the Long Legacy of Anti-Mexican Violence at the Border

To Understand the El Paso Massacre, Look to the Long Legacy of Anti-Mexican Violence at the Border David Dorado Romo August 9, 2019 The Texas Observer The El Paso shooter wasn’t a “lone wolf.” His act of white supremacist terror is part of a century of racial violence targeting fronterizo communities.

People visit a makeshift memorial at the scene of a mass shooting in El Paso. , AP Photo/John Locher

In the immediate aftermath of the El Paso shooting—the largest massacre of Latinx people in the history of the United States—politicians of all stripes stood before the cameras and gave their diagnosis of what just happened. They sounded like the proverbial blind men who touched one part of the elephant and confused the different fragments for the whole. El Paso Mayor Dee Margo, a Republican who once praised the “freedom fence” for keeping out “riff raff,” emphasized that the atrocity was committed by an outsider. Other voicesblamed mental health, video games, and the lack of gun control laws. But none of these diagnoses went deep enough, looking only at the symptoms. Before we know how to fight back effectively against white supremacist terrorism like the El Paso massacre, we have to know exactly what we’re up against. History offers an important instrument to determine the root causes of what I characterize as a deadly epidemic. The chilling manifesto reportedly posted online by the alleged shooter tapped into entrenched narratives with deep roots in the history of the U.S.-Mexico border. It’s unlikely that the 21-year-old from Allen, Texas, knew just how utterly repetitive his words and actions were. The height of Texas Ranger violence against Mexicans occurred from 1915 to 1919, with some 300 ethnic Mexicans murdered between 1915 and 1916 alone.  UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS The shooter wrote that he was protecting whites in America from “cultural and ethnic replacement” brought on by “the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” He claimed that “Hispanics will take control of the local and state government of my beloved Texas, changing policy to better suit their needs.”

Number of Mexican unauthorized immigrants decline. Pew

Pew Research Center:

Mexicans decline to less than half the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population for the first time.

More.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/12/us-unauthorized-immigrant-population-2017/

Farm Workers Win Election in Washington State

FARM WORKERS WIN A WATERSHED ELECTION IN WASHINGTON STATE
By David Bacon
The Nation, 10/3/16
http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.de/2016/10/farm-workers-win-watershed-election-in.html
https://www.thenation.com/article/why-these-farm-workers-went-on-strike-and-why-it-matters/



The children of migrant farm workers and their supporters march to the processing plant at Sakuma Brothers Farms


Burlington, WA-There is not much love lost between the owners of Sakuma Brothers Farms and Ramon Torres, the president of Familias Unidas por la Justicia. Sakuma Brothers is one of the largest berry growers in Washington state, and Familias Unidas is a grassroots union organized by the company's workers. Torres used to work in the Sakuma fields. He was fired after the strikes by pickers in 2013 in which the union was formed.

This month, on September 12, the workers finally voted in an election to demonstrate what really needed no proof - that they supported the union they formed three years ago. This election is a watershed: Familias Unidas por la Justicia is the first union organized by farm workers in the United States in many years.

The balloting took place over four hours at the company office, two hours north of Seattle, surrounded by Sakuma's blueberry fields. After all the votes had been cast, Torres and a small group of workers and supporters drove over to the polling place to watch the count. A company manager balked, however. The ever.  The count couldn't take place as long as Torres was on the property, he said.

After a lot of arguing, the workers retired to a local schoolyard, together with Richard Ahearn, former regional director of the National Labor Relations Board. There, on the tailgate of a pickup belonging to State Senator John McCoy, Ahearn counted the ballots. The result: 195 for the union, and 58 against.

Jeff Johnson, who heads the Washington State Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, was part of the workers' group.  "The irony of where the votes were tallied was hard to miss," he said later. "The majority of students at that elementary school are Latino, Senator McCoy has been a fierce advocate for these workers, and this is as much a public victory as a union victory."

The union is a grassroots organization formed by the pickers themselves, and is led by indigenous Mixtec and Triqui migrants from the southern Mexico states of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas. A union contract at Sakuma Brothers could give this union the stability and resources needed to make substantial changes in the economic conditions of its own members, and of farm workers across western Washington.

Strikes and organizing among agricultural laborers, especially indigenous migrants, has been on the rise all along the Pacific coast over the last several years.  The election in Burlington and a new contract will further raise the expectations of thousands of people working in the fields, from northern Mexico to the Canadian border.  "This is a new dawn," Torres said. "When we were celebrating afterwards, people began saying, 'From now on we know what the future of our children is going to be.'"

Organize Against a Trump Victory

DSA believes that a Donald Trump presidency would represent a victory for the most reactionary nativist, misogynist, Islamophobic and racist forces in the country. A Trump administration would bring immediate harm to many people and would create conditions hostile to organizing for progressives. Therefore, DSA will work with the emerging labor, immigrant, and anti-racist-led “Dump Trump” movement. For this reason, we do not endorse the #BernieOrBust tactic, though we understand the sentiment behind it. Our perspective can best be summarized as: “Dump the Racist Trump: Build the Left from the Grassroots Up.” 

See the complete list of talking points  here:

http://www.dsausa.org/talking_points_for_dsa_s_electoral_work_dl

See more:  Trump, Racism and the Left.

http://www.dsausa.org/trump_racism_and_the_left_dl

We Cannot Have a Candidate Who Insults Mexicans and Latinos, women, African Americans and Muslims.

Tenemos Familias | Bernie Sanders

Many of these workers can not vote. It is up to us to vote for them.
If you cannot vote, you can still campaign for candidates and assist opposing campaigns  with literature distribution.  One of the most effective things you can do is to work with campaigns and to talk with your friends, neighbors, and families.

The Latino Vote Must Take Down Donald Trump !

Others Will Not Do This

By Duane Campbell,

Mexican American Digital History Project.

Trump’s Racially Divisive Politics Must Be Exposed and Opposed !

The intolerant agitation promoted by Republican Donald Trump and support of its substance by most Republican candidates is a call to the “silent white majority” and a demand that 11 million immigrants be deported.  This campaign is a dangerous and divisive racial message.  It must be vigorously opposed.

We know these campaigns to be dangerous. It is not only the ranting of a fringe right.

If you cannot vote, you can still campaign for candidates and assist opposing campaigns  with literature distribution.  One of the most effective things you can do is to work with campaigns and to talk with your friends, neighbors, and families.

Trump’s popularity among Republican voters has dramatically risen in the polls.    He leads the Republican Party campaign for president and determines the terms of the debate .  Cruz  and Rubio  have  a similar policy on immigration,  Build walls, deport people.  This fear mongering political message has found a very receptive base within our society among xenophobic and angry conservative sectors.

Trump Proposes an Inhumane Immigration Plan - Washington Post

Ed. note. To its credit, the Washington Post recognized the Trump deportation plan for what it is. 

Washington Post

By Editorial Board November 11

“WE HAVE a country that’s going to hell.” So pronounced Donald Trump, candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, at Tuesday night’s debate. If Mr. Trump thinks that now, it’s likely many Americans would come to agree with him were they to see the economic and social upheaval unleashed in carrying out his plan to forcibly deport more than 11 million undocumented immigrants, a major portion of whom are employed, have lived in the United States 15 years or more and have children and other relatives who are U.S. citizens.

Mr. Trump, who has stirred up so much enthusiasm for mass deportations, is now offering what he evidently regards as an exemplary template: the far more modest but still massively cruel round-’em-up-and-throw-’em-out program carried out, mainly in the summer of 1954, under the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Ed. note. As we argued on Sept 1, Trump is Dangerous.
http://antiracismdsa.blogspot.com/2015/09/trump-is-dangerous.html

Mass Deportation: How Do You Deport 11 Million People?

Good video.  Ignores the 1,000,000 Mexicans deported in the 1930's, including over 500,000  US citizens,and the 1,000,000 Mexicans deported in Operation Wetback in the 1950's.

Mexican Farmworkers in Historic Strike

Al Jazeera Documentary Shows Mexican Farmworkers’ Struggles in Historic Strike

Rachel Luban   June 20, 2015

In These Times

A historic farmworker uprising ignited this March in Baja California, Mexico. Thousands of crop pickers stopped work at peak harvest in the valley of San Quintin, a major source of the U.S.’s tomatoes, cucumbers and berries, demanding better pay, legally mandated benefits and an end to sexual harassment in the fields. Fault Lines’ “Invisible Hands” premieres on Al Jazeera America on Monday, June 22nd at 10 p.m. Eastern time/ 7 p.m. Pacific.





Farmworkers in Baja California, Mexico earned $7 to $8 per day—not hour—before the historic strike, making it even more difficult to walk off the job and forgo what little wages they earned., Peter Haden / Flickr / In These Times,

[Reprinted with permission from In These Times. All rights reserved.]

A historic farmworker uprising ignited this March in Baja California, Mexico. Thousands of crop pickers stopped work at peak harvest in the valley of San Quintin, a major source of the U.S.’s tomatoes, cucumbers and berries, demanding better pay, legally mandated benefits and an end to sexual harassment in the fields, among other improvements. The months-long movement received surprisingly little media attention on this side of the border—even though, according to a new documentary by Al Jazeera America, it is the first strike of this scale in Mexico in over a decade.

The short documentary, “Invisible Hands,” offers some of the first footage for U.S. audiences of the front lines of the uprising. It shows police crouching behind barriers to shoot rubber bullets at protestors; it shows hundreds of workers crowded outside negotiations with growers and government representatives in nighttime darkness, their backs turned to the police; most important, it shows what the men and women behind the protests endure to get produce to U.S. grocery stores.

Host Josh Rushing says, “It’s hard to understand how they could get by on the wages they’re paid here,” which were $7 to $8 per day—not hour—when the protests began. The workers interviewed in the documentary do barely get by. Ana, a raspberry picker who started working in the fields at age 12, now has children of her own to take care of. Even though she works at least six days a week, sunup to sundown, food is scarce. Her family can’t afford meat and often forgoes cereal, milk and cheese. “We only buy eggs, soup, rice, beans, the cheapest oil there is,” she says. They have no refrigerator—they can’t afford the electricity.

The workers’ poverty puts them in a weak bargaining position and makes walking off the job even more difficult. While the companies face lost profits, the workers face hunger. How long they can hold out without pay? “Invisible Hands” shows how the protestors’ militancy cannot keep their demands from plunging: they first demand almost $20 a day; the growers counteroffer with a raise of only about 50 cents. The workers return with a much lower proposal of $13 a day. But even that is too much for the growers. The protests all but ended this month with a mixed victory for the pickers: They have been promised government-required benefits and between $9.50 and $11.50 a day, depending on where they work—far less than they had originally demanded.

The documentary focuses almost exclusively on the wage struggles of the San Quintin workers, but hints of other battles within the strike pop up throughout. At a checkpoint where workers raise money to be able to continue striking, a woman holds up a sign reading “No more sexual harassment against women workers.” Ana is seen working long, meagerly paid days, highlighting the lack of overtime pay the pickers are also fighting against.

If these all seem like problems for Mexican growers to solve, “Invisible Hands” implicates the U.S. in the workers’ destitution. It is the newest episode in Al Jazeera America’s series “Fault Lines,” which explores the United States’s economic and political role in the world. In this case, U.S. companies’ role is to exert downward pressure on the wages and working conditions of the people “at the bottom of our food system,” as Rushing says.

“The tendency of the industry is for the retailer to squeeze the supplier,” says Eric Holt-Gimenez of the Institute for Food and Development Policy, a progressive U.S.-based think tank. “So who does the supplier squeeze? The supplier squeezes the workers.”

Fernando Rodriguez, the CEO of Los Pinos, a major exporter of tomatoes, says paying workers more than the minor increases the growers offered would put him out of business. While he speaks to Rushing onscreen, workers literally run through his fields with buckets of green tomatoes—they are paid based on how much they pick. The costs of production and transportation are steep, Rodriguez says, and supermarkets have a higher profit margin than he does.

“This is a tremendously wealthy food system,” Holt-Gimenez says. “Six trillion dollars a year. It’s just very poorly distributed.” It is the nature of the food system, he says, to render workers like Ana invisible. “When you pick up an apple, you don’t see the labor in that apple . . . You walk down the grocery aisle, think about all this phantom labor embodied in all those products. We don’t see it.”


“Invisible Hands” begins to make that phantom labor visible.


“We break ourselves working in the fields,” says a raspberry picker for BerryMex, a supplier for U.S. company Driscoll’s. Fearing retaliation, she speaks with her face covered by the lavender bandanna she wears in the field. She shows Rushing the thorns in her hands and arms she hasn’t been able to pick out. “It’s like sandpaper,” he says, feeling her skin.

When he tells her how much raspberries sell for in the U.S., she scarcely believes him. “How is it possible that they sell their product for so much money and they pay us so little for it?” The growers pay them “una miseria,” a pittance, she says again and again.


Fault Lines’ “Invisible Hands” premieres on Al Jazeera America on Monday, June 22nd at 10 p.m. Eastern time/ 7 p.m. Pacific.


Rachel Luban is a writer living in Maryland. She contributes to Full Stop and her work has appeared on Jezebel, The Rumpus, and In Our Words. Follow her on Twitter: @rachelcluban.


Portside is proud to feature content from In These Times, a publication dedicated to covering progressive politics, labor and activism. To get more news and provocative analysis from In These Times, sign up for a free weekly e-newsletter or subscribe to the magazine at a special low rate.

Why Mexican Farmworkers Are On Strike

Sonali Kolhatkar

March 26, 2015    Truthdig

As many as 50,000 mostly indigenous workers have stopped harvesting produce for more than a week in protest of labor law violations. What they want is for their basic needs to be met, such as obtaining health care, getting overtime pay and vacation days, and being paid wages higher than the dismal $8 a day that most of them earn.



A farmworker holds his knife before beginning work near Holtville, Calif., earlier this year. The Mexican strike is big news among farmworker communities in the U.S. with ties to Mexico., AP / Gregory Bull,

The green Driscoll’s label on the organic berries that I buy each week are a comforting symbol of a family-owned company that got its start in California. Sometimes the berries are marked “Product of USA,” but more often than not, they are labeled as originating in Mexico. That is because Reiter Affiliated Cos., which sells berries through its affiliate BerryMex under the Driscoll’s label, grows much of its produce in Mexico. On its website Reiter claims to be “the largest fresh, multi-berry producer in the world and the leading supplier of fresh strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries in all of North America.” Now, the farmworkers picking many of those berries are on strike, demanding a change to the brutally impoverished conditions under which they live.

Mexicans demand justice of their government

ed

Growing Clash Between Immigrants Rights Activists and Washington DC Power Brokers

GROWING CLASH BETWEEN IMMIGRANT RIGHTS ACTIVISTS AND WASHINGTON DC POWER BROKERS By David Bacon http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/19564-growing-clash-between-immigrant-rights-activists-and-washington-power-brokers OAKLAND, CA  (10/21/13) -- This fall, when Congress couldn't pass immigration reform bills -- even ones deeply unpopular among many immigrants themselves -- one of the most important responses came from Oaxaca.  In the capital of this southern Mexico state a representative of a Silicon Valley union sat down with a state agency and an organization of indigenous migrants, and signed an agreement for mutual cooperation. All three groups pledged to work to protect the rights of Oaxacans who have migrated to the U.S. -- about 800,000 now live in California alone.  "Our objective," the agreement reads, "is the protection of the human and labor rights of Oaxacan workers and their families, in the food and commercial industries."  It lists a number of shared commitments, including explaining to immigrant workers their labor rights in the U.S., helping them file claims when they're hurt at work, and advocating for them when they face government agencies.

Why Organized Labor is active in immigrant rights

by Amy Dean

Maria Elena Durazo speaks during the Action Summit on Worker Safety and Health at East Los Angeles College, April 26, 2012. (Photo: Susan Goldman / US Department of Labor)

Immigrants' rights are workers' rights. These days, that idea is a principle held dear by the US labor movement. But that wasn't always the case.

As recently as the mid-1990s, many unions took protectionist stances against allowing new immigrants to come to this country. It was only after these unions saw the abuses that became prevalent under an employer-driven system for verifying immigration status that the labor movement embraced a new position. The movement recognized that for working people to thrive, all employees had to have full rights in the workplace.

Today, labor is one of the key forces pushing for comprehensive immigration reform in Washington, DC. To learn more about the movement's advocacy and more about how unions transformed themselves into outspoken champions of immigrant rights, I spoke with Maria Elena Durazo. A daughter of Mexican immigrant farm workers, Durazo rose to become the leader of the hotel and restaurant workers union in Los Angeles, the dynamic UNITE HERE Local 11. And, as chair of the national AFL-CIO’s Immigration Committee, Durazo is now a leading point person in the national immigration debate.

Knowing that many people are confused when hearing about union activism around immigration, I asked Durazo a straightforward question: Why is this issue a top priority for labor?

"It's bad for American workers for there to be 11 million-plus people out there working with no rights," Durazo said. "[These immigrants] are subject to exploitation. They are subject, as a result of that, to accept lower wages. They are subject to working in dangerous conditions. That is bad for those immigrant workers, and it is bad for American workers as a whole."

She continued: "We cannot have a prosperous nation and recreate the middle class as long as there is an underclass of 11 million people who do not have rights. By fixing this and getting them all on the road to citizenship, we address a huge issue that is the cause of enormous exploitation - of wage theft and other massive violations of labor laws."

The Case of Marco Rubio ( and Ted Cruz)

Rodolfo F. Acuña

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL)  strongly criticized the first draft of President Obama's immigration reform plan saying “It’s a mistake for the White House to draft immigration legislation without seeking input from Republican members of Congress… ," predicting that "if actually proposed, the President’s bill would be dead on arrival in Congress." The Rubio statement calls the bill "half-baked and seriously flawed." It alleges that Obama’s bill is not tough enough on border security and that it penalizes "those who chose to do things the right way and come here legally" over "those who broke our immigration laws."

Rubio’s statement undermines the social construct of a Hispanic group that bonds the disparate Latino groups. Many of the activist members of this group dismissed Rubio as a “gusano” – a worm or a maggot – a term popularly used to refer to reactionary Cuban exiles that came here during the 1960s.

Prior to his epiphany Rubio had no interest in Mexican or Latino immigrants; his sudden awakening and concern about immigration was kindled because of the strength of the Latino vote, and Mr. Rubio’s presidential aspirations. Based on his surname Rubio claims the right to take ownership of the issue, even though his base is the Tea Party and the far right of the Republican Party.

Cultural Nationalism

 Cultural Nationalism ,Chicanocentricism, Cowardness

Take Your Pick

Rodolfo Acuña

One of the advantages of growing old is that, if you look back in time, you see patterns in behavior and events. You can anticipate that the boulder that Sisyphus is pushing up the hill will roll back.

This morning I clicked on to the Los Angeles Times and read that Gov. Jerry Brown -- who signed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975 -- vetoed the Farm Worker Safety Act, legislation. 

Many supporters were disillusioned. It was the 50th year anniversary of the United Farm Workers’ struggle to get farmworkers the same protections that many animals enjoy. Moreover, Jerry Brown was a favorite among Latino voters.  I remember two years ago a left-leaning Mexican American attorney saying that his priority was to get Brown elected and he would not contribute to anyother cause.

In the context of history, Brown’s flip flopping is no surprise. I remember in 1978 his opposition to Proposition 13 which contributed to destruction of California’s education system, only to join the sponsors once the initiative passed. Brown offered no moral leadership.  Brown also recently vetoed the Trust Act that would have limited the state's law enforcement's interactions with federal immigration enforcement efforts.  It would have been a bold answer to Arizona’s nullification of federal powers.

The adage to never trust a gringo or a liberal who comes speaking Spanish rings true.  Brown knows that the United Farm Workers do not have the same cache among liberals that they did in the 1960s and 70s so he relies on Mexicans and Latinos having a short memory and on liberals not caring enough about farmworkers and immigrants.  How many voters are there who care?

16th. of Sept.

A Great Day for Activism- and for America

by Randy Shaw

Beyond Chron- August 16,2012

http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=10406

For the estimated 1.2 million young undocumented immigrants
who began signing up for President Obama's "Deferred Action
for Childhood Arrivals" legalization program, August 15, 2012
will forever signify the power of grassroots activism. Those
eligible under the program will be able to legally work and
live in the United States but will not gain permanent
legalization status or a path to citizenship. Obama
implemented his "most ambitious immigration initiative" in
response to both growing Latino political power and the
courageous and inspiring grassroots pressure from young DREAM
ACTivists. It is these young people, not the fake,
billionaire-backed Tea Party Republicans, who represent the
true power of grassroots activism to create meaningful change.

When we look at the progressive movements that have made real
gains since President Obama's election in 2008, only two stand
out: marriage equality and immigrant rights. Both have a way
to go, and the lack of comprehensive immigration reform
coupled with increased deportations has left many disappointed
with progress in this area.

But the ability of DREAM ACTivists to win tangible gains for
over one million young immigrants remains an historic
achievement. And they accomplished this almost entirely with
the type of true grassroots activism that many previously
doubted could still make a difference.

ICE Agents continue to defy Presidential policy decision on immigrants

   by Duane Campbell
         On July 5, 2012, the California Senate passed the California Trust Act to set California policy in opposition to Arizona’s anti immigrant SB 1070.  On the same day,  Sacramento police arrested Juana Reyes outside of a South Sacramento  Wall Mart for selling tamales .  She was arrested upon a request from Wall Mart, charged, and later  all charges were dropped.  In the meantime, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was informed and she was “held” by Sacramento County Sheriffs.  The arresting officers told her children they would never see their mother again.  She spent the next two weeks in jail- her U.S. citizen  children ages 7 and 10  were placed  in children’s protective service.

            Such arrest, detention, and orders for deportation was totally unnecessary under the conditions of the California Trust Act (AB1081) which has yet to be signed by Governor Brown.

            Today, some 35 demonstrators, including members of DSA, the ACLU, Occupy Sacramento and others  joined Juana Reyes in a demonstration to insist that her deportation by stopped and that her family be protected.  Assemblymember Tom Ammiano , author of the Trust Act, commented, “ Had the Trust Act ( AB 1081) been in place Juana Reyes  wouldn’t need a lawyer, wouldn’t need a press conference, and would not be facing deportation. Instead, she would still be working hard to provide for her two small children – as hse has for her two decades in the U.S.- she would still be trying to live a law abiding life.”

            Attorney Julia Vera, working with the Northern California ACLU, said that Juana Reyes was released on a $1,500 bond, an amount she could not raise by selling tamales.  Members of her local church raised the funds for her bond.

The Purge of Mexican Americans in Tucson schools

by Salomón Baldenegro 
Estimadas/os: First, let’s get the media-driven nonsense out of the way: “Ethnic Studies” was not dismantled in the Tucson UnifiedSchool District. Mexican American Studies was dismantled. It is the Mexican American community whose legitimacy in this country is being challenged. It is the history and contributions of the Mexican American community that are being de-valued by the concerted attack on our community by the Mexican haters and their enablers. All the other “ethnic studies” curricula in TUSD are intact and functioning—and “legal.”

The other bit of nonsense we need to get out of the way is the fiction—purveyed most recently in the Arizona Daily Star’s editorial of Sunday, January 15—that TUSD did what it had to do, that it really had no choice but to dismantle Mexican American Studies.

The indisputable fact of the matter is that TUSD had a choice: to go along with the Mexican haters Horne and Huppenthal or appeal Huppenthal’s decision, which would have put a hold on the threatened financial penalties on TUSD until the issue was resolved in court. TUSD made the conscious and deliberate choice to support Huppenthal.

Now to the matter of TUSD’s Mexican Purge:

The Purging of the Mexicans has begun in earnest in TUSD, one day after the pusillanimous TUSD school board, led by its chief Mexican hater Mark Stegeman, voted 4-1 to join hands withTom Horne and John Huppenthal and dismantle the Mexican American Studies curriculum.

Students forced to witness the Purge

The very next day after its nefarious vote, while classes were in session, TUSD conducted a purge of any and all books and teaching materials having to do with Mexican Americans and/or that deal with topics that are banned (e.g., civil rights) from MAS classrooms. Award-winning journalist Jeff Biggers reports that,

“According to district spokeperson Cara Rene, the books ‘will be cleared from all classrooms, boxed up and sent to the Textbook Depository for storage.’ ”

(The link below takes you to Biggers’ article in Salon.)

TUSD teachers and students who witnessed the purging of the books corroborate what Biggers reports. (Below is a link to a Three Sonorans article that contains relevant video about this.)

Occupy and the immigrant communities

David Bacon
OAKLAND, CA  (12/5/11) -- When Occupy Seattle called its tent camp "Planton Seattle," camp organizers were laying a local claim to a set of tactics used for decades by social movements in Mexico, Central America and the Philippines.  And when immigrant janitors marched down to the detention center in San Diego and called their effort Occupy ICE (the initials of the Immigration and Custom Enforcement agency responsible for mass deportations), people from countries with that planton tradition were connecting it to the Occupy movement here.

The banners at Occupy Seattle

        This shared culture and history offer new possibilities to the Occupy movement for survival and growth at a time when the Federal law enforcement establishment, in cooperation with local police departments and municipal governments, has uprooted many tent encampments.  Different Occupy groups from Wall Street to San Francisco have begun to explore their relationship with immigrant social movements in the U.S., and to look more closely at the actions of the 1% beyond our borders that produces much of the pressure for migration.
   Reacting to the recent evictions, the Coalition for the Political Rights of Mexicans Abroad recently sent a support letter to Occupy Wall Street and the other camps under attack.  "We greet your movement," it declared, "because your struggle against the suppression of human rights and against social and economic injustice has been a fundamental part of our struggle, that of the Mexican people who cross borders, and the millions of Mexican migrants who live in the United States."