[Marxism] Largest demo ever in Atlanta -- 80, 000 march for immigrant rights

[Joaquín Bustelo <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

        The biggest demonstration ever held in Atlanta --as far as anyone
can remember-- took place Monday.

        The AP gave the police estimate as more than 50,000. The organizers
are saying up to 80,000. Some say 100,000, but I don't think we need to go
there, even if it is literally true. 

        Whatever the estimate --cops or ours-- this means that something
like 10%-20% of the community turned out, depending on how much of North
Georgia you encompass, and even taking into account that no one knows for
sure exactly how many of us there really are.

        The most optimistic organizer I know, Adelina Nicholls, president of
La Coordinadora, the Coordinating Council of Latino Community Leaders, had
predicted 20,000-40,000. 

        Like the action in Atlanta, the protests in Los Angeles two weeks
ago, Sunday in Dallas, and in many other cities across the country have also
been larger than expected, and not just the largest Latino or civil rights
protests, but the largest protests ever in many cities. Period.

        Like the other demonstrations across the country, the Atlanta action
was very, very brown, deeply indigenous, and very, very proletarian in
composition. And by "proletarian" I don't mean proles by some
teachers-and-office-workers-proletarianization-of-intellectual-labor-we're-a
ll-working-people sort of definition, I mean "nothing to lose but your
chains," T-shirts and jeans because that is all they can afford, manual
labor proletarians.

        It was overwhelmingly young, 20-35, reflecting the makeup of the
immigrant community. Lots of workers who took off from work because as they
see things, their future depends on it.

        If I had to describe it in one word, that word would be *real*. This
is an introduction to what Cuban patriot José Martí called "Nuestra
América," OUR America, THE Americas, the hemisphere of the indigenous and
indigenous- and slave-descended masses, of the toilers, of the ones that
defeated the coup against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, that pushed Lula into
the presidency in Brazil, that got Evo elected in Bolivia, that had so many
of their pro-Ollanta Humala votes stolen in Peru on Sunday, that have kept
Fidel in power for nearly five decades despite everything American
imperialism has thrown against him. THAT America, the Americas of the
working people that in Evo's victory and in the faces of these marchers is
finally finding its bronze soul.

        This is the "pink tide" against neoliberal globalization and which
is mostly NOT an electoral phenomenon --no matter WHAT the Miami Herald
says-- sweeping across the border.

        THIS IS A MASS MOVEMENT UNLIKE ANYTHING SEEN WITHIN THE UNITED
STATES FOR MANY DECADES. 

        A *genuine* MASS movement. And I don't mean a SLIVER of the masses.

        There are literally no Latino working people in this city that don't
have family, friends, neighbors or coworkers who weren't at this protest.
Think about that. No "six degrees of separation." 

        Thousands --probably tens of thousands-- of those there took off
from work to be there. You would too, if you understood your future and the
future of your loved ones was at stake. 

        What "allowed" this to happen, however, is not JUST the pressure
from below of the Latino proletariat, but a UNITED FRONT, a multi-class
*national* (in the sense of involving the "national question," not just in
the sense of "nationwide") front of the Latino communities *including*
upper-middle-class and outright (small) capitalist sectors. 

        A steady torrent of people was still streaming into the site here
two hours AFTER the hour set by the organizers, because they heard it on the
radio --the BOURGEOIS radio and even worse, the BOURGEOIS RELIGIOUS
OBSCURANTIST radio-- and so they put on a white T-shirt and came on down.
The streets leading to the rally site looked like they were ALSO
demonstration sites, as sidewalks on both sides were packed with people
wearing white, and I repeat, at 11 AM (when I took off to go to work) for a
9 AM demo.

        Plaza Fiesta, perhaps the biggest Latino mall in Atlanta, where the
marchers convened and the post-march rally was held, was completely shut
down --with the agreement of their management and shopkeepers. WHY? 

        Because this is their market and this is their labor. They KNOW how
much you can profit from this market and this labor, and are worried by how
the political scene around immigration has been evolving. 

        Every single Latino radio station in the city that I know of was
broadcasting live at least part of the time from the site from the first
hours in the morning. WHY? 

        Because this, too is their market, and the market of their
advertisers. 

        Undoubtedly, many in these relatively privileged layers are also
motivated by their own legal status issues, present or past, or those of
friends or family, and even genuine individual sentiments of solidarity. But
the class interests are there nonetheless, finding expression in national
forms and, in that, having a significant area of  coincidence with the class
interests of the proletariat, at least in a narrow, immediate short-run
sense.

        There were Catholic and Evangelical preachers and even a Rabbi and
someone who got hundreds of little American flags to distribute and big
Virgin of Guadalupe banners. An Anglo-American friend who was heading the
marshalling effort because of his experience and reliability said it made
him wince, all the red-white-and-blue. I should have told him in the hands
of THESE people, this wasn't the banner of imperialism, but a demand on the
imperialists to let them in, i.e., a demand for the abolition of imperialist
privilege. 

        Yes, I, too, would have chosen a different way to express it. But
this was the masses with all their hopes, prejudices, illusions -- and their
class instincts. 

        The most often heard chant was "Sí se Puede," the old farm workers
slogan. Why this slogan has proven so powerful when it doesn't seem
particularly directed at anything deserves a bit of thought. I believe it
speaks to overcoming fear, and overcoming the feelings of inferiority and
submission imperialist society instills especially on the most oppressed.
And it is a collective statement of power.

        It was interesting watching the capitalists trying to, well,
capitalize on the movement.

        There were donations of water from THIS store and free fruit from
THAT supermarket, viewing it as a promotional expense well worth the cost. I
was surprised the "Banco de Nuestra Comunidad" wasn't there handing out
flyers explaining how to get a tax ID number so you can buy a house -- and
get a mortgage from them at usurious rates.
        
        Later, long after our Atlanta event had ended, I heard Nativo López,
the president of MAPA, talking to Lou Dobbs, and he was THANKING Dobbs and
Sensenbrenner and their ilk. He said folks like these were the ones who had
galvanized and mobilized the community thanks to their over-the-top
anti-immigrant ranting. 

        It was the ideological right-wing, flat-earth, nativist wing of the
Republican Party, empowered and emboldened by the post-9/11 imperialist
offensive against all things that aren't white, that provoked the sentiment
that's now finding expression in action in streets all over this country
(and I mean all over: there were even pro-immigrant protests scheduled in
Alaska!).

        But there is also a genuine division within the U.S. ruling class
and its political circles. On the one hand, they are united around the
course charted by Bush of unilateral U.S. world domination, which of
necessity implies, generates and re-enforces white supremacist attitudes,
ideology, and attacks. On the other, they *need* immigrant labor
--preferably, of course, "illegal" and thus more easily super-exploited--
within the United States. And those two things clash.

        It is this conflict within the ruling class and its political
circles that has "allowed" the subservient, dominated Latino "comprador"
bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie to bloc with the Latino working class
--the significantly if not mostly "illegal" Latino working class-- in
defense of --frankly-- of the BOURGEOIS *right* of Latino workers to be
exploited, to sell their labor power within this country.

        And it is the aggressiveness of the ideological right-wing white
supremacist wing of the Republicans that has PUSHED the Latino bourgeois and
upper petty-bourgeois forces into unleashing --they hope in a "moderate" and
"responsible" way, in a *controlled* way-- at least a little bit of the
power, the CLASS power, of the Latino proletariat.

        And hence the insistence by the preachers and the politicians for no
Mexican flags, only American ones, for white shirts as a symbol of "peace,"
for everyone to be on their best behavior.

        THAT is how you get all seven or eight local Spanish-language radio
stations in a city like Atlanta to not just cover a protest like Monday's,
but to publicize it beforehand and broadcast live from the site calling on
people to come on down and join the march. And that's what allowed the
massive sentiment in the community, which has been there all along, to
become action.

        A very significant factor in all this that needs to be kept in mind.
This is the first Latino-wide movement of any significance at all to have
emerged, and in this sense, we could be seeing a crucial stage in the
emergence of a different national consciousness. The movements of the 60's
and 70's were specifically Chicano or Puerto Rican for the most part even if
any Latino of whatever nationality was always unquestionably welcomed as a
carnal.

        This "Latinoism" is Bolivarianism in its United States form, and
driven by essentially the same thing that is driving the sentiment for Latin
American unity south of the Rio Bravo, which is imperialist exploitation and
oppression.

Joaquín

Las barras y las estrellas se adueñan de mi bandera
Y nuestra libertad no es otra cosa que una ramera
Y si la deuda externa nos robo la primavera
Al diablo la geografia se acabaron las fronteras
     --Ricardo Arjona, "Si el norte fuera el sur" 


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