Why the Central America Caravan ?

Sunday, Dec 9, 12:30pm, Central American Refugee Caravan: How do we ensure a moral and lawful response? Dr. Duane Campbell and Cori Ring-Martinez provide caravan updates and background on the root causes of the refugee crisis, followed by discussion of our individual, collective, and national responsibility to asylum seekers based on human rights and international law. Refreshments. First United Methodist Church, 2100 J St. Sacramento. FMI: 916-225-8511

Central American Refugee Caravan- How you can help

Sunday, Dec 9, 12:30pm, Central American Refugee Caravan: How do we ensure a moral and lawful response? Dr. Duane Campbell and Cori Ring-Martinez provide caravan updates and background on the root causes of the refugee crisis, followed by discussion of our individual, collective, and national responsibility to asylum seekers based on human rights and international law. Refreshments. First United Methodist Church, 2100 J St. Sacramento. FMI: 916-225-8511

Day of Action/Day of Shame: Nov 25th, 2018- At the Border

Credit: Jeff Valenzuela

Written by Maya Flores (DSA Immigrant Rights Committee & DSA-Fresno)

November 25^th, 2018 should be remembered as the day we, the United States and the Trump administration, gassed women and children in a sovereign nation. It should also be remembered as the day that those still aligned with constitutional and international law stood up for human rights. Those of us who organized the rallies, the marches, and the demonstrations had no idea that Nov. 25^thwould end in tear gas attacks, injuries, and stampedes. Some were at the border just to show solidarity, but would end up being tear gassed as well, others held events, while others watched in horror as the events unfolded November the 25th. It will be forever etched in our minds as both a Day of National Action and as a Day of National Shame.

DSA chapters nationwide organized for a day of action on November 25^th, 2018, to stand with the asylum seekers and to reject the false narrative of “invasion” and “illegitimacy”, to remind everyone of the long history of US political and economic interference that has acted as a catalyst for the mass exodus, and to declare “let them all in! Dejalos entrar!”

In San Diego, DSA-San Diego teamed up with Otay Mesa Detention Resistance, the Migrant and Refugee Solidarity Coalition, People Over Profits-SD, Union del Barrio, and other orgs to hold a rally and a march to the border. According to local news reports, there were over 600 attendees standing up for the rights of the asylum seekers! They held an initial rally with speakers, during which time multiple US helicopters buzzed low over their heads several times prior to the gassing at the border. After the speeches, the activists marched to the border en mass to show solidarity for the refugee caravan. San Diego is the closest to the border and DSA San Diego members felt it was their crucial duty to show up to declare “let them in! Dejalos entrar!” What nobody expected was the unprecedented and illegal use of violence against asylum seekers who were in a sovereign country at the hands of the US government. 

Steven Nieder (DSA-San Diego) was at the border near the front of the crowd when the US tear gassed the crowds, including many women and children. Steven was kind enough to not only give DSA his personal narrative, but to also get permission from an on-the-ground photographer so DSA can publish his startling, vivid, and shocking photographs from that day, November 25th. Here is his narrative, written in the first person, which he sent to me:

[Steven Nieder’s narrative]: I was there doing human rights observing and trying to help those who had been teargassed, as there were multiple barrages. The Mexican police had funneled everyone that tried to go to the port of entry into the canal next to the border. The caravan members involved were a rather small contingent of the group in TJ, and it was made up mostly of middle school and high school aged boys. I was staying back to where the teargas from the previous waves was manageable. I went up to the border fence, which in this particular area is just a few barbwire rolls on top of each other, when I thought everything was coming to an end. There was a layer of media next to the border, followed by a handful of policia in riot gear that was getting the caravan members to leave. I thought the events were over and was facing away from the border when I heard shots starting to go off. As I turned around, I found myself in a good 50 foot cloud of teargas. I started running and immediately was struggling to breathe and see. I wanted to drop into the canal, but knew if I ran onto an uneven surface I'd fall, so I kept running through the smoke. I, along with most others, was running with my eyes closed. I opened them when I started running into people. People were trampling over a girl probably ~10-12 years old due to having their eyes closed. A few of us were able to block her from the running crowd and get her to her feet again. I don't think I've fully processed it all yet, there were kids crying and a few women vomiting uncontrollably. It was pretty much just the media and policia who were actually next to the border at that time. It caught me completely off guard, as we were just standing there and they gassed us with our backs to them. [End of narrative]

(Photographs graciously provided by Jeff Valenzuela, all rights reserved)

Credit: Jeff Valenzuela

Conflict at the Border

What’s happening with asylum-seekers at the border?Nation Nov 26, 2018 6:45 PM EST. pbs newshour

The busiest port of entry along the southwest border was shut down by U.S. immigration officials this past weekend after hundreds of Central American migrants hoping to declare asylum attempted to cross fencing that separates Mexico and the U.S.

U.S. agents responded to the breach, as well as reports of rocks and bottles thrown by protesters at the border, by firing tear gas at the thousands of Central American migrants who had gathered near the San Ysidro border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico, for a demonstration.

Images showing families fleeing tear gas prompted outrage from some American lawmakers and advocates about the growing violence against migrants seeking asylum in the U.S.

The Department of Homeland Security said it was responding to “lawlessness.” And President Donald Trump urged Mexican officials to move the migrants away from the border.

Here’s a closer look at what’s happening at the border.
What happened


Migrants cover their faces, as they run from tear gas, thrown by the U.S border patrol near the fence between Mexico and the United States in Tijuana, Mexico. Photo by Hannah McKay/Reuters

The number of Central American migrants seeking asylum from their home countries has been growing in Tijuana. Since the first members of the caravan arrived a couple weeks ago, the group amassed in the border city has grown to about 5,000 people.

This is the same group — made up of migrants who originally started their journey together in Honduras — that Trump characterized as an “invasion” ahead of the U.S. 2018 midterm elections. Having traveled northward toward the border for weeks, the caravan has grown increasingly frustrated with long wait times for their asylum claims since arriving in Tijuana. The waiting list for asylum claims had 3,000 names on it before the caravan arrived, the Associated Press reported, adding the San Ysidro center is processing fewer than 100 claims a day.

Potential Deal With Mexico Could Impact Thousands Of Migrants Stalled In...

 NYT. MEXICO CITY — Leaders of the incoming Mexican government are in talks with American officials to allow migrants applying for asylum in the United States to remain in Mexico while they await a decision — a drastic overhaul of current policy that President Trump suggested Saturday night was as good as a done deal.

While Mexican officials said no decision has been made, leaders of the incoming government are under immense pressure to deal with thousands of migrants lined up along the border between the two countries. The top officials of the incoming administration plan to meet as early as Sunday to discuss the proposal, according to the new foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, who will take office on Dec. 1.
Update.

Ciudad de México. Olga Sánchez Cordero, futura secretaria de Gobernación, desmintió que exista un acuerdo entre el futuro gobierno de México y el de Estados Unidos para exigir a los solicitantes de asilo que esperen en México mientras se procesan sus casos en los tribunales de aquel país, como reportó el diario The Washington Post.

“El futuro gobierno no considera en sus planes que México asuma la condición de tercer país seguro para la atención de los migrantes centroamericanos o de otros países que se encuentran en territorio de México, o para los que lo hagan en un futuro”, señaló en un comunicado.

\

Dijo que para el equipo de transición lo más importante en el tema de las caravanas de migrantes centroamericanas que han ingresado a México es la protección de sus derechos humanos y el auxilio para asegurarles condiciones para su alimentación, salud y alojamiento.

Sostuvo que mantienen comunicación constante con las autoridades mexicanas federales y locales en las que rechace la responsabilidad de prestar ayuda humanitaria a los migrantes y definir su situación migratoria.

La Jornada, D.F. 

Activists Support the Migrant Exodus

View this email in your browser

Join DSA in supporting the Refugee Exodus! #MigrantCaravan #CaravanaMigrante The Democratic Socialists of America and the national Immigrants' Rights Working Group are supporting the migrant caravan; those traveling in the caravan with demands for asylum in the US, and the groups providing material, legal, and organizational support. We need you, as individual members and as chapters, to help us with these efforts! DSA has joined border organizations in the International Call to Action for the Refugee Caravan and Central American Exodus. Chapters across the country will be participating in actions on November 25th in solidarity with the caravan! Read the statement here & reach out to us if you plan to organize or participate in a local action.  So, what can you do?

Humanitarian exodus from Honduras

Valuable essay on the Caravan.

https://nacla.org/blog/2018/10/22/humanitarian-exodus

Fox News and Trump Create Crisis Image of Caravan

Foul tactics: Fox News  fear creation about the caravan from Honduras.  See  how Trump is using the news cycle to build the Republican campaign


https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/conservative-max-boot-slams-fox-news-on-caravan-coverage_us_5bcd054ce4b055bc9481f807

What can we do?  
This fear campaign may cost the Democrats several seats in the very close Congressional election on Nov. 6.  What we can do is work twice as hard to defeat the Trump/Republican campaign.

We must Defeat Trump and the  anti immigrant Republican agenda:. 

·      We must stop him now before he and his enablers can further consolidate power.  

·      The available way to stop him is to Vote to win control of the U.S. Congress in the 2018 election.  

We need to defeat Trump enablers Congressmen  Jeff Denham &  Tom McClintock. 

Elect a stronger advocate for U.S. Senate,   Kevin de Leon, rather than Dianne Feinstein. 

Who you vote for depends  upon which Congressional district you are in:

Congressional District 4  Jessica Morse

                   District   10  Josh Harder

          District 6.  Doris Matsui

          District 7 Ami  Bera 

       District 9   Jerry McNerney 

District 3 John Garamendi 

October 22, Last day to register to vote.  After 22, you will need to register for a provisional ballot. 

-->

Let the Caravan Pass

Let the Caravan Pass

Photo/ NY Times

By Carlos Alcala

CLC Chair

   Border separation of families are skyrocketing.  The Charlatan President is using the "caravan" from Honduras as the new boogieman.  The caravan should not be stopped.  People in the caravan are refugees.  Our country has laws that allow refugees to seek asylum and we have a due process system.  By comparison, there are many Ukranium refugees who come to this country every year.  We are all people and we are all entitled to equal protection under the law.  There should not be different treatment for Latinos and European refugees.  Trump has increased European refugee immigration by 200% since 2014 including an 1100% increase in Ukranium refugees  from 2014.  At the same time, Trump  has reduced 2018 refugee Latino refugee immigration by a whopping 65% from 2014 including zero refugees allowed from Mexico.  Refugees should not be about white culture, as GOP Steve King suggests.  Race should not enter into refugee status.  The laws of our country should outweigh racism.  Let the caravan pass.  Let our refugee laws function.  Keep racism out of refugee decisions.   

     Make no mistake about it, Republican Congressmen prop up this system. Without their support, Republican Speakers could not prevent votes on DACA or other immigration reform. These votes will never be taken because the same Republican Congressmen that proclaim support for Dreamers also vote to prevent any votes for Dreamers from ever occurring. That way they can give lip service to the Dreamers and the children, while not having to vote on the issue. This is true corruption.

Chicano/Latino Caucus of California Democratic Party 

Migrant Caravan Being Used by Trump

The caravan of migrants from Honduras heading across Mexico for the U.S. border is a very inopportune act. It is dangerous,  It will add votes to the Trump forces in this critical last few weeks of the election. The caravan will consolidate the power of the Trump regime, an enemy of all immigrants. 

I have been active in immigrants’ rights for over 20 years and continue today. I understand the motivation of these caravans and empathize with the migrants.

But, at this time, the cost of the caravan is too high.  The caravan will substantially increase the vote for Trump supported candidates in marginal districts and may even leave the House in the hands of the Trump clique. 

Trump and his campaign is already using the fear of a migrant Invasion in swing districts – and it will work. 

In 2013 the many forces of immigration had reached a compromise in the U.S. Senate.  With a few short days left in the session, the compromise was on its way to a vote. ( Full disclosure: I opposed parts of the compromise).  Just as the vote approached, a migrant caravan came to the border- hysteria was rampant, and several Republicans were challenged from the Right.  Eric Cantor lost his seat in the House and his leadership position.  And, the compromise bill died.  We have suffered a oppressive system since then. This failure contributed to the rise of Donald Trump and the nativist segment of the Republican Party.

It could all happen again. 

The intolerant campaign promoted by Donald Trump and supported  by the Republican Party is a call to the “silent white majority” and a demand that 11 million immigrants be deported.  This campaign promotes a dangerous and divisive racial message.  It must be vigorously opposed.

 Donald Trump is a serial liar, he  regularly incites political violence and he  is a  rampant xenophobe, racist, and  misogynist. 

Trump has an overly cynical and conspiratorial view of immigration: calling for  building walls, breaking up families,  and deporting  people.  This fear mongering political message has found a very receptive base within our society among xenophobic and angry conservative older voters.

This campaign is dangerous.  It mobilizes right-wing anti immigrant forces. Trump’s campaign is not just racism- it is a strategy to magnify racism to win the election – and we must defeat it.  He is promoting an anti Mexican, anti immigrant, anti Muslim agenda. This is more than the ranting of a fringe right. He is mainstreaming racism and the caravan gives him a opening to do it all again.  Unfortunately the migrant caravan contributes to this campaign.  

 Only the participants in the caravan  can make the important decisions of the caravan, but as a minimum, it should be delayed until after the election.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/19/americas/caravan-mexico-border/index.html

No National Guard to the Border

Illegal border crossings in the US are at their lowest levels since 1971. We must keep our country safe, but border patrol agents are more than prepared for the ebb and flow of border crossings.

So why is Trump requesting that National Guard units be sent to the border while he waits for his racist sham of a wall to be built? 

The same reason his Justice Department is suing California over legislation we passed to protect immigrants: to use racism and xenophobia to divide us, incite fears, and stoke tensions with Mexico.  

Here's how we fight back: Pooling our collective voices and power together, demanding accountability, and demanding that states across the country rise to the challenge. 

Your voices can help provide the support states need to reject Trump's request, and keep their National Guard units at the ready for real threats, not Trump's political ploys.
Add your name today to tell Trump that we won't stand for a militarized border with Mexico >>
Duane, all my life, as a kid growing up in poverty in a border town, as a community organizer, and as a legislator, I've seen first-hand the the contributions of the undocumented community to California’s culture and economy.

I know that tearing families apart is bad for business, not just our global image.

And I know that militarizing our border with Mexico is the act of a desperate president, eager to appease his extreme right-wing base at any cost to our nation.

California needs a leader in the Senate to take these fights head on and win. Nothing less than the future of our state and country is at stake. That's why I'm running.

Please take action now and send a message that a militarized border is unacceptable.
We'll defeat this together,

Kevin 

ADD YOUR NAME →

Trump v Pueblos Sin Fronteras

TRUMP TAKES DACA OFF TABLE: President Donald Trump repudiated legislative deals to protect Dreamers from deportation in a tweet Sunday morning. The president urged Congress to end the legislative filibuster in order to crack down on immigration. "Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough laws NOW. NO MORE DACA DEAL!" he wrote. In the same tweet, Trump warned of "caravans" of people headed to the border. "It was unclear whether the president's tweets represented any change in his immigration policy," wrote Katie Rogers in the New York Times, "or were just the sort of venting he is known to do after reading a newspaper article or seeing a television program." That was Rogers' polite way of saying that Trump almost certainly was just venting. 

Trump's "caravans" are actually one (fairly large) caravan of about 1000 people travelling north. "Hundreds of Central Americans - children, women, and men, most of them from Honduras - have boldly crossed immigration checkpoints, military bases, and police in a desperate, sometimes chaotic march toward the United States," Adolfo Flores reported Friday for BuzzFeed News. "Despite their being in Mexico without authorization, no one has made any effort to stop them. Organized by a group of volunteers called Pueblos Sin Fronteras, or People Without Borders, the caravan is intended to help migrants safely reach the United States, bypassing not only authorities who would seek to deport them, but gangs and cartels who are known to assault vulnerable migrants."

"When they get to the U.S., they hope American authorities will grant them asylum or, for some, be absent when they attempt to cross the border illegally," Flores writes. "More likely is that it will set up an enormous challenge to the Trump administration's immigration policies and its ability to deal with an organized group of migrants numbering in the hundreds. The number of people who showed up to travel with the caravan caught organizers by surprise, and has overwhelmed the various towns they've stopped in to spend the night." More here. 

Mexico's Movement for Peace and Justice - Caravan

The CIP Americas Program--along with some 100 partner organizations of migrants, churches, unions, students, NGOs and community members in the cities along the route--is helping to organize caravan events and give voice to the victims of the drug war. We will be accompanying the caravan on part of its long journey through the country and providing daily blogs, articles and interviews as events unfold.
A handful of U.S. companies that produce weapons and defense and intelligence equipment are raking in taxpayer dollars in government contracts for the drug war, while in Mexico more than 70,000 people have died since the war was launched in December 2006.
Today the face of the U.S. government in Mexico is the face of war. This face is reflected in the vast expansion of joint security operations and direct intervention in Mexico´s counter-narcotics planning and operations. Instead of schools and hospitals, our tax dollars support military helicopters and espionage systems.
The relationship between the two nations has degenerated into a seemingly endless war on drugs. The war is commanded from the north, where enforcing prohibition is considered more important than human lives, and fought in the south, where the long arm of enforcement has left 70,000 dead in the past six years.
Despite tragically negative results, the U.S. government has dismissed calls from citizens in both countries to end the war on drugs and the misguided Merida Initiativethat supports it. Instead, we continue on a path that throws U.S. youth behind the bars of lucrative private prisons and feeds defense companies by perpetuating violent conflict in Mexico.
Family members of the thousands murdered, disappeared, attacked and displaced in Mexico’s drug war and their supporters will present a very different, human, face of binational relations. They will meet with families in the United States that have suffered senseless incarceration and violence as a result of criminalizing drugs, rather than supporting communities and individuals to manage the health and social threats posed by consumption and addiction.

Dream Act caravan

Thursday December 2nd, 2010 11:00am-12pm    

Sacramento Capitol Building (North side steps on Ist) 

1. Dream Graduation

*PLEASE REMEMBER TO BRING YOUR CAP AND GOWN and creative signs. 

The goal of this action is to bring to light the thousands of students caught in the horrible, perpetual limbo of being educated, bright and ready to work, but denied the chance to because of their illegal immigration status. We come together to send our representatives the message that we need the DREAM Act now, our economy needs it. We also aim to raise awareness to our community and our state legislators about this growing student movement. 

Thursday December 2, 2010 11 am-12 pm

Please check FACEBOOK for updates

WHO:  Immigrant students, including AB540 students, families, and district residents.  Members of the California DREAM Network, a project of CHIRLA, Wise Up!, the Korean Resource Center, S.T.A.N.D., and Sac State Coalition

CARAVAN SCHEDULE:‬

Loretta Sanchez:  Fullerton Community College, Cal State Fullerton.  Rally to welcome the Statewide Dream Caravan which will be driving from Palm Springs to Sacramento lining up the votes for the DREAM Act. Diplomas symbolizing the thousands of unresolved Dreams of students across the nation.‬