Hi Carlos, Pepe, Tony, Elena, Phil and all who have taken their time to read apparently boring e-mails. That's part of what we have not doing: discussing the most boring but important issues.
I guess the old saying, "the urgent things don't allows to focus on the important things" can be very well used in the immigration movement. Let me try to be brief: 1.- I agree with Tony. Regardless of the yes-they-can-no-they-can't debate, we have to do at least 2 thigs: prepare for the future and fight in the present; attend the urgent and the important things at the same time. 2.- We proposed in Chicago to follow up on the Blueprint and develop it to be considered a law initiative. After all, we don't want Omar Lopez to get to Congress empty handed. We need to write it down now (or from now till November). And let's be clear on one thing: the "undocumented" problem will only be solved with "documents", wich it means some kind of legislation that gives papers to people. That would not solve, and we know it, the whole "immigration" question, obviously, economic, racism, employment, discrimination, and so on and on. But if we want "papers", we need legislation. 3.- We would like to retake it as a Labor Law, rather than "immigration only" or as a National Security piece. As I understand things, the current Immigration Law is mostly based on family, with "working" being only a side component. Our idea is to reshape the system into a working-based permanent-visa system, without falling into "guest worker". 4.- We insist in the 100 days campaign, Jan 20-May Day 2009, where all communities, factions and fractions of the struggle participate. The idea would be 100 days of fighting, picketing, conducting workshops, events, vigils and so on, all together, the anti-war, the pro-chice, the universal health care, the homeless for housing and so on. 5.- We need to get to May Day with a bang. It ocurrs to me that May Day is Friday and 5 de Mayo is Tuesday. Can we maybe start organizing a 5-day strike? (yes, including Saturday and Sunday, when most restaurants, hotels and other services would have to close!). 6.- Elena is right. Conditions are very different from the 1950's or the 1920's. We are living a day-worker reality now even in Union shops. Can we organize them into membership organizations even outside the Labor Unions and legally represent them in the workplace? Let's talk about it. Hopefully someone has some experience on that. 7.- National fights require national coordination, at leats, and maybe a semblance of a national organization. The problem allways it's been that national organizations are already "there", and we small guys are "here". LULAC, NCLR, the Labor Unions and the like have the money and the contacts to sit down with legislatiors, and we don't. I rather go with national coordinated actions instead of national organizations. Maybe the May Day 2009 march in Washington? Obama says "solution will not come from Washington, but will come to Washington". Let's go to Washington, then. 8.- On the Green Party, let's give it a try, but let's understand that playing that game is cutting off, by definition, that 80 percent of the "immigration movement" participants who are non-profit organizations very tied up with the Democratic Party. They will do (as they are doing in Chicago), all they can to discredit us, to downplay our actions, to "denounce" us, blah, blah, blah. Previous efforts have failed, like the one in Carpentersville two years ago, but now it's the time to start thinking about it again. Never the less, I rather go for two or three campaigns-candidacies, than for 20 of them at the same time. Let's concentrate resources to win, rather than spread to win public opinion. 9 and final: could we consider a series of meetings, small, big, regional, national, to talk about all this? I would say we have to do it between now and the end of november, to be ready for January and the future. -- Jorge Mujica --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Internet group address: http://groups.google.com/group/ChicagoMayDay To send e-mail: [email protected] To unsuscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
