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But this is not Honduras . . .
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by Anne Winkler-Morey, W A M M
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My friend Michael Livingston once told me that teaching social justice involves lying a little—if you tell the uninitiated the straight truth they’ll write you off. I have found this to be true about teaching in general, whether it’s trying to persuade a person on the street to oppose the war, teaching history to college students, helping 13-year-olds learn how to read, or even teaching dance to middle school girls—I need to meet my students halfway even if it means walking in the opposite direction of where I want to go with them.
Sometimes, however, I wonder.
The immigration debate is heating up in Minnesota and nationwide. Last December Governor Pawlenty presented a “study” that claimed that illegal immigrants and their offspring are costing Minnesota tax payers more than they contribute.
Similar caustic rhetoric coming out of Washington, in the guise of proposed legislation, illustrates that Pawlenty is not the only politician using hate-mongering as an election-year, vote-getting ploy.
In meeting these politicians and their unwitting supporters halfway, we point out that undocumented immigrants pay taxes and pay into social security without receiving a dime. We say that immigrants perform work that other Minnesotans don’t want and for wages they would not accept, providing U.S. citizens with inexpensive goods and services. We remind them that we are a nation full of immigrants. We tell them to thank an immigrant for their high quality of life.
These arguments may help someone to reject the latest hate campaign but they do not get to the heart of the immigration issue: Our economy has been dependent on the super-exploitation of a labor underclass for centuries. Substandard immigrant wages perpetuate labor and race inequality, imperialism, and war.
How does this system work?
1. PERPETUATATING RACISM
Throughout U.S. history the hierarchy of labor has been justified by dehumanizing workers on the bottom of the ladder: people from Africa: “3/5 of a person,” women: “property of father or husband,” children: “half the size, half the pay,” the last off the boat: “of inferior ethnicity.” People of the global South are: “simple people who need less.” Prisoners: “in debt to society—not deserving.”
Today, defining immigrants as illegal and therefore undeserving is the lynchpin behind Pawlenty’s anti-immigrant campaign. Children of undocumented immigrants (regardless of their citizenship) are not deserving of an education, their parents do not deserve a decent wage and labor protections, and no one in the family deserves health care.
2. VULNERABLE WORKERS
Slavery worked by keeping workers as vulnerable as possible. The middle passage—mass torture—left people physically and emotionally battered. Language barriers among slaves made it difficult to organize. Legally sanctioned corporal punishment heightened the cost of rebellion. Laws defining this sector of the population as not deserving of political representation made legal recourse impossible. Jim Crow laws legalized a race hierarchy post-slavery. Similar tactics have kept women, children, and prisoners vulnerable, allowing employers to further exploit these workers. Neocolonial policies left workers in other countries working for U.S. corporations in unsustainable mono-crop economies, without employment alternatives or the ability to vote out their oppressors. These are the conditions forcing many to seek work across borders.
New immigrants have always been in the most vulnerable worker category. Language, cultural, and citizenship barriers combine to create vulnerable conditions for immigrant workers. Illegal status, like slavery and disenfranchisement, is a powerful way to intensify the vulnerability of a group of workers. Many immigrants fear returning to desperate economic and political conditions that prompted their decision to leave home.
Free trade policies, illegal status, and geographic proximity make it easy to deport organizers and replace them with other desperate workers. A multitude of these factors together help to maintain the super-exploitation of working people from Mexico and Central America.
Preserving a super-exploited labor force requires military force. The Iraq war is not just about oil but oil profits. Migrant laborers from all over the world are working in Iraq today.
Well yes, Anne, that’s all quite true, but what do you say to the dedicated Minneapolis public-school teacher, who when faced with job of incorporating a non-English-speaking student into her overcrowded classroom exclaims, “After all, this is not Honduras!” How do you meet her halfway so she can hear you? Maybe this is not the time to talk about global capitalism or how immigrants shore up social security. Maybe this is the time to talk about social change, posing the question: How are we going to get the educational sources we need to teach our children?
We can remind her of the gains made by past labor, civil rights, and peace movements. It is through organization and coalition building that we can turn bombs into books, bring teachers the resources they need to serve an increasingly diverse student body, and parents the salaries and benefits they need to provide kids with what they need to be school-ready.
Today more than ever these movements overlap. The immigrant rights movement not only brings all these issues together, but here in the Twin Cities it provides the opportunity for unprecedented coalitions of diverse ethnic communities and representatives of labor, religious, and civil rights organizations.
Peace activists can help turn Governor Pawlenty’s immigration study on its head. Let’s not miss this opportunity to build a coalition against racism, inequality, and war that is unprecedented in this North Star state
Plans are in the works for a mass action for October 12, and many other actions will take place before then. People are organizing around the principles of civil rights, labor rights, civil liberties, and family unification. Watch the WAMM calendar for events coming up. If you are interested in getting involved further, email me. |
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Word Up
To live in defiance of the bad around us is a marvelous victory! To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
—Howard Zinne
Iraq Resource
Nir Rosen, an Arabic-speaking journalist goes about unembedded in Iraq, and provides excellent firsthand reporting on the sectarian violence and tensions in Iraq, based on Arabic-language conversations with real Iraqis. Info online.
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© 2006 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete April 2006 Index - click here
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