The May 1 Coalition held a press conference today (that I just viewed on C-Span) concerning the boycott by undocumented immigrants and their supporters. I haven't been following this story closely, so I can react to the press conference like the people it presumably tried to reach: the uninitiated. I'll preface this by saying, and I hope I don't need to, that I am vigorously opposed to any condoning of racial or ethnic inequality, so don't take what I'm saying as any defense whatsoever of that. I'm a paying member of the NAACP, OK? And I really do want to find a workable solution for our obviously broken immigration system that does not involve crazy "Minutemen" types. If there's a reasonable proposition that causes the least possible harm to well-meaning people, believe me, I'm all ears.
But...
I think the organizers actually did a rather poor job of explaining what the purpose of the boycott is, and why people should not view it as harmful, or at the very least, purposeless.
The banner hung behind the podium said:
Great May 1st Boycott
No Work, No School
No Buying, No Selling
Full Rights for all Immigrants!
www.May1Coalition.org
"No Work, No School". Right off the bat, it's playing to stereotypes. Inadvertent but undeniable. Is this the most constructive message to send?
After the director of Latino Movement USA introduced the program with the premise that comprehensive immigration reform is needed, opening the door to full rights for all immigrants, the first speaker to come out couldn't have been selected better by Karl Rove himself: Mahdi Bray, executive director, Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation. So the first guy to come out and explain why there needs to be less stringent control at the borders is a Muslim activist? Oooookay. What is the paranoid American's view of that going to be? This guy is rumored to get funding from Wahhabi Saudi Arabia for his radio talk show. Whether or not there's any substance to that allegation, from a political/P.R. perspective, is this really the guy you want to be leading off the event?
Then they brought out the leader of the Mexican Brotherhood. Not the Mexican-American Brotherhood, just the Mexican. The viewer is left wondering how America even figures into the equation.
The next speaker was a lawyer who argued for stopping raids on undocumented workers. Fine.
Then a student from Howard University who tried to draw parallels between sending former slaves to Liberia so they could have rights they weren't getting here. Valid point, to be sure, but not really related to the matter at hand. Slaves were brought here against their will, and any argument that they should not have been afforded full legal rights is and always was obviously erroneous. I don't need to go into why. But this isn't nearly the same thing. Not opening the doors to whoever wants to come in, in itself, is not racism. There are lots of documented Latinos who went through legal channels of immigration who must receive 100% of the rights any other American does. There is no question about that. But I think to pull out comparisons to slavery when you're talking about undocumented immigrants is something of a non sequitur, and it cheapens the struggle of former slaves. These are just not nearly the same circumstances. There is surely a component of racism to all this, but if all the immigrants were from Canada or Finland, the same fundamental problem would still exist, and people would be clamoring, though perhaps somewhat less ardently, to fix it. The shade of racism is there, but it's not at the core of the legal issues.
A United Church of Christ reverend came out next to say that we've "criminalized" immigration. He was correct to condemn DHS director Michael Chertoff for announcing a crackdown on illegal immigrants as a mechanism to scare people. He was clear about what we SHOULDN'T do. But as you may have noticed by now, there had been very little to this point about what we SHOULD do. He made another statement that was echoed a few times by other speakers: If you're WORKING, you shouldn't be denied full rights. You're being taxed, so why shouldn't you be represented? But what if you AREN'T working? What if you're working but not paying taxes? Does the Constitutional rights argument suddenly disappear? No one ever answered that or made that distinction.
Next, the national coordinator for a group you don't wan't to associate yourself with if you want any public support: A.N.S.W.E.R. We're not fighting for SOME equality, he said, but for FULL equality for all immigrants, documented or not. "Why not round up the Big Oil executives instead?", he asked. Never mind that unregulated capitalism (though illegal) is the main driving force for the hiring of undocumented immigrants in the first place: an attempt by businesses and individuals to undermine labor laws and fair labor practices. By now the viewer is wondering, "Is their policy just to let anyone and everyone from every nation come on in however they can and expect to receive full rights as an American as soon as they break the plane?" No one answered this, either.
The Latino Movement USA guy came back and concluded with "What is the purpose of the boycott?" and added (rather smugly) "as if it needs to be explained". Well, yes, it DOES need to be explained, and no one in this program had yet explained it. He said that first, immigrant workers would like us to understand that they will no longer be defined as criminals. Second, what the movement wants is "comprehensive immigration reform" for WORKING men and women. He did not define what he meant by comprehensive reform, nor did he say what one's rights should be if one crosses the border but is unable to find a job.
That was it. Then they took questions. The attending press was rightly concerned about issues like, "What do you mean by comprehensive reform?' "Is this a good time for such a boycott?" "What about a backlash?" "Is your group pulling a sort of power play by upstaging other groups and even business interests who are on your side?" But Latino Movement USA's director was mostly defensive, using textbook political dodges like, "The only backlash is going on now with all the raids on undocumented workers," and "The only people hurting anyone are Congress and the President." To gauge the effectiveness of the boycott, he said they would calculate the economic loss to the country it caused. That's effectiveness? Causing economic loss to your new home country? All righty.
I went to the www.May1Coalition.org website to see if they spelled out what they mean by immigration reform, and the petition they have there looks like this:
I demand full rights and equality for all immigrants living in the United States. Neoliberal economic policies targeting Latin America, like NAFTA and CAFTA, have pushed millions of people into abject poverty. Immigrants are forced to come to the U.S. to look for work. Nobody should be criminalized for attempting to survive. No human being is illegal. Racism against immigrants emanates from the same forces behind the U.S. war to conquer and control the wealth of Iraq.
No real specifics again, and a rather unclear conflation of issues.
It sounds to the uninitiated like their proposal boils down to the following:
1. Open the borders completely. To do otherwise would be the "criminalization of immigration".
2. People should be allowed to get on the path to citizenship legally if they find jobs. If not, well, we don't know.
3. We will attempt to force our agenda by the sheer mass-action forces of capitalism.
Look, I understand that the cause means well, but to me, their public relations, if this event is any indicator, have been an utter disaster. Maybe these aren't their intentions, and I'm trying to be as understanding and reasonable as I can, but thus far they've given me nothing really concrete that I can support. The fact is, we've got a tough situation on our hands for everyone concerned. But the May 1 boycott has done little or nothing to convince me that they have a reasonable solution.