On 12/1/06, Mark Lause <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Got it. This not unsurprising fact actually echoes what happened in the
origins of the civil rights movement. It wasn't the traditional Left but
religions and some labor figures that mobilized the numbers that morally
confronted and defeated segregation.
However, my point was that no movement seems to have come out of last
spring's mobilizations. I say "seems" because the mobilizations amounted to
very little in Cincinnati. From my perspective on it, this reflected the
dominance of religious leaders eager to make a moral point but not to
mobilize and empower the wider community.
I've honestly not heard about it, if the mobilizations last spring sparked
something elsewhere comparable to say the sit-ins that spread like wildfires
across the South in the 1950s.
The spring mobilization practically accomplished its most important
goal: scuttling the attempt to make undocumented immigration a federal
crime. After the accomplishment of the most urgent goal, the rank and
file are back to local organizing, and organic intellectuals of the
Latino communities held a series of conferences to create a national
network. Local work will continue, the new national network may or
may not survive.
What is important, however, is that the question of undocumented
immigrants, unlike that of civil rights, i.e., de jure equality, for
Blacks, women, homosexuals, the disabled, and so on, cannot be solved
within the existing legal framework of a capitalist state, for a
national state has the right to select and reject newcomers. So, this
will be an enduring issue, which will not go away, as long as a large
economic inequality between the USA and Mexico (and other countries in
the global South) remains.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
