2,500 join in march to launch Freedom Ride

REGISTER-PAJARONIAN ^ | 9-23-03 | TARMO HANNULA

[JustPiper]

Movement supports rights for immigrant workers

SAN FRANCISCO - About 2,500 marchers toted signs, chanted slogans and carried a united message of support for the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride on Saturday in downtown San Francisco. The 15-day campaign, starting with two busses filled with 106 people, will cross the country, aimed for Washington D.C. and eventually New York.

The movement was inspired by the Freedom Riders of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Overall, eight major cities will launch busloads of Freedom Riders to join the caravan that will visit 70 host cities.

Close to 70 unions from the Monterey Bay and San Francisco Bay areas were represented in Saturday's rally, march and festival that started at Yerba Buena Gardens, wound along Market Street and culminated in front of City Hall. Also, nearly 100 community organizations showed up to bolster the Freedom Ride that will leave San Francisco on Tuesday morning.

Once the crowd had settled in front of City Hall, Dolores Huerta joined Gov. Gray Davis on stage to offer words of support for the Freedom Ride. Huerta is well know among farm workers and immigrant groups from her days of marching with Caesar Chavez and during the formation of the United Farm Workers.

Marcher Leroy Cisneros of Oakland said he felt the Freedom Ride was a groundswell movement.

"This is a strong grassroots organization," he said. "We've got unions out here, church groups and organized labor. This ride will have a big effect on the next presidential election. It's great to see all the people come out and show this kind of support. It's a powerful movement."

Jim Homer of Santa Cruz said he joined the march with a group from the Monterey Bay area from Local 270 of Santa Clara and Santa Cruz.

"Today is important because it helps continue to draw attention to immigrant rights," Homer said. "Immigrants need to have the opportunity to live decent lives and to earn a decent living. This march should be a focus on justice for all workers here and abroad."

Several marchers took time to step aside and thank San Francisco police officers that aided in traffic control along the route. One officer said the crowd, which he estimated to be about 2,500, was peaceful and well organized.

The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride will stop in Washington, D.C., Oct. 1 and 2 to meet with members of Congress to express the need for changes in immigrant laws. The chief goal of the ride is to demonstrate a broad national constituency for meaningful reform of immigration laws, while also encouraging civic participation by new and future citizens.

Steven Yip of the Chinese Progressive Association said: "We need to let the media and the public know that it is important to raise current wages from $6.75 to $8.50 an hour. The cost of living around much of the Bay Area is very high. Most immigrant workers get very low wages."

The original Freedom Ride began in 1961 when uprisings in the South grew despite a Supreme Court ruling that segregation, particularly in bus stations and waiting rooms, was unconstitutional. Freedom Rides were formed to show support for integration but violence emerged and one bus was firebombed in Alabama and white and blacks were attacked.

On Oct. 4 and 5, The Freedom Riders will meet in Flushing Meadows Park in New York.

[JustPiper]

Freeper's, Kansas and Reno are protesting, let's have more of us to meet them at their destinations please?

[JustPiper]

Legalization and
A Road to Citizenship

Just as the Freedom Rides of the early 1960’s exposed the brutality of legal segregation in the South, the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride will expose the injustice of current policies toward immigrants.


Nearly one thousand immigrant workers and their allies are boarding buses in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Chicago, Houston, Miami and Boston and cross the United States over the next 12 days... (more)

Contact a coordinator in your area for information about local events.



Immigrant workers work hard, pay taxes, and sacrifice for their families. They work as construction workers, doctors, nurses, janitors, meat packers, chefs, busboys, engineers, farm workers, and soldiers. They care for our children, tend to our elderly, pick and serve our food, build and clean our houses, and want what we all want: a fair shot at the American Dream.

But our broken immigration system keeps millions of hardworking immigrants from becoming full members and enjoying equal rights in this nation of immigrants. As a result, many are subjected to exploitation, separated from loved ones, and unprotected by our laws. The road to citizenship needs a new map. The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride intends to help draw that map.

The destination? Policies that work for immigrants and for all Americans. Policies consistent with our most noble principles and sacred values. Policies that: 1) Reward work by granting legal status to hardworking, taxpaying, law-abiding immigrant workers already established in the United States; 2) Renew our democracy by clearing the path to citizenship and full political participation for our newest Americans; 3) Restore labor protections so that all workers, including immigrant workers, have the right to fair treatment on the job 4) Reunite families in a timely fashion by streamlining our outdated immigration policies; and 5) Respect the civil rights and civil liberties of all so that immigrants are treated equally under the law, the federal government remains subject to checks and balances, and civil rights laws are meaningfully enforced.

We draw our inspiration from the Freedom Riders of the early 1960’s. The original Freedom Riders are American heroes who demonstrated that when ordinary people show extraordinary courage, a movement for sweeping social change can be sparked. We hope to make our contribution by widening and extending the road they traveled so that it includes immigrant workers and their families in the ongoing struggle against exploitation and exclusion, and in support of liberty and justice for all.

[JustPiper]

September 23--Buses depart from L.A. Contact Sylvia Carranza, 213-381-5611, ext. (*)851, for more information.


September 23--Labor Rally, 1:30 pm,Tyson's food, Wallulla, WA. IWFR Celebration, 3 pm, Volunteer Park, Pasco, WA. Contact Jim Price for more information.


September 25--Minnesota Route Send-Off Festival, 5-9 pm. Powderhorn Park, South Minneapolis. Contact Suzanne Murphy or 612-379-4311.


September 26--Denver, CO, 6-9 pm at St. Joseph's Church, 6th and
Galapago, in Denver. Contact Leslie Moody at 303-477-6111 x12.


September 27--Chicago Send-Off Rally. Illinois Coalition, 10:00 a.m., Federal Plaza (Dearborn at Adams Street in the Loop). Contact Lucy Scharbach for more information lscharbach@herelocal1.org or 312-663-4373 x260.


September 27--Immokalee, FL, 12:00 - 2:00 PM. Rally, walking tour of farmworking community, and lunch! Meet and park at Coalition of Immokalee Workers' office building - 215F W. Main St. (corner of 3rd St. and Main). Contact Coalition of Immokalee Workers (workers@ciw-online.org) for more information.


September 28--Boston Send-Off Rally, 4 pm, Faneuil Hall. Contact Brian Lang (617) 423-3335 for more information.



October

October 1--Baltimore, Noon, University of Maryland, Baltimore Campus, Welcome the Freedom Riders from Minnesota and rally for in-state tuition for Maryland’s immigrant high school students.


October 1-- Washington, DC, 6:30 p.m. Bible Way Temple, 1100 New Jersey Ave., N.W. Welcome all the Freedom Riders to DC!


October 2--Meet with Congress


October 2--Washington DC, 7 p.m. Farragut Square (K St., N.W., between Connecticut Ave. and 17th St.) March in Solidarity with workers in the D.C. parking industry (most of whom are immigrants).


October 3--Rally at Liberty State Park in New Jersey 2 pm.


October 4--Mass rally in Flushing Meadows Park, Queens, New York

[JustPiper]

Ping!

[gubamyster]

ping

[JustPiper]

Ping!

[JustPiper]

Thank you Gub! This is just a prelude to our big blitz !

[Spiff]

Attention Arizona FReepers - the Illegal Immigrants In-Your-Face Ride will be passing through Arizona today23 Sep and tomorrow 24 Sep.

You can visit their website at http://www.iwfr.org/rla.html to see the route that will cross through Arizona.

We need to get specific times and locations for their stops. I'm trying to get a group together to respond to the Tucson and Nogales visits as well as the cross through Cochise County. We will get the license plate number of the bus, follow it, and call Border Patrol insisting that they stop the bus full of illegals and process them for deportation.

Some are considering gathering some of the illegals' trash in some of the lay-up sites in the desert and taking it to them and returning it to them personally.

Other ideas are being floated. We need to quickly get organized and respond to this affront.

[JustPiper]

Immigrants Set Out on Their Own Freedom Ride - 9/23/2003 - Los Angeles Times

[E Rocc]

Steven Yip of the Chinese Progressive Association said: "We need to let the media and the public know that it is important to raise current wages from $6.75 to $8.50 an hour.

And the minimum wage in China is??????

-Eric

[Tancredo Fan]

FAIR - September 22, 2003 Fight Against Illegals Involved in "Freedom Ride" A coalition of illegal alien advocacy organizations is sponsoring a "Freedom Ride" consisting of illegal aliens demanding worker rights, driver's licenses, in-state tuition benefits, general public assistance, amnesty, and open borders. The so-called "Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride" began on September 1 and will culminate in events in Washington, DC on October 2 and New York City on October 4. More.......

[JustPiper]

I'd love to know the stata on the Nogales/Tucson border?
My uncle has seen the illegals slither over there for 3 decades!

[JustPiper]

Some are considering gathering some of the illegals' trash in some of the lay-up sites in the desert and taking it to them and returning it to them personally. Other ideas are being floated. We need to quickly get organized and respond to this affront.

Bump and do it! Make sure you contact that turncoat McCain! More power to Arizona Freepers!

[JustPiper]

Bump and thank you!!!

[unsycophant]

Do you have any idea how much money American Patrol received last year in donations?

Ot this year?

[jonalvy44]

don't any of these people have JOBS?

[PatrioticAmerican]

Illegal immigration is the one issue that can sink Bush.

[bjcintennessee]

I just spent over an hour going down the list of pending bills on the FAIR website and forwarding messages to my respresentatives. There are a lot of bills being considered and I would encourage everyone to go to this site and contact their respective respresentatives.

In the meantime, I think D.C. should have a line of busses waiting to haul all the illegals back across the border (nice of them to congregate to make it easier). Oh yeah, FAIR also gave the phone number for Homeland Security, encouraging everyone to call and encourage deporting the illegals when they converge on Washington, D.C. That number is (202)282-8000.

[jimt]

It's a freedom ride, all right. They want the freedom to ride on our tax dollars, to violate our laws, to demand their culture be paramount - yup, it's a freedom ride.

[Spiff]

Do you have any idea how much money American Patrol received last year in donations?

No. But, apparently, they've received far less donations than they have spent. Glenn Spencer is using his life savings for this endeavor. And he certainly isn't living off the money, if that's what someone is implying - the error-ridden Jon Dougherty/WorldNetDaily article notwithstanding.