they have developed a structure that has initiated large protests and provided direct service, and they are now strategizing more ways to take direct action and non-compliance in the post SB 1070 era.

Fernandez says that this struggle is ultimately about overcoming fear and moving from reaction to proactive action. “We’ve been in a crisis in Arizona for a long time,” he explains. “Even if SB 1070 weren’t implemented, it wouldn’t matter. The political crisis would continue.” To address this crisis, Fernandez believes organizations must build unity across race and class. “Traditionally in America, when the working class starts suffering, instead of connecting together and looking upwards at the cause of the problem, they look sideways or downwards for who to blame.” Most importantly, he believes activists must take action to seize the initiative.

In this vision, he has been inspired by young organizers working on the DREAM ACT, a federal law that creates a path to citizenship for undocumented youth. “They came to Arizona and said, ‘we’re undocumented and we’re going to commit acts of civil disobedience.’” At first, Repeal Coalition members tried to talk them out of this action, but the youth explained, “We are going to lose our fear because it is the fear of being arrested or the fear of being deported that fuels the inability of political action.” The bravery and vision of these youth has inspired Fernandez to continue to search for new and bold ways to take action, rather than just continually respond to right wing attacks. “We need to set the agenda,” explains Fernandez. “We have to say, ‘No, you’re going to react to us.’”

Despite a range of tactics and philosophies, one thing organizers here have in common is a dedication to exporting the lessons of their struggle. While Arizona’s law is the first and most draconian, similar laws are pending across the country. And during this current national economic crisis, more and more politicians have found that they can score political points by demonizing immigrants. “The last two months we’ve had a lot of people calling us asking what they can do to help Arizona,” says Fernandez. “We say, organize in your own town. You don’t have to come to Arizona because Arizona is coming to you.”

Jordan Flaherty is a journalist, an editor of Left Turn Magazine, and a staffer with the Louisiana Justice Institute. He was the first writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience, and his award-winning reporting from the Gulf Coast has been featured in a range of outlets including the New York Times, Mother Jones, and Argentina’s Clarin newspaper. He has produced news segments for Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, and Democracy Now! and appeared as a guest on CNN Morning, Anderson Cooper 360, and Keep Hope Alive with the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Haymarket Books has just released his new book, FLOODLINES: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six. He can be reached at neworleans@leftturn.org.

More information about Floodlines can be found at floodlines.org.  Floodlines will also be featured on the Community and Resistance Tour this fall. For more information on the tour, see communityandresistance.wordpress.com.

18 May 2010

Contributed by Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon.net

Part of me found this article about the generation gap on opinions about immigration fascinating, and part of me wondered, “How often are we expected to find it a revelation that the teabaggers are a bunch of cranky old racists whose anger that the world is passing them by boiled over when the country elected a black President?” The article itself is kind of weird; the focus is on young white people resisting older white people and their racism, but what’s missing is much discussion of the fact that younger people are also just a lot less likely to be white than older people.  Not that there can’t be racism across all sorts of lines, but the brutal reality is that the anti-immigration temper tantrum is being thrown by a bunch of older white people that are pissed about the multi-cultural direction this country is going.  Perhaps the writer thought caveating his points to death would read poorly.  Still, when he says something like, “her generation watched ‘Sesame Street’ with Hispanic characters”, I have to point out that a lot more members of her generation are Hispanic, which is going to influence the polling data on this. True, there are many Hispanic Americans who oppose immigration, but on the whole, I have to point out that these demographic changes will influence the polling data tremendously, at least as much if not more than shifts in opinion amongst white Americans between generations.

Still, I think there’s something to be said for just this phenomenon that the writer focuses on.  It is true that those of us who grew up in much more racially diverse environments are way more laid back about this stuff.  And that also has an impact.  The gap between generations on the issue of immigration is remarkable, to the point where it definitely represents both the growing diversity of younger generations of Americans and the fact that younger white people are breaking with older generations on this issue.

Still, divisions were pronounced by age: for instance, while 41 percent of Americans ages 45 to 64 and 36 percent of older Americans said immigration levels should be decreased, only 24 percent of those younger than 45 said so.

There’s been a lot of discussion about how foolish Arizona politicians were to make attacking immigrants a centerpiece of their legislative efforts in an election year.  Or ever, really.  It’s seen as unbelievably stupid short term thinking—pandering now to get a bunch of teabagger votes, but the price you pay is you create a reputation for Republicans as racist towards Hispanics right when Hispanics are growing as a voting bloc.  But this is also epic short term thinking when it comes to age demographics.  I suppose Republicans are betting on the fact that the younger generations just don’t vote.  And that may be true, but as every year passes and more of the older generations die off, each vote from a younger person counts for more.  And that’s true, even if we don’t see a single non-voter now switch to a voter as she ages and becomes more civic-minded.

What’s interesting to me about all this is that this explosion of anti-immigrant sentiment has blown the cover story about how conservatives aren’t opposed to immigration because they’re racist.  We were all supposed to pretend that their hostility to immigrants had nothing to do with difference, and was just a principled political opinion.  But now, it’s a free-for-all of racist blather.  Some of the quotes from the article really get to this:

Mike Lombardi, 56, of Litchfield, Ariz. — one of 1,079 respondents in the Times/CBS poll conducted from April 28 to May 2 — said his support for his state’s new law stemmed partly from the shock of seeing gaggles of immigrants outside Home Depot, who he assumed were illegal. Comparing the situation to his youth in Torrance, Calif., in a follow-up interview, he said, “You didn’t see anything like what you see now.”

There’s nothing about that sentiment that isn’t pure racism.  He’s not saying, “Hey, those guys are great, and I love their work ethic and what they contribute to the community, but (fill in policy argument).” It’s just that he sees this group of men, and even though they’re not doing anything any reasonable person could ever find offensive, he’s pissed because they’re different than he is and there’s change.  And even if you want to stretch and say that being pissed about change isn’t necessarily racism, I have to point out that the Home Depot wasn’t there when he was a kid, either, but he’s not up in arms about the existence of Home Depot.

And then there’s this classic of the genre:

“My stepdad says, ‘Why do I have to press 1 for English?’ I think that’s ridiculous,” Ms. Vespia said, referring to the common instruction on customer-service lines. “It’s not that big of a deal. Quit crying about it. Press the button.”

Sometimes I wish we could add up the calorie expenditures of pushing the 1 for English over a lifetime and show the people who cry about it that, if they’re that worried about it, they can chew a stick of gum and gain all of that back.  Pushing the button certainly wastes less energy than the non-stop whining about it.