<html>
<body>
<font size=3>
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/santos04182006.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/santos04182006.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2>April 18 ,
2006</font><font size=3> <br>
</font><h1><font size=4><b>Un Pueblo Unido<br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font size=4 color="#990000">What Immigrants Must Learn from
the Black Civil Rights Movement ... and
Soon</b></font></h1><font size=3>By JUAN SANTOS <br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="Verdana" size=2>"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<br><br>
</font>
</dl><font face="Verdana" size=5 color="#990000">T</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>hey're lying to us.<br><br>
They want us to keep playing their way.<br><br>
To keep waving American flags.<br><br>
To keep trusting them to do the right thing.<br><br>
We dare not.<br><br>
Millions of people's lives are at stake.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
?Y que?<br><br>
</i>Some three to six million people would still be arrested and
deported.<br><br>
The Republicans and Democrats alike have decided the arrests would be for
misdemeanors - not felonies.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
But nothing could be further from the truth. Here's why.<br><br>
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:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>"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."<br><br>
</dl>Everyone with brown skin would become a stigmatized
"suspect." The only difference is we would be suspects in a
misdemeanor - not a felony.<br><br>
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:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>"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."<br><br>
</dl>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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
This is how it worked then, and what they're aiming for now.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
This is the equivalent of the "carrot" of
"legalization" and "citizenship" in our context
today.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
A similar fate would await the millions, who, under a
"compromise," would face nothing less than mass deportation,
mass, legal persecution.<br><br>
Same trick: different decade.<br><br>
A sister disappears; a father, a mother ...<br><br>
Here's the rough numbers.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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·<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>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<br><br>
<dd>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?<br><br>
<dd>THE BOTTOM LINE IS: WE WANT THESE PEOPLE....WHO ARE STOPPED BY POLICE
TO BE DEPORTED RIGHT?<br><br>
<dd>WELL....THE RULE LAW (SIC), RIGHT NOW, IS THIS: ANY ILLEGALS CAUGHT
ON THE BORDER IS (SIC)....DETAINED AND DEPORTED!<br><br>
<dd>WHY SHOULD IT BE ANY DIFFERENT?<br><br>
<dd>MAKING A FELONY (SIC) REQUIRES TOO MUCH<br><br>
<dd>"COURT TIME" WITH LAWYERS INVOLVED...RED TAPE...<br><br>
<dd>DON'T YOU SEE? IT IS A TRAP THAT THE ENEMY HAS GRABBED!<br><br>
<dd>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!<br><br>
<dd>ALL WE NEED TO DO, AS I HAVE SAYING (SIC) IS...REFORM
ENFORCEMENT!<br><br>
<dd>TIGHTENING THE NOOSE, SCORCHING THE EARTH...WILL FORCE THE ENEMY TO
LEAVE, VOLUNTARILY!<br><br>
<dd>15 MILLION ILLEGALS, DEPORTED COMES OUT TO BE LIKE 8 THOUSAND
ILLEGALS EVERY DAY NONSTOP FOR 5 YEARS!<br><br>
<dd>THE NAZIS, WHO DID NOT NEED DUE PROCESS...TOOK ALMOST 10 YEARS TO
ROUND UP LESS THAN THAT...PRIOR TO THE FINAL SOLUTION...<br><br>
</dl>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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
We must stand united - un pueblo unido</i> - holding close the bravery
and audacity that has caused our movement to sweep the nation and the
world into wakefulness.<br><br>
The answer to this dilemma - to the trap they have laid for us - is clear
and simple.<br><br>
No compromise.<br><br>
No trading the life of one for the life of another.<br><br>
And as of May 1st, the day of the general strike·<br><br>
No more American flags.<br><br>
Juan Santos</b> is editor of Mexica Tlahtolli,</i> a Chicana/o - Native
American newspaper in Los Angeles. He can be reached at
<a href="mailto:JuanSantos@Mexica.com">JuanSantos@Mexica.com</a><br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
</font><font size=3>
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.freedomarchives.org</a></font></body>
</html>