Guest Column

Migrants Rising

By Colin Rajah

National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR)

 (January 28, 2005, Porto Alegre, Brazil) Being part of a U.S. delegation to the World Social Forum (WSF) is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the general impression of most Brazilians and participants at the WSF is that the US is an oppressive empire and its people are complacent about it and their government. So there’s a lot of resentment everywhere from posters exclaiming “Americans, wake up, what are you thinking?!” to the local vendors who refuse to speak or understand any English.

But there are also those who appreciate that we don’t fit that image of the politically complacent yet financially greedy “American.” In fact, we don’t even look like it! This is, after all, a delegation of almost 100 folks organized by the Grassroots Global Justice (GGJ) committee. GGJ is a group of organizations around the U.S. that are primarily membership-based, grassroots, people-of-color-led, that came together after the Second WSF to create a space for our communities who are most affected by neoliberal globalization and all that it encompasses.

From the Southwest Workers Union, based in San Antonio, who are primarily Latino/Latina workers fighting for worker’s rights while battling the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, to Picture the Homeless in New York who are former homeless and shelter-dwellers campaigning for their housing and health rights. From North Carolina’s Black Workers for Justice, who are building coalitions with new Latino immigrants to fight racism in the South, to AGENDA in East Los Angeles mobilizing their community since the 1992 L.A. rebellion.

Amidst all this, immigrants are very present. We estimate that more than half our delegation are either immigrants ourselves or come from families with at least one immigrant. Undeniably, immigrants are on the receiving end of a lot of the neoliberal system – losing land and jobs due to privatization and being “managed” to feed a corporate need for cheap and disposable labor. But neither are we mere helpless victims. Every one in the delegation is directly involved in organizing in one way or another. And in spite of the diverse nature of the group, we stand univocally together when we chanted for no more raids, no more detentions, no more profiling, and no more borders.

And it doesn’t end with our delegation either. For the first time, there was a Migration Social Forum organized by the Brazilian Catholic Pastoral Ministry just before the WSF itself. The opening march (with an estimated 100,000+ people) although overwhelmingly decrying U.S. imperialism and the occupation of Iraq, had numerous banners and cries damning the targeting of immigrants around the world. A workshop by the Italian group ARCI, called for a campaign to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers. A session by the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities (NALACC) is planning to organize an Americas-wide conference by and for migrants. A bi-national research collaboration between Alaskan and Brazilian advocates for refugees revealed increasing systemic abuse of refugees around the world in violation of the Geneva Convention; they are now calling for an international network for refugee rights.

All this in just the first two days. Undoubtedly, we migrants are rising against an increasingly oppressive system to protect our rights, and we’re finding new and innovative ways to work together here at the World Social Forum to achieve this. The culmination might just be at the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights’ workshop this coming Sunday titled “Is Another World Possible for Migrants?” – a question posed on a banner by Korean migrant rights advocates from the last WSF.

For now, it seems the answer might just be yes.

_____________________________________ 

Colin Rajah coordinates the International Migrant Rights program at NNIRR.

_________________________________________
CONTACT INFORMATION: Arnoldo Garcia
National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
Red Nacional Pro Derechos Inmigrantes y Refugiados
310 8th Street Suite 303
Oakland, CA 94607
Tel (510) 465-1984 ext. 305
Fax (510) 465-1885
http://www.nnirr.org/