Immigration coalition unites communities against ICE raids

The Southern California Immigration Coalition Conference, a coalition of several dozen organizations, successfully gathered nearly 400 people from across the region on April 11 with the objective of “building unity between different sectors of the community to unite around this struggle—from elected officials, to students, to workers, to professionals, to leaders from the LGBT community, to teachers and parents, to community leaders, to union leaders, to intellectuals and to many more.”

Dozens of grassroots organizations participated. Photo: J. Humberto Lopez

The historic event began with a standing-room-only press conference inside the Santee Education Complex, a south-central Los Angeles high school which hosted the event.

The conference itself consisted of several keynote addresses in the morning by local legislators and a solidarity statement by the United Teachers of Los Angeles.

Then a working breakout session consisting of nine different workshops took place. Each workshop was facilitated with the intent of having panelists address or discuss how to organize against the repression unfolding against undocumented workers across the states. The issues ranged from “Strategies and Tactics on Stopping ICE Raids,” “Parent and Teacher Participation in the Struggle for Reform,” “Labor and Immigrant Rights,” and “The Role of Media” to “Students/Youth Involvement.”

ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Often called La Migra, it is the U.S. agency responsible for the raids on immigrant workers and their families.

In the “Fair and Humane Immigration Reform” workshop, panelists and participants agreed to begin the process of developing a working group to draft a more progressive counterproposal than those that are currently being introduced in Congress. It was clear that the current proposals all contain components that would further militarize the U.S./Mexico border and call for the recruitment of more ICE agents to be trained and deployed across the states to terrorize migrant communities.

Ron Gochez of the Association of Raza Educators, one of the emcees for the event, stated, “We met our main goal of uniting a broad sector of our community under our three principles, which call for full legalization, and end to the ICE raids, and a NO to guest worker programs.”

It was clear during the event that students, workers, activists and organizers from various cities across southern California were present and participating in the dialogue and discussion, developing a vision beyond marching and protesting, but rather building organization in our communities to resist and provide an alternative to the politics of fear and oppression.

“An important aspect defining the success of this conference was the presence of dozens of grassroots, independent organizations formed by workers and communities to resist ICE raids, as well as the participation of the Alianza Latinoamericana de los Derechos del Inmigrante of San Francisco,” stated Daniel Montes, a local south-central Los Angeles member of Unión del Barrio. “The ALDI community-based struggle led to the passing of a city ordinance allowing the issuing of municipal identification cards to all residents, including immigrants, so as to recognize and address the needs of marginalized groups in our communities.”

At the end of the conference, all the facilitators from the 10 workshops reported back to the general assembly about what was discussed in each space. Concrete proposals for a plan of action beyond the May 1st March were agreed upon. “The ability for communities to independently challenge the corporate/capitalist-dominated propaganda machine, where our communities are constantly being scapegoated, was a sharp example of self-determination; that is, our community deciding for itself the course of struggle via mobilizations, community-based media, and organization was central to this conference,” stated Francisco Romero, a Raza Press and Media Association correspondent who participated in the reporting on the event, as well as presenting on a panel.

According to conference organizers, the focus of the event was to develop a movement-building plan of action for mobilization and organization beyond southern California. This network would be centered around the three basic principles of unity and work toward continuing to resist and organize against the Democrat and Republican-endorsed Migra-terror in our communities.