Under One Flag
City’s melting pot reaches the boiling point

by Jarrett Murphy
April 18th, 2006 11:32 AM

The white and green T-shirts stood out in the crowd of mostly Latinos who were milling about the intersection of Canal and Broadway last Monday at the tail end of the massive rally for immigrant rights. The shirts read, “Legalize the Irish.” To the sea of people fighting to stop a draconian House immigration bill from becoming federal law, some waving Peruvian or Salvadoran or Ecuadoran flags, others hailing from West Africa or South Asia, the Irish slogan could have come off as exclusive, offensive. But Héctor Figueroa couldn’t care less.

“It doesn’t bother me at all,” the secretary-treasurer of SEIU Local 32BJ tells the Voice. “We need a multitude. We don’t need a mass movement. We need a multitude where people are able to express their identities.”

Whether you believe the low-ball attendance figure of 70,000 or the organizers’ claim that 300,000 showed up, the April 10 rally that shut down Broadway from Barclay Street to north of Canal was a success. It took place on a Monday afternoon, in a city with a legendary diversity in its foreign-born population, and was put together in less than two weeks by a coalition embracing more than 100 groups.

That feat owed much to grassroots groundwork laid by community organizations and labor unions over recent years. But Republican congressman James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin gets some credit too. Nothing forges unity and action like a common enemy, and Sensenbrenner’s H.R. 4437 is certainly that. The most punitive of a handful of immigration reform measures making the rounds on Capitol Hill this spring, H.R. 4437 would make illegal immigrants into felons and would classify as criminals the social workers and others who help them. It would implement tough border security initiatives and make it harder for illegal immigrants to challenge deportations. And it makes no provision for “aliens” to legalize their status. (There’s now talk of some changes to the bill’s language.)

Such a bill breeds many foes, and they were in the streets in force April 10—unions, religious groups, neighborhood organizations, socialists, anti-war protesters, and low-wage workers. It was a striking scene, all those flags in the late-day sun, that spectrum of skin tones.

“I think we’re going to look back on H.R. 4437 and really see that it’s a sad moment in history for Congress to pass such a bill,” says Gouri Sadhwani, executive director of the New York Civic Participation Project, an umbrella activist group for several progressive unions and community organizations. “I think at the same time you’ll look back and see all the protests that we’ve witnessed in the past few weeks as a resurgence of the civil rights movement. There’s no doubt in my mind that we’re going to look back to 2006 and say this is when it started.”

That movement will claim a big first prize if it kills H.R. 4437. But then it will face a real test. Saying no to a bad bill is one thing, but agreeing on a good one is another. Even deciding the next step in the fight against H.R. 4437 has some of those who rallied together on April 10 agreeing to disagree.

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For some New York City advocacy groups, H.R. 4437 has been on the radar screen since last summer. When the measure passed the House late in 2005 and moved to the Senate in January, there was an emergency meeting here involving some 50 organizations with stakes in the debate. However, it was a March 7 protest in Washington that got local groups and unions talking about doing something big in New York. The national day of action on April 10 presented an opportunity, so local groups began a flurry of preparations about two weeks before the big day.

It was a short window to overcome some traditional New York City obstacles. The cops normally require a few weeks’ lead time for a major rally, but in this case Change to Win (the national labor coalition that split off from the AFL-CIO last year) started negotiating with the NYPD only about a week before the event. Then there were the protesters. “New York City is a place where it’s particularly challenging to put together a coalition to mobilize because we have such a diverse community,” says Héctor Figueroa, secretary-treasurer of SEIU 32BJ. And the groups are in different geographic pockets: The Bronx has more Nigerians than Chinese or Indians. There are more Haitians in Brooklyn than there are Koreans in Queens.

But there were networks in place, the organizers say, from previous efforts. 32BJ had run organizing campaigns, like “Justice for Janitors,” that boosted its street cred in immigrant neighborhoods. The Civic Participation Project has spent years fusing union support to neighborhood crusades like winning better language services at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and cleaning up a Bronx park. And some of the groups earned their stripes fighting previous measures like the Real ID Act, a crackdown on undocumented people’s driver’s licenses.

It’s the stuff that local political machines, in their finest moments, used to do: building political power by meeting basic needs. It’s also the kind of grassroots organizing that Change to Win (which includes SEIU, UNITE HERE, and other unions) dissed the AFL-CIO for neglecting. And some of the linkages on display at last week’s rally hinted at a big-tent progressivism that activists have dreamed about, like Mexican restaurant workers marching alongside the anti-war omnibus United for Peace and Justice.

Despite the rally’s success, H.R. 4437 lives. Local organizers met the day after the event to plot their next steps: citizens’ meetings, calls to lawmakers, and a “day of action” on May 1.

But what kind of action?

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It’s a long and arduous process because there are so many groups involved,” 1199′s Chris Fleming says of the planning. “We are all working very hard to continue the unity.” It won’t be perfect, however. “There are folks calling for a national boycott” on May 1, Fleming notes. “1199 will not be part of any sort of strike, anything along those lines. We don’t think it’s the right message to send.”

Others think it’s the perfect move. “It’s an idea that’s been in the works for a long time,” says Monami Maulik of Desis Rising Up and Moving, a Queens-based organization for South Asians, who was on the steering committee for the April 10 rally. “The idea of a day without immigrants has really caught hold, especially in the Southwest and border areas. I think it would be an extremely vital show of power of immigrants as workers.”

To strike or not to strike is a purely tactical question. But some of the internal disagreements concern not just how to fight, but what to fight for. “I think when we start getting into the smaller issues there has been a lot of debate around what people are willing to give up for legalization, and there are some folks that would much rather see nothing done than more deportation,” says Raquel Batista of the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, which since 1982 has assisted immigrants with bringing family members over, applying for citizenship, and fighting deportations. “And there’s definitely a sector that wants to see legalization and is willing to negotiate that.”

The debate is not just between unions (who largely support the Senate’s McCain-Kennedy compromise) and community organizations that oppose any bill that toughens deportation rules. It’s also taking place within organizations and between immigrant groups that feel they have more to gain from legalization (like Mexicans) or more to lose from deportation (e.g., Dominicans). The fissures are products of different patterns of immigration—some people slip across the border, others come here on legal visas and overstay—as well as history. As a group, Dominicans haven’t been here as long as Mexicans, whose ancestors once knew California as part of their native country. “All of that kind of plays itself out in this bigger debate,” says Batista, “but it’s not necessarily what you see folks really talking about—the deep history of all of this and how it’s coming to play now.”

The disagreements surprise no one in a movement so broad. So there is a conscious effort to put them aside in the name of getting the worst possible laws off the table, then worry about the specifics. For now, the movement has set broad legislative goals—family reunification, workplace protection, a path to legalization, and civil rights—that everyone can live with.

“There isn’t necessarily unilateral consensus around which bill is the best bill, but there is a real consensus about preventing—and sending a strong signal against—anti-immigrant bills, and that’s what you see in the streets,” says Sadhwani. “People are really pissed off.”

The anger itself is a kind of victory. The political aftermath of 9-11—detentions, deportations, forced registrations—set the U.S. immigrant movement back years. April 10 was a comeback. “People for the first time in a long time felt really safe to come out because they’ve been so inspired and encouraged by undocumented people and other people—millions—coming out to the streets around the country,” Maulik notes.

Immigrant-led political movements aren’t new. The push for an eight-hour day in the late 19th century was one. The 1912 “Bread and Roses” strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, involved 17 ethnic groups. The steel strike of 1919 was also diverse. It failed, and helped trigger a crackdown on newcomers. “But fifteen years later the children of those immigrants were the ones who built the labor movement into a successful movement in this country,” says Mark Naison, a labor historian who teaches at Fordham. Those sit-ins of the 1930s succeeded “because people had elected Democratic governors and mayors who wouldn’t send in troops to remove people from the factories,” Naison adds. “In order for [today's movement] to succeed you have to have some electoral might to combine with the social power. That’s why I think success might come in 10 or 20 years.”

Hence the signs at last week’s rally that proclaimed, “Today we march, tomorrow we vote.” Foreign-born voters already wield some clout in New York. Many can vote, and those who can’t might have relatives who do. But it’s a different story in most of the states that elect people to the House and Senate, who will ultimately determine the immigrants’ fate. Census data show that in half the states, immigrants constitute a mere 5 percent of the population, or less.

That doesn’t discourage those who packed Broadway last Monday night. “There’s no way that these groups are going to go back and do nothing. Many new organizations are popping up in communities that weren’t organized before,” says Maulik. “I think it’s an infrastructure that is going to stay, and that’s really exciting.”

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0616,murphy,72905,5.html

“In our time all it takes for evil to flourish is for a few good men to be a little wrong and have a great deal of power, and for the vast majority of their fellow citizens to remain indifferent.” —William Sloane Coffin; In the Yale Alumni magazine in 1967

This crisis to which you refer may be a crisis of jumping the gun… the folks I talked with on April 10 were waving flags (an admirable display of discipline, in my view) and the issues were schools, taxes, drivers licenses… and dignity.

The dnager to the petit bourgelisie is that in mobilizing the working class they may not be able to de-mobilize them. The danger to the working class is that they might step out too quickly before they have the institutional and ideological infrastructure to support themselves (which they have to build with the help of sectors within the petit bourgeoisie), and experience what a friend of mine calls the “cartoon law of gravity…” running along on firm ground that leads directly out into unsupported space, then looking down for an instant before the movement begins a wide-eyed plunge.

I am not totally clear yet on where this came from… my impression is from West Coast Chicano nationalists (good)… and apparently it has legs. Now we are duty-bound to support it.

How is the publicity being done for this, and the outreach? What can folks do to most effectively support it in a principled and intelligent way?

“[The] multi-class alliance with these bourgeois forces is unlikely to last.” I think that’s an important point. The Latino bourgeois class is not interested in “immigrant rights,” per se, so much as they’re interested in maintaining their labor pool. This is the wing of the movement that is much more likely to push for accepting a new Bracero program and/or push for folding the movement into working with “friendly” elected officials.

“Now, in a direct sense this is NOT a job for Anglo comrades, except insofar as it affects their general political stance in terms of propaganda and alliances.” I’m not sure if JB means that the way it sounds; I think participation by non-Anglo comrades is very important. I think we should be out there on the front lines doing grunt work and taking direction from the movement. I think we should be working within other movements (anti-war, Palestine, labor, etc) to try and influence *them* to support this movement.

I agree that we shouldn’t see ourselves as “leading” the movement or (especially) try to jockey for power within the coalitions, but I do think there’s a *supportive* role for us to play.

( source : Washington Post / Fresno Bee )

Uhhhhhh , that is a LOT of dead people. No ‘freedom’ ; no ‘representative government ‘ ;
no Easter Sundays for them. They’re dead .
No hugs, no smiles, no winks, grins, slaps on the
back ; no shaking soda-pop bottles / cans and then
letting it shoooot up like a crazed liquid
something-or-another ………. Where was I ?
Oh, yes. The dead ones. So many of them. Victims
of ” retaliatory killings ” . Fact. Also : victims
of CIVIL WAR . Believe me, if the Catholics and the oh, let’s just go with the Jehovah Witnesses
near where I live got into ” retaliatory killings”
to the tune of ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED dead
DEAD DEAD DEAD , plus untold hundreds of injured , I think some of us would call it a ” civil war ” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This one of us would be looking for somewhere else to stay.

Oh, and my last bit. I wish Stan Goff would spend some of his energy talking, at length, about how LOUD ” military ( weapons ) operations ” are.
That seldom gets highlighted. Bombs is LOUD,
y’all. If you think some of your extended family’s citizenry is uptight, tense, and fidgety,
please attempt to imagine spending 3 hours with them
during a Baghdad April.

Yikes, Happy Politically-Correct Version of Easter,
Timothy R. Anderson
April 14, 2006

I would add — as Joaquin did — find and establish communicaitons and relations with the advanced layers of this movement in order to figure out what are the appropriate ways to unite.

And there is more than bigotry on the table. There is a structure of national oppression.

Still, the unity in rhetoric is a problem, which the author suggest then continues. The leftists he criticizes do serve the function to turn people off to “the left.” People who read his article may have glanced through it, picked up the tone, and dismissed it as something they were not interested in. My initial reaction. Although I am glad I took the time to read it and think about it.

Jeri

If radicals aren’t careful, they could end up making the same mistakes of logic and interaction that they did during the days of Southern apartheid. CP-USA and them other fools came to Black folks with the idea that they knew what was best for Black folks (when it was Black folks who had to live in that hellhole called Dixieland), and they were unforgivably dismissive of indigenous strains within the Black struggle, such as Garveyism and other cultural nationalist tendencies. What Commie worth their Manifesto would call raising the self-esteem of oppressed workers bourgeois? You’d think after this historical debacle, they would learn something.

You know, over thirty kids walked the fuck out of Smithfield-Selma High School in racist-ass Johnston County En-Cee without any help from us Marxists in the Great Triangle Park, thank you very much. They were threatened with suspension and all that shit, and they still did it. So what we got to say about it, other than that we’re trying to catch up?

As a radical Marxist and a fellow member of an oppressed nationality, I think that the best support I can give to my Latin@ sisters and brothers is to shut the fuck up, pay attention to their lessons, and follow them. I hope that my fellow non-Latin comrades (negr@ y blanc@ especialmente) will do the same.

Yours in struggle,
Yolanda