RE: [Marxism] Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez arrive in Cuba

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There's a big mass rally scheduled for 6 PM tonight in Havana.
Fidel, Chavez and Evo Morales will be presiding. The event is
going to be broadcast nation-wide and internationally using
shortwave for RHC at SW: 11.760. I'm assuming all of the other
usual international services will be operating as well. ALBA,
the Bolivarian Alterntive for the Americas, is being expanded
not to include Bolivia in addition to Cuba and Venezuela. 

May Day in Cuba will be massive as well. And internationally we
are seeing the uprising of the Latin American immigrant workers
in the United States which will evoke the largest May Day demos
probably in the history of the United States. The working class
is on the march. It's important not to misconflate the working
class with the organized labor movement, a much smaller part of
the working class as a whole. The trade unions are helping build
these mobilizations, but they're far, far broader than the class
as a whole.

It's important, very important, to see these two processes: that
of Latin American integration and the movement for justice for
immigrant workers as being parts of a broader process which is
showing that a better world is possible, and is being built 
right before our eyes. In fact, the struggle for justice for 
immigrant workers and the process of continental integration is
also united in purpose. The immigrants who want to live and work
legally in the United States want to be able to return home to
visit their home countries and families, and not have to risk
being departed for doing so. They want to be able to send money
home to their families without difficulty, and so on and on and
on. It's really essential to grasp the full extent of what's
unfolding before our eyes. Mumia gives us a good sense of that
in his immigration column which is posted below.


Walter Lippmann


MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: IMMIGRATION BLUES
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/49576

U.S. RACIST VIOLENCE AGAINST IMMIGRANTS:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/49574

A DAY WITHOUT IMMIGRANTS (Granma, English)
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/secciones/ingles/noticias/art82.html

SUPPORT FOR MAY DAY BOYCOTT GROWING IN THE U.S. (English)
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/secciones/ingles/noticias/art86.html

Fidel, Chavez and Evo Morales embrace in Havana (Spanish):
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/2006/04/29/nacional/artic10.html

Acto por la integración latinoamericana hoy en la Plaza de la Revolución
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/2006/04/29/nacional/artic11.html

FRONT PAGE OF TODAY'S JUVENTUD REBELDE (note jazzy new layout)
http://www.jrebelde.cu/2006/abril_junio/abril-29/portadab.html

FRONT PAGE OF TODAY'S GRANMA:
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/2006/04/29/plana.jpg

Immigration Blues

Mumia Abu-Jamal

4.2.06

Now, as polls show growing disenchantment with both political
parties, the issue of immigration is raised once again, as
politicians seek to stir the pot of social resentment.

Voices are raised, tempers are frayed, proposals are launched, and
the destinies of millions are apparently held in limbo.

But, in numbers not seen for generations, mostly Mexican-born (or
related) families pound the pavements in protest, demanding amnesty
for the millions who live and work, in the most thankless jobs, here
in the U.S.

The immigration "discussion" masks deeper currents in American life,
of those who dread the approaching dawn when those who number the
nation's majority are brown, instead of white.

As the government and the servile corporate media hawked fear to trap
the nation into the Iraq War, so now fear is once again merchandised
for political gain. The perpetual fear of the foreign "Other," the
fear of Spanish speaking people, who are called "criminal" for daring
to cross the Rio Grande, to inhabit the lands stolen from their
ancestors!

The truth of the matter is that it is highly unlikely that over 11
million men, women, and children will be returned to Mexican
territory. That's because businesses, especially those engaged in
agriculture, would virtually go out of business, if their
immigrant-based workforce up and disappeared.

But, like most people, many Latino immigrants are involved in other
businesses and industries in U.S. life. Guess who's doing the lion's
share of the work to actually rebuild New Orleans? (In case you have
not guessed, let me just say--It ain't FEMA!).

With the exception of Native Americans (as in so-called "Indians"),
and African Americans, every person in the U.S. today is a descendant
of a willing immigrant (OK, strict historians will object that many
poor whites, especially in the Southern states, were sent to Georgia
and Maryland as indentured servants, as part of a penal sentence.)

But, the point is clear. Immigration was consciously used to craft
the U.S. as a white nation. For centuries, certain racial groups,
like Chinese, for example, were specifically excluded by law from
citizenship (like their Mexican counterparts, many Asians were needed
in the building of this country as cheap labor.)

As law professor Ian F. Haney-Lopez has shown in his book, White by
Law: The Legal Construction of Race, (N.Y.: NYU Press, 1996),
American courts and legislatures have consistently defined "citizens"
as "whites," and over the course of centuries, millions of people
were denied entry to the U.S., or even if allowed in denied
citizenship, because they were not "white." In 1882, Haney-Lopez
explains, the U.S. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which
barred Chinese workers for a decade. In 1884, the Act was expanded to
bar all Chinese people, and shortly thereafter an indefinite ban was
implemented. State and federal court decisions banned Syrians,
Asian-Indians, Palestinians, mixed race people, and multitude of
others on the basis of insufficient whiteness!

That ugly history may be reborn in this latest "battle" over Mexican
immigration. Political storms have a way of giving way to political
hurricanes, that even those who planned them cannot control.

Several years ago, a right wing politician in California tried to
ride the anti-immigrant train to the White House. His name was Pete
Wilson, and his playing with fire left him politically burnt. Angry
Hispanics in Cali sent him, and some of his colleagues in the
Republican Party, into retirement.

But, this era of politicians, trying to create an issue that protects
them from the falling numbers of the incumbent Bush Administration,
look at Wilson's fate as ancient history.

Perhaps the recent demonstrations, massive in their size, vociferous
in their spirit, have given them pause.

Time will tell.

The political entity that truly befriends this growing segment of the
U.S. population will have tapped into a powerful social force.

Don't expect it to be either the Republicans or the Democrats.

Mumia Abu-Jamal
 



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