Tucson May Day March
by George Saunders
About 5,000 people came out to
march on May Day in Tucson
to demand “Stop the Raids and Deportations.” They marched for justice for
immigrants and to protest government immigration policies that have caused
thousands of deaths in the Arizona
desert over the last dozen years as immigrants have crossed through this
sparsely inhabited, hot, and inhospitable landscape in search of work, just to
try and earn a livelihood. As one large banner carried by marchers said, “We Are
Workers, Not Criminals.” Another homemade sign declared: “Better Life
Opportunities—Education, Jobs—That’s Not Criminal.”
Aztec dancers led the march,
affirming the native culture that has survived centuries of European invasion
and occupation. The dancers were followed by the May 1 Coalition banner: “No to
the War in Iraq,
and No to the War on the Border.”
The march was a genuine outpouring
of Tucson’s
Mexican American community, with entire families present, from infants in
strollers to grandparents. The spirit of the marchers was warm, cheerful, and
energetic. Some signs said “Viva Chicanos” and “Chicano Power.” One T-shirt
read: “Brown and Proud.” There were some Mexican flags and a few U.S. flags.
Young people took turns riding on each other’s shoulders to wave the Mexican
flag higher.
Mexican Americans are now more than
50 percent of Tucson’s
population, according to newspaper reports published last fall. And this is a
metropolitan area of about one million people. Two hours to the north, the Phoenix metro area, now among the ten largest in the U.S., also has
a Mexican American majority. This is similar to southern California, where the numbers are of course
even larger. If aroused and organized, these communities could completely
change society in this part of the world.
Hundreds of school-age youth came
to the march, despite intimidation attempts by the Arizona superintendent of schools. The day
before the march, he appealed to parents not to let their children take an
unexcused absence from school. The May 1 Coalition urged parents to get excused
absences. Whatever way they worked it, between a third and a half of the
marchers were young people, from kindergarten through college.
The adults were mostly working
people who, like the majority of U.S. workers, are not organized in
unions. One young man carried a sign saying “Union Makes Us Strong.” He sure
had the right idea, but it turned out he was not a union member. Still, some
unions were represented among the marchers: for example, the Machinists,
UFCW, Unite-Here, CWA, AFSCME, SEIU, and the National Writers Union.
Liberal Democrat politicians were
notable by their absence.
The May 1 Coalition, which very
effectively organized and built the march, is an alliance of several dozen
mostly young activists from many different groups as well as unaffiliated
individuals. Probably the main contributor to the Coalition was the group known
as Derechos Humanos, which
has been fighting in opposition to U.S. border and immigration policy
for more than two decades.
The first speaker at the noontime
rally was Isabel Garcia, who is generally recognized as the leading
spokesperson for Derechos Humanos.
She stressed that the march was demanding full rights for everyone, and that we
are fighting against the biggest and most powerful empire ever known. A young
woman named Liz, speaking for the group Tierra y Libertad, followed Isabel
Garcia, giving an excellent talk, which we hope to reprint at a later time.
Violeta
Dominguez, a University of Arizona student from Mexico City, spoke in opposition to any
“guest worker” program, or as the proposed “STRIVE” bill before Congress calls
it, a “new worker” program. She works with former “braceros,”
who are still fighting to get their unpaid wages from
the unjust bracero program that was in operation from
the 1940s and into the 1960s. Half a dozen former braceros
were part of the march, with signs saying in Spanish: “Braceros
of Yesterday in Solidarity with Braceros of Today.”
Also speaking was Leilani Clark, a Tucson
high school student who is part Native American and part African American. She
read a poem written by a young Mexican, a poem Leilani
encountered this past weekend during a visit by Black Americans for Justice to
Immigrants (BAJI) across the border just south of Tucson, a staging area for those preparing to
make the deadly trip on foot through the desert.
The march began at about 10 a.m. in
South Tucson, which is mostly Mexican
American. The route went directly north, along Sixth Avenue, to the center of town, and
the marchers in their thousands gathered in front of the Federal
Building and Federal Court to make
known their opposition to U.S.
policies and to the proposed “STRIVE” bill now before Congress. Then they
returned to Armory
Park, on Sixth Avenue, for
the noontime rally.
Totally legal and peaceful, this
march and rally made up, in a way, for an ugly and intimidating event that
happened at the April 10 march last year in Tucson. At that time, on
instructions from the top political leadership of the city, the police allowed
a dozen vigilante Minuteman types to establish a presence in the park where the
rally was held, right in the middle of the 15,000 or more marchers and rally
attendees. These “Border Guardians” provocatively burned not one, but two,
Mexican flags—and their provocative presence was protected by the police for
hours.
Toward the end of last year’s April
10 rally some young people threw a few drops of water on the burning Mexican
flag—and were attacked by the police protectors of the vigilantes! A long political
and legal struggle resulted, and the half dozen Mexican Americans, mostly
youth, who the cops arrested and beat up were freed from the toils of the
“justice” system after a few minimal penalties and some unnecessarily costly
fines. In the course of the fight over this issue, last year’s April 10
Coalition evolved into this year’s May 1 Coalition, and in the process the
groups carried out many protest activities—going to City Council hearings,
meeting with City Council members, organizing a play to dramatize and protest
what the politicians and cops had done, not being quiet or intimidated, not
just slinking away.
One result of the past year’s
protest efforts was that the police were on relatively good behavior for this
year’s May Day. As for the vigilante types, there were only half a dozen this
year, truly like a flea on the toe of an elephant. This time the police kept
them away from the rally area, with their three or four stupid signs expressing
a hopelessly regimented mentality: “It’s a Crime to Boycott School”;
“Illegal Mexicans Are Criminals.” They forgot “Do What Teacher Tells You.”
A good answer to these numskulls
was a sign I noticed several times among the May Day marchers:
“Justice over
Authority.”