On January 1, five residents of South Florida stopped eating in a protest action. They are demanding that the Obama administration take measures now to put an end to the deportations that are separating families -- at least until Congress can provide more permanent relief by fixing our harsh immigration laws.
The Fast for our Families is indefinite: the fasters intend to consume only liquids until President Obama listens to "the voices of American families that have been torn apart by the deportation system," as they wrote in a letter to the President on January 6.
The fasters include Francisco Agustin, a Guatemalan farmworker who suffers from a job-related disability, and Jenny Aguilar, a Honduran mother who has lived in the United States for 18 years and raised her three U.S.-born children here. The immigration agency forces Aguilar to wear a GPS monitoring device on her ankle. "I am fasting because of all the injustice and damage to families that Immigration [enforcement] is causing," says Aguilar. "I want to be free and have a different life for my children."
Another faster was previously deported to Mexico for driving without a license. She has two U.S.-born children, ages four and six. Wilfredo Mendoza and Jonathan Fried are United States citizens who joined the fast in solidarity with their immigrant friends, family and community members. On January 6, Guatemalan-born artist Sabastián Caño joined the other fasters at St. Ann's Catholic Mission in the Miami suburb of Naranja. You can keep up with them on their blog and website, and check out their live feed each day at noon.
No organization called for this action; it wasn't part of any great mobilization plan. No one told these people to start a fast. Their motivation stems from a need to keep families together, and from a persistent hope that the system can be changed. Realizing that the fasters are determined to risk their health, and even their lives, with their action, groups like the Miami Workers Center, Florida Immigrant Coalition, South Florida Interfaith Worker Justice and Families for Freedom are doing their best to build support for the fasters and their demands.
Also on January 1, a group of young immigrants from Florida's Students Working for Equal Rights set off on a 1,500-mile, four-month long, "Trail of Dreams" through the southeastern United States to Washington D.C., to push for true community-led immigration reform and in solidarity with the fasters.
A thousand miles away, the fast has been taken up by Jean Montrevil, a New York City immigrant rights activist and father of four who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on December 30. He is now facing deportation. His wife Jani, a U.S. citizen, is fighting with the support of the community to free Jean so he can stay here with their children. Immigrants held with Montrevil at York County Prison in Pennsylvania are also participating in the protest.
The movement is spreading, but it needs your support. Here are some simple things you can do:
SHARE: Check out the links in this post, and help spread the word about these actions to your contacts through Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, blogs and listserves.
WRITE: Send your own letter to President Obama. Let him know that you believe in keeping families together and giving everyone a fair deal. You can also contact your senators and your representative in Congress with the same message.
FAST: Fast for a day (or more) in solidarity with the Fast for our Families -- and let everyone know why you're doing it.
ACT: Get inspired to start your own action -- a weekly vigil, petition drive, demonstration, teach-in, street theater, civil disobedience -- and link it up with the Fast for our Families and the Trail of Dreams.
If you don't understand why any of this is important, or you feel it has nothing to do with you, just think: you too could be facing deportation today if it were not for the accident of where you happened to be born. As U.S.-born citizens we never earned the right to our privilege. We were just lucky.
As the fasters wrote in their January 6 letter to President Obama: "Please put yourself in our shoes and just imagine for a minute what it would be like to be separated from your beautiful daughters just because you were born in a different latitude."
Whether or not you realize it, the chances are good that someone you care about is affected by the threat of deportation. So don't wait to do something until after ICE comes and hauls away your best friend, your neighbor, your boyfriend, your in-laws, your teachers, your classmates, your co-workers.
Instead, reach out your hand to the families and communities who need your help right now to win justice. This is one of those moments in history when we have a real opportunity to make a collective difference in the struggle for a better world. The time is now; 2010 is the year.
Some of you may remember 2006, the year of mass mobilizations for immigrant rights: millions of people marched in the streets, walked out of schools and meat-packing plants. It all started with a modest call for a "Day without an Immigrant" on February 14 -- Valentine's Day -- in Philadelphia. To everyone's surprise, more than two thousand people took part in demonstrations, including hundreds of immigrants who skipped work at chicken-processing plants in southern Delaware. Two months later we found ourselves in the middle of a revolution. On April 10, 2006, some two million people demonstrated in more than 140 towns and cities across the United States, and similar numbers did so again three weeks later on May 1. Then the protests dissipated: after a wave of immigration raids hit in April, many people felt they had already made their point, and they went back to laying low.
Now 2010 is here, and the Fast for Our Families and the Trail of Dreams are the spark that can ignite this year's movement. It may not take the same form as the 2006 mobilizations, but if we sit around waiting for that moment to return, we'll miss what's happening now. So let's do our part, and help this new movement win some long-awaited justice for immigrants.
Fast forward to 2010. Obama has beefed up the Border Patrol and has forced the migrants deeper into the desert and the death toll will climb even higher as a result. Americans will blame the migrant for even attempting to cross into America and the people that dislike Obama will still accuse him of being "weak" on immigration policies even though he is far more stronger than the last President in this area.
Politics and not logic will continue to drive this issue. A lack of humanity will be the bottom line as wealthy Americans yowl about dollar and cents instead of decency. Folks in other states will demand a massive wall built across the border that would shame the DDR and then yowl about "COMMUNISM" and "SOCIALISM" in Washington D.C. A bleak and illogical future to be sure.
The effort to dehumanize and demonize began in this time. "It was their own fault that they were dead. Weren't they illegal? Since they are illegal and broke one law to come here, we assume that they will break all the laws that we have, they must be criminals. If only they minded the law, If only they stayed in Mexico and fought for an honest government, if only they spoke English." Began to creep into everyday talk. The mass hatred begins.
Not many really listened or cared about the migration issue until 2006 when thousands of migrants took to the streets demanding citizenship and actual human rights. The marches failed to bring citizenship for an array of reasons.
The marches also brought a terrible back-lash of hate and anger as groups sprang up over night to combat the "Great Evil". These Border groups all came rushing down to the Border areas with agendas and a great command of facts, figures and history even though none had ever spent much time in the regions involved.
The Powers-That-Be during the Bush years put amnesty on the table and removed it after a fire-storm from the party faithful. They howled and argued mindless among themselves and did absolutely nothing. The rank and file of that party put all the blame on the other political party that lacked the votes to stop any laws and resolutions. Their own impotence on the issue drove them to blame others for their own lack of action or resolution.
The mass migration of the last decade requires a decent amount of thought as it involves many issues on many levels. Bumper-sticker solutions such as "BUILD A WALL", "DEPORT THEM ALL" or "IT'S THE DEMOCRAT'S FAULT" show a clear lack of understanding of the issues involved as well as a closed mind to facts regarding many issues.
The great migration started in the Clinton years. Clinton walled off American cities to force migrants into the harsher environments as a deterrent. It failed as a policy and an idea as conditions in other parts of the planet (It's just not Mexicans.) were so terrible that people began to brave the most deadly Tucson sector (which at the time was wide open) to come to America. Clinton never had the time to deal with this issue well due to constant attacks by a hostile Republican Senate during his second term of office.
It amazed us in those days, but it seemed that America cared more for Monica Lewinsky than thousands of people crossing the desert every day in search of work.
I, yes for the grace of God, was born on this soil, in the deep and sometimes unjustifiably cruel south, where people with skin a shade darker than pale, were reminded daily that they were not worthy. Because the pigment of their complexions were dark, (do you hate your black and brown clothes with the same vehemence?) were hated and feared. Do we need to like and understand all our fellow citizens? No. Do we need to love all our fellow citizens? Yes.
The necessity to survive, the lack of equality and fairness in a ruthless world, where the wealthy and the powerful have their own interests to protect, where governments that are corrupt have little motivation to provide for their vulnerable citizens, “but for the grace of God, there goes I”. I, who am quite sure , that you, who cast aspersions with such hardline misunderstanding, have never known, up close and personal, an actual human being whose status is none in a country that manages to value their work contributions but nothing else about them. As, if you did, you might find out that there is an unimaginable story that led that “other” to our great nation, where opportunities to advance and progress truly exist...
One last relevant quote from the transcript of the film Game Of Death:
Bruce Lee's Uncle - "I heard that the syndicate is after you. You must be a big man."
Bruce Lee - "How did you know that?"
Uncle - "It's a small business."
Lee - "I can't join them, and I can't be forced to join."
Uncle - "You have just described a problem as old as man. You're not unique. There is a solution I do not think you've considered. When you get to the top, you understand how far it is to fall, but, if you think very little of yourself, then you can be pushed off, and fall very easily...What is your opinion of yourself?"
Lee - "I believe I deserve to be where I am. I've worked hard for it."
Uncle - "Then don't let them push. They will never let you rest. You push."
Lee - "You mean kill?"
Uncle - "Integrity can be an expensive thing. What is the price of your integrity? What are you willing to pay?"
I'm not instigating violence but the metaphoric resemblance is clear and so is the message.
Much love and respect.
peAce
- Brown Recluse
"If you're not ready to die for it, take the word "freedom" out of your vocabulary."
- Malcolm X
We all need to be self empowered and to realise that we are taught to fear death for this reason. Each struggle has a price and in the modern day the price end s up being pain and ultimately death. Whatever your struggle is.
If immigrants (or anyone that is standing up for their true freedom) starvation,protests and pleas won't work. We have to say "NO" and stay grounded.
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The people who falsely believe that they have power and property over us do so because we give it to them (especially the people that blindly follow the system and are subservient to it). Writing letters, and asking them to stop. Starving themselves?! HAH. They're probably laughing their way to the bank. That's their fuel. There is one way to stop this, it will be immensely difficult but, its the one way to stop all this non sense and that is to put our foot down, ground it, like they teach in Jui Jitsu and become an unmovable force. Not just immigrants but humans as a whole.
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To fight the laws of society, whether they are just or not, is like going to someone's house and defying the authority of their space.
I completely disagree that anyone should be deported off of this land or any land for that matter. I believe that in order to stop deportations and any type of violations to us as a species we have to stop it when it's ugly head surfaces. I don't believe that letters to our slave masters will change anything, if there is a 'change' then it is merely an illusory one that satisfies the complacent mind of [wo]man as a willing participant of this robotic system. We're sending letters to the same people that have made it an agenda to get rid of us. Throughout history. Yes Jane, social movements might help out in a local or wide scale domestic change and that is completely honourable but that focus will continue to breed the same struggles over and over again until we completely up root the main cause.
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This is America, the land of immigrants. If you don't like immigrants, you're free to leave.