News

Freedom rides through CASA of Maryland

BY ETHAN GOFFMAN

Busloads of youth set out across the country on a seemingly quixotic task: to bring justice and civil rights to a marginalized and exploited population. The freedom riders of the 1960s? Yes, and also the immigrant freedom riders of 2003, who are striving to build a monument--not of stone, but of memory, that will serve as a kind of psychological rallying point for future action.

The buses began their long rides from the sprawling corners of the United States, from Seattle and Los Angeles, from Houston and Miami, passing through and gathering riders from more than a hundred cities. The ride through Montgomery County approached the end of their long journey to the nation's capital and, finally, to a vast rally in the longtime immigrant capital of the United States, New York City.

For Montgomery County, with its huge and diverse immigrant population, the ride is of stark significance. In the year 2000, according to the U.S. Census, Montgomery County was 27 percent foreign-born, with some 100 languages spoken. Devotees of ethnic food can track the movements of immigrants through the onrush of flavors available in Silver Spring restaurants.

This huge immigrant presence explains why the Maryland portion of the freedom rides was routed through CASA of Maryland on October 4. CASA served as the rallying point for the Maryland caravan to New York City, and since 1985, CASA of Maryland has served immigrants throughout the county, acting as a safe pick-up area for day laborers that ensures a reasonable wage, and engaging in social services concerning education, health, legal issues, and employment.

Not surprisingly, CASA was central to Maryland organizing for the immigrant freedom rides. On October 1, vanloads of travelers set off from CASA to D.C. area events. Both Washington and Baltimore held interfaith breakfasts to welcome the traveling immigrants. Subsequent rallies advocated in-state tuition for the children of immigrants who attended Maryland schools, as well as supporting asbestos removal workers and laundry workers. Speeches, music, singing, chanting, dancing, and poetry punctuated these events.

The labor-oriented nature of these rallies makes clear the major role unions now hold regarding immigrant rights. Kim Propeack, Advocacy Director at CASA of Maryland, explains that this marks a major shift in union positions since the 1980s. At that time, most unions opposed immigration, believing that it undercut American workers and brought down wages. "Over the years," explains Propeack, "the AFL had come to realize that that was not a strategy that worked."

Because unemployed and desperate workers will find their way into the United States, legally or illegally, documented and organized immigrants are less likely to destabilize job markets. In the past decade, immigrant workers-underpaid and devoid of basic work safety, health, and overtime rights-have been the most eager to join unions.

"Immigrants are breathing new life into the union movement," Propeack says, as exemplified by the Justice for Janitors campaign. Unions also came to realize that failing to protect one group of workers undercuts bargaining power on a broader scale.

"All workers suffer when it's easier to abuse undocumented workers," Propeack says.

While the right to organize is one major touchstone of the immigrant freedom riders campaign, perhaps even more prominent is the legalization drive. Immigrant legalization was garnering great national support, from Republicans and Democrats alike, until the events of September 11, 2001 spurred a new wave of fear. With time, and a growing realization that immigration and terrorism are unrelated, the legalization effort is being revived.

Propeack argues, "At a basic level, we don't accept people as worthless because they're from a different country. If you're religious, I do not believe that there is a biblical justification for that."

The argument was well recounted in the recent debates for governor of California: undocumented immigrants are driven here under conditions of desperate poverty and political repression. They spend years doing crucial jobs others don't want or have time for--from providing day care for children to working heavy construction to cleaning toilets. Their children grow up and attend school here, yet they lack such basic rights as in-state tuition, driver's licenses, and the freedom to visit family members across borders.

Propeack also asks why, in an international world, in which capital and consumer goods circulate freely, people should not do the same.

"This is an economically-driven phenomenon," she states. "You cannot have free flow of capital, free flow of companies, free flow of litigation, and free flow of products, and not expect free flow of bodies."

For the organizers of the immigrant freedom rides, the answer to problems of depressed wages and conditions is not stricter control of borders, but better organization of workers.

Most current legalization proposals involve some form of immediate amnesty for those currently in the United States, and a streamlined path to residence for new immigrants. In Maryland, legislative efforts center around the Dream Act, which would allow in-state college tuition for youth who went through local high schools but have undocumented parents. This is the situation faced by scores of kids in Montgomery County schools, many of them superior students. Proposals to allow driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants are intended to reduce the number of illegal drivers on the road.

Determined to dramatize the plight of immigrant workers, and to bring labor and legalization issues to the forefront, a convoy of 11 buses and six passenger vans set out from CASA in the gray hours of the morning of October 4. This was the culmination of a six-month whirlwind of organization coordinated across the country via telephone, fax, and e-mail, and includ-ing fundraisers, press events, newsletters, fliers, bus rentals, t-shirt design, provisioning of food and water, and more.

The bus I took included over half of the contingent of 75 sent by Montgomery County. Spanish, English, and French phrases alternated rapidly, flitting through the crisp morning air. Latecomers trickled down the aisle, along with sandwiches and bottles of water. A civil nervousness hung in the air. Finally, the bus started up--not with a roar, but with a polite sigh. The sun slowly awakened Maryland's hills, woods, gas stations, and strip malls.

My seatmate, Seleth Selebangu, agreed to an interview. Like most on this bus, he is one of the day laborers who wait daily in front of CASA of Maryland. During his year in America, he has worked land-scaping, construction, and painting jobs. SelebanguÊ arrived from the Central African Republic, fleeing the civil war that has wracked his country, and needing money to send home to his wife and children. He chose the United States because "America is a good country; a powerful country; a country of immigrants."

However, as for so many immigrants for so many years, Selebangu's image of America did not fit the immediate reality.

"Maybe I came at the wrong time. I was thinking everything would be easy," he says.

Much of the problem stems from the low status immigrants face. Contractors, Selebangu explains, "don't see us like equals." He complains of one who spoke down to him.

"He didn't know I used to be a bookkeeper," he says. "I know I had gone to school more than he."

Because he does dangerous work, often on rooftops, Selebangu is especially worried about his lack of medical insurance. He remembers a time when he cut himself deeply and wanted to quit for the day, but the contractor insisted he finish the job, so he bandaged himself and worked on.

He finds the lifestyle too fast and the food unhealthy. Hospitality is also a strong custom in Selebangu's home--another change for him in America.

"I don't know my next door neighbors; they don't say hello," he says. "I feel very lonely here."

For his first five months in America, Selebangu's financial and legal status was uncertain. Then he got lucky, finding a job taking care of an 85-year-old in Bethesda. This pays his room and board, allowing him to send his day-labor wages to his family. He also hopes to take advantage of educational opportunities, and plans to study bookkeeping programs and website design at Montgomery College.

We are interrupted by an enthusiastic Kim Propeack, who prompts the bus into learning some basic chants in Spanish, English and French. Various responsibili-ties are also worked out, such as who will lead the different chants and who will hold the banners. The buildings grow larger and more frequent, and a hum of anticipation arises as the riders sense the approach of New York City. I have time for one more interview.

José Garcia is Vice President of CASA's Workers' Association. Like the numerous routes that the freedom rider buses have taken across the country, the story of how he reached this point is long and twisty. In English he cannot explain himself with the fluency he desires, so we quickly switch to a translator.

In 1994, Garcia's son disappeared from their San Miguel, El Salvador home. Hearing that his son might have moved to the United States, Garcia followed him to North Carolina, where he had gotten married. There, Garcia worked as a day laborer. In 2001, after a dispute with his son and in a search of better work, he moved to Greenbelt.

Again he worked as a day laborer, now under the auspices of CASA of Maryland. The work was sporadic, and Garcia had severe difficulty getting legalization papers. He tried three times, had money stolen by a lawyer, and still couldn't attain his papers or better work. Finally, this August, he received his papers via a neighborhood store, and this September he started a better job working eight to ten hours a day packaging goods at a factory.

Acutely aware of the politics around immigrants' rights, Garcia feels a keen sense of loss at the opportunity that collapsed along with the collapse of the World Trade Center.

"Never in the U.S.," he says, "had so many noted those rights. I can visualize it. Even Colin Powell felt obliged to grant it."

Not only has this chance been lost but a new governor has undercut Garcia's hopes for Maryland. He notes Robert Ehrlich's opposition to the Dream Act, and to immigrant driver's licenses.

As we approach New York, Garcia remembers his last trip to the city. "In the right lane was an opulent skyline. In the left lane, many poor. This class of people are hidden, as if they're meaningless, little rabbits," he says.

Someone spots the Statue of Liberty. Or is it? Yes, the famous, if distant, outline emerges, followed by the Manhattan skyline. People point and chat excitedly. There's the Empire State Building. Where would the World Trade Center have been? But our route keeps us distant from the most famous New York monuments.

We skirt the city and arrive in the massive parking lots of Shea Stadium, joining scores of buses. After final instructions to remain together, our group marches across the lot, over a cement bridge to the freedom rally. A lively Latin band, led by a heavyset singer dancing vigorously across an enormous monitor, greets the gathering crowd.

Flags and signs wave boisterously. Sojourning waves of marchers converge. AFL-CIO president John Sweeney begins a wave of speeches. Although neatly separated into sections by iron barriers, the crowd continues to grow. I gaze across oceans of humanity, the tired, the poor, the masses taking a break from their submissive huddling--for this one afternoon, at least. How many are there? A hundred thousand? Who can count?

Union and immigrant leaders speak throughout the afternoon, interrupted by spells of music. The CASA of Maryland group has long since broken up, perhaps trickling, like me, to the stands hawking zesty tacos and miniature flags at the far end of the field, then wandering through the vast crowds cut off from the original group.

The crowd has thinned. The afternoon seems to end anti-climactically. Then one last singer ascends the stage, and the crowd surges enthusiastically. It is Wyclef Jean, the Haitian hiphop singer and former Fugees member. He whirls through a set of freedom songs: No Woman No Cry, the Lord's Prayer, and a Jimi Hendrix-inspired version of The Star-Spangled Banner. He speaks in English, French Creole, Spanish, and the language of music, reminding the crowd that he is one of them, that he arrived on these shores an impoverished immigrant.

Heading home

The riders are sleeping. The major national television networks all but ignored the immigrant freedom ride. Has it lived up to its historic predecessor?

It is too soon to know. In cities across the country, newspapers and local television stations ran prominent stories. Spanish-speaking media also covered the rides in depth, as did the New York Times and NPR. And surely the rides had a huge impact on the tens of thousands who took part in them, and on the hundreds of thousands--or, more likely, millions--who witnessed the immigrant caravans roll by, and experienced the energy of the speeches and rallies. In innumerable households and coffee shop discussions, magazines, documentaries, and online discussions, the ride will live on.

Propeack believes that the ride succeeded in its purpose, which was to "unify and educate communities about the importance of immigrants, the commitment of unions to the immigrant community, and the recognition of...how a unified workforce advances all workers."

Propeack's hope is that this ride creates a living, lasting memory in the same way that the march on Washington,the 1963 freedom rides, or the Works Progress Administration did. If the freedom rides do result in new legislation, this is only one part in a larger story which emanates from the United States' past and its long struggle for civil rights.

Yet it is also a global story, requiring a generous, and complex, vision of the future. It is the story of the struggle to recognize the rights and abilities of growing portions of humanity. And it is the story of efforts to attain a globalism for the many which crafts mechanisms of economic exchange to benefit those who work and to allow the flowering of converging cultures.

These issues are remarkably complex, and the path remains unclear. If we are lucky, the immigrant freedom rides will be an important step on this path.