SCAF at Today’s March against HR 4437

There is a repressive atmosphere in the united states today. The government has unleashed a full attack on the people.

From South Dakota banning abortion, to police getting off for murdering innocent children, to people’s homes being taken away because of gentrification, to the new racist and fascist HR 4437.

These new attacks on immigrants are part of the whole agenda of the people in power and the capitalist system. It is to drive working class people of color who were forced from their homelands in Mexico, Central America, and South America in particular, deeper into the shadows. These workers make up the back-breaking sector in the working class – working the jobs nobody will take up under the worst conditions for the worst pay. This economy lives off the labor of immigrants who pick the food, make the clothes, clean the houses, and basically run society. This new law will create an atmosphere where if they do find a job, it would guarantee them super exploitation, and anybody who assists, fights, and stand in solidarity with them will be criminalized.

Today thousands of High School students walked out of their schools in some of the communities that would be most affected by this bill, in East Los Angeles, and South East Los Angeles. People are stepping up and taking bold actions against the direction that this society is taking – and demanding something else.

We have to build a movement where the most oppressed are leading and in the forefront of their struggles – and where we’re relying on ourselves. We have to build a movement where our tactics are not just to react to this unjust system, but to replace it and build something much more better in its place.

As an anarchist I believe that no human being is illegal, and want to live in a society where one country does not dominate, exploits, and conolizes people. Where borders were a thing of the past – and still people’s cultures and particular histories are upheld.

The Southern California Anarchist Federation will be at tomorrow’s march against HR 4437.

Our contingent will be made up by our communities, and we will be marching with the Port Trucker Association and the Youth Justice Coalition (two organizations we work with)

We will meet on Olympic and Hope at 10am.

Okay. I’m sick of hearing it. I’m going to call bullshit on opposition to this bill.

This is NOT a civil rights issue: likening it to the Civil Rights Movement with quotes like “We have a dream too” is wrong. Nor is this racism or fascism, ShiftShapers. This is a law aimed at more effectively penalizing those who insist on breaking American law.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS BREAK THE LAW.

I don’t care if they’re Haitian, Mexican, Cuban, Canadian or MARTIAN- they need to legitimately apply for citizenship, plain and simple. If people want to become Americans, good on them! The more the merrier!

...Just do it THE RIGHT WAY.

big fucking deal. legality and illegality do NOT equate right and wrong. slavery was legal. the holocaust was legal. ect. ect.

besides, you’re ignoring the fact that the institutions of immigration systemically and systematically make it impossible for most people to emmigrate “the right (‘legal’) way.”

Immigrants Rising Up Against Immigration Reform Bill: Thousands of immigrant rights supporters filled a major Phoenix thoroughfare Friday morning as they marched toward the office of US Senator Jon Kyl in a rally calling for a more humane reform of immigration laws.

The only thing that bothered me about the walk-out yesterday was when I saw a bunch of kids reaping the benefits of America, but chanting “Mexico! Mexico!” If they love Mexico so much, they can go back.

What these people need to realize is that the government doesn’t enforce the policies they have in place NOW, so what does it matter if they pass new laws making it harder to be an illegal? Not like they’ll enforce those…

no human being is illegal.

IMMIGRANTS’ WALL OF DEATH: Latin American leaders say thousands of immigrants will die if the U.S. Congress passes the Sensenbrenner immigration bill.

IMMIGRANTS RISING: Immigrants and their supporters are fighting back against the most anti-immigrant piece of legislation in 80 years.

These guys have been driven from their homes by free trade agreements and the subsequent destruction of agrarian communities in Central America, and often pushed by gangmasters, local businessmen etc.. to the U.S. with the sole aim of protecting the communities they have left. NAFTA and CAFTA have made them citizens of a wider world – and people turn round to say “you are not a citizen, not the same, an invader of my country” when that country has made living in their home nations all but impossible.

Mankind does not exist within borders, but within skin and the boundless imagination.

I’m just wondering, ShiftShapers, do you respond, walk away from the computer, get an idealogy enema, come back, respond again, do a load of “One Earth, One People, One Love” t-shirt laundry, come back and respond yet again, rinse and repeat or do you sit on this one thread for hours at a time without, yet, figuring out how to condense your responses into one solid, incoherant, bumper-stickeresque retort?

If you spent as much time writing your congressman as you did bitching on this thread, you might actually accomplish something. Now the tricky part is to get people to do away with “borders”....

The problem I have with this bill is the provision in it for a 700 mile long wall to be built along the US Mexico border to “keep illegals out of the US”. I keep getting this feeling like the wall isn’t to keep “illegals” out of the US, but to keep us in. After all the East Germans would say they built the Berlin wall to keep the influences etc of the West, out, when the wall was to keep East Germans in….

Soke – how do you know me so well?!? LOL

Legislation Sparks ‘‘Mini Revolution:‘’ About half a million activists have rallied in Los Angeles in California to protest against plans to criminalise undocumented workers. Demonstrators seek an immigration system that is humane and not racist.

“no human being is illegal”

Nonsense – criminals running free are illegal, not legal, criminals…call it what you want.

All these crappy jobs talked about? House cleaning, Janitorial, making clothing, doing dishes. These are jobs I did while in high school and college. Jobs my Son is having a hard time getting now that he finished HS because of the illegal work force.

I know this seems racist to some, but that is because the majority illegal-immigrants are brown. Interesting thing is, my first experiences with issues like these were with the Brits, Swedes and Japanese that were trying to marry US citizens to get citizenship. I was asked twice to help women get citizenship in the US by marrying them.

Of course there’s a degree of race issues here – that’s natural when theres a mss influx of a different race, but it’s a legal issue first and formost.

Playing the race card with this issue is as lame as some neo-con playing the patriot-card.

an activity or behavior (such as crime) or a status (such as undocumented) can be “illegal,” but not a human being him- or herself.

SS – Things and people get labeled, and when its associated with something unsavory it becomes non-PC.

For example. Crippled – Handycapped – Physically Challenged. The latter is what’s acceptable now, give it 5-years and we’ll see what’s next on the list.

If there was a PC term that could be used regarding legal – vs illegal immigration, that would allow us to get away from side-bar issues such as culture, class and race issues and focus on ways to allow people to become legal citizens of this country and defeat the undergound economy? I’d be all for it.

We have to focus on helping the immigrants that are here become productive memebers of society so they can seek legal remedies to their plights, rather than being at the mercy of gangland-law associated with the underground economy exploiting and terrorising immigrants.

If there was a PC term that could be used regarding legal – vs illegal immigration

you mean “undocumented worker” ?!?

what tells me that this is a racist issue more than anything else is that whenever someone mentions “illegal aliens” or even “undocumented workers,” they’re usually refering to, and people usually think of, brown people from mexico, mezoamerica, central america, and south america. i know many illegals. many are students from europe, india, japan, china, and africa who’ve overstayed their visas. they stay in the states and work. and they don’t worry about the INS (now ICE, right?).

side-bar issues such as culture, class and race issues

Eh? What do you mean by “side bar issues”?

Undocumented Workers – right! :-)

Side-Bar issue I am suggesting are issues of race.

We need to continue to give the children of undocumented workers extra attention in education (which is being done in the schools in California{vocational, free meals, free tutors, free day care, free money for college})

And seal-up the borders and yes, deport some of the millions who don’t apply for citizenship and follow our laws in our country.

I know there’s other issues at work here with NAFTA and capitalist abuses. But, like taking cold medicine – a crackdown on undocumented workers and their employers may not cure the cold, but it brings a healthy state back sooner.

I know it’s easier to just dislike everything going on in America – especially with the psychopaths in power for the past several years. But the people who are fighting for a crackdown on undocumented workers are no more racists than the average person of any race in my estimation. Just trying to stem-the-tide.

If a revolution meant the USA and Canada turns in to a Mexico or El Salvador, would that make you guys happy?

We’re busting ass trying to pay a mortage, get our own kids through school and getting children of immigrants educated (wife’s a HS English teacher here in CA) and give them a fair shake at a good life that CONTRIBUTES to society as a whole, not just their family or the gangs that are trying to suck them in.

If a revolution meant the USA and Canada turns in to a Mexico or El Salvador, would that make you guys happy?

of course not. but it’s going to happen anyways. or, rather, economic and industrial collapse is going to render the US into a third world country, and it is out of this, rather than because of it, that revolution will occur. past that, all of industrial civilization is headed for collapse at the hands of a severe energy crisis. it is from these circumstances that true revolution will arise.

We’re busting ass trying to pay a mortage, get our own kids through school and getting children of immigrants educated (wife’s a HS English teacher here in CA) and give them a fair shake at a good life that CONTRIBUTES to society as a whole, not just their family or the gangs that are trying to suck them in.

So uh, would contributing be wearing a nicely starched shirt and tie, brushing up their english and joining a predatory mortgage company? Or what about a corporate lawyer at an oil major?

Both of these are gangs who bring massive misery and warp your/our democracies.

Shiftshapers –

Maybe there will be an economic collapse – as greedy as say the Bilderbergs are I can’t imagine they don’t have a plan that will offer a future for their grandkids. I’m more optimistic than you. I know their are indicators and when energy costs become too great there could also be a crash, but I believe in the human spirit and thatthere’s enough ingenuity and good in the world to keep us above water. I have faith and I know that may not be enough. We’ve all been dying since the day we were born – it doesn’t make me a nihilist. Are you really that cynical. It’s bad enough that it may happen w/o some people wishing it so.

Szamko –

Contributing in a positive manner is what I am talking about- education, work, family, community – what are we without any one of those? Look through the employment section of the newspaper. There’s thousands of descent jobs with opportunity for growth – there’s minority programs that are dying to throw money at people who want to work at an education and career. So yea, if that means learning English and pounding the pavement, inconviniencing yourself so you can find work in close proximity to a place you can afford to live/buy then go for it. These things exist for people in the USA and Canada I’m sure. But, if you isolate yourself and plant the flag of a foreign country in the ground, in your hearts, and in your minds in the middle of California or Texas – your just asking to be perpetuating yourself as a second class citizen.