MNFR summary on september part one

It’s been a long month. Hopefully, I will be able to journal more regularly starting today.

I first heard of Mariano back in July of 2003. It was some paper piece rushedly handed by someone to the education department (I think). It talked about sweat and blood and some agitational material. The education department thought it could be a good material for Voces Laborales, CDL’s monthly bulletin, and passed it on to me who was working on the June edition back then (oops, it must have been May, then)

It’s still up and well.

Caravana por los Derechos de Trabajadores Inmigrantes
Voces Laborales, vol.1, n.11. Mayo-Junio 2003
http://www.cdl.uni.cc/voc1/1.11.freedomride.htm

Inmigrantes a lo largo del país se reúnen en Washington para pronunciarse por la justicia y reforma legal en lugar de sufrir en silencio.

Esta Caravana, o Freedom Ride, representa la más grande movilización de trabajadores inmigrantes y nuestros aliados en la historia de los Estados Unidos.

Los inmigrantes y nuestros aliados iniciaremos el movimiento en el 20 de Septiembre de 2003, desde las ciudades más alejadas del país para brindar apoyo a las reformas legales. Después de reunirnos en Washington con los Miembros del Congreso, nos dirigiremos a Nueva York, para una masiva manifestación el Sábado, 4 de Octubre.

Los trabajadores hemos participado en la construcción de este país. No hay mina, puente, o surco en los campos de todo Estados Unidos que no hayan sido tocados con las lágrimas, sudor y sangre de los inmigrantes. Pero vivimos en constante amenaza de deportación y pérdida abrupta del trabajo. Recientemente, un nuevo momentum nos ha hecho objeto de una de las legislaciones y medidas ejecutivas más represivas que recuerdan memorias recientes. Justamente, los trabajadores inmigrantes demandamos amnistía total para los trabajadores que han contribuido tanto, y justamente reclamamos estar libres del reforzamiento de las condiciones de explotación.

Este es el mensaje que llevará la Caravana, o Freedom Ride de los trabajadores Inmigrantes, orgullosamente y en alta voz a través del país. Ésta es una iniciativa que nació en Oakland Park, California, donde se reunieron representantes de más de 400 organizaciones que incluye el AFL-CIO, comunidades religiosas y asociaciones estudiantiles.

Para más información, contactar Centro de Derechos Laborales (Teléfono: 612-276-0788) o la página web www.immigrantworkersfreedomride.com

Then I kind of forgot about it – I think I went to a few planning meetings, but back then I was more involved with doing quote and quote “authentic spanish” work in editing RCTA’s textbook. Soon, Jorge took off as rider representing CDL. I think there was someone else who went under RCTA’s sponsorship.

When I finished the summer internship with RCTA and started the work-study with TCRLN, the two intern/staff members had also been riders. Somehow I had not seen Mariano very often back then, but starting the spring of 2004 he started coming to our office regularly. I think he still had his SEIU situation dragging behind him and heard some comments. In retrospect, there should have been tensions between our direction which was about bringing workers to solve their issues within the context of unions, and his, but apprently the Freedom Ride connection had overcome that. One night, while standing post for the worker’s rights center, he came in to talk about something, and I just fell asleep right in front of Julia and him while they discussed plans. There is no better way of leaving lasting impressions.

I also remember earlier a CDL volunteer who was a rider and organizer, and was very excited about it – he once winked and said “you know, all this is really about getting Bush out of office”. In a sense, he was a bit like the old man who comes to Macalester’s library – he did lots of research on sites like CommonDreams and printed tons of articles. One day, CDL decided not to engage officially with him because of his partisan leanings. I think he moved to ACT now.

I also recall Maura, who took a class with professor Ping in the semester when she took a week off to participate in the ride in late september. Maura said that her classes were not really about English, but about immigrants, and she was doing census research and reading stories by second generation immigrants – I’d guess Ping is tenured already?

Then last summer, around mid-july, the Freedom Ride people came up with the idea of organizing a full ride across rural Minnesota to raise awareness on activism going on in other cities and develop a stronger voice in legislation. Some key items that caught my attention: there are way fewer people in the countryside, so organizing a core of immigrants to vote/raise their voice is quite menacing for the state house and senate; among other things, what activists in the rural area need is media exposure, more than workforce.

That was amazing. And a few weeks later, Mariano came to ask me for a website for MNFR. It’s been the most rewarding web work I have done since started in 1997. And it’s not only in terms of the kind of movement it supported or people I came in touch with through it, but the sheer technical aspect as well – daily hits, variety of visit sources, tasks that were non-tech specific, and so forth. Dealing a trained staff that understood domains and servers was great. So we bought a domain name and shared ¡Adelante!’s server using a parked domain feature (or something like that)

Deciding what the domain name was going to be took over an hour, I think. Mariano and Quito sat there and started talking about the kind of relationships they wanted to have with hosts, sponsors and affiliates, and the impact that a name like Freedom Ride Coalition or IWFR MN Chapter or else could have on such relationships, or the images they could portray thereof. He kept asking for themed names, like “immigration reform” “justice for immigrants”, while quito and me tried pushig forward abbreviated names that would be 1) easy to remember 2) stick to pickets and banners without taking too much space. We settled for mnfr.org, but I think Mariano is still not very happy with that.

Oh, forgot mentioning that I also met Liz who interned almost full-time with MNFR during spring of 2004, in our Lilly weekly discussions. She mentioned the fateful meeting where someone proposed that immigrants across the country rise up and initiate a general strike to show our power, and the moderator or chair of the discussion had suggested taking a more feasible step. Then Pedro (Pablo?) rose up and started pointing at each one, yelling out “are YOU an immigrant?” and “are YOU an immigrant” , going on each person. And that scared a lot of people, and they didn’t come back – MNFR had lost quite a base. According Liz’s interpretaiton, if I got her right, that attitude came from his ISAIAH training, where “training” consists of you being yelled at for two hours. (now it all sounds weird..) I was really interested in that incident and tried asking more, but TCRLN people weren’t too excited to recall the story either. But then, now I think that htis was maybe an AFFIRM meeting.