Arizona law. How can decent people support it?

Nobody is in any doubt. This Arizona law that allows cops to pick up anybody they think might have no papers is aimed at the Latino people. If you have a brown skin and inexpensive clothes you are not safe on the street, at school, in the hospital. I think about these poor people and how their lives are. I think about the right wing politicians and the thugs of groups like the Minute Men and think what kind of people they are. Are we even of the same species?

The US corporations brought in the North American Free Trade Agreement. This was to let US agribusiness (that is the big corporations) into the markets of the other North American countries. US agribusiness receives huge subsidies from US tax payers, that is workers, and so it has been able to compete much more successfully with Mexican farmers. Over one million Mexican farming families have been driven of the land as a result. So what can they do? They head North to try and get work. Just like US capitalism and its degenerate drug culture and economy is responsible for the drug catastrophe and violence in Mexico (90% of the guns in the Mexican drug wars come from the US) so US capitalism is responsible for driving the Mexican peasants off the land and to seek work in the US. Those protesters who are against the Mexican workers coming here should be protesting the policies of US agribusiness and the corporations who drove these people of their land.

But on to get to the most horrific part about the suffering of these poor people who are driven from their homes. In the winter I see central American workers standing at bus stops here in Chicago. They are waiting to get to and from work. And they are invariably wearing threadbare clothing and shoes. They are freezing. I look at them and wish for a united workers movement which could help them. Then the other day I was reading about the women who are driven north to seek work. For them it is a nightmare. Six out of ten Latina women are raped as they make their perilous journey North seeking work. They are raped either by those who ship them North or raped by the cops on the way or in the US. This is a nightmare and all these people are doing is seeking to work. Imagine arriving with just about nothing in a strange country having just being raped.

Those people who are supporting the Arizona law are a disgrace. The labor leaders who refuse to use their vast resources to organize the unorganized in the US and to link with the union leaders throughout Central America are just as much of a disgrace. They sit in their air conditioned offices, hobnob with politicians and let these working class people live a nightmare. We need to build a united workers movement throughout all of North and central America and one that takes direct action on a mass scale to protect our brothers and sisters and to build a better life for all in whatever country and in whatever circumstance we may live.

Sean.