Immigrants’ supporters fight SB 1070
2010George Shriver 2010-07Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 10 →
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TUCSON, Arizona—Mexican Americans and their allies in this state are gearing up to resist the racial-profiling law SB1070, scheduled to go into effect July 29. A federal court hearing is set for July 22 on a request for an injunction against the law.
In addition, on July 6, the Justice Department said that it would file suit against Arizona. It seeks an injunction against SB1070 on grounds that it infringes on federal jurisdiction.
In the Tucson area, the Derechos Humanos coalition and others are holding protests at the State Building downtown every Friday, 4-7 p.m., as part of a Month of Action. In the Phoenix area, groups are planning strikes at Dodge Main calling out the Chrysler bosses and racist elements in the United Autoworker (UAW) bureaucracy who routinely failed to defend Black workers.
For close to three hours, the LRBW explained the entrance en masse of Black workers into Detroit to take some of the hardest and lowest paying jobs in the automobile industry, given increased demand for cheap labor during World War II. The LRBW showed through testimony, video clips, and song that militant united fronts of Black and white workers in Detroit won some of the highest wages in the United States for a time.
The USSF was inspired by philosopher Hannah Arendt’s writings on the importance of the public realm for civic engagement and collective deliberation. The forum certainly allowed space for a dynamic assembly to dialogue toward a deeper understanding of our world.
However, a coherent ideological superstructure to tie the many movements together was lacking. Stated event organizer Elena Herrada of Centro Obrero: “I haven’t seen anybody claiming to really have any answers, just seeing everyone saying ‘yeah, how about this’ and ‘how about this.’” Identity politics, lifestyle anarchism, and naïve Third Worldism were much on display at the expense of class-conscious analysis.
Along with a myriad of liberal NGOs such as the Sierra Club, Oxfam, and Amnesty International, event donors from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Ben and Jerry’s Foundation have little interest in radi“30 actions in 30 days.”
If no injunction stops the law, the call is for “no school, no work” on July 29. People everywhere are asked to hold support demonstrations for the Arizona resistance on July 29 and after. Such actions are reported in the works in Chicago and Twin Cities.
In Philadelphia, there are plans to urge a boycott of the July 27-29 baseball games, when the Phillies play the Arizona Diamondbacks.
President Obama, meanwhile, made a speech to the nation about immigration on July 1. He criticized SB 1070 as “divisive,” but reinforced efforts to militarize the border. Obama boasted: “We have more boots on the ground on the Southwest border than at any time in our history.” n cal change, preferring a perhaps slightly less brutal form of capitalism.
It might also be noted that USSF core sponsor UAW came out of the collapse of Detroit with $1.3 billion in assets in 2009 and part ownership of the automobile industry, while new autoworkers have seen their wages cut in half in the name of “global competitiveness.” As well, the UAW has supported a succession of Black Democratic Party mayors since the early 1970s, who have done little to stem the collapse of the city.
News coverage of the USSF was virtually non-existent in the bourgeois media while similarly styled but much smaller right-wing gatherings, such as the recent Tea Party convention, received abundant coverage. Such realities point to the weakness of the left in the United States. Lack of working-class ideological cohesion along with promotion of identity politics are the perfect breeding ground for the Democratic Party to disorient the movement with its cynical objectives for continued warfare and corporate plunder.
While problems associated with capitalism were discussed at the USSF, it is time to look beyond capitalism and toward an international socialist reorganization of society and the means of production. It is time to take the dialogue begun at the USSF much deeper to understand the determinant forces— both political and social—that are holding us back.
Where they say we have no answers, we say socialism is the answer! n
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F Sandy Lake First Nation gathered to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the signing of Treaty 5. In the century since aboriginal people ceded 100,000 square kilometres of land to the British Crown for a few tools and an annual payment of $5 a head, grinding poverty Sandy Lake is a fly-in-only community 600 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay (Lake Superior) that survived for centuries on hunting, trapping, and fishing. Today, aboriginal teen suicide is five to six times higher for First Nations youth between 10 and 24 years of age than for non-aboriginal youth. Of the 600 young people By BARRY WEISLEDER ar from the G20 Summit galas, 2700 members of Barry Weisleder / Socialist Action