Nina plus Norah plus Ice Cream

Hangin' at the House

Marchers, Mexicans, and Me

As readers of The Emilio Report well know, Emilio and I had a grand time participating in a protest march in downtown Chicago on Monday, May first. Here are some of the deets (as my dear sister might call them)pertaining to my views of said event:

1. I don’t know who organized the march. I learned about it by word-of-mouth. My sense is that it ended up being organized by any and everyone who promoted and participated in it.

2. The protest was against the exploitation of workers, but it was not just against the exploitation of workers. It was against the exploitation of undocumented workers from other countries who are now living in America. As such, nationality had an important role in the protest.

3. I understand, though, that some of the organizers were adherents of a “majoritarian strategy” and hoped to make the march as inoffensive as possible. For sensible reasons, they requested that marchers carry American flags only and not the flags of other nations (though they were principally worried about Mexican flags, whose vast numbers at a previous protest march in Dallas provoked much criticism in some circles). But I tend to agree with NYU journalism professor Ellen Willis, author of Don’t Think, Smile!: Notes on a Decade of Denial (Beacon Press, 1999), that

No mass left-wing movement has ever been built on a majoritarian strategy. On the contrary, every such movement—socialism, populism, labor, civil rights, feminism, gay rights, ecology—has begun with a visionary minority whose ideas were at first decried as impractical, ridiculous, crazy, dangerous, and/or immoral. (Don’t Think, Smile!, xiv)

The winning formula, as Willis describes it, is

a good cop/bad cop routine in which the liberals dismiss the radicals as impractical sectarian extremists, promote their own ‘responsible’ proposals as an alternative, and take the credit for whatever change results. (Don’t Think, Smile!, xv)

4. In its coverage of the controversy surrounding the protest in Washington, D.C., the Washington Post describes the dynamic in this way:

American social movements have historically been rife with divisions, said
Michael Kazin, a Georgetown history professor. The splits can be damaging if they distract followers, he said -- but they also can signal strength. "I can't think of any important movement in American history that has not had important divisions about strategy and about the ultimate ends," Kazin said.
"The larger the movement is, the more divisions there are. People think, 'This is really important, so there's even more reason to steer it in the right direction.' "
The budding Latino movement's discord over today's event appears to boil down to a rift between groups whose main focus is to work within the system to gain legalization for immigrants and those that want to build a more radical grass-roots workers' movement, Kazin said.
"There's a typical division, you might say, between people who see the need to put pressure on people on the inside and are very happy to have Teddy Kennedy speak at the rally, or even [John] McCain, and folks at the May 1st rally who would not feel comfortable with Congress people," he said, referring to the senators from Massachusetts and Arizona who have sponsored legislation that includes a guest-worker program and a route to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

4. In the scenario Willis and Kazin describe, I identify more with the bad cop, the cultural radical, the sectarian extremist, and "those that want to build a more radical grass-roots workers' movement" (at least today I do). And I agree with the position taken by the Los Angeles-based group, Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER), which helped promote the march, that "Ideological cohesion to the T isn't something that is absolutely necessary right now."

5. Though I am no fan of nationalism (a foolish pride in nation, like a foolish pride in race, can be a dangerous distraction), at this protest I identified with the Mexican flag wavers.

6. As it turned out, the protest was a multi-flag event that was dominated by American flags, some of which were enormous. Mexican flags ran a clear, but distant second.

7. My sense was that the diversity of flags and signs and language and colors of people was appreciated and I doubt that many if any immigrants from other countries felt threatened by the Mexican flags in the crowd. The protest had many symbols and many messages and spoke for many different kinds of people. It was less a crystal clear message than it was a cacophony of messages. But I believe the cacophony itself sent a kind of message: cacophony is good; mongrelization is good; immigration is good; excessive love of purity is dangerous.

8. I wanted to stick a little Mexican flag in Emilio’s Baby Bjorn, but didn’t see any place to buy one until we were leaving. I bought one then for three bucks (the plastic version cost a dollar), from a vendor who was selling both American and Mexican flags.

9. That Mexican flag is now displayed in the window of our apartment. I think of it as a pathetic little sign of my solidarity with the many exploited Mexican immigrants who work in this city.

10. I suppose some people might be offended by the sight of a Mexican flag, just as I am offended by the sight of a Confederate flag. But I don’t mind offending people who are offended by Mexican flags.

11. I don’t mind offending people who are offended by pink triangles. Or the hammer and the sickle (that’s the ultimate unity symbol in my book).

*

*
12. When our government was stoking the fires of Francophobia as it ramped up its invasion of Iraq (remember "freedom fries"?), I sought for and failed to find a French flag pin, or a pin that says "Vive L'France!" to attach to my backpack (I still want one). I wouldn’t mind offending people who are offended by French flags.

13. I also don’t mind offending people who are offended by someone singing the national anthem in Spanish and would like to start singing it that way myself.

14. If I were choosing an American national anthem I would, of course, choose Woody Guthrie’s "This Land is Your Land," and I would sing this verse louder than the others:

As I was walkin’, I saw a sign there
And that sign said: “No Tresspassing”
But on the other side, it didn’t say nothing
Now that side was made for you and me.”

14. I don’t think people in other countries pay much attention to the words of the American national anthem. I think they are more likely to be struck by how often we sing it.

15. And for the record: according to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Bureau, in the year 2000, the country of origin for 68.7% of the estimated “unauthorized population” in the United States is Mexico (it was 58.3% in 1990, so you would think that the percentage might be higher today). The Pew Hispanic Center paints a different statistical picture, though. According to them, the percentage of unauthorized migrants that are of Mexican origin has remained virtually unchanged for the past decade. Thus, as the PHC would have it, of the estimated 10.3 million unauthorized migrants living in the United States two years ago (March 2004) , about 57 percent were from Mexico, about 24 percent were from other Latin American countries, about 9 percent were from Asia, 6 percent from Europe and Canada, and 4 percent from the rest of the world. Both the PHC and the USCIS agree, however, that Mexicans make up by far the largest group of undocumented migrants. (That's Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata at the center of the table at right.)