Huge march in Phoenix for immigrant rights
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PHOENIX, Ariz.—The march and rally on May 29 was the expression of a genuine mass movement in opposition to racist laws recently passed by the Arizona state legislature, especially the racialprofiling law, SB (Senate Bill) 1070.
According to march organizers, as many as 100,000 turned out. (The Associated Press arrogantly and absurdly reported only “10,000 to 20,000.”) Two hours after the front of the march reached the Capitol, the last marchers were still arriving. As many as 60 solidarity actions took place elsewhere in the U.S. and other countries.
The crowd in Phoenix consisted mostly of working-class Latino families, from grandparents through mothers and fathers, and teenagers in large numbers, down to small children, even infants in strollers. This is an oppressed nationality fighting back against its oppression, but also an important section of the working class going into motion.
Despite a six-mile march under a hot sun, with temperatures near 100, people were in good spirits, proud, confident, unafraid, committed to the struggle no matter how long it might take. The atmosphere of solidarity was magnetic, full of promise for eventual victory and the overturn of the unacceptable racist laws.
The importance of defeating SB 1070 is highlighted by moves toward enacting similar laws in at least a dozen other states. Defeating the racists in Arizona will set them back nationwide.
Organizers of the march were the Phoenix-based immigrant-rights group Puente (puenteaz.org) and the National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON; see www.altoarizona.com). Among the speakers was a leader of a national organization of domestic workers, a young Latina woman from California, whose group is allied with, or similar to, NDLON, an AFL-CIO affiliate.
Speaker after speaker from other parts of the U.S. stressed their solidarity with Arizona’s people of color. Two Black Katrina survivors from New Orleans repeated, “We’ve got your back.” A Black minister denounced discrimination because of skin color, harkening back to the civil rights movement. A delegation of original Freedom Summer participants from the 1960s was present, along with Black Americans for Just Immigration (BAJI) from Oakland, Calif.
The march was led by a contingent of indigenous people, including local communities in the Phoenix area—the Gila River Indians, Guadalupe Yaqui, Salt River Indians, Tohono O’odham, and others—who welcomed marchers from all over the United States to their land and showed strong solidarity with their embattled Latino brothers and Latina sisters.
Organized labor had a more noticeable presence than in most recent immigrantrights demonstrations in Arizona, especially on the speaker’s stand. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spoke at the rally, and was in Phoenix the night before the march to address a national gathering of the AFL-CIO affiliate, LCLAA (Labor Council for Latin American Advancement). Trumka urged local unions to get more involved in the fight against SB 1070. Among other unions represented at the May 29 mass action were the UFCW and the Laborers (LIUNA).
Socialist Action At rallies before and after the march, speakers denounced Obama’s sending of 1200 National Guard troops to the border, an action he brazenly took on the eve of the May 29 march. One speaker demanded, “Take back those troops and use the money for schools, and to support ethnic studies in Arizona schools.”
A racist law passed by the Arizona state legislature right after SB 1070 aims at ending the unique ethnic studies program in Tucson public schools, K-12. The program makes it possible for the majority of students, Latin@s, African Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans, to learn about their own history and culture—something not provided for by “mainstream” textbooks and media.
Speakers also called for Obama to use the power of the federal government to overturn SB 1070—which he is very unlikely to do, in view of the anti-immigrant actions of his administration during its first year and a half. At least 5% more undocumented workers were deported in Obama’s first year than during Bush’s last year.
Under Obama’s appointee as head of “Homeland Security,” Janet Napolitano, former Democratic governor of Arizona (who was just as anti-immigrant as the Republican sponsors of SB 1070), this administration has caused an unprecedented number, thousands and thousands, to be fired from their jobs through the enforcement of the anti-immigrant Everify system. (See David Bacon’s recent article about E-verify firings on the website grassrootsimmigrantjusticenetwork. blogspot.com.)
Obama leaves little room for reformist hopes. The “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” he explicitly supports is the Schumer blueprint, recently repackaged as the “REPAIR” proposal, backed by Schumer and five other Democrat senators, including Majority Leader Harry Reid. (REPAIR stands for Real Enforcement with Practical Answers for Immigration Reform.)
The emphasis on enforcement is obvious in the proposal’s very name. Under the Schumer-REPAIR plan, only after an arduous, costly, and humiliating process, in which all undocumented immigrant workers would have to confess to having broken the law, pay heavy fines and taxes, and submit biometric identity data, could they then go to the back of the line to apply for legal permanent residency—and begin an uncertain wait of many, many more years. Essentially this means very little legalization, if any.
At the May 29 event speakers did call for “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” (CIR), but the dead-end nature of what Obama and the Senate Democrats are proposing makes it awkward and unrealistic to keep repeating the call for “CIR.” One speaker at the rally, union leader Eliseo Medina (of SEIU), seemed aware of the difficulty, especially in the face of that giant crowd demanding justice. So he added, “By comprehensive immigration reform I mean legalization!” But that’s not what Obama, Schumer, & Co. mean.
Some speakers called for getting out the vote in November, to defeat the racist Republicans who control the Arizona legislature. But there’s a problem. Most of the Democratic politicians can hardly be distinguished from the Republicans on the immigration issue (as on others). Former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano is an example already mentioned. Another