Lucha organizes "Immigration Week" on campus

11/12/07 -- Lucha, one of the groups central to taking on the Minuteklan last year on campus, kicked off its Immigration Week events tonight with a candlelight vigil at 9pm. The event, scheduled to coincide with the nightly 9pm vigils in support of the student hunger strikers, drew a sizable crowd of at least 100 people, despite the cold and rain.

Many students, faculty and others spoke, make demands ranging from reform of core curriculum to include more ethnic studies, to more radical calls to oppose conservative and liberal immigration policies alike. One young speaker identified himself as an undocumented immigrant, and told the crowd of how he learned just recently that after repeated appeals, his remaining immediate family in the US was now going to be deported.

PLP handed out leaflets about opposing anti-immigrant racism, and copies of Challenge-Desafio. One PLer also took a turn on the microphone, introduced himself as a student, member of PL and the international working class, and a proud Communist, stating that "the capitalists, conservative and liberal, want to pave the way to wider wars, bigger profits, and increasing fascism--and they're going to do it with the dead bodies of thousands of immigrant workers and their children."

He stressed that workers of all "races" need to unite to smash the whole rotten, capitalist system. "How long will we wait [until we finally get rid of the entire system] while we fight for breadcrumbs from these capitalist parasites?" After saluting Lucha for organizing the event, as well as the hunger strikers whose tents were close by, the comrade ended with the chant, "smash racist deportations, working people have no nations!"

While the politics at the event ranged from the predictably nationalist--there were several invocations of the Young Lords, as well as one former member present--to the more openly revolutionary, PLP raised sharp political points and the event energetic and moving.

Lucha will be hosting a series of events throughout the course of the week, including speakers and film showings. A particularly important event, on Wednesday from 12-4pm at Low Plaza, will be about the DREAM Act--which Lucha supports in their literature. PLP believes it is critical that all working people oppose this proposed legislation designed to stave off a real return of the draft by creating a back-door draft for undocumented immigrant youth wishing to gain US citizenship. The act offers a college education track to citizenship as well, however, only 1 in 20 youth would be eligible for the higher education option. The rest would simply be sent to fight and die in oil war after oil war. Supporting the DREAM Act is a fatal error and plays directly into the hands of reactionary forces of war and developing fascism.