Fwd: Coordinadora March on Washington
Awa...@aol.com
Anyone know whether any Jewish organizations, either Russian Jews themselves
or the various pro-Soviet-Jewry organizations, or the mainstream Jewish
world, or the progressive Jewish world -- are involved in any of the plans
for this March on Washington (October 12) for immigrants rights ? -- Good
shabbos, Arthur.
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Forwarded message:
From: RKa...@afsc.org (Rachael Kamel)
To: awa...@aol.com
Date: 96-08-29 16:18:09 EDT
Hello, Arthur, David Gracie here at AFSC passed on your request for more
information about the march on Washington sponsored by Coordinadora '96, a
national grassroots immigrants' rights network.
You may recall me from my other life, where I am a congregant at Mishkan
Shalom, involved in economic justice work based there; I e-mailed you a few
months back asking for information about Jewish renewal mailing lists and
since then have been following the JRJ list.
Here in this life, I am the coordinator of the Mexico-U.S. Border Program in
the AFSC National Office; I work in support of programs in Southwest that
are concerned with immigrants' rights, abuses of human and civil rights by
the Border Patrol, and worker organizing in maquiladora plants -- all issues
that are quite distant from the Philadelphia political landscape.
Our "Immigration Law Enforcement Monitoring Project" (ILEMP) was one of the
founders of the Coordinadora '96, which came together in the wake of the
passage of California's Prop. 187 in 1994. The Coordinadora network
undertook a two-year process of grassroots organizing in immigrant
communities, combining local campaigns and base-building with periodic joint
actions, to create a new movement for immigrants' rights which would be led
by immigrants themselves, rather than agency-based advocates who speak on
their behalf (many of whom have shown themselves to be only too ready to
sell their constituency down the river, as in the process of lobbying over
the pending immigration bill -- which, by the way, is due to be reported out
of a conference committee & come up for a final vote next week).
This process will culminate this October 12 in a march on Washington, which,
while based most closely in immigrant communities, has extended its demands
to embrace a basic program that reflects the most pressing concerns of all
disenfranchised communities. Groups in at least 30 states are sending
contingents to the march; AFSC programs in Texas, Arizona, California,
Oregon, Iowa, New Jersey, Florida and Massachusetts are actively involved.
Our staff in the field believe that this march will be a historic occasion;
so far as we know, it is the only significant national action planned for
this fall in resistance to the climate of repression and mean-spiritedness
that rules in Washington today.
If you send me a fax or a snail mail address I can send you copies of an
AFSC statement expressing our support for the march, a leaflet we prepared
to promote it locally, an earlier background statement giving more details
of the history of this movement, and a partial (and somewhat outdated) list
of endorsers. I'd be very happy to provide multiple copies of any of these
items if you are able to circulate them. We also have t-shirts, posters and
bumper stickers available for resale with the slogan "No Human Being Is
Illegal." (Originally coined by Elie Wiesel, this slogan has been broadly
taken up today by the immigrants' rights movement.)
We have been doing some outreach locally to Puerto Rican organizations,
among students at area colleges (who organized a fairly active Coalition
Against Xenophobia in the wake of Prop. 187), and to Quaker meetings and
others involved in the former sanctuary movement. In general, my impression
has been that while national interest in this march is quite strong, locally
it is just too far from people's reality to have very much impact. Still I'd
be very grateful for anything you can do to pass the word along and help
generate interest in this action.
best,
Rachael Kamel
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