The Beat Goes On
I’m at work…and decided this would be a good time to throw down my first entry. Most of the time I’m running around being arty, but last Wednesday I attended a rally for immigrants’ rights in Danbury, CT. were some 4000 Portuguese and Latino immigrants gathered in front of the city’s municipal building to protest the passage of a controversial bill allowing the city police to be trained to assist ICE (the federal immigration police). Blurring the lines between the immigration task force and everyday law enforcement. Needless to say people fall on all sides of issues dealing with immigration and Danbury, CT, oddly enough, has become a focal point of the discussion.
It was a pretty serious experience, yelling in three different languages (English, Portuguese and Spanish) for three hours with immigrant and native protestors. Being in the middle of a crowd that large with so many charged emotions makes you feel as if anything could happen to turn a protest into a mob or a police officer guarding to attacking. But there were plenty of warm smiles and pats on the back from strangers who were happy for the support of an outsider that many of my fears went away.
For me this issue is about human rights and my fear of criminalizing a section of our population that is only here for want of a better life. That said I also believe illegal immigration is unfair to people who migrate to the states through our excruciatingly complicated and difficult citizenship process. In the end this issue is about those who have and those who don’t have and can’t get. I’ve seen Mexican poverty and America looks pretty tempting from down there.
Deep,
The boss man
Comments
Perhaps your life before, during and after Connecticut college should have involved educating yourself on the realities of working poor and lower middle class American citizens, who are black, brown and white are the ones with civil rights, and are also entitled to human rights considerations as well.
Perhaps living so high on the hog, being supported all your life by mommy and daddy's wealth, their investments that profit from the gutting of wages, rights and protections of workers, having a privileged and pain free existence. Not having to be afraid a parent would lose their job, or get sick, thereby forcing you to have to quit school to help pay bills at a minimum wage job, benefiting from a high quality education and it's ability to provide you with a means to support yourself in the style you have been accustomed to your entire life.. you have no idea what those less fortunate citizens who are invisible to you, have to deal with on a daily basis.
I'm sure you've seen Mexican poverty, while on a vacation and were out looking for dope to smoke, perhaps? Or on the drive to and from the airport, hotel or beach?
Have you bothered to learn about what American poverty looks or feels like? Or is it that you resent American wage standards, American citizens standing up for their rights, as you yourself feel entitled to do? Like not being forced into dangerous positions by working with faulty and broken equipment, being exposed to hazardous conditions.. I'm sure it's a real strain for someone like yourself to emphatize with a free human being actually having the gall to state that they shouldn't have to be exposed to a carcinogen or work with a tool that could maim them.
Have you bothered to learn how poor American citizens and their children become homeless when they are displaced from their jobs? Or that hunger, desperate hunger (which isn't a problem in Mexico. The wages are lower, but so is the cost of living. There is no hunger problem in Mexico, the country is the 14th wealthiest country in the world) in the US has lead to citizens having numbers of malnutrition that we haven't seen since the Great Depression.
BTW, there were no "Portuguese" at the rally in question, they were Brazillians, who do speak Portuguese. They are illegal aliens from Brazil. There are Portuguese who do live in the area and in the region as well but they came as legal immigrants, or at the very least their parents or grandparents did. Learn a bit more about the human lives you seek to pass that ivory tower judgement on.
It's inhumane and hypcritical for a rich man to decide that poor citizens should be deprived of their ability to support themselves, so he and those like him can profit even more from illegal aliens. If you are so concerned about the poverty in Mexico, for example, why not give away your own profits, your own job, everything you own, instead of deciding that some poor citizen should have to based on your whim. Illegals should return to their home countries and demand higher wages and opportunities there, as American citizens did here in the last century.
Posted by: Jenny | February 21, 2008 06:43 PM
Hi Jenny. There is a Brazilian population here in Hartford, CT, where I live and work, and consequently there is an older and vibrate Portuguese population as well. These populations both exist in Danbury, CT. and are drawn to each other because of the language they share in common. I mentioned the Portuguese specifically because, as you mentioned, they have a longer history as immigrants in the U.S. and still decided to support the human rights of their Brazilian friends and neighbors.
Yes. It is immoral for business owners to take advantage of an economic situation were they are always able to boot legal workers in exchange for illegal immigrants who are often willing to work under harsher conditions for less money. Clearly this is a practice that needs to end. Understand though, that it is not the undocumented immigrant that is to blame, but the business owner that is immoral enough to make and let any employees work in inhuman situations and disregard basic human rights.
My support of oppressed and disenfranchised peoples is based on the belief that the denial of human rights to one is a denial of human rights to all. My support of one group is not a denial of the needs of another group, but a manifestation of my belief that what is beneficial to the “least of these” is beneficial to all.
It is important to find where disenfranchised peoples’ stories connect and overlap in order to make true progress on important issues. Therefore, better treatment for women in the work place and an end to sexist imagery and language is also beneficial to our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. It follows that, improving the working conditions and compensation of Americans in low wage jobs also improves the working condition of newly legalized American immigrants and undocumented immigrants, who many American companies continued to hirer.
The rally in Danbury was in support of families that had been divided by ICE raids conducted on there homes. Danbury’s small police force works to stop the unfair treatment of workers (undocumented and documented). They also have the capacity to find illegal immigrants in the community, which they certainly should be doing. The fear was that this new partnership, between the city police and the federal ICE agents, was going to end any level of trust between undocumented peoples and the local police force.
Undocumented workers whose human rights were being violated, or who are in life threatening domestic disputes, or who feel they were being discriminated against would not longer be able to go to the local police for support.
These are human rights issues that are universal and do not just extend to legal citizens, but to all people within our boarders whether they have a green card, no card, or a drivers’ license. The Human Right agenda also extends far beyond our borders and calls us to act on the continent of Africa. You are right to say we need to stand up for the human rights of documented American citizens, but my experiences in Mexico and Spain and on my street in Hartford, CT. call me to go even further and work toward adherence to basic human rights anywhere I am in the world. Thanks for your comments.
P.S. I do roll on dubs, swim in a pool of money every morning, and only wear clothing made of polar bear skin
Posted by: Ross Jordan | April 14, 2008 11:06 PM