People rise up against immigration raids
By Adrian Garcia
Los Angeles
As California's Border Patrol was conducting a
racist campaign of raids specifically targeting Latino
communities, hundreds of undocumented workers, members of
immigrant-rights organizations, churches and anti-war groups
took to the streets of Los Angeles June 26 to demand an
immediate end to the raids.
Local news station KCAL reported that between June 1 and
June 16 approximately 7,000 undocumented workers had been
detained and/or deported. Immi grant families find themselves
in a state of terror. People are keeping their kids away from
school, opting not to go to work and staying away from shopping
centers for fear of being rounded up.
"Bush racista, eres terrorista" ("Racist Bush, you are a
terrorist") reverberated through the militant crowd marching
down Broadway Blvd. to the approval of the predominantly Latin@
onlookers, some of whom joined the march.
Organizers of the day's event--Latino Movement USA,
Hermandad Mexicana and the ANSWER coalition--called for a
cessation of the raids, amnesty for all undocumented workers
and their right to obtain driver's licenses.
Sako Sefiani, an organizer for the Inter national Action
Center and a Work ers World Party mem ber, clas si fied the
recent raids as "racial profiling, pure and simple." Sefiani
made the connection between the war against working people at
home and the U.S. imperialist campaign against working people
abroad.
"The people of Falluja [Iraq] fought back against U.S.
occupation, and we must unite and give our solidarity to the
Iraqi resistance, immigrants who face round-ups and to Black
people, who face police beatings in this country," proclaimed
Sefiani.
Hwan Sa Kim of Korean Americans for Peace and Justice spoke
about the need to fight for the rights of all immigrants who
find themselves under attack.
Muna Coobtee of the Free Palestine Alliance addressed the
relentless and illegal assault against the people of Palestine
by the state of Israel and presented the similarities in the
treatment of immigrants in this country with the treatment of
Palestinians in their occupied homeland.
Juan Jose Gutierrez, coordinator of Latino Movement USA,
urged people to stay involved in the struggle. He asked the
crowd to be part of the 10th-anniversary demonstration
commemorating the historic struggle against the reactionary
Proposition 187 that was aimed at preventing undocumented
immigrants from receiving medical care and schooling.
Another militant demonstration of 5,000 protestors marched
against the Border Patrol's raids in the working class
neighborhood of Maywood, Calif., June 27. These protests send a
clear message to the bosses in Washington that the people will
unite and take their struggle to the streets until justice for
all workers and oppressed people is achieved.
Reprinted from the July 8, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
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