In solidarity and support of Immigrant Rights.

[Tom Joad]

I find it disturbing that the greatest page is almost completely devoid of any mention of what is taking place on the streets of the USA at this very moment.

Actual social change does not happen at the whim of politicians, because with few exceptions, they are a cautious people, and will not move far from the status quo, no matter how vile that may be. (Witness how long it has been since the mass of American people have rejected the Iraq war, but still many politicians are afraid of "premature" withdrawal). Real social change comes from the movement and organization of common people.

So it must be that we support what may be one of the most massive workday protests in US history.
No massive movement for social change can happen without sacrifice, without inconvenience, without confrontation. Today immigrants are taking a strong and courageous stand.

Today On May 1st, international demonstrations are demanding a comprehensive immigrant reform to ensure the rights and dignity of our immigrant communities. We need massive mobilizations like this to *demand* an justice for immigrants, and *demand* an end to US criminal occupation of Iraq, and for economic and environmental justice. This can be just one example of what is to come, and what must come if we are to change U.S. society in a meaningful way.

This won't come from politicians (even the best of them), or from entertainers, it will come from masses of people making demands for justice.

Are we at DU to stand in support, or are we just sitting around waiting for the next Daily Show rerun on TV?

Away from the TV's and computer screens and into the streets!
Viva La Huelga!

"Wherever there is a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there." -- Tom Joad

[alcibiades_mystery]

1. Hasta la victoria siempre

Ayup.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. I'll bet a lot of us...

are out marching now.

[goclark]

3. I'm headed out of the door to join in the March right now

Our wonderful gardener worked Sunday so that he could join in support of his friends today.

I support him and I believe in Marching for RIGHTS.

So many people of all colors Marched with my people through many Civil Rights struggles.

This is the same thing to me.

Recommended and Kicked.

[mshasta]

4. sacramento is in da' house...

THE WAR IN IRAQ, THAT IS ILLEGAL...STOP THEM NOW...

[Igel]

5. I'm in favor of immigrant rights.

I'm also in favor of law enforcement and respecting sovereignty.

There's no contradiction there, however much some people want to perceive one.

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. You do understand how hard it is to immigrate from Mexico these days?

Tell me, if you had a family to feed, would you break the law to cross the border to do so? I know I would. And I am not a criminal either.

[Kurovski]

18. Especially when you know full well that you will be welcomed

with open arms by both businesses and individuals alike, clamoring to pay for your services.

It's guaranteed.

[proud2BlibKansan]

20. It's a fair wage issue

We need to be pounding that message. We all benefit when wages are fair.

[VolcanoJen]

23. That's exactly it.

I find myself so torn on the immigration issue, and I just don't know what the solution is.

Having worked in the restaurant industry for the last ten years, I've seen the shift to low-wage immigrant workers happen right before my eyes. Now, I adore the workers at my restaurant. They're fun, they're light-hearted, they're always in a good mood, and they work hard. Unfortunately, I can't communicate with them, and it's incredibly frustrating when you're trying to a manage a restaurant and you have to spend fifteen minutes finding someone who can translate.

But they also work cheap. Dirt cheap. And that's why they're in the kitchen, not because of some kind of goodwill or outreach. They're being exploited as cheap labor, and it's crushing the working class.

God, I hope this post doesn't make me sound like a xenophobe; most everyone here knows I'm just a good old-fashioned liberal. This issue absolutely tears me up.

I don't know which way to go.

[proud2BlibKansan]

25. Fighting for fair wages is a winner for all workers.

Plus, that battle is way overdue.

I know what you mean about the language difference. It CAN be frustrating. We need to provide more opportunities for them to learn English and for us to learn Spanish.

[vickitulsa]

27. So glad to hear someone say this Volcanojen!

I've been wanting to for some time, but I've worried about being misunderstood and flamed. Haven't been able to afford a flamesuit!

But one of the hardest things about being a thinking person is you can often see both sides (or many sides) of an issue, and that means it gets difficult to take a "yes or no" type stand.

It was only after reading a great many threads here at DU over a period of time that I decided I could feel comfortable here, for instance. Yet still I hesitate to voice some of my thoughts -- and particularly on THIS topic!

I've wanted to speak aloud to somebody five simple words: "I'm TORN on this issue!"

At least one thing good is already coming from the immigrants' taking the day off work to march: The dialogue has no been officially and irrevocably engaged. No more ignoring all the problems -- indeed, the tragedies -- inherent in the status quo. SOMETHING has to be done ... now if we can only figure out WHAT.

Another thing I'm hopeful about: Perhaps all Americans who want the U.S. out of Iraq (and don't forget about Afghanistan) will SEE just how effective and powerful the massive marches by immigrants can be, so they'll turn out in even larger numbers to demonstrate against Bush&Co's illegal wars after this.

Is it just me, or has anyone else begun to feel the ground trembling underneath us as current events bring back strong memories of the Sixties?? :hippie:

We really CAN "shake the world" and compel politicians to change course if we want it badly enough to get out in the streets en masse. Many during the Vietnam War just never dreamed the demonstrations and protests could accomplish anything good, but without the voicing of our outrage, that war would have gone on for many more years, most likely.

It will be most interesting to see what comes of the immigrants' marches today!

[VolcanoJen]

28. Hugs, Vicki.

:hug: :hug: :hug:

"I feel the earth move under my feet..."

[Tom Joad]

29. Damn straight! And a fair trade issue too.

We need to push that too. No more neo-liberal corporate-friendly trade agreements.

[Igel]

30. It's also hard to get to find

a dissertation topic in some fields, but that doesn't mean that either a dissertation shouldn't be required, or the topic should be made trivially easy or redundant.

Immigration controls serve not the interests of the immigrants, but of the nation that institutes them. Thus has it ever been, thus even the countries in Central and South America perceive it, and it is rightly so. Mexican immigration policy is not intended to cater to Guatemalan immigrants for their own sake, Guatemala's is not dictated by Hondurans their own sake. Mexican immigration policy is intended to serve, one would think, at least some subset of Mexicans. The same is true for most countries. Those for which it isn't true it's simply not a problem, because few want to immigrate.

It's hard--damned hard--to immigrate from Mexico. They have a very favorable immigration quota but it's swamped by the number of applicants. But I think if we make it easy for everybody that wants to be here just because they want to be here, we should do so honestly and not preferentially; we should aid those that can't walk in their goal of arriving here. The population of the US would quickly increase until the living conditions--pay, diet, environment, crowding, education, etc.--in the US and elsewhere were roughly equal. Long before that point was reached I'd be trying to immigrate to a country with a sane, not a suicidal immigration policy, and probably be turned down.

[fasttense]

6. They aren't marching for justice

They are marching for free access to US jobs and amnesty. Now where have I heard that they are marching for better working conditions and reasonable pay. They are sponsored by the big corporations who can't get enough of cheap labor and complaisant workers.

[proud2BlibKansan]

15. That's strange

I sure see a lot of signs demanding fair wages. This was also mentioned in the emails I got about our rally today.

[noamnety]

7. K&R

with them in spirit.

[fleabert]

8. Si se peude... I stand (white as white can be) with my husband, an US born

Mexican of Mexican immigrants- legal and illegal among them all.

[earthside]

9. It's a Bait and Switch

I hope most DUers are smart enough not to fall for this transnational corporatist bait and switch ploy.

After the illegal immigrants get their "rights," and there is amnesty, and we have virtually open borders, and millions more impoverished people are forced out of their own countries ... because of the political cover provided by the compassion of liberals and progressives --- THEN the wage lowering and benefit cutting will get underway big time.

That is why I will not march in support of the immigration reform position of George W. Bush and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And that is what is going on today.

Better to stay home and watch the Colbert clip a couple more times.

[Tom Joad]

14. They are lowering wages. cutting health care. And you want us to

oppose other workers (or sit quietly at home when other workers are being attacked) and not confront the corporate goons?

Fox News agrees.

[proud2BlibKansan]

16. Faux - I watched them last week one morning

Their lead story was about diseases brought across the border by Mexicans. Then they did a story on Mexicans stealing SS numbers.

[Tom Joad]

17. Scary KKK-like shit, ain't it.

[proud2BlibKansan]

19. I was in NY on Sat for the march

and met a whole group of DUers. We went out to eat and one of the things we talked about is how disappointing it is to see the anti immigration rhetoric here on DU. We ALL agreed. That sure was nice to hear.

[alcibiades_mystery]

21. Open borders cut both ways

Closed borders are nostalgic, the inability to face the new global capitalism that we actually, in fact, confront. Just as the workers of the nineteenth century had to invent new ways of facing the oppression that they confronted in the new wage labor system, the workers of the 21st century will have to invent new ways of facing global capitalism. The old ways are bankrupt; at best they confront a ghost, a form of capital no longer in existence. When we pretend that closed borders is a strategy for confronting global corporatism, we are merely being nostalgic. We are not inventing new weapons. We need more open borders, not less of them. We need to forge a new strategy for confronting the new forms of global corporatism, not pine for the old days when the old strategies actually worked. In fact, the only ones who are being took here are the nationalists, the closed border crowd, who are being used by the globalists in this transitional period to reduce the demand for free movement of labor and global solidarity among workers, the only thing that the global capitalists fear. As long as there remain some nationalists, waving their flags like silly imbeciles, global corporatism can proceed uninterrupted, speeding the flows of abstract capital while blocking the flows of concrete labor. But these nationalists, of course, will be the joke soon enough, for global capitalism will liquidate the borders along with any forms of resistance based on the old wage labor system, both of which global corporatism will soon be able to do without.

[mitchtv]

10. Our march is in Palm Springs at 4pm PDT (so hot today)

several hours from now. We will end at Mary Bono's office.I will go.

[YankeyMCC]

11. K & R

The inherent rights of human beings have nothing to do with arbitrary boundary lines or citizenship tests.

[YOY]

13. I know quite a few immigrants who won't be marching

Of course they're here legally...and many of them resent the illegals. This is just what they tell me and I simply listen.

:shrug:

Flame away, but it's true. I teach ESL to Korean Immigrants and and am married to a Bulgarian woman.

The Koreans (and these are not Rev. Moon's folks...that crowd get ESL at their churches) started asking me how to say things in Spanish. I know a bit of Spanish, but not enough to be considered capable in the language. I asked why and they told me that a good number of latin folks who are here illegally and that they work with do not know and do not want to know English. THIS IS JUST WHAT THEY SAID AND NOT MY OPINION before anyone jumps down my throat!

One guy, an electrician by trade, was furious. He saved and jumped through every hoop and works like hell just to get and keep his visa. He claimed that he does everything legally and he feels as though these 'villagers' were getting more breaks than he gets (or wants to get.) His roommates are illegal and some have been in the country for several years and still do not know English anywhere near his level (which is roughly intermediate...very good for one year here.)

My wife is an immigrant as well and is disturbed by how some people make the immigration process look extremely complicated. It is not as difficult as some make it out to be. She has a bee in her bonnet about the spin being about immigration when it is really about illegal immigration and the employers who get away with hiring at ridiculous wages and no benefits. She knows other Eastern European immigrants who feel the same.

There are a good number of DUers that disagree with them, but hell I'm just repeating what they said.

Sorry, but there is more to this issue than meets the eye and there are people behind it that I am not sure that I trust.

:shrug:

[suffragette]

22. K&R for solidarity

Beautifully stated.
I'll be heading out later to march here.

[Kashka-Kat]

24. support for what? what exactly are "immigrant rights"? Im baffled--

Someone pls tell me-- exactly how immigrant rights (ie amnesty, open borders, disregard for labor laws) can co-exist with the traditional pro-labor, pro-workers rights Democratic party stance..???

Been asking on this board for a while now and not getting response. In all sincerity--am I missing something here?

Maybe you have to live in the Rust Belt to understand, but it does not bode well when formerly good paying skilled trades like roofing, carpentry, etc. are now going to undocumented immigrants for much less $$ & no benefits.

These are NOT just "jobs no one else wants to do". These are my cousins,siblings, and neighbors-- working class folks.

Now, if we were going after the EMPLOYERS to get them to adhere to labor laws.... well, now I could go along with that...

[sinkingfeeling]

26. I'm in full support. Not buying a thing today and will try to join up at

protest after work.