May Day 2007—Migrants can no longer be ignored
For most of the world, May 1 is Labor Day. Last year in response to proposed U.S. federal legislation that would have turned all illegal aliens into criminals, people took to the streets in numbers not seen since the Civil Rights Movement. This May Day, following immigration raids at job sites across the country which resulted in deportations that are splitting families, thousands of immigrants and their allies rallied in cities across the nation. In Chicago, over 150,000 people marched, with tens of thousands more in New York City, Detroit and other major cities.
In San Francisco, a jubilant throng of thousands marched, waving U.S., Mexican, and Central American flags. Signs such as “Are our taxes illegal too?,” “No Human Being is Illegal,” and “Walls Divide Families” were raised high. Drummers and dancers kept the mood enthusiastic and, ultimately, triumphant.
In Santa Rosa, police estimated a record ten thousand people gathered at Juilliard Park to hear speakers denounce the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids that are terrorizing undocumented immigrants, driving them and their children underground. Speakers acknowledged the crowd as indigenous people, people divided by human-made borders, and people discriminated against because they are of a different color and speak a different language. Significantly, many migrant workers were recognized as displaced farmers struggling to survive the devastating impacts of the corporate globalization of agriculture.
The otherwise peaceful demonstrations in Los Angeles garnered the most attention due to their large size (25,000) and the widely circulated footage of police firing rubber bullets and swinging batons at protesters in MacArthur Park. While Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa cut short a trip to Mexico and has called in an investigation, the LAPD’s actions illustrated the fact that undocumented workers are always vulnerable to violence—whether on the border, in the workplace, or in the street. Recently Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums said of ICE raids, “We say to the federal government that there are 11 million people in this country who we force into the shadows of life. Give them a chance to come out into the sunlight."
As Congress considers immigration legislation, the structural economic inequalities that underlie migration patterns are rarely mentioned. Neo-liberal economic policies have taken the livelihood of many small farmers in Mexico and Central America. Free trade agreements have widened the income gap. U.S. agribusiness, as well as many small businesses across the nation, now depends on cheap immigrant labor. A solution that provides a path to legal status for those who want to stay must be found—11-12 million people are simply too many to ignore.
Economic policies that allow citizens worldwide to stay on their land and support their families in their country of birth would do much to reverse the largest global migration from South to North that the world has ever seen. Today goods and capital flow freely across borders. In this global world, migration policies are sorely in need of reform.
Why do millions risk their lives to cross the border illegally? “Along the Immigrant Trail,” a Food First reality tour, will explore this question first-hand this summer. The 11-day tour will start in El Paso Texas, cross the border to Mexico and follow the immigrant path back to Chihuahua, Tlaxcala, Mexico City, and Oaxaca. We will document our trip and our meetings with migrant families, small farmers, rural and human rights activists, and government representatives in a 1-hour TV documentary entitled “El Camino del Migrante,” The Immigrant Trail. For more information about the film or the July 29-August 7 tour, contact immigranttrail@foodfirst.org
