By Francisco Romero, RPMA Media Team
(Detroit, MI) On the second day of the United States Social Forum (USSF), there were several workshop strategy sessions that took place dealing with the immigrant and migrant rights struggle. From I.C.E. and Police collaboration, to Immigration Reform legislation analysis, to local grassroots resistance and organizing in defense of of workers’ rights, with our without ‘papeles’.
ALTO AL DECOMISO DE AUTOS (Stop Vehicle Impound)
The morning was kicked off with an intense, solution/action-oriented session led by Miguel Robles of the Alianza Latinoamericana por los Derechos de los Inmigrantes (ALIADI) based out of the San Francisco bay area. Robles, a grassroots organizer, has traveled up and down California and beyond, to meet with and learn about how different cities are setting up Driver Licensce Checkpoints, and the various schemes utilized to extort money from undocumented drivers as well as collaboration-joint efforts to deport Raza. From the onset, Robles made it clear, that each participant within the workshop must look forward into organizing and coordinating a campaign to bring halt to the unjust practice of targeting Mexican/Latin-American communities with the “Retenes”. Workshop participants representing Arizona, New Mexico, Washington, Kansas, and California broke up into focal groups which then presented to the general body, what the plan of action items were to launch a coordinated effort to end the vehicle impound policies targeting workers without licenses. The workshop faciltator pronounced that it seems unlikely for a national “immigration reform” to take place this year and called on a massive locally-based reform be waged, city by city, block by block. Please visit: http://www.aliadi.org/
LIVE, LOVE AND WORK~ Repeal ALL Anti-Immigrant Laws!
In a late afternoon session, led by the Repeal Coalition, a Flagstaff/Phoenix Arizona-based community organization, nearly 100 participants gathered to discuss the importance about the multi-level, multi-progned approach rooted in the fundamental principle of a person’s right to “Live, Love and Work”, that is, the right for a person to choose where they want to Live and move freely without fear. The right to Love, that is, the right to be with family without fear of being separated by I.C.E., and lastly, the right to Work. The Repeal Coalition calls for “All human beings—with papers or without—be guaranteed access to work, housing, health care, education, legal protection, and other public benefits, as well as the right to organize. Our strategy is to help build a grass roots social movement that can repeal these laws, change the terms of the national debate on immigration, and expand the freedom of all people—documented and undocumented.” To contact Repeal Coalition: http://www.repealcoalition.org/
LA LUCHA SIGUE! Stop the Militiarization and Criminalization of our Communities
Candidate Obama, back in his 2008 presidential campaign, spoke about implementing “comprehensive immigration reform” within his first year of office. Nearly a year and half into his presidency, and now President Obama, not only is there no reform, on the contrary, the ICE raids continue to terrorize our barrio with thousand upon thousands being detained and deported. Repressive and blatantly racist laws, such as Arizona’s SB-1070 continue to expand and influence the discourse. Added to these recent legislative assaults, we have Obama calling for additional 1,000 plus occupational troops to the border region, this only weeks after the brutal beating to death of Sergio Hernandez and then, the bloody assassination of Anastasio, a young 14 year old. All of this, within days of the quietly forgotten four migrant workers that were forced to drown after Border Patrol Agents ordered the migrantes to cross back swimming to the Mexican side. Please visit- http://laht.com/article.asp?CategoryId=14091&ArticleId=359090
In the end, the participants of today’s workshops on immigrant and migrant worker rights agree that the solution for these current realities will be found, Abajo y a la Izquierda, that is, from the grassroots/in the barrio, and to the left, meaning away and outside the confined capitalist/imperial framework.
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