July 02, 2007

Progressives: urge Clinton, Obama, Richardson, Edwards to support Elvira Arellano's "campaign of resistance"

Dear fellow progressives:

Elvira Arellano - the undocumented person from Mexico currently seeking sanctuary in The Right Rev. Walter "Slim" Coleman's church in Chicago to avoid being deported and separated from her U.S.-born son - has issued a call to a "campaign of resistance". I urge all fellow progressives to not only heed the call, but to encourage the Democratic candidates to join with her in her struggle. Please go to campaign appearances by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, and John Edwards and urge them to at least support Arellano, and perhaps even her "campaign of resistance" if we're lucky.

You can read her declaration here:

Hours after the Senate voted against advancing the immigration reform project, the Mexican activist Elvira Arellano announced a campaign of resistance against the U.S. government.

In a written statement, the leader of the movement Familia Unida (United Family) said that "if the Democrats and the Republicans cannot summon the courage to fix the broken law we will not sit quietly and see our families and our children cut to pieces on the broken pieces of that broken law."

She demanded an immediate moratorium on all raids and deportations.

Arellano... said [presumably August 15] would be the deadline the government will have to "revive and pass a comprehensive immigration reform."

Otherwise, pro-immigrant organizers will begin a campaign "aimed at bringing this government and this economy to a halt."

Representatives from the Centro Sin Fronteras and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights [press release link] also announced this morning they were prepared to take "economic actions" against corporations that support anti immigrant legislators and programming.

Also, a massive concentration of families and children is scheduled for July 17 in Washington D.C. to "confront the leaders of both parties and the President."

The above is an English translation of the Spanish version of an article at the site of the La Raza Newspaper (laraza.com/news.php?nid=44792). The article is marked as coming from EFE and what's left off from the above version is a call for a "hate moratorium" and for Lou Dobbs' show to be canceled.

Unfortunately, elviraspeaks.com is still "Bajo Construcction", so we have to turn to this Centro Sin Fronteras page to read more about the movimiento.

At that page - authored by Emma Lozano of Centro/Puebla Sin Fronteras and Elvira Arellano - they discuss how their struggle will continue even after an amnesty passes, they demand full legalization for almost all undocumented persons (quite a concession, since there are apparently some who would be rejected), complain about "small white led leftist organizations" interfering in the people's struggle, discuss the "the militancy of resistance", and say:

We have asserted that our demand to be here and to be fully enfranchised here is a right not a privilige and a destiny of our people to transform this nation.

Note to fellow progressives: we did Manifest Destiny, so what they want to do is OK.

They also sound a bit like Dick Morris, the New York Times, and the Democratic/GOP leadership:

Our message of attack is simple: the republicans are anti-family and their proposed system of labor is racist. Our lever of power is simple: Latinos will not vote for republicans. – or democrats that do not vote with us. We will vote against all republicans and will run independent candidates against democrats who oppose us.

UPDATE: I earlier misidentified Walter "Slim" Coleman as 'Walter "Slim" Whitman'. I apologize to the country singer with whose name I got his mixed-up.

Posted to Immigration2007a at July 2, 2007 11:50 AM