Immigration forum expresses unity

A powerful meeting on the struggle for immigrant rights was held Jan. 22 in New York, with a panel of speakers representing, as event chair Teresa Gutierrez described, “people who are actually fighting the racist attacks the U.S. government commits everyday.”

Teresa Gutierrez, Emma Lozano, Victor Toro, Arturo J. Pérez Saad, Flor Crisóstomo, Marc De La Cruz and Shahid Comrade. Photo: Walter Sinche

Víctor Toro, a founder of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) in Chile in the late 1960s, who faces deportation from the U.S., discussed taking advantage of the economic crisis to build a broad movement, calling on all those affected by the crisis to come together and march in May Day rallies in 2008.

Marc De La Cruz, one of the Sentosa 27—Filipino nurses and one physical therapist who are being tried for trumped-up charges in Long Island, N.Y., after they complained about exploitative working conditions—described their case, where several of the nurses, if convicted, face jail time and deportation. For more information, visit www.s27plus.com.

Flor Crisóstomo, a Mexican immigrant and mother of three, described how she and her brothers ended up in the U.S. from her native Oaxaca: “Every day in Mexico showed the necessity of work and food. ... My brothers were already in college [in Mexico], but in 1995 NAFTA devaluated the Mexican currency and obliged me and my brothers to go north.”

Tearfully she declared, “It’s not easy being without your children for seven years; working, not even asking for welfare and paying taxes, and facing these attacks. ... I am Indigenous and I don’t need to ask permission to come here. This country forced me to come here to work. ... If you really want me to leave, leave us in peace in our own countries.”

On Jan. 28, Crisóstomo announced that she would be taking sanctuary at the Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago—the same church Elvira Arellano received sanctuary.

Black and Brown unity was a recurring theme during the evening. Emma Lozano, a key figure in the support of Arellano and Crisóstomo, pointed out that her brother, Rudy Lozano, was assassinated after helping to forge the unity that resulted in the election of the first Black mayor in Chicago, Harold Washington, in 1983. She said the U.S. is becoming “more people of color—which is ok to them if you’re serving them, but not if you’re resisting.” “Flor says to me,” Lozano reported, “let Blacks and Latin@s unite, and they will tremble.”

The event was sponsored by the New York May 1 Coalition for Immigrant Rights (http://may1.info/).

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