Please spread far and wide…if anyone is interested in joining the
action, contact us at shutdownice@gmail.com, or see our facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/event.php?eid=63335968943&ref=mf
An Open Letter to President Barack Obama
Dear President Obama:
In Spanish, the word “esperar” has three different meanings: to wait, to expect, and to hope. The last word, hope, is the watchword of your presidency and of your campaign. At the bottom of the most famous image of you, it is emblazoned as a beacon of what your presidency will mean. It is this “hope” that has driven millions of Latinos and other immigrant groups to vote for you; and these groups are among the key constituencies that drove you to victory. Yes we can!
For those without documents, your victory has also brought hope. There are many, however, within the immigrant rights community, who wonder whether the first two meanings of “esperar” will take precedence and, in doing so, destroy the hope that your presidency has engendered. Will those whose expectations have risen with your victory be told to wait? Within the first 100 days of your presidency, you have created an executive order that will close Guantánamo and end the torture that has been practiced there. With this action, you have cast yourself with those who believe that the use of terror to deal with social issues is immoral. What many of us fail to understand is why another executive order cannot be signed ending Immigrant and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) community and workplace raids that are terrorizing many immigrant communities and families within this country? Rather, recent statements by Janet Napolitano indicate that your administration is going to increase the repression on immigrant communities and further militarize the border.
ICE raids have torn children from parents whose only “crime” is to seek work and make a better life for their loved ones both here and in their home countries. These raids have terrorized and silenced workers who have attempted to organize their workplaces against wage theft, dangerous working conditions, and exploitation. Hundreds of detained immigrants have died in ICE custody and been denied essential medical care. Recently, a demagogic sheriff has paraded detained immigrants down a public street dressed in nothing but pink underwear. These actions appear too close to those humiliating techniques used in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. They are undertaken in an increasingly racist and xenophobic environment where hate crimes against Latinos has dramatically skyrocketed. These raids have also encouraged the most bigoted and hate-filled towards vigilantism. Make no mistake, these raids are a form of terror and have sowed fear in the hearts of many immigrant men, women, and their children. For those of us with documents and who stand in solidarity with the immigrant rights movement, we believe that the raids are another aspect of the general deterioration of civil rights and liberties in this country since the events of 9/11. Within the immigration courts, the lack of due process and other legal protections enshrined within the Constitution has led to a parody of justice. Indeed, there have been numerous instances of US citizens being deported due to racial profiling. The techniques used by ICE increase the militarization of our society, fitting in too comfortably with Patriot Act and the disgrace of two million people in prison – none of which makes us safer, but certainly making us more fearful and distrusting.
Against the demagogues of political parties and the media, we do not believe that there is a zero-sum employment game pitting immigrants against citizens in a race to the bottom. Even a cursory reading of US history demonstrates that recently-arrived immigrants have been at the forefront of the labor struggles of the past. It is no different today when we see courageous struggles led by immigrant workers to raise the level of wages and improve working conditions in industry after industry and field after field. Many of the economic and social rights that citizens enjoy, defining what we today call “citizenship,” were won by those who did not possess papers. The processes that have shipped jobs overseas or hollowed out industries here are the same forces that have driven campesinos off the land or workers from the maquiladoras over the border. The most economically powerful expect that no border should limit their ability to move capital and industry, yet expect that the people affected by these decisions should recognize them. We believe that those, regardless of nationality, who earn a paycheck and have mouths to feed understand that these necessities override lines drawn upon a map. One does not wait in the face of a rumbling stomach. The cry of a hungry mouth requires no translation.
Earlier in the year we read that you promise to bring meaningful and comprehensive immigration reform to Congress, but that it may have to wait until 2010 or 2011 due to a lack of “political capital.” More recently we have read that your administration will be pushing an immigration bill this year. No matter how long it takes to pass real and just immigration reform, without an executive order ending the raids and deportations, this time effectively is a time of more terror and fear for many immigrant communities. This is intolerable. You are asking those among the most marginalized and exploited within our society, those whose labor has been at the foundation of our economy, those who have already waited and expected for far too long, to go to the back of the line. Well, we follow Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in saying that we can no longer wait.
You have said: “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” We take you at your word. If an executive order declaring a moratorium on ICE raids is not signed within the first hundred days of your administration, we will use non-violent civil disobedience to shut down ICE detention centers. We are non-violent because we wish, through contrast, to expose the system of violence and fear that pervades the communities, workplaces, schools, and homes of the undocumented and their children. We are disobedient because the law is unjust. We believe that by no longer waiting, we will have once again given rise to hope. In the words of the United Farm Workers: ¡Sí
se puede!
