After a couple of months of low activity ICE is back on its racist agenda, attacking immigrant workers. Headlines in the New York Times in the last couple of weeks read like this: "Immigration Officials Arrest 905 in California Sweep" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/us/24deport.html?scp=3&sq=immigration&st=nyt ) and "270 Illegal Immigrants Sent to Prison in Federal Push" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/us/24immig.html?scp=25&sq=immigration&st=nyt)
The latter article details the outcome of the largest raid in U.S. history at the Agriprocessors Inc. meatpacking plant in Iowa. Over 389 workers were detained for working with false papers. This raid is unique from others because until now, relatively few immigrants caught in raids have been charged with federal crimes like identity theft or document fraud.
It is important to keep in mind under what political context this new offensive is coming: 1) an election year, which has divided sections of the immigrant's rights movement.
2) ICE has been up until now on the defensive, with the well publicized mistreatment of detained immigrants by the New York Times, Washington Post and CBS News.
3) U.S. economy is heading towards a recession, which means that the Mexican economy shall soon be in a deeper one. (Ruling class also need a scapegoat--immigrant workers)
4) The ruling class in this country is looking for a restructuring of the immigration system in this country, fast.
Fight Back:
The response of immigrant rights activists both in Postville, Iowa and all around California, particularly in the Bay area and San Diego, has been remarkable. Some good coverage can be found at http://socialistworker.org/2008/05/26/san-diego-protest-against-ice. In New York City, the No Raids Committee of Queens along with The Humanist Center, Polo Democratico and other community groups will be marching to demand the right of immigrants to vote in local elections and to show the community that we will not let the Iowa Raids intimidate us. Also, activists in the No Raids Committee are preparing a petition in support of the 270 workers in federal prison, the demands are: to drop the charges of document fraud and to release workers immediately. I will post petition shortly.
Struggle continues:
In spite of the largest ruling class offensive against immigrants in decades activists and family members have been committed to fight for worker's rights. Although this layer of people nationally is small, the dynamics of social movements, i.e. its retreats and victories, will prove to be an invaluable lesson for all of us .
Showing posts with label immigrant rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label immigrant rights. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Monday, April 7, 2008
Showing day laborers have the power to fight
An organizer on workers taking a stand for their rights
CARLOS CANALES is the day labor organizer of the Workplace Project in Hempstead, N.Y., on Long Island. Carlos fled El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980s and became a well-known organizer in New York. He talked to ALVARO LOPEZ about the conditions that immigrant day laborers face and how they have organized.
CAN YOU talk about what conditions were like for day laborers before there was a workers’ center?
IT HASN’T changed too much. We can say that for day laborers who are on the official side, there are some differences. The most important difference is that contractors tend to respect day laborers more when they’re in a workplace center we’ve organized than when they pick them up on the street.
The majority of the nonpayment of workers that we see here every week--I’d say 99 percent of it--is workers who are on the streets. They’re not coming from our workers’ centers.
That would be the most concrete difference. But there are other differences. For instance, workers in the workers’ center are more organized. They participate in the process of improving their condition or quality of life.
There’s only one rule that you hear me repeat over and over again every day when I go visiting: “You do not have to obey rules that are coming from outside the trailer. You have to disobey any rules that are imposed on you.”
You have to create your own rules--you have to create your own government here. Whatever’s happening at this trailer, you have to know what’s going on. If you don’t want to participate, that’s okay, but you have to ask whoever the coordinator or organizer is. Nothing that’s happening can be secret. It must be open.
HOW DO you organize workers’ centers?
MOST OF the time, workers call the workers’ center. We usually go to visit the place and we start a long process, visiting every day to establish relationships with the majority of people, because it may have been two or three who called on behalf of the others.
They’ll have a big meeting, and we’ll elect a board of workers. They are five or six workers, representing the rest. So after that, we train the new ones about what to say to the press, what not to say to the press, how we are going to face the issues, what the issues are.
Once they’re trained, in many cases, they realize they don’t have the power by themselves to change what they want to change. Politicians know that they don’t vote. So how will the gringo listen to us?
Sometimes they say that we’re immigrants, and they won’t pay attention to us. Then we go look for support before we go to negotiations with local authorities. We visit churches, identify people who’ll be in support of the workers, and then we organize a group of supporters to support the day laborers and a workers’ center.
The day laborers begin a steady process of negotiations, asking local authorities to assign an official place where they can stand and wait for contractors. So that the media and the authorities know that they have a place to stay, and the police from now on won’t come to bother them.
Also in the workers’ center, there are other complementary benefits, like English as a Second Language, computers to use, workshops on basic labor rights, heath information about things like TB, immigration courses, and any other workshop that people want.
Every Friday, we have general assemblies with workers, because the maximum authority is with the workers. They have to do the deciding in an open meeting. So they can debate and everybody can give opinions and vote.
HOW DID the contractors respond? Have you had run-ins with the Minutemen?
IT DEPENDS. Here in Long Island, in Nassau County, the most difficult place that we’ve found to organize labor is Farmingdale. In Suffolk County, it’s Farmingville. In Farmingville, it has been impossible to organize a working center because there are a lot of people who are anti-immigrant.
In Farmingville, you have Sachem Quality of Life, a group of local residents who are organizing, and their only purpose is to target day laborers. They were protesting at a 7-11 to stop contractors from picking up day laborers. They told the contractors to go to the Department of Labor.
They’ve done a lot of other things, like passing legislation that will prohibit contractors from picking up day laborers on the street. The last thing they did was lobby Steve Levy, the executive of Suffolk County, and made him order the police to arrest any day laborers standing at that 7-11 for more than 30 minutes.
IS SACHEM Quality of Life part of the Minutemen?
THEY ARE the Minutemen.
THERE HAVE been some counter-protests against the Minutement, right?
THERE WAS a counter-protest against Sachem last December, when they came to Massapequa.
Last year, the Minutemen targeted the border with Mexico. Then, by December, they changed their target and said the new target would be day labor. So they came to New York State.
By last summer, they came to Massapequa to recruit people, supposedly to patrol the border with Canada. But then in December, they came to protest day labor sites. They were just 6 or 7, and we got about 50 or 60 local residents.
WHAT ROLE would you like to see day laborers play in the immigrant rights movement?
A LOT of day laborers in the future will make a transition to more permanent jobs. So after some five or 10 years, they stop being day laborers.
They participate in the immigrant rights movements--in the rallies. If a good law is passed, which is improbable, maybe they will be assimilated into the community, build families and stay here. A lot of them want to stay here and live here.
CARLOS CANALES is the day labor organizer of the Workplace Project in Hempstead, N.Y., on Long Island. Carlos fled El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980s and became a well-known organizer in New York. He talked to ALVARO LOPEZ about the conditions that immigrant day laborers face and how they have organized.
CAN YOU talk about what conditions were like for day laborers before there was a workers’ center?
IT HASN’T changed too much. We can say that for day laborers who are on the official side, there are some differences. The most important difference is that contractors tend to respect day laborers more when they’re in a workplace center we’ve organized than when they pick them up on the street.
The majority of the nonpayment of workers that we see here every week--I’d say 99 percent of it--is workers who are on the streets. They’re not coming from our workers’ centers.
That would be the most concrete difference. But there are other differences. For instance, workers in the workers’ center are more organized. They participate in the process of improving their condition or quality of life.
There’s only one rule that you hear me repeat over and over again every day when I go visiting: “You do not have to obey rules that are coming from outside the trailer. You have to disobey any rules that are imposed on you.”
You have to create your own rules--you have to create your own government here. Whatever’s happening at this trailer, you have to know what’s going on. If you don’t want to participate, that’s okay, but you have to ask whoever the coordinator or organizer is. Nothing that’s happening can be secret. It must be open.
HOW DO you organize workers’ centers?
MOST OF the time, workers call the workers’ center. We usually go to visit the place and we start a long process, visiting every day to establish relationships with the majority of people, because it may have been two or three who called on behalf of the others.
They’ll have a big meeting, and we’ll elect a board of workers. They are five or six workers, representing the rest. So after that, we train the new ones about what to say to the press, what not to say to the press, how we are going to face the issues, what the issues are.
Once they’re trained, in many cases, they realize they don’t have the power by themselves to change what they want to change. Politicians know that they don’t vote. So how will the gringo listen to us?
Sometimes they say that we’re immigrants, and they won’t pay attention to us. Then we go look for support before we go to negotiations with local authorities. We visit churches, identify people who’ll be in support of the workers, and then we organize a group of supporters to support the day laborers and a workers’ center.
The day laborers begin a steady process of negotiations, asking local authorities to assign an official place where they can stand and wait for contractors. So that the media and the authorities know that they have a place to stay, and the police from now on won’t come to bother them.
Also in the workers’ center, there are other complementary benefits, like English as a Second Language, computers to use, workshops on basic labor rights, heath information about things like TB, immigration courses, and any other workshop that people want.
Every Friday, we have general assemblies with workers, because the maximum authority is with the workers. They have to do the deciding in an open meeting. So they can debate and everybody can give opinions and vote.
HOW DID the contractors respond? Have you had run-ins with the Minutemen?
IT DEPENDS. Here in Long Island, in Nassau County, the most difficult place that we’ve found to organize labor is Farmingdale. In Suffolk County, it’s Farmingville. In Farmingville, it has been impossible to organize a working center because there are a lot of people who are anti-immigrant.
In Farmingville, you have Sachem Quality of Life, a group of local residents who are organizing, and their only purpose is to target day laborers. They were protesting at a 7-11 to stop contractors from picking up day laborers. They told the contractors to go to the Department of Labor.
They’ve done a lot of other things, like passing legislation that will prohibit contractors from picking up day laborers on the street. The last thing they did was lobby Steve Levy, the executive of Suffolk County, and made him order the police to arrest any day laborers standing at that 7-11 for more than 30 minutes.
IS SACHEM Quality of Life part of the Minutemen?
THEY ARE the Minutemen.
THERE HAVE been some counter-protests against the Minutement, right?
THERE WAS a counter-protest against Sachem last December, when they came to Massapequa.
Last year, the Minutemen targeted the border with Mexico. Then, by December, they changed their target and said the new target would be day labor. So they came to New York State.
By last summer, they came to Massapequa to recruit people, supposedly to patrol the border with Canada. But then in December, they came to protest day labor sites. They were just 6 or 7, and we got about 50 or 60 local residents.
WHAT ROLE would you like to see day laborers play in the immigrant rights movement?
A LOT of day laborers in the future will make a transition to more permanent jobs. So after some five or 10 years, they stop being day laborers.
They participate in the immigrant rights movements--in the rallies. If a good law is passed, which is improbable, maybe they will be assimilated into the community, build families and stay here. A lot of them want to stay here and live here.
ICE is “trying to scare the community"
June 8, 2007
THIRTEEN GUATEMALAN immigrants are the victims this time in yet another Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid in New York City.
On May 20, about a dozen ICE agents rushed into a Brooklyn apartment, allegedly looking for an “Oscar.” Nobody with that name was found, but agents demanded that everyone in the apartment present valid identification. Of the 15 people in the apartment, all but Obispo Lopez and his 16-year-old son Nehemias were detained.
As Lopez told the El Diario newspaper, “They asked us for our papers, and I showed them my identification from the Guatemalan consulate, and the others did as well, but they took them anyway. They didn’t even let them take anything or get dressed.”
Lopez, a construction worker, says the agents took away two of his sons, Evijoel and Avimail, and his son-in law, Alvaro Juarez. As of now, there is no word where the men are being held, but the family has received a phone call saying that they are in good condition.
The day after the raid in the largely immigrant neighborhood of Bensonhurst, people were concerned for the fate of the detainees, and for their own safety. ICE officials say the raids are designed to detain “criminals,” or those who have ignored final deportation notices. But the May 20 raid isn’t an isolated one.
“This is the third time there’s been a raid in this neighborhood,” Benny Hernandez, who owns a small deli across the street from the apartment where the Guatemalan immigrants were detained, said in an interview. “The raid before this, they left children behind and deported one of the parents.
“They’re attempting to scare the community...People who just want to work will be terrified to do that.”
Others in the community know firsthand what it is like to have their lives disrupted. A mother of two said she remembered vividly a raid four months ago, in which the husband of a close friend was detained. Once again, ICE agents were looking for someone who either didn’t exist or no longer lived in the apartment. But five people in total were detained and deported back to Ecuador.
“Her husband is in Ecuador now, and they don’t know what to do,” the woman said. “I’m undocumented too, and I think it’s unjust to separate families. I live very close by, and I’m worried about my children. I don’t have any family here, so what happens if they take me? Who will take care of my children?”
Stories like these will only multiply as federal immigration authorities attempt to reach their goal of deporting 75,000 immigrants by the end of this year.
“The government has to be responsible for its actions,” says Maribel Lopez, an immigrant mother of two who also lives near the site of the Brooklyn raid. “I’ve seen people die of hunger in my native country. People come here to seek a better life and to see their children succeed, but this [proposed immigration legislation under consideration in the Senate] is unjust and doesn’t allow for us to settle.”
Currently, Obispo Lopez and Brooklyn Pastor Erick Salgado are working with the ACLU in New York to get legal services for the workers detained in Brooklyn and their families back in Guatemala. We need to continue building a grassroots response to the ICE raids, and demand an end to the deportations and a just immigration policy.
Luisa Gallego contributed to this report
THIRTEEN GUATEMALAN immigrants are the victims this time in yet another Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid in New York City.
On May 20, about a dozen ICE agents rushed into a Brooklyn apartment, allegedly looking for an “Oscar.” Nobody with that name was found, but agents demanded that everyone in the apartment present valid identification. Of the 15 people in the apartment, all but Obispo Lopez and his 16-year-old son Nehemias were detained.
As Lopez told the El Diario newspaper, “They asked us for our papers, and I showed them my identification from the Guatemalan consulate, and the others did as well, but they took them anyway. They didn’t even let them take anything or get dressed.”
Lopez, a construction worker, says the agents took away two of his sons, Evijoel and Avimail, and his son-in law, Alvaro Juarez. As of now, there is no word where the men are being held, but the family has received a phone call saying that they are in good condition.
The day after the raid in the largely immigrant neighborhood of Bensonhurst, people were concerned for the fate of the detainees, and for their own safety. ICE officials say the raids are designed to detain “criminals,” or those who have ignored final deportation notices. But the May 20 raid isn’t an isolated one.
“This is the third time there’s been a raid in this neighborhood,” Benny Hernandez, who owns a small deli across the street from the apartment where the Guatemalan immigrants were detained, said in an interview. “The raid before this, they left children behind and deported one of the parents.
“They’re attempting to scare the community...People who just want to work will be terrified to do that.”
Others in the community know firsthand what it is like to have their lives disrupted. A mother of two said she remembered vividly a raid four months ago, in which the husband of a close friend was detained. Once again, ICE agents were looking for someone who either didn’t exist or no longer lived in the apartment. But five people in total were detained and deported back to Ecuador.
“Her husband is in Ecuador now, and they don’t know what to do,” the woman said. “I’m undocumented too, and I think it’s unjust to separate families. I live very close by, and I’m worried about my children. I don’t have any family here, so what happens if they take me? Who will take care of my children?”
Stories like these will only multiply as federal immigration authorities attempt to reach their goal of deporting 75,000 immigrants by the end of this year.
“The government has to be responsible for its actions,” says Maribel Lopez, an immigrant mother of two who also lives near the site of the Brooklyn raid. “I’ve seen people die of hunger in my native country. People come here to seek a better life and to see their children succeed, but this [proposed immigration legislation under consideration in the Senate] is unjust and doesn’t allow for us to settle.”
Currently, Obispo Lopez and Brooklyn Pastor Erick Salgado are working with the ACLU in New York to get legal services for the workers detained in Brooklyn and their families back in Guatemala. We need to continue building a grassroots response to the ICE raids, and demand an end to the deportations and a just immigration policy.
Luisa Gallego contributed to this report
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