Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants! Vote Yes on SF Prop F

Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants! Vote Yes on SF Prop F - Yes to School Board Vote for Immigrant Parents


A November 2 ballot measure, Proposition F, would amend the city charter to give immigrant parents or guardians with kids enrolled in public schools the right to vote in school board elections, irrespective of their immigration status, for the next four years. Initiated by Board of Supervisors Green politico Matt Gonzalez, the measure has gained widespread support, as well it should. According to a fact sheet from the Immigrant Voting Project, 37 percent of San Francisco residents are foreign-born. The public school population is less than 10 percent white, 21 percent Latino, 14 percent black and 55 percent Asian or other nonwhite. We demand full citizenship rights for all immigrants and support Prop F as a modest step forward.

From Democratic President Clinton’s militarization of the Mexican border to the bipartisan, police-state USA Patriot Act, immigrant rights have dramatically deteriorated, even as immigration, especially of Latinos and Asians, has rapidly increased. Some 8.6 million Californians, nearly a quarter of the state’s population, are foreign-born. Estimates are that nearly a quarter are “undocumented” and thus “illegal” nonpersons under America’s racist anti-immigration laws.

Even before blacks (1868) and women (1920) won legal voting rights, many states and territories allowed immigrants to vote and even hold office. American history shows that black and immigrant rights go hand in hand. Immigrant voting rights reached their height following the Civil War with Reconstruction. With the betrayal of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow segregation, immigrants also came under attack from Congress, the courts and the racist mobs in the streets. The Ku Klux Klan played an integral role in the passage of the 1924 National Origins Act that barred immigration from Asia and severely limited it from southern and eastern Europe. The 1924 Act was not repealed until 1965 under the impact of the civil rights struggle.

Black oppression is the cornerstone of American capitalism. In the face of the bipartisan attacks on immigrant rights, black rights too have fallen back. While funds for education and social services are slashed, the capitalists who run the state and city attempt to divert the oppressed into fighting one another over the crumbs from the pie. In 1996 Prop 209 passed in the state, wiping out what remained of affirmative action for blacks and Latinos in public education and employment and services. Two years later, with the support of a majority of black voters, Prop 227 passed, gutting bilingual education programs that are crucial for non-English-speaking immigrant populations. The groundwork for the various racist propositions that passed in California was laid by the passage of Prop 187 in 1994—with the support of most black and even some Latino voters—which denied emergency services for undocumented immigrants (since ruled unconstitutional). Now, Bush’s sinister “No Child Left Behind” calls to further strip federal funding from schools with low student performance, along with threats to fire the entire school staff, targeting the powerful teachers unions.

As a result of the 1983 Consent Decree requiring that San Francisco Unified desegregate, the city once had one of the most integrated school districts in the country. In 1994, paralleling the national backlash against school integration and affirmative action programs, some Chinese-American parents filed a Jim Crow legal suit to prevent their children being bused to poorer schools on the city’s east side. Under pressure from that suit and the anti-affirmative-action provisions of Prop 209, in 1999 San Francisco Unified altered its desegregation plan, finally agreeing in 2001 to a “diversity index” based on socioeconomic factors. By the 2003-2004 school year, the number of schools with severe segregation (60 percent or higher of one racial group in one or more grade) had more than tripled, from 13 to 42, out of 114 schools (San Francisco Chronicle, 25 September). Based on state tests, black student performance is not only lower than any other group in the district, but lower than their “counterparts statewide and in other major urban centers” (Report No. 21, Consent Decree Monitor, 28 September). Furthermore, “white flight” has meant a drop in the number of white students in the San Francisco public schools by more than a third.

The urgent concern for decent education for their children unites all working people. A major source of the black-immigrant tension is the terrible underfunding of the public schools across the country, especially in the inner cities. Reliance on pressuring politicians and the school board can’t win the resources that public schools need—that will take the mobilization of the power of labor for free, quality education for all, taking up the active defense of immigrant rights and the struggle against racist discrimination.

School Board voting rights for immigrant parents is an elementary democratic demand that undercuts the bosses’ divide-and-conquer strategy and facilitates uniting all the oppressed behind labor power. Important labor support for Prop F includes SEIU Locals 250 and 790, BART transit workers ATU Local 1555, hotel workers UNITE HERE Local 2—a heavily immigrant union now in the middle of a vicious employer lockout—and the San Francisco Labor Council. Yes on Prop F! Defend public education! Free, quality education for all through university! Full citizenship rights for all immigrants!
26 October 2004

Spartacist League
Box 29497, Oakland CA 94604
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