20,000 Rally For Comprehensive Immigration Reform; 200 Arrested in Civil Disobedience Action
Tuesday, October 8, 2013(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)
For several years now, Lisa Bergmann of New Haven, Conn., has been anxious
about many of her Spanish-speaking friends and neighbors. The former Unite Here
member was one of more than 20,000 people – including thousands of unionists
-- who marched down the Washington, D.C., Mall yesterday to demand the U.S.
House immediately pass comprehensive immigration reform.
Bergmann says the danger to her friends is why
she came to the protest. “I’m a citizen. I don’t have to worry,” she
says. “But I worry about a lot of my friends who are waiting to get
their papers. And I have friends who are incarcerated” because they’re
undocumented. “And some are afraid to drive” because police could stop them
and demand proof of legality – which they lack – on pain of detention and
deportation.
Concerns like that -- which would be alleviated,
if not ended, by comprehensive immigration reform -- brought the thousands to
the Mall. And 200, including 90 union leaders and unionists, went one step
further at the end of the half-day march: They engaged in peaceful civil
disobedience in front of the Capitol and got arrested. Arrestees included
Bergmann, newly-elected AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre, Metro
Washington Council President Jos Williams, Communications Workers (CWA)
Secretary-Treasurer Annie Hall and Political Director Yvette Herrera, The
Newspaper Guild’s President, Bernie Lunzer, and Paul Booth, the top assistant
to AFSCME’s president, and AFT President Randi
Weingarten.
“I’m not really worried about getting
arrested,” Hall said beforehand. “This reform is long overdue.
And it’s about people who are coming to this country to seek and find
economic justice for themselves and their families.”
Unions, led by
contingents from the Service Employees and their Local 32BJ, the Laborers and
Unite Here, contributed a large share of the demonstrators. Other unions
represented included AFSCME, the Communications Workers/TNG, Labors Council for
Latin American Advancement, AFT and the United Farm
Workers.
The rally, which went on with National
Park Service cooperation despite the federal government shutdown, was a sea of
colorful banners, flags, T-shirts and signs, punctuated by strong pro-reform
speeches and lively music.
House Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., pledged to use every method available to get a
comprehensive reform bill to a floor vote, where all 200 Democrats and several
dozen Republicans would vote for it – over GOP leaders’ opposition.
“We have the votes to pass the bill,” Pelosi declared.
The
point of the arrests and the D.C. march, just three days after similar marches
in more than 60 cities nationwide, was to force the GOP-led U.S. House to bring
that comprehensive immigration reform plan to the floor. “Let them
vote,” was a frequent chant. But, driven by its Radical Right/Tea Party
wing, the House majority is resisting.
That
comprehensive reform would include a long – some would say torturous – path
to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented people in the U.S.
It also would immediately bring them
under U.S. labor laws, preventing or lessening the dual exploitation of workers
by venal and vicious employers: Hiring the undocumented and paying them
rock-bottom wages, threatening them with deportation if they unionize – and
using the threat of hiring the undocumented to force native-born workers to
accept lower wages and benefits and worse working conditions.
The big march in D.C. and the prior marches on Oct. 5, including several busloads of CWA members who showed up at GOP House Speaker John Boehner’s district office in Springfield, Ohio, that day, are designed to put pressure on the Republicans to budge, CWA President Larry Cohen said.
“This is
what democracy looks like,” he said, gesturing to the multi-racial,
multi-ethnic, multi-lingual crowd during an
interview.
The public pressure also has indirect
focus, another union leader said: The mass movement will grab the attention of
Republican moneymen and political operatives. They in turn will pressure the
House GOP to pass comprehensive reform, or lose their party’s backing and
cash. “It’s a bank shot around the Tea Party,” the unionist
said.
The political machinations were not on the
minds of the marchers. They were there to show enormous public backing for
legalizing the undocumented. “I’m human. I want people to have
good pay, a good job, good health care and respect on the job,” Clyburn said.
“We’ll help people get this if immigration reform is
passed.”
“It’s personal for me,” said a
marcher named Lauro – he declined to give his last name – from New York City
who was carrying a large Laborers Local 79 banner. “It’s for my
family, and it’s for my guys” in the union. “I immigrated 16 years
ago myself.”
“How long will we be here?” Cohen
asked. “One day longer. There’s a very deep passion.”
- Mark Gruenberg, PAI Staff Writer; photos by
Chris Garlock/Union City