| April
18 , 2006
Un Pueblo Unido
What Immigrants Must
Learn from the Black Civil Rights Movement ... and Soon
By JUAN SANTOS
"I'm
not an American. I'm one of the twenty-two million Black people
who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million Black
people who are the victims of democracy--nothing but disguised
hypocrisy. So I'm not standing here speaking to you as an American,
or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver--no, not I. I'm
speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America
through the eyes of the victim. I don't see any American dream;
I see an American nightmare." -- MALCOLM X
They're
lying to us.
They
want us to keep playing their way.
To
keep waving American flags.
To
keep trusting them to do the right thing.
We
dare not.
Millions
of people's lives are at stake.
Racist
lawmakers on the Republican ultra-Right now assure us - after they
were deeply stung by the protests of millions, and after we won
the hearts of 62% of the US population - that they want to drop
the provisions in new immigration laws that would make migrants
felons.
?Y
que?
Some
three to six million people would still be arrested and deported.
The
Republicans and Democrats alike have decided the arrests would be
for misdemeanors - not felonies.
That's
so they don't clog their courts, a point that was made with crystalline
clarity on the House floor when HR4437 first passed in December.
It has nothing to do with "compassion" or authentic "inclusion."
They want us to imagine that not being labeled "felons"
will make us safe.
But
nothing could be further from the truth. Here's why.
Every
immigration proposal still on the table authorizes local police
to enforce federal immigration law, just like agents of La Migra,
the Border Patrol. The National Immigration Law Center makes it
plain:
"State
and local police with no immigration law training could claim
new authority as enforcers of criminal law to decide when someone
who 'looks foreign' or 'sounds foreign' has violated federal criminal
immigration law."
Everyone
with brown skin would become a stigmatized "suspect."
The only difference is we would be suspects in a misdemeanor - not
a felony.
But
the penalty for the "crime" would remain the same - for
those without papers it means deportation. FOX News tells us that
under the Hagel - Martinez "Compromise" that was backed
by the Democrats and by organizations like the National Council
of La Raza:
"Illegals
(sic) in the United States less than two years would be required
to leave immediately. If caught once, they would be subject to
a misdemeanor, and if caught twice they would be charged with
a felony. About 2 million to 3 million people fall into this category."
Under
such "compromises" millions of migrants will be deported,
their families split apart and uprooted. The "compromise"
approach endangers not only migrants, but all Brown people. It will
open the door to a new ethnic cleansing, one surpassing the ethnic
cleansings of Mexicans the US government carried out during the
Great Depression, when 350,000 Mexicans and Chicanos were deported,
and during Operation Wetback, when 1,300,000 of us were deported
in the mid-1950s.
Imagine
- at a minimum - that everyone who's marched for migrants rights
in recent weeks were deported. That will give you a picture of the
magnitude of pain and chaos the rulers want to inflict.
Not
that life post-"compromise" would necessarily give the
impression that mass roundups were underway. More likely, it would
all happen quietly, millions arrested, one by one: out of sight.
Call it a slow death, the kind suffered today by impoverished African
Americans in the wake of the first Civil Rights Movement. It is
imperative that our new movement not suffer the same fate.
This
is how it worked then, and what they're aiming for now.
When
outrages like open Jim Crow segregation could no longer be counted
on to keep African Americans "in their place" in the context
of the world-wide anti-colonial rebellions of the 50s and 60s, the
powers that be tried to buy off a sector of Black people in the
US by giving them new opportunities; a substantial Black middle
class arose almost overnight.
This
is the equivalent of the "carrot" of "legalization"
and "citizenship" in our context today.
For
the rest of the Black nation, stranded in the ghettos, Jim Crow
was followed by an even harsher master - mass incarceration. One
by one young African Americans have vanished, locked into prison,
until the ones added up to millions, each rendered silent - until
the silence of the terror and rage in the ghettos of America has
grown so loud it has turned the nation deaf.
A
similar fate would await the millions, who, under a "compromise,"
would face nothing less than mass deportation, mass, legal persecution.
Same
trick: different decade.
A
sister disappears; a father, a mother ...
Here's
the rough numbers.
If
every one of the 650,000 cops in the US were authorized to arrest
only one migrant once every 3 months, within two years 3 million
of the migrants left without papers would be gone. In four years
half the migrant population of the US would be gone. No mass roundups,
no mobilization of the SS or the National Guard. Just quietly, one
by one, until the ones add up to millions, and until the millions
add up to silence.
And
in that silence, the terror and rage that has engulfed the ghetto
would engulf the barrio as well. Then, in a replay of the African
American experience following the Civil Rights Movement, our middle
class "leaders" will wonder aloud where the "victory"
went, never admitting that their "compromise" was not
our victory, but our defeat. Never admitting they had helped to
seal the fate of millions, and helped advance the surge toward a
fascist state in the US.
Don't
imagine that the powers that be don't understand what they are doing.
Even the Minutemen understand it, as evidenced from this all-in-caps-communication
from one of their number·
TAKE
AWAY WHAT THE ENEMY HAS IT'S (SIC) EYES ON...AND MAKE HIM CHOOSE
FROM THE ALTENATIVES (SIC) WE DECIDE TO OFFER...CONTROL THE OPTIONS
2.) USE THE RULE OF LAW TO "FEIGN RETREAT"...IN OTHER
WORDS...PRETEND TO SACRIFICE THE FELONY ISSUE, BUT STILL MAKE
IT SO! WHAT DO I MEAN?
THE
BOTTOM LINE IS: WE WANT THESE PEOPLE....WHO ARE STOPPED BY POLICE
TO BE DEPORTED RIGHT?
WELL....THE
RULE LAW (SIC), RIGHT NOW, IS THIS: ANY ILLEGALS CAUGHT ON THE
BORDER IS (SIC)....DETAINED AND DEPORTED!
WHY
SHOULD IT BE ANY DIFFERENT?
MAKING
A FELONY (SIC) REQUIRES TOO MUCH
"COURT
TIME" WITH LAWYERS INVOLVED...RED TAPE...
DON'T
YOU SEE? IT IS A TRAP THAT THE ENEMY HAS GRABBED!
KEEPING
IT A CIVIL OFFENSE, MISDERMEANOR (SIC)...AND SIMPLY APPLYING THE
RULE OF LAW AT THE BORDER TO REFLECT INTERIOR ENFORCEMENT WITH
LOCAL POLICE IS MUCH MORE WHAT WE WANT!
ALL
WE NEED TO DO, AS I HAVE SAYING (SIC) IS...REFORM ENFORCEMENT!
TIGHTENING THE NOOSE, SCORCHING THE EARTH...WILL FORCE THE ENEMY
TO LEAVE, VOLUNTARILY!
15
MILLION ILLEGALS, DEPORTED COMES OUT TO BE LIKE 8 THOUSAND ILLEGALS
EVERY DAY NONSTOP FOR 5 YEARS!
THE
NAZIS, WHO DID NOT NEED DUE PROCESS...TOOK ALMOST 10 YEARS TO
ROUND UP LESS THAN THAT...PRIOR TO THE FINAL SOLUTION...
However
poorly articulated, this Minuteman understands the situation clearly.
The powers that be are parading an illusion of "due process"
before us, and trying to appear as something less than punitive,
while they set the stage for a radical ethnic cleansing, American
style.
To
achieve this, they are using the time tested method of divide and
conquer, the same tricks they used to derail the first civil rights
movement, and to destroy the lives of millions of African Americans,
while keeping their system safe from any rebellion from below by
establishing a Black buffer caste who, they hoped, would come to
have an investment in being real "Americans." That's the
same bait they hope today's movement will take. But we must understand
that what's gotten us this far is our will to resist. It is our
will to resist that spoke most plainly to our would-be persecutors,
not flags, not even our dreams. The government that trained and
financed the death squads of Guatemala, El Salvador, and, yes, Mexico,
cares nothing for our dreams.
We
must stand united - un pueblo unido - holding close the
bravery and audacity that has caused our movement to sweep the nation
and the world into wakefulness.
The
answer to this dilemma - to the trap they have laid for us - is
clear and simple.
No
compromise.
No
trading the life of one for the life of another.
And
as of May 1st, the day of the general strike·
No
more American flags.
Juan
Santos is editor of Mexica Tlahtolli, a Chicana/o
- Native American newspaper in Los Angeles. He can be reached at
JuanSantos@Mexica.com
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