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Street Protest Actions with More Planned
Protests for immigrants' rights are beginning in cities around the country like the week of them in the San Francisco Bay Area from February 26 through March 2. Throughout the week, community leaders, people of faith, labor leaders, teachers and youths rallied against ICE raids and guest worker programs speaking out for "yes to legalization for all (undocumented workers)."
Similar actions are planned elsewhere including in Chicago by a group called the March 10 Movement named after the 500,000-strong largest ever protest in the city held on that date in 2006. They'll include rallies for passage of real immigration reform including a path to legalization for all undocumented workers and an end to detentions and deportations. The first of the planned marches was held on March 10 - of course - in the city's downtown area to be repeated each week "until there is a real solution" from Congress, signed into law. If they follow through, it will mean a long spring and summer of protest marches.
Last year's mass Chicago march inspired millions of immigrants and supporters to rally in cities around the country that helped defeat the worst parts of anti-immigration legislation mostly crafted in the racist House Sensenbrenner bill now a dead letter. Since then, however, no progress for reform has been made and pending action from the compromise House-Senate bill and most recent new House proposal will continue an ongoing war on immigrants only mass opposition street protests have a chance to stop the way last year's actions achieved modest success now stalled and slipping.
That's how things are now in a nation dedicated to permanent war, a bipartisan criminal class in Washington beholden to capital, and workers everywhere losing out in a race to the bottom. Poor Latinos (and all Muslims) face some of the worst of it, and those in Mexico and Central America face a Hobson's choice. Wither at home under NAFTA and CAFTA or try making it north to suffer abuse and neglect in an uncaring state dedicated to keeping its tired and poor and huddled masses permanently that way. That's the message from Congress in the kind of "immigration reform" being crafted, but Latinos and others on the streets have other ideas.
At over 45 million strong, Latinos are now the largest ethnic group in the country and fastest growing with its Mexican component rising fastest of all. Nowhere is this more apparent than in California where about one-third of all Latinos live and make up over one-third of the state's population of 36 million. It's even more pronounced in Los Angeles where Latinos are now a majority providing a future glimpse of America with this group becoming more dominant than ever but still marginalized, demeaned and denied real equity and justice in a country clinging to its Christian white supremacist roots.
That can only change with mass civil disobedience street protests, employer boycotts and a campaign targeting Congress for justice long delayed and denied and now demanded in the current legislative session. Real change never comes from the top down. It's always from the bottom up that's unstoppable when enough people mobilize in the streets and halls of power for it.
That's where things now are entering spring that promises months of rallies and protests around the country. With enough of them, Congress might start hearing the Immigrant Solidarity Network's message that "We are all humans (and) no one is illegal," and the one from the Mexican American Political Association that Mexican and Hispanic people want and deserve the same constitutional and democratic freedoms all others in America are entitled to. That's what they say and want. Now they're coming out again demanding it. Stay tuned.
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