UUSC partner joins front lines of Phoenix protests

I was reading a blog from one of our economic-justice partners when the news broke that a federal judge in Arizona had issued an injunction blocking key parts of the state's new anti-immigrant law from taking effect. Fernando Garcia, campaign coordinator for UUSC's partner the Northwest Arkansas Workers' Justice Center in Springdale, Ark., has been in Phoenix all week supporting the drive for human and immigrant rights as he participates in prayer vigils, rallies, civil disobedience, and counterprotests designed to express national outrage at the Arizona law.

"People here are fighting vigorously to stop this legislation in its tracks and win humane solutions to immigration," Garcia said in his blog post. "If it doesn't stop here, we better believe it will be knocking on our doors soon."

The Arizona law became effective today, July 29, but without the most egregious provisions that were put on hold by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton. She issued a preliminary injunction against sections that call on police officers to check a person's immigration status if there is a "reasonable suspicion" that someone may be undocumented and that require immigrants to carry their papers at all times.

The judge did not rule on the merits of the case but prevented enforcement of the most controversial sections until the litigation has reached a final conclusion, probably by the U.S. Supreme Court. The lawsuit was filed by the U.S. Justice Department after President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder strongly criticized the new law as unconstitutional on a number of levels.

UUSC has condemned the Arizona law in the strongest terms, citing the anti-immigrant hostility it expresses and the human-rights violations it encourages, among many other reasons. (Read the full statement: "Immigrant Rights are Human Rights.")

After reading some of the news stories about the judge's ruling, including reports in the New York Times and the Arizona Republic, it was refreshing to read Fernando Garcia's account from the front lines of the mounting immigrant justice movement in Phoenix. The stories, messages, and analyses are very powerful, and paint a different picture than what we see in most of the mainstream media.  

"Regardless of the injunction, the reality on the ground is incredible," said Garcia. "I heard stories of homeowners walking away from their houses to get out of the state. One [Arizona Interfaith Alliance for Worker Justice] workers center member said four families have moved out of Arizona from his block alone. He mentioned that a popular supermarket chain has closed 70 of their stores since the law was enacted only of few months ago.

"Innumerable amounts of people have ripped out their roots to flee the political environment, but each family's departure leaves a hole in the economy and the social fabric of those who remain."

The Northwest Arkansas Workers Justice Center is a community-based organization that advances the rights of low-wage and immigrant workers through organizing for improved wages and working conditions. The Center educates and supports workers to be effective advocates, while building local and national partnerships to involve the broader community in the struggles of workers in Northwest Arkansas. Several local police departments in Northwest Arkansas participate in the federal 287(g) program, which deputizes local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration law.

For months, our collective efforts to face the economic crisis have eclipsed most other conversations about overarching issues that affect us as a nation. But last week, the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities (NALACC)-Massachusetts and Jobs with Justice sponsored a forum on immigration.

Although the question of immigration reform seems to have been relegated to a quiet blip flying under the radar (at least in terms of attention from the national media), it remains very real for 40 million immigrants (particularly the nearly 12 million of them who are undocumented) who live day-to-day, trying to make a decent living in this country, and for all those who stand in solidarity with them.

Panelists Avi Chomsky, Bill Fletcher Jr., Jeannette Huezo, and Oscar Chacón gave insightful commentary on the political landscape for immigration policy reform in 2009, exploring the question, "Is a Humane and Just Immigration Reform Possible in an Economic Crisis?"

Chomsky addressed the central question through an analysis of how we define the economic crisis. She argued that it is usually defined with job loss at its center, with job loss resulting in a decline in the country's ability to produce and consume. This definition limits our understanding of the economy, confining it to the view that "the more production and consumption, the better." We should, instead, examine the conditions under which production takes place, or the full range of consequences of our consumption — including its impact on workers, our health, and the environment.

Instead, we need to redefine the economic crisis as a crisis of inequality.

It has become painfully clear — through everything from the voracious growth of the unregulated private investment system to the unethical sub-prime mortgage practices to the falling value of the minimum wage — that the combination of a growing gap between rich and poor and a frenzy of speculation is unsustainable.

Not only is there socio-economic inequality at the local and national levels, but also at the global level. The United States makes up 5 percent of the world's population, but consumes anywhere from 25 to 50 percent of the planet's resources.

This inequality is not accidental. In fact, Chomsky emphasized, it is a direct result of U.S. foreign and domestic policy: everything from how international trade takes place to how U.S. corporations operate in the Global South.

And this is where immigration comes in, because as long as resources are being drained out of countries like Mexico into the United States, there will be people coming to this country to seek a better life for their families.

Many immigrants affirm that if they had the same opportunities in their home countries as they seek in the United States, they would stay at home. Home is where their families, their culture, and their roots are — it's home. Not to mention, many immigrant workers express that prior to coming to this country they underestimated how hard it would be to get a good, safe job that pays a living wage. Of course, this is a direct result of inequality of opportunity that is shaped by our current immigration policy and by race, ethnicity, class, and gender dynamics.

A humane immigration reform would both allow for people to pursue full economic opportunities in their home countries and ensure that those who choose to come to the United States can fully realize their economic, social, cultural, and political rights.

So, what will it take to change the dynamic of global inequality that leads to increased migration? What will it take to build a more just system of immigration?

Chomsky reminds us that it begins with redefining our conception of the "standard of living," which has thus far been associated with higher consumption, to looking toward building a sustainable "quality of life." That is, by lowering our consumption, we actually achieve a more just and equal distribution of resources. In this new scenario, production would be tailored to meet human needs, rather than to maximize profits, which only deepens inequality.

To address the crisis of inequality, there would need to be a reorientation of government economic policies in order to create solid jobs aimed at human needs, protecting the socio-economic rights of those "at the bottom," and instituting safeguards for low-income communities and communities of color in this country. That includes

• enforcement of labor laws on health and safety and wages,
• expanded legal rights and full human rights for immigrants, and
• expanded membership in unions, especially for immigrants and women.

Moreover, we would need to restructure U.S. trade and foreign policy to promote a redistribution of resources to the Global South, creating conditions for people to make a dignified living anywhere in the world, so that people would not have to leave their home countries.

Decreasing inequality both domestically and internationally would not only build a stronger foundation for the economy and begin closing the wealth gap, but there is also potential for a profoundly positive environmental impact. So this framework is not just helpful to understanding how to reform our immigration system: it is connected to local, national, and global issues of environmental justice. Community-led, grassroots economic development would present an opportunity to "green" the economy from the bottom-up, and it would begin to remedy the damage inflicted by the biggest fossil-fuel-guzzling economies against the least-energy-consuming countries.

For me, all of this begins to look like a spiritual shift. Over many years, the immigration debate has been framed largely in fearful, racist, xenophobic terms. Immigrants have been treated merely as tools to bolster our economy through their hard work and investment in the system, regardless of whether they had the rights to go along with their contributions and regardless of how immigrant communities bore the brunt of the crisis of inequality.

But as panelist Oscar Chacón pointed out, now we have a moment of opportunity — ironically, in the context of economic crisis — to reframe the narrative of immigration.

Author, activist, and Quaker spiritual teacher Parker Palmer has written,

Who doesn't know that a society in which the rich get richer while the poor get poorer is a society that will someday have to pay the piper? Who doesn't know that when a relatively small fraction of the world's population uses its power to command and consume a disproportionately large fraction of the world's resources, the chickens will come home to roost? Who doesn't know that an economic system that encourages us to live beyond our means and refuses to regulate greed is one in which our avarice will come back to bite us? Who doesn't know that at every level of life, from personal to global to cosmic, what goes around comes around?

The problem is not that we don't possess a capacity to know these things. If we didn't, we wouldn't have all the colloquialisms I just used! The problem is that the knowledge we need, like the seismic shifts that create eruptions, originates underground. It comes from a place within us deeper than our intellects, a place the poet William Stafford calls ‘a remote, important region in all who speak,' a place sometimes called the inner teacher or the soul.

But rarely do we allow ourselves to go to that place. Instead, we fill our lives with noisy distractions, blocking our access to insights that might scare us but could also save us. The purpose of an authentic ‘inner life' retreat is not to flee from a frightening world, but to give ourselves access to those deeper sources of knowing that can help us find our way through what we fear.

A storm is brewing as Tropical Storm Gustav barrels into the Gulf of Mexico. Three years after Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast, the people of South Mississippi are bracing themselves again by loading up on emergency supplies and tuning in to storm advisories.

But another emergency already hit Mississippi earlier this week - this time it was the force of the I.C.E., not wind and rain. On Monday, August 25, hundreds of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided the Howard Industries plant in Laurel, Miss. Almost 600 workers were detained, including a dozen minors and several pregnant women. It's reported that about 186 children were not picked up from school on Monday because their parents were in detention. Hundreds of small children have been left without their mothers.

As one of the only community-based workers' rights institutions in the state of Mississippi, UUSC Economic Justice partner MPOWER is on the scene, supporting families to connect with their loved ones in detention, helping make arrangements to ensure children are cared for, and working with local organizations and churches to address the humanitarian needs.

MPOWER (Mississippi Poultry Workers for Equality and Respect), based in Morton, Miss., is focused on building the capacity of poultry-processing workers to combat abusive labor practices in the industry, with particular attention to building solidarity between Latino immigrant and African American workers. As a "worker center," MPOWER also provides labor rights education to workers in other industries all over Mississippi, and through advocacy and organizing, responds to urgent needs faced by workers as they arise. This week, the staff of MPOWER has been actively providing assistance and support to the workers and families who have been most affected by the raid.

So much uncertainty looms on the horizon, as workers and their families affected by the raid also await the impending tropical storm, the path and strength of which is, naturally, unpredictable. MPOWER reports that Mississippi workers' minds are brimming over — a swirl of memories awakened by the anniversaries of Katrina and Rita, anticipation of the equally unpredictable ICE — first Postville, now Laurel, and "where will they go next?"

Just last month, I was in Mississippi to provide technical support to MPOWER. During the course of the days that we were working together on long-term planning, developing their board of directors, and connecting with other UUSC partners, we were called to action as we learned of an arrest of a poultry worker at the Koch Foods chicken plant, just a block from the MPOWER office. The worker who was arrested was a young, single mother of a two-year-old girl. MPOWER helped to find a temporary guardian for the little girl while her mother awaits trial, but you can only imagine the ripple effect of this same trauma happening to hundreds of children.

"For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you made me welcome."

Fortunately, the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance (MIRA) — a partner of the Rights in Humanitarian Crises program that was supported by UUSC to work with immigrants in Mississippi to claim and defend their rights in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita — is working to provide legal representation for the detained workers. But I can't help but wonder if the workers will truly have access to the due process that is promised by this country. Will they be sufficiently informed of their legal rights? Will they be provided meaningful access to legal representation? The connections between workers' rights, civil liberties, rights in humanitarian crises, and immigration in this country are inextricable.

As we celebrate Labor Day this weekend — and as we strive every day to uphold the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and to promote justice, equity, and compassion in human relations — let us remember the workers and their families in Mississippi who are weathering the storms.