Guest Editorial: The Arizona Provocation

Sergio Reyes is a serious person.* This May Day he is marching in support of workers and immigrants.

Reyes brings a gravitas to the day that accompanies few. Neither a college lefty nor foundation-weaned and preened non-profit operative, Reyes comes to the United States from Chile where a US-back military government installed the world’s first regime that would implement everything that neo-liberal Washington demanded: government that cut taxes on corporations, cut programs for working people, cut regulations and, yes, cut people.

Reyes knows this; he was jailed and tortured for 3 years before being exiled from Chile. Yes, the 2 costs of the corporate agenda were people and democracy. As Reyes knows this social regime was carried—often at the tip of a bayonet—to every country in the world… And what a world it made! People chase livelihoods across borders as rapacious global capitalism sunders communities and families, exploding here and there into “civil” wars, all while ratcheting up the global thermostat and threatening the planet.

Reyes knows all of this. So he is not just marching, he is organizing. So the Boston May Day Committee is rallying Saturday, May 1, 2010, under a series of slogans that connect workers’ rights, service cuts, good jobs, global justice and immigrants’ rights. They’ll be starting on Boston Common at 12 noon and then marching at 1:00 through Boston before leaving at 2:00 for the Blue Line to join a community rally in Lo Presti Park (East Boston).

Notice that despite the US aggression toward his country and his person, Reyes is marching with and for US working people. His animus is toward the system, not the people. This recalls the French resistance fighters who during the Second World War stood before Nazi firing squads and, in a final act of defiance, shouted, “Victory to the German Working Class!” Yes, Reyes’ is an unapologetically internationalist vision standing up for what the US people imagine to be the best that the country has to offer: civil liberties, democracy, human rights, free speech. But what we imagine is not necessarily identical with what is…

Arizona is.

As in 2006, immigrants’ rights are a salient part of May Day. To be sure, it has always been part of May Day as OMB’s Jason Pramas has noted in previous editorials on the subject. So as we join Reyes on the Common, we realize that the country is set aflame by the Arizona provocation. It tries to roll back that long march for freedom propelled by indigenous resistance, worker struggles, women’s insurgency and, above all else, the African American and Latino freedom struggles.

So it is that May Day is preceded by an Arizona bill, made law by its governor last Friday, that legalizes racial profiling and effectively deputizes its Minute Man wannabes to go after anyone who appears to be an “illegal.” In effect, a legalized police state or martial law has come to Arizona. The bayonets that Reyes faced down in Chile patrol the streets of Phoenix and Tucson! Corporate globalization and hitherto hidden jackboots now legalize their presence in an American state.

Today’s Boston Metro reports that Arizona-like initiatives are underway in other states and that there are similar stirrings in our state legislature. These must be stopped!

In a pithy critique, Boston’s Carol Gomez of Mata Hari: Eye of the Day, an immigrant- and women-led organization challenging violence in the family and from the state explains why this legislation is so destructive: "The Arizona Governor's decision sets a precedent and legitimates a culture of fear, ignorance and racism. Laws like this give permission and socially condition officials and people to enact and justify racism.

“Laws like this drive vulnerable communities further underground, keep people facing human rights violations of domestic violence, sexual violence or trafficking from ever coming forward for help. This bill which encourages racial profiling will extend well beyond just immigrants -- but reignites and erupts legalized racism against ALL people of color, queer people and others who don't fit within a dominant paradigm."

Just as worker-center battles all over the United States in 2006 yielded a massive pro-immigrant mobilization across the nation. So too may the Arizona Provocation. Fittingly, the provocation has been met by continuous community resistance within state. The National Day Laborer Organizing Network and organizer-musician-jornalero-in-chief Pablo Alvarado built a massive 20,000-person march challenging Arizona’s notorious brownshirt-in-chief Sheriff Arpiao. This immigrant worker-led initiative has sparked solidarity across borders and it stretches well into the mainstream. To the point that even our Capitulator-in-Chief questions its legitimacy.

Today we are also heartened to read that, “the three most experienced immigrants' and civil rights legal organizations nationwide – MALDEF, ACLU and NILC – announce[d] their partnership… to challenge [the law] SB1070 in court," according MALDEF President and General Counsel Thomas A. Saenz.

But there will also be an air war: Presente.org, fresh from giving Lou Dobbs the boot, is setting loose its new media machine as is ColorOfChange.org.

In addition to supporting boycotts, legal challenges and other grassroots actions, Reyes has articulated a broader vision for fighting back. Given his life experience, Reyes has been a principled voice for a global response that connects workers in the US with their counterparts around the globe. As can be imagined, this is work-in-progress that will build over the years. But so too was the 8-hour workday when immigrant workers in Chicago struck back in 1886.

Now the 8-hour workday is a global norm—to be sure it is often observed only in the breach or only as a legitimate norm to which people aspire. But humanity as a whole shares the ideal. As the "Rebel Journalist" John Ross, who will be joining Reyes on Boston Common, reminded his audience at encuentro 5 Thursday evening, “On May First hundreds of thousands of workers converge on the great Zocalo Plaza in Mexico City to commemorate international workers day and to reiterate the words of the Haymarket martyrs, German immigrant workers, who were hung for having led the struggle for the eight-hour day 124 years in 1886 on the streets of Chicago. Although May 1st is a holiday as American as apple pie (and tacos and polish sausage), for more than a century it had been studiously ignored in the country of its birth until 2006 when a million new immigrant workers, mostly Latinos, marched to demand immigration reform as they will again this May lst. ¡Que viven los martires de Chicago!"

More than a man and his vision, May Day is about millions of people in motion. So join Sergio and discover that the serious man is also a deft guitarist and stirring baritone who jokes often more than our society forces him to shout!
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* You can also catch up with him online at http://www.BostonMayDay.org