BALTIMORE
Rally kicks off immigrant freedom march
By Sharon Black
Baltimore
On Sept. 7, some 300 union and community
activists gathered at St. Matthews Catholic Church in
Baltimore's Eastside community to kick off the Immigrant
Workers Freedom March, which will culminate in Queens, N.Y., on
Oct. 4.
Members of UNITE, the garment and textile workers union, who
are involved in a campaign to organize the Mayflower laundry,
helped fill the hall. There were also members of Hotel and
Restaurant Employees Local 7, and Food and Commercial Workers
Local 27.
Advocate groups for immigrant workers and community groups
joined the effort. They include CASA of Maryland, Hispanic
Ministry, Catholic Labor Committee, All Peoples Congress,
American Friends Service Committee and many others.
Those present represented workers from around the world.
Workers from Kenya and other African countries participated
along with immigrant workers from Mexico and other parts of
Central and Latin America. Filipino workers clapped as
undocumented workers discussed how they suffer at the hands of
ruthless bosses.
Maryland and D.C. AFL-CIO President Fred Mason was cheered
as he proclaimed, "The Bush regime creates the conditions in
many poorer countries that force workers to emigrate." Mason,
the state's highest-ranking African American labor leader,
recounted his own plight in rural Virginia and how he was
forced to emigrate to find adequate work.
Steven Ceci, an organizer of daycare workers with the
Service Employees union, remarked: "Every worker should support
the upcoming Oct. 4 demonstration. There are no boundaries in
the workers' struggle. This country was built on the labor of
millions of kidnapped people from Africa. Workers from Haiti,
the Dominican Republic, Honduras and so many other parts of the
world have been forced from their countries for economic and
political reasons. Their labor along with that of many other
workers keeps the hotels, laundries, kitchens and factories
running. You can see by the great turnout tonight that Balti
more's unions are beginning to forge the unity capable of
breaking the reactionary racism of the post- Sept. 11
frenzy."
Reprinted from the Sept. 18, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
HOME
:: U.S. NEWS ::
WORLD NEWS ::
EDITORIALS ::
SUBSCRIBE ::
DONATE
Email
this article
Printable
page