5/1-3 2008 Washington DC: Calling for "A Million Immigrant March"

5/1-3 2008 Washington DC: Calling for La Gran Marcha Nacional 2008, "A
Million Immigrant March"


For more info Contact Jesse Díaz, Jr.
213.725.1714
_granmarchanacional2008 [at] gmail.com_ (mailto:granmarchanacional2008 [at] gmail.com)



Compañeros y Compañeras:

November 05, 2007



Working collectively with our fellow actors in the Movimiento we have
realized drastic actions with tangible results. Last year we marched and buried
HR4437, we boycotted and shut down the Empire for 24 hours by flexing our
labor and consumer power and killed S2611, or as some of us called it
"Sensenbrenner light," and we voted and changed the face of Congress. Still, there is
no legalization proposal on the horizon, ICE continues to raid our
communities, and local elected officials are attempting to pass draconian measures
targeting the livelihood of our people like in Phoenix, AZ. We have reached a
point in the Movimiento for renewed collective measures to push forward the
current campaign for immigration reform. We can't and won't wait until after
the presidential elections! We must centralize our efforts and make our
voices heard loud and clear across the country next year.

We have been nothing but short-changed, back stabbed, and sold out by this
Congress, and most specifically, by even our own in it who have continued to
call for enforcement before legalization. Congress rationalized passing
legislation to construct the wall of shame as a first step to immigration reform,
and, as we all knew, there is still no mention of a solution for giving 12
million folks citizenship. We need to make our message clear to Congress,
especially the Hispanic Caucus that if there is no "citizenship" component to a
bill we won't support it. We want the proposals from here on out to
include immediate amnesty as the only resolve; they must understand that you don't
go to a gunfight armed with a knife, and that they sure as hell should not
try to fool us one more time with the so-called "earned citizenship" rhetoric
that caused deep and unwarranted divisions among us last year.

When we have marched over the past year and a half, the foremost demand
conveyed in both the homemade and printed signs, among the speakers, and in the
outreach media such as flyers distributed among the Pueblo, is the demand for
full, unconditional, immediate amnesty for the undocumented folks here in the
US, and it should be, it is the primary goal of the Movimiento por los
Derechos de Inmigrantes. The Pueblo is not silent, the government won't listen.
In the recent campaign for a so-called immigration reform, specifically the
"grand bargain," Lou Dobbs et al, used the term Amnesty against us, we must
not allow this to happen. We as a Movimiento must take back and collectively
embrace the term "amnesty." Again, amnesty is not a radical term; it is not
an extremist point of view to use this word. Amnesty for many of our
people was accomplished once in this country in 1986 and it should be done again
because the stakes are much higher now, 12 million undocumented folks are
being attacked in low intensity psychological and political warfare. Our
people are well aware of this.

Those who are on the fringes of the Movimiento, promote a pathway to
citizenship, but that is not the central goal of the Movemiento. Settling for
citizenship while working for minimum wages after twenty years and the earning
the right to vote is hardly what is best for our people. The Democrat's
agenda to institute an "essential worker" program was questionable but surprising
to many of us. We have already experienced this debacle. We know guest
worker programs spawn corruption and the exploitation of labor and wages for
the "authorized worker." This is hardly what is in the best interest of our
people. Ask any one of the Ex-Braceros who are still in the struggle for
their wages decades later. The Hispanic Caucus must consider our past
experience with guest workers, not discount it as mere "Mexican history," to
reiterate, this is US history, the country to which they have pledged their
allegiance and service. For everything that is sacred in our community we must
fight against this unjust proposal to legalize our people qua institutionalized
servitude among the working poor.

There was a meeting in DC on October 25th with 4 of the 30 members of the
Hispanic Caucus, which was designed to walk us down the little moderate brick
road…again. But they didn't. Now it is all about a work visa only, to be
renewed every five years, with the only possibility for legalization is when
your children turn twenty-one years old and can sponsor you, and according to
Luis Gutierrez, the proclaimed champion of immigration rights, "if you have
no children, then you should go to the bailes on a Saturday night and…" The
rationalization is that "this is what [we] asked for…to stop the raids and
division of the families." And, that "we should work together on this
legislation because we worked against each other and therefore caused many failures
of legislative proposals last year…" To the contrary, we had nothing but
victories last year, the proposals that were proposed would have been
detrimental to our people, just like the Hispanic Caucus' current proposed legislation,
that would only legalize 600,000 parents of the 3.2 million US citizen
children, falls considerably short.

Instead, we should look more closely at our own Immigration Blueprint
created in Los Angeles in January 2007, under the guidance of Peter Schey, a legal
contributor to the IRCA campaign, and at the Sheila Jackson proposal that
preceded even HR4437. We simply want a new legalization program that will
include the 12 million already here; it is not a radical position, we have passed
a legalization program once already in our lifetime, and this time it should
not exclude anyone. Then any legislation proposal must raise the visa cap
for "future flow workers" to never put us in this position again.



Conditions and Action

For over a year now we have conceived a march on Washington DC, not a
regional march, but a national one. We have worked together yet we have worked
apart.

The regional efforts were successful last year, without a doubt. This year,
the boycott on Primero de Mayo was a mere shadow of the previous; let's face
it the conditions were not there yet, but they are here now. El Pueblo
marched and some participated in the not selling, buying, going to school, and or
not going to work requests- set forth by the handful of boycott promoters-
in limited numbers.

Given the conditions now, still no palatable legalization proposal, the
continuance of the raids in our communities, the heightened harassment of the
undocumented by local legislators- such as in Waukegan, Illinois, where the
economic resistance by the Pueblo there has caused stores to shut shop, while
forcing other business stakeholders to not support the legislation against their
undocumented customers- something must be done among us in the Movimiento ,
collectively and nationally that will centralize our efforts in the eyes of
the political establishment. In the Rio Grande Valle, there is fencing still
being proposed to be built along the Texas border, yet the resistance against
it even includes the mayor of Brownsville, where he participated in an
anti-border wall pachanga there last month and the Movement is alive and well in
Texas. In Calexico, there was a No Border encuentro in November 5-11 against
the raids and deportation centers, and everyone was invited to come out share
space and bring new ideas to the table, this group was attacked by the Migra
with teargas and batons, some were arrested.

Other cities around the country are struggling, for instance in Takoma Park,
Maryland, the council is attempting to overturn a decades old sanctuary city
agreement, also in Dane County, Wisconsin, folks in the Movimiento there
support a "county card" that will serve as an viable ID for the undocumented and
children, benefiting both groups without a doubt. There were some brothers
with these cards in DC the other day. And, let's not overlook the HB1804
struggle in Oklahoma City where the battle has heated up in recent days
between pro and anti immigrant groups.

There have been some small but significant victories as well, in Danbury,
Connecticut, the council was forced to allow a protest against the
collaborative 287g ACCESS program with ICE, in Kansas City, a Judge found that an
undocumented brother could not be in violation of probation because he was here
unauthorized and sentenced him only to jail, and an Appeals Panel later ruled
that although he did come into the country unauthorized, there is no
Congressional law that implies if you stay you are doing so unlawfully, it is only the
act of "crossing" that violates Federal law, and of course in Hazelton,
Pennsylvania, where the proposed plan to publicly and economically marginalize our
brothers and sisters was found to be unconstitutional.

In Phoenix, the 287G issue is at the forefront, and many are being unduly
affected by the strong-arm of the law there, who continue to take on federal
immigration law enforcement with little to no legal or political resistance,
our people are leaving the state entirely. In fact at the October 25th
meeting in DC, Congressman Luis Gutierrez refused to touch the issue when asked to
take on the national issue of 287G as part of a review committee. He said,
"I am not going to lie to you, I will not do it." What is the Latino Caucus
waiting for? Nevertheless, Gutierrez did offer to go to Arizona in person
to denounce the measure. Stay tuned.

There are still issues looming such as the saga of our sister Elvira, and
the struggle she has broadened into Mexico, and left behind here in the US,
there are many devoted folks that continue to carry the banner of her struggle,
a few of which we accompanied on September 12 th in DC. Although a
controversial action that alienated some moderate folks from the struggle, I believe
the action in the halls of congress on September 12th led by our carnalito
Saulito Arellano made a powerful statement; we took the struggle right into the
belly of the Beast and their only response was to corner the 100 of us and
put us all under arrest. That was powerful! We need to continue going to DC
and keeping the pressure on…

In terms of the raids, check points, and deportations, they have been
steadily and calculatingly undertaken. ICE officials know that if you were to
spread them out and do a little here and a little there, the response would be
minimal and regional. Again, we need to centralize our efforts. We have
been under low intensity warfare since the spring 2006 mobilizations, the Swift
raids (1,297 arrested), in NYC, in Boston, in Little Village Chicago on April
24 th which enraged the community so much it motivated a large outpouring on
Chicago streets on May 1st, and most recently in Los Angeles (1,327
arrested), what ICE is calling the largest of them all, and the many more in smaller
communities that should not be overlooked. ICE refers to the arrested
innocent bystanders as "collateral damage," when they go in for felons, clearly
establishing the division of our families as part of the sentence for
"harboring" a suspected felon. Part of the local organizing efforts should be to
educate our community not to open the doors to ICE without a tangible warrant.

Relative to the raids in Long Island, NYC, and New Jersey, a legal defense
campaign has been launched by Andrea Siebert ( sieberta@mail. law.cuny. edu or
347-249-7127) and or Laura Perez ( perezl@mail. law.cuny. edu or
718-207-8080) at CUNY School of Law, in an effort to find representation for those that
are being held in Houston, Texas; this is a vitally important struggle.

Appallingly, the President has the power and authority to stop the raids and
yet sought to beef up workplace "enforcement," the Supreme Court has had the
power to impose an injunction on the inhumane raids- and on that note, kudos
to the district court that has stalled the no match letter conundrum and the
AFL-CIO and others who brought the issue to it- yet ICE continues separating
our families as Congress sits vacuously silent and many of our people seek
refuge, or voluntary confinement, in churches around the country. The
establishment is draining us, and has given us no other alternative but to march
and rally on their doorstep in mass, and fill the halls of Congress with our
people lobbying for immediate legalization.

La Gran Marcha Nacional 2008, "A Million Immigrant March"

The rumor is true; a group of us have submitted and received permission to
march on the Capitol next May 1 st through 3rd. We cannot do this alone; we
need everyone's ideas, help, and access to resources. We need all organizers
nationally to help build the infrastructure for this event for the Pueblo to
come and partake in the right to assemble and more importantly to be
recognized as being a part of the very fabric that holds this country together. By
December 11th, we need to have a clear picture of what the action would look
like for the meeting with the DC agencies involved, and invite those that
can attend the meeting with them and the rest of the organizers for this action
from around the country to be there also. Therefore, on December 8 th we
will have a meeting in LA to create the program for the event. The major
projected events for Thursday through Saturday include, rallies, lobbying,
encircle the Capitol, statewide reports, and a marcha. We need organizers from each
state to organize the time for their statewide reports, we then will need
security volunteers and a group that will coordinate them, another point person
to handle first aid, organizers to set-up, break-down, and maintain,
therefore we need someone to coordinate that project. The largest assembly on the
Hill has been nearly 900,000 individuals against the war, and against
reprisals from the establishment, the police, and war supporters; we need to dwarf
this number. It can be done; half of us were there in April 2006, "imagine
bringing the other half?

To be on the working-group listserve, send emails to
granmarchanacional2008 [at] gmail.com. Please send ideas, questions, complaints, volunteer capacities,
access to a stage, entertainment volunteering or contacts, first aid, tent
availability, speakers, etc., to the email address, or come to the first
organizing meeting in Los Angeles on December 8 th, at 10 am at the Placita Olvera
with further ideas and donations (we have raised $10,000 seed money); there
will be places available for you to stay with enough time to prepare. The
follow up meeting will be in Chicago in late January, and hopefully the next in
the greater DC area.

In the meantime, we encourage you to get endorsements from your
organizations, unions, coalitions, churches, home associations, families, immigration
agencies, universities and their clubs, associations, groups, etc., and
entertainers and media outlets, this will take a great big effort of outreaching,
fundraising, and mobilizing, but if everyone pulls their parts in the division
of labor, all of our grains of sand will come together to form the beach on
which to crash the wave of people that has never been seen before in the
history of mass mobilizations to the Capitol.

En solidaridad, and Stay Strong in the Struggle,

Jesse Díaz, Jr., Political Action Committee Chair for La Hermandad Mexicana
Transnacional, Inland Empire, CA

Gloria Saucedo, Director of La Hermandand Mexicana Nacional, Panorama City,
CA

Alicia Flores, La Hermandad Mexicana Transnacional, Oxnard, CA