May Day Banner Drop

Press release from the Stolen Land Committee :

Today on international workers day, a group calling itself the Stolen Land Committee hung a banner off the east face of an abandoned building at 12th and Pearl streets reading “No One Is Illegal.”

The group took this action in solidarity with workers throughout the world who march and rally today in commemoration of those who lost their lives during the struggle for the 8 hour day here in the United States. In particular the group seeks to highlight the struggles of undocumented immigrant workers here in the united states who risk their lives on dangerous border crossings to come to the United States and work. 2 years ago in 2006, Immigrant workers lead the largest demonstrations in the history of the United States on mayday.

Unlike some labor unions, the stolen land committee recognizes that the criminalization of these workers and the treatment of immigrants as a possible terrorist threat which we should fortify our borders against serves the interests of large agricultural companies and corporations seeking to drive down the wages of all workers in the United States. By criminalizing undocumented immigrants large employers are able to pay immigrants sub-minimum wages and threaten them with deportation should they start to unionize. Agricultural and domestic workers, jobs where many undocumented immigrants are concentrated, are the two groups of workers that do not enjoy the right to unions and collective bargaining granted under the national labor relations act passed during the new deal era. Just as labor unions are under threat in the U.S. as major employers move or threaten to move their operations overseas to exploit cheap labor in the name of being ‘internationally competitive,’ so too are they under threat by the criminalization of a large portion of the working class right here in the United States.

Currently migration across the U.S./Mexico border is the largest migration in the history of humankind. An estimated 1 million people cross each year. As the border has been militarized, starting in the
90s with operation gatekeeper, significant barriers have been placed along the border in areas where it is easiest to cross. This has pushed immigrants to crossing in dangerous areas like the Sonora desert in Arizona, or the rugged mountains in southern California where many die of exposure or dehydration. It is no coincidence that increased border restrictions were put into place just as the U.S, Canada and Mexico were entering the North American Free Trade Agreement which by opening borders to capital and the flow of goods has rapidly devastated the Mexican economy and created a huge increase of migration as people lose their land and struggle to feed their families.

Today the same corporations who benefit from defense contracts in Iraq are benefiting from contracts to build border walls, place cameras and sensors and build detention centers to hold deportees. The Border Patrol has now become the largest Federal policing agency in the country and the national guard has been consistently mobilized in the name of ‘securing our borders.’ White supremacist vigilante groups, such as the Minutemen are openly patrolling the border with arms and receiving huge amounts of media attention. This anti-immigrant hysteria gripping the country is more about feeding corporate profits and whipping up racism at home to win reelection campaigns than it is about keeping immigrants out. The reality is the U.S. economy has always been dependent on immigrant labor and that immigrants today play a huge role in keeping the economy going at all. Without the steady inflow of undocumented migrants to feed U.S. industry with labor, spend money here and pay taxes for which they will never recieve benefits, many sectors of the U.S. economy, especially in the part of the U.S. that is historic northern Mexico, would cease to function.

In the era of the globalization of capital and the opening of borders to the free flow of goods and services, but not of workers it becomes increasingly clear that these borders serve to divide workers from eachother for the benefit of companies seeking to exploit labor in order to realize super-profits. Today, as workers celebrate international workers day across the globe, and as immigrant workers and immigrant rights marchers across the United States breathe new life into the American labor movement we say:

No One Is Illegal! Stop The Raids and Deportations!

Amnesty Now! No Apartheid Wall!

No to Empire! No to Plan Mexico! No to Plan Columbia!

U.S. out of the Middle East! There Can Be Not Justice On Stolen Land!

They Didn’t Cross The Border, The Border Crossed Them!

Solidarity with Working People everywhere!