IMMIGRATION, WAR: "Out Now!" A beautiful/ ugly slogan

October 2007

e good news is that as the 2008 presidential campaign heats up opposition to the war in Iraq is overwhelming. Everywhere Democratic candidates go they meet crowds demanding OUT NOW. In red, blue, purple and green regions, rural and urban communities, within virtually all racial groups, creeds and economic classes, majorities oppose the war.

How will the U.S. government maintain legitimacy when the government clearly disregards the will of the people? The people must be distracted! And distracted they are. People have found an issue that rivals, even overwhelms the war as a social cause worthy of their time and passion.

Besides the war, what is inspiring the masses to signing a petition, lobby congress, write a letter, attend a meeting, or actually taking the risk to stand in public with a protest sign? Health care? Education? Mortgage foreclosures? Global warming? Mass transit? Housing?

No my friends, the masses have decided they can accept collapsing bridges and under-compensated flood damage. Overflowing classes, over-inflated mortgages, overheated atmosphere--these can be tolerated.

What raises the blood pressure here in Minnesota, among the heirs of Polish, German, Swedish, Finnish, Italian immigrants today is ATM machines that ask “English or Spanish”. It’s José and Mohamed playing soccer where baseball and Bobby and Jane should be. It’s familia picnics in the park, Muslim prayer rooms and Hmong communal gardens. It’s anytime other-than-English-speaking-people dare to take space formerly filled by the anglo-phonic.

Why, at this historical moment, did English speakers in this Ojibwe and Dakota land get the idea that they have a special right to always understand and be understood? The current self-righteous hate wave here in MN, and around the country, is part of long xenophobic tradition. As the republican candidate Rudy Giuliani said back in 1996, referring to 19^th century Know Nothingists and the Chinese exclusionists, the periodic rise in anti-immigrant sentiment is a pattern in the United States. The Chinese exclusion campaign was a response to a moment when the railway companies were squeezing farmers and workers in every part of the country. Instead of demanding fair wages for all workers they demanded an end to Chinese immigration. The Chinese , who were paid half the wages of white workers, became, overnight , the first “illegal immigrants” and the non-Chinese workers and farmers still had to overcome bosses intent on breaking worker solidarity anyway they could.

The problem for Giuliani today is he is not eager to criminalize low-wage workers he knows are essential to keeping profits high and the cost to consumer goods low. Yet he wants to build support for a criminal war. He knows the anti-immigrant movement does dampen the peace movement as those most squeezed by the war-time economy are susceptible to calls for scape-goating by media jerks like Lou Dobbs.

We who oppose the war have the inverse problem from Giuliani. How do we build a movement for social justice when those who will whisper out now with us are simultaneously shouting OUT NOW to their immigrant neighbors?

When anti-immigrant sentiment emerges in white and black communities that are suffering the most from the war–time economy, communities with more than their share of loved ones in Iraq, who are struggling to cope with the physical and mental wounds of returning soldiers and heal the hearts of those left behind—those communities where the schools are the most crowded, and decent jobs the hardest to find, -we know the corporate moguls are winning at that age-old divide and conquer game.

So what do we do? On the one hand we want to build a movement based on one goal we can all agree on-- bring in the largest numbers. The immigrant rights movement is making the same calculations, concerned that if they talk about the war they will lose support. Hey, as a nominal member of both movements, I do both, that is, I hold my tongue all the time.

But it occurs to me that the cost of not making the connections is that fascism grows.