By Francisco Romero, RPMA Media Team
(Detroit, MI) Activists, organizers, non-profit organizations, grassroots independent organizations, unions, students and workers poured into Detroit today to kick off the 2nd U.S. Social Forum (USSF). Today, to start off the five day long conference, several thousand took to the streets of Downtown Detroit, with an array of demands, slogans, and chants. From environmental struggles, to immigrant and migrant worker rights, to labor union and education battles, marchers descended upon the Cobo Conference Exhibition Center.
With over 1,000 workshops taking place at this year’s USSF, the conference will be the largest social-political networking and organizing platform, a mass forum, which includes respresentatives from every single state within the U.S, but also, has the participation of hundreds of international organizers from Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin-America.
In the midsts of the mass march and welcoming ceremony to this year’s USSF, the Detroit City Council voted today to condemn Arizona’s SB-1070, joining dozens of cities that have publicly denounced the anti-worker legislation of Arizona targeting undocumented workers. At this year’s USSF, there are various workshops dealing with global migration, immigrant/migrant and refugee rights, as well as community resistance to the blatantly oppressive measures being implemented against them. To name a few, for example, “Uncovering Truth on Police and ICE Collaboration”, and “Fight Back Against State, County and City Drivers License Checkpoints and Towing/Impound Schemes Against Unlicensed Immigrant Drivers”, “Immigration Reform: Truth and Myths=Change”.
Undoubtebly, this year’s USSF, in a climate of global financial crisis, of perpetual Imperialist wars of agression, of disatrous environmental catastrophes, and of continued militarization of the border and communities across the U.S., the forum, serves as a timely opportunity for communities in resistance to connect and coordinate short, medium and long range goals and plans of action to combat the increasingly suffocating state of the world.
Otro Mundo Es Posible
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