Click here to go to home page

Immigrants

Wednesday night’s organizing meeting in New York City for the Saturday, September 11 march against the ugly racism & Islamophobia leveled by the right wing Tea Party against a Muslim Community Center near Ground Zero was truly amazing and inspiring.The plans for a racist rally on September 11 against an Islamic Community Center have galvanized a united anti-racist response. About 100 organizers and activists from dozens of groups attended the meeting to plan a massive show of unity and solidarity. Here are some highlights:...
The Emergency Mobilization Against Racism and Anti-Islamic Bigotry is organizing a rally for civil rights and religious freedom on Saturday, September 11th. This rally is a response to the ugly and violent attacks, both verbal and physical, which are happening more and more frequently around the country. It is also a specific response to the hate-filled protest being called by a coalition of racist and anti-Islamic organizations on September 11th....
...
The French government of Nicolas Sarkozy is attacking the country’s large and diverse immigrant and foreign communities, which it calls the sources of delinquency and crime, with expulsions and deportations, loss and denial of French citizenship, and new laws imprisoning parents for the crimes their children commit, as well as increased police violence. According to many French political analysts, the Sarkozy administration is using this approach to repair its public standing, which has been battered by the worldwide recession, growing unemployment and the anger of France’s combative unions....
Activists here and around the country have begun mobilizing to stop cold those who promote racism and hatred of Muslims. They plan to confront a vicious demonstration and rally scheduled for the World Trade Center site on Sept. 11. A rally and counterprotest near the WTC site on Aug. 22 showed that the confrontation is gaining momentum....
On September 11 the Tea Party and its racist and right wing allies plan to again demonstrate at the World Trade Center site. For months these bigots have attempted to whip up hysteria against a proposed Islamic masjid (mosque) and community center several blocks from the WTC. ...
On September 11 the Tea Party and its racist and right wing allies plan to again demonstrate at the World Trade Center site. For months these bigots have attempted to whip up hysteria against a proposed Islamic masjid (mosque) and community center several blocks from the WTC....
Aug 11, 2010
Build May Day 2011
...
On July 29 the racist, anti-immigrant law SB1070 went into effect in Arizona. On July 28, federal judge Susan Bolton temporarily blocked the worst parts of the law from being implemented. Nonetheless, July 29 was a day filled with nonstop protests and bold actions as people took to the streets to show their outrage at this bigoted attack against immigrants and workers....
...
Despite a continuous onslaught of attacks against immigrant workers, resistance and opposition continue to grow in the U.S. — not only against Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, but also against the entire campaign to criminalize and drive workers born outside this country underground....
Organizations from Arizona’s three major population centers — Tucson, Flagstaff and Phoenix — met on July 17 to prepare coordinated activities for July 29, the date of SB 1070’s implementation. SB 1070 is a racist, anti-immigrant state law that is opposed by immigrant rights advocates, progressives and justice-loving people in Arizona and around the country....
LGBTQ organizations, Immigrant Rights groups & progressive allied organizations are being asked to please circulate the following email widely to their internet networks as soon as possible. They ask that your constituents and members sign on to the online petition in support of the boycott and circulate it widely as part of Week of Solidarity against the anti-immigrant attacks in Arizona & Call to Action for Human Rights July 23-30, 2010...
hereby demand the immediate repeal of Arizona's unconstitutional and racist anti-immigrant law SB 1070, which legalizes racial profiling by law enforcement and makes failure to carry immigration documents a crime....
...
President Barack Obama gave a major address on immigration on July 1, after much anticipation by the immigrant rights movement.

If immigrants and supporters expected anything positive to come out of the speech, they were greatly disappointed. In fact, what President Obama endorsed as proposed policy is everything the movement has been fighting against, not only since 2006, but historically....

A massive march filled the streets of downtown Phoenix on May 29 as close to 200,000 people gathered to denounce the racist SB 1070 law and show their determination to fight back against this anti-immigrant attack. The streets were packed from curb to curb for over three miles as demonstrators made their way along the six-mile route that began at Steele Indian School Park, snaked its way through downtown and ended at the state Capitol building....
At approximately 1 p.m. on May 21, more than a dozen people occupied the Tucson Headquarters of the U.S. Border Patrol to draw attention to impacts of border militarization in Indigenous Communities. Six people, including Alex Soto, a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation and a volunteer with the group O’odham Solidarity Across Borders, locked themselves together for up to three and a half hours. “Indigenous voices have been ignored. In our action today we say NO MORE!” said Soto....
Momentum is growing for the national march to stop SB 1070 to be held May 29 in Phoenix. The march will demand the repeal of SB 1070, Arizona’s “Show me your papers” law, and an end to racist immigrant-bashing and the blaming of immigrants for economic and social problems which in reality result from the capitalist economic crisis....
On May 11, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law House Bill 2281, which eliminates ethnic studies programs from the state’s K-12 schools. This came just three weeks after she signed the repugnant anti-immigrant Senate Bill 1070.

The HB 2281 bill, which was pushed through the state legislature by the same racist forces that pushed SB 1070, not only eliminates the Tucson Unified School District’s popular Mexican American Studies and Raza Studies programs but also slanders TUSD’s programs with outright lies. It states that the ethnic studies programs teach students to “resent or hate other races” and that they “promote the overthrow of the United States government.”...

n a powerful, energetic and inspiring day of action, activists, unemployed people, students and youth, and community organizers from across the East Coast and Midwest converged on the Department of Labor on May 8 to honor the 75th anniversary of the Works Projects Administration — by demanding a concrete jobs program, now. They then held a meeting to strategize around their demands and plan future events.

Proposed actions resulting from the meeting include the creation of People’s Assemblies to be held in various cities to help link struggles and movements together; national days of outrage and local speak-outs against unemployment; community-labor action committees inside local unions to support the fight for jobs; and connecting with student and youth calls for an Oct. 7 day of action in support of public education....

In Nepal, Honduras, Greece and elsewhere around the world, this year’s May Day actions went far beyond the traditional workers’ holiday by opening major struggles over decisive policies and in some cases over questions of power....
It was a significant event that not even the big-business-owned press could ignore, hard as they wanted to do. May Day 2010 in the United States was the largest national outpouring of protests since the May Day Immigrant Uprising of 2006, when millions of people, the great majority of Latin American and Caribbean origin, took to the streets against the reactionary Sensenbrenner bill that denied full immigrant rights....
Tens of thousands of people rallied, chanted and rocked to Hip Hop performers and other artists and orators for more than three hours in Union Square today before marching two miles to the federal buildings in downtown Manhattan. This year’s May Day action focused on combating the recently passed Arizona anti-immigrant law and demanding legalization of all undocumented workers in the U.S. and their families....
This week nationwide press conferences are being held in various cities by leading coalitions in the immigrant rights movement to collectively denounce attempts to criminalize immigrants, from the recent bill in Arizona to the Schumer plan. Included in the media events are the May 1st Coalition in Tucson, Arizona; the May 1st Coalition in New York, New York; the Miami May Day Coalition in Miami, Florida; and here in Los Angeles the Southern California Immigration Coalition (SCIC)....
On Saturday May 1, 2010, a diverse coalition of immigrant rights advocates, community and union leaders, artists and youth-based community organizations will gather in Union Square at midday for a rally, march and Hip Hop concert in support of immigrant and worker rights. In light of legislation passed in Arizona last week, the Union Square event will emphasize condemning this racially charged legislation that will terrorize not only immigrants but all communities of color....
Seventy-five years ago, Pres. Roosevelt signed the executive order establishing the Works Projects Administration, the biggest public jobs program in U.S. history. Join unemployed people, trade unionists, community and youth activists and organizations from all over the country on Saturday, May 8 in Washington, D.C. to call for a real jobs program for the 30 million unemployed and underemployed people in the U.S. today....
April 23 — When the Arizona Senate passed a sweeping, racist anti-immigrant bill on April 19, it unleashed a firestorm of outrage from Arizona’s oppressed communities. The bill legalizes racial profiling and criminalizes all undocumented people as “trespassers.” It also contains provisions attacking day laborers, allows for the seizure of any vehicle used to transport an undocumented person, and calls for the arrest of anyone who provides assistance to an undocumented person....
The Arizona law targeting all immigrants, and all Latinos/as, has been passed by both houses of the Arizona Legislation. The governor has three days to either veto, sign or let it pass into law without action. We must let the Arizona state government know that this racist attack will be answered by not only protests, but a full-scale tourism and convention boycott of Arizona...
On April 17, the openly Nazi group NSM held a rally at Los Angeles City Hall. Many groups, including socialist, anti-war and anti-racist organizations, mobilized to challenge their so-called right to free speech that motivates violence, racism and genocide against non-European peoples and the LGBTQ community....
In the early morning hours of April 15, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI and other Homeland Security agencies launched a military operation against Tucson’s mostly Latino/a and Indigenous south side neighborhoods....
In 2006, May Day was revived in the U.S., the country of its origin, as a result of the upsurge of immigrant workers. This was a great step forward for the workers' struggle....
...
Among the many so-called “Tea Party” actions mobilizing right-wing forces on the pretext of opposing paying taxes was one called by a local New York City group, which seemed to be based in Staten Island. The Tax Day rally, however, was set at the Central Post Office across from Madison Square Garden in Manhattan.<...
A visit of the “Tea Party Express” to cities in the Midwest — a region of the country that has been most devastated by the economic crisis of capitalism — did not go unchallenged. Rather, activists and community members confronted them at several stops to denounce the right-wing attempt to divide working and oppressed people and to show that the racist, sexist, anti-lesbian-gay-bi-trans, anti-immigrant, corporate-funded Tea Party does not speak for working people....
The corporate media may give it a different spin, but for Palin and Wall Street’s Tea Party, Boston was a bust....
Southern California, Occupied México- On Friday and Saturday March 26 and 27, the International Action Center (IAC) and Unión del Barrio hosted a National Labor Tour coordinated by the US/Cuba Labor Exchange to Southern California. The purpose of the tour was two fold; 1) to bring together workers in the US with those from Latin America to discuss the current social and political problems arising from US Economic Trade Policies (Free Trade Agreements), and 2) to build support for the Bolivarian Alternative for Nuestra América (ALBA) the social and economic integration program for continental unity....
On March 21 a multitude of immigrants and their supporters amassed in the largest demonstration for immigrant rights in Washington, D.C., in decades, if not ever....
On March 21, tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people will be demonstrating for immigrant rights in Washington, D.C....
The International Action Center will be traveling to DC this weekend with activists from Bailout the People Movement, BAYAN, FIST-Fight Imperialism Stand Together, Peoples Organization for Progress, May 1 Coalition for Workers and Immigrant rights, Women’s Fight Back Network, Free Mumia Coalition and many others in cars, vans and buses.

Saturday, MARCH 20...

This year’s May Day is more important than ever as the economic and financial crisis continues to strike a heavy blow on workers from the U.S. and around the world. A recovery with no jobs is a recovery solely for the multinational corporations, who are raking in record profits as the people face increasing poverty, joblessness, homelessness, disease and death. The escalation of war abroad in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the racist, ruthless military occupation of Haiti demand our response....
The Bail Out the People Movement, meeting in New York on Feb. 24, voted to endorse and help to mobilize for the March 20 National March on Washington. The demonstration, called by the Answer Coalition, raises the slogans: U.S. out of Afghanistan and Iraq, Free Palestine, Reparations for Haiti, and Money for Healthcare, Jobs and Education. The endorsement, proposed by the International Action Center, had unanimous support and was followed by a concrete discussion of outreach, transportation and material to take to Washington....
On March 4 students and workers from all around the country will take action to defend education against increased privatization of pre-kindergarten through 12th grade schools, budget cuts, layoffs, furloughs and tuition increases at college and universities — especially the public institutions....
The year is 2010. Yet discrimination against and exploitation of the workers who grow and harvest our food supply continues today and in its vilest forms — against immigrants and women....
This year’s May Day is more important than ever as the economic and financial crisis continues to strike a heavy blow on workers from the U.S. and around the world. A recovery with no jobs is a recovery solely for the multinational corporations, who are raking in record profits as the people face increasing poverty, joblessness, homelessness, disease and death....
Jenny Ulysse is a teen-aged Boston community organizer who was in Port-au-Prince Haiti on January 12 and was injured in the earthquake. She has been unable to receive an x-ray or any medical attention for her injured foot and leg since then. Although she is a legal resident of the United States, lives here with her family and is the main breadwinner, is employed and goes to school in Boston, her efforts to return and obtain necessary medical attention are being rebuffed at the U.S. embassy because she is not a citizen....
Haiti has suffered a terrible natural disaster at the cost of hundreds of thousands of precious lives. This natural disaster however, has been bitterly aggravated by racism and imperialist domination....
Why is Bloomberg, the 8th richest man in the U.S., spending $100 million to buy this election? Yes he’s arrogant and enjoys controlling the lives of 9 million people in NYC....
If the U.S. government was interested in supporting democracy or in building respect for the will of the people in a democratic election, it should have started by respecting the outcome of the 2006 Palestinian election. The Palestinian people voted in large numbers, electing Hamas candidates to parliament with large enough votes to form the Palestinian government. In Gaza, Hamas had a total sweep....
Approximately 40 immigrant artists (artists who were displaced from their homelands) will participate in 4 exhibits throughout the metropolitan New York area, the first two openings taking place in July, 2009. The artists come from a variety of continents and countries including Ivory Coast, Taiwan to Guatemala and Chile....
There is a war going on inside this country—a war against immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants. This war is escalating, and like most wars, it is taking many casualties. The casualties are innocent children, women and men whose only crime is the need to survive, to find a way to live and work in the United States....
One the eve of America's Independence Day celebration, American Muslims (with the support of concerned members of non-Muslim communities) will spearhead a three-part initiative to draw attention to, and to educate the public on, the enormous gulf that still exist between promise and fulfillment, and how this socio-political deficiency within the American body-politic has impacted the Muslim community (globally) post 9/11....
“Immigrant,” a bilingual community event on immigrant rights in Syracuse, held in the Blodgett High School cafeteria, drew a standing-room-only, multinational crowd of more than 110 people on May 14. ...
Immigrants and their supporters have marched, rallied, picketed and even met with the mayor’s staff to express their opposition to the enforcing of immigration laws by Houston cops....
Organizing for the June 14-17 People's Summit and Tent City in Detroit is building fast. A planning meeting April 25 was attended by representatives from a broad base of progressive organizations. They included the Autoworkers Caravan, which has been in the forefront of challenging the massive attacks on auto workers' wages and benefits; the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions; disabled activists from Warriors on Wheels; Call 'Em Out; the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization; the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality; and the National Lawyers Guild. Two UAW members from Toledo, Ohio, also attended....
...
There was a kickoff rally May 1 at Union Square's historic site of many May Day gatherings -- and then a march to Foley Square, in front of the notorious Federal Building, where many immigrants have experienced abuse, grief and discrimination at the hands of "la migra," formerly known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service and now Immigration and Customs Enforcement....
Over the last several months, a series of dramatic cases involving police killings of civilians has brought to light the essential role of law enforcement within capitalist societies. Numerous cities throughout the United States have seen a dramatic increase in the murder of African Americans by cops as well as the escalation of raids and deportations against immigrants both documented and undocumented....
Without a doubt, millions of people around the world are anxious about the news of a possible pandemic of the swine flu virus....
Fear of a swine flu pandemic is spreading much faster than the virus itself. While it's too soon to predict how widespread and deadly this new variation of influenza virus will be, information about the likely origin of the outbreak is starting to surface. A huge factory-farm pig operation owned by U.S. corporate giant Smithfield and operated by its Mexican subsidiary, Granjas Carroll de Mexico, may have spawned this new threat to public health....
May 1 is May Day -- International Workers' Day. It began in the United States a long time ago during the struggle for the eight-hour work day, but that history is not well known here, and for good reason. The scions of capitalism who feed us their ideology don't want workers and oppressed people to know their own history of struggle....
In the aftermath of the April 12 sniper killings of three Somali teenagers by the U.S. Navy, several U.S. agencies met on April 17 to conduct a review of military and foreign policy toward this Horn of Africa nation. The State Department, Pentagon and Justice Department have outlined a series of options to ostensibly fight "piracy" in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean....
Former congressman Tom Tancredo, a national symbol of hate, racism, sexism, bigotry and the scapegoating of immigrants, was invited to speak at UNC Chapel Hill on April 14 by Youth for Western Civilization, a newly-formed white supremacist organization on campus....
While May Day has historically been a day of workers solidarity and a celebration of labor power, this is not a day or year like any other....
Clearly, the fight to bail out the people will not end in April. We must continue to build a movement that will guarantee jobs,homes, health care, an end to repression and war, and everything the people need during this growing economic crisis....Since 2006, workers have come out to commemorate May 1st, International Workers Day. Despite the raids and deportations, immigrant workers, the sector whose struggle bore May Day in Chicago two centuries ago, have revived May Day, a day celebrated by billions around the world every year. In 2005, workers and activists reclaimed May Day once again and held several May Day demonstrations in New York City and elsewhere....
The May 1st Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights held a news conference on March 17 at Union Square to announce the upcoming May Day rally in New York City, which has been held there each year since 2005....
As banks fail, jobs disappear and the economy sinks deeper into a horrific crisis of poverty and misery, the television channels and political campaigns have suddenly become full of the most unlikely people denouncing "big business."...
...
Event To Welcome Mario Castellon Leiva, Who Has Been Bicycling Across The U.s. From El Salvador In Defense Of Immigrant Rights...
On July 6, 2007 Victor Toro, a Chilean was arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security while on board Amtrak in Rochester, New York. He was transferred to Cayuga County Jail in Auburn, New York and bail was set at $5,000.00. ...
MIGRANTE Europe supports the struggle of Chilean activist and migrant worker Victor Toro for freedom and justice. We join his friends and supporters in calling for his immediate release and grant of political asylum....
More than two weeks after being granted bond by a federal judge, Sami Al-Arian is still being held in prison. In fact, Dr. Al-Arian is now being subjected to the worst treatment by prison officials since his stay in Coleman Federal Penitentiary in Florida three years ago....
On Monday, May 12, 2008, at 10:00 a.m., in an operation involving some 900 agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed a raid of Agriprocessors Inc, the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing plant located in the town of Postville, Iowa. The raid --officials boasted–--was “the largest single-site operation of its kind in American history.” ...
"For a long time, others spoke on our behalf. Now we speak for ourselves." The message was clear: the time for the voice of the grassroots migrants has come with the resounding success of the International Migrants Alliance (IMA) founding assembly....
The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights condemns the latest Department of Homeland Security immigration raid carried out on May 12, by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) against immigrant workers at a meat-packing plant in Postville, Iowa....
A terror raid against immigrant workers at a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on May 12 devastated a whole town. Residents and local officials have expressed their shock and anger in the national media....
The International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU), known for its militant and democratic traditions as well as its economic and social justice activism, has written a new chapter in its glorious labor history by shutting down all 29 ports on the West Coast for eight hours on May Day....
May Day, or International Workers' Day, was celebrated with marches, combative demonstrations and sometimes open struggles all over the world. In the non-imperialist world, these actions focused on the great increase in food prices in recent weeks, in Europe on defending jobs and workers' wages. In both Europe and the United States, immigrant rights were up front. In the U.S. longshore workers held a rare political strike against war on the West Coast....
For the third consecutive year U.S. workers reclaimed their historic holiday, which originated with Chicago labor struggles for the 8-hour day in the 1880s. The dominant call this year was for full rights for 12 million undocumented workers....
WORLD EVENTS have made May Day 2008 a turning point. AT NO OTHER TIME in our lives has it been more critical to march together and work together. WE NOW FACE AN ECONOMIC CRISIS the likes of which we have not seen in our lifetimes that is throwing millions out of their homes, jobs and making it more difficult to get healthcare, an education or even gas and food....
Yesterday, on the morning of April 15th, Dr. Al-Arian was removed from the abusive prison of Howard County Detention Center in Maryland. Although immigration officials promised to prevent any further abuse, he was simply thrown from the pot into the frying pan....
On March 8, 1908, working women in the needle trade industry took to the streets of New York City demanding better working conditions, higher wages, shorter workdays and the overall improvement of women's lives in this country. These women marched through New York City demanding justice for women workers and immigrant workers; they were in fact working immigrant women. The message and militancy of these women were so inspiring to women around the world that in 1910 the International Socialist Congress meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, officially declared March 8 International Women's Day....
No one should be awakened by armed squads bursting into their homes in the dead of night with shotguns and automatic weapons drawn taking away parents and relatives leaving children alone....
Workshops will coordinate with the activities of the International Action Center and Troops Out Now Coalition. Trainees will have a chance to gather footage from demonstrations, meetings and forums and will learn to edit that footage and stream it on YouTube and Facebook....
On Monday, January 21, from coast to coast, thousands took to the streets to march against racism.The Martin Luther King March Against Racism Coalition called for nationwide actions, saying, "There is a time for celebrations and there's a time for fighting. Now is a time that we need to fight. And fight like hell. On this King Holiday we must organize and march against the forces of racism, reaction and war, not just the war abroad but the war raging here at home. To know what's happening, is to know that nothing is more important than jump starting a multi-racial movement against racism."...
This year, let's help put the meaning back into the Martin Luther King holiday on January 21st by marching against racism, oppression, war, poverty and division. In New York, the march will assemble at 1 PM for an opening rally at 32nd Street and 7th Avenue, near the offices of radio station WABC (which recently put Don Imus back on the air!). Then we will march to Columbus Circle and rally outside of CNN's offices (located inside the Time Warner building)....
Victor Toro Ramerez fought the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Now he is fighting deportation from the U.S., and is linking his own struggle to that of all undocumented workers....
On Sept. 30, the television program "Desperate Housewives" had one of its main characters make a scripted racist slur against Filipino medical professionals. The character insulted the medical education system of the Philippines....
From June 27 to July 1, Atlanta will host the first-ever Social Forum held in the United States. The U.S. Social Forum will gather thousands of grassroots and community activists from across the country who will engage each other in political discussion and strategy planning. The operating slogan for the five-day event is "For another world to be possible, another U.S. is necessary."...
More than 1 million immigrants and supporters skipped work and school and took to the streets of New York City today in support of immigration rights. As the day began, many businesses throughout the region remained closed, as owners observed the May 1 Great American Boycott -- a day of no work, no School, no shopping, and no selling. ...
We the undersigned uncategorically denounce the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid and detention of at least 350 immigrant workers at Michael Bianco Inc. in New Bedford, MA. which took place the morning of Tuesday, March 6, 2007. We stand firmly in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in all immigrant communities and demand the immediate release of all who have been detained by ICE. Further, we demand an immediate end to these raids and deportations of immigrant workers and the reunification of their families. ...

International Action Center • Solidarity Center • 55 W. 17 St., Suite 5C • New York, NY 10011
Phone 212.633.6646 • E-mail: iacenter@iacenter.org • En Español: iac-cai@iacenter.org