From Seattle, Los Angeles and Miami to New York, working families and their allies are engaged in a historic national mobilization to spotlight immigrant rights and the injustices of current immigration policies: The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride.

Freedom for all: Immigrants deserve the same freedoms as all Americans, HERE President John Wilhelm says.

Beginning Sept. 20, hundreds of immigrant workers will board buses as part of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride in a massive nationwide event sponsored by the AFL-CIO and affiliated unions and spearheaded by the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees. The new Freedom Ride is modeled after the 1961 Freedom Rides of the U.S. civil rights movement in which student activists from across the country rode buses into the Deep South to challenge segregation on interstate transportation and in bus and train terminals.

As the new Freedom Riders get set to embark on their journeys, unions are forming strong new partnerships with community, civil rights, religious, student and immigrant rights groups to fight for workers’ rights on the job and economic and social justice for all.

“Immigrants built this country and the union movement,” says HERE President John Wilhelm, chair of the AFL-CIO Executive Council Committee on Immigration. “Today, millions of immigrants are working hard at jobs many of us don’t want to do, paying taxes and playing by the rules. They deserve the same freedom and equality we all strive for in America.”

The Freedom Riders—who include documented and undocumented immigrants and union and community allies—will stop in dozens of communities across the country to spotlight the need for immigration reform. With the 2004 elections approaching, the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride also will put immigration issues squarely on the national political agenda while encouraging greater participation by immigrants, whatever their immigration status, in the civic life of the nation.

“The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride is about standing beside each other and standing up for the founding principles of our country—that what matters isn’t where you’re from but where you’re striving to go, and that exploiting any group of workers is an attack on the living standards of all workers,” says Laborers President Terence O’Sullivan.

The buses will depart from 10 major cities—Boston, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Portland, Ore., San Francisco and Seattle—and will converge in Washington, D.C., New Jersey and New York in early October. These “traveling freedom schools,” says Dave Glaser, national director of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride and a HERE organizer, will enable workers to share personal experiences and discuss the need for immigrants to gain legal status, have a clear road to citizenship, reunite their families, be free to form unions without regard to legal status and enjoy full civil rights protection.

“Exploiting any group of workers is an attack on the living standards of all workers.” —LIUNA President Terence O'Sullivan

State legislators and political leaders across the country have endorsed the ride, including the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, the California state legislature and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), an original Freedom Rider.

“History will ride with us on these buses filled with immigrants,” says the Rev. James Lawson, an original Freedom Rider and civil rights leader. “The fight for the civil rights of workers who come here from all over the world is the same as the Freedom Rides of 1961 and the continuing struggle for civil and human rights for all.”

Energizing the movement
Working families are being energized by the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, as workers mobilize community and union support. Building on last year’s Reward Work campaign—sponsored by more than 400 religious, community, political, student, union and immigrant organizations—which generated hundreds of thousands of postcards supporting immigrant rights, the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride has taken the fight for immigrant rights to a new level of unity and strength, says Maria Elena Durazo, national chair of the Freedom Ride and president of HERE Local 11 in Los Angeles.

“Our cause is broader than immigrant rights. Immigrants are also fighting for good jobs, access to health care and rights on the job—the same issues all workers are seeking,” Durazo says. “The Freedom Ride is helping us forge a new unity and consensus with allies on these issues.”

The Los Angeles union movement, which has a strong activist history on immigrant issues, is a leading example of the extent of the energy being generated by the Freedom Ride. The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor recently held a major fundraiser and donated $100,000 to offset the cost of the Freedom Ride.

On Sept. 20, the day the Freedom Riders depart Los Angeles, an estimated 10,000 people will send the riders off. On the same day, Cardinal John Mahoney will preside at a service in the city’s cathedral to bless the riders and their mission.

United in Chicago: Immigrant Workers Freedom Riders in Chicago display their solidarity at that city's kickoff event.

Elsewhere, 1,500 people gathered in Chicago Aug. 9 to rally in support of immigration reform before marching to the Congress Hotel, where the mostly immigrant workers have been on strike for eight weeks after the Congress Hotel’s refusal to accept the terms of a citywide contract for most union hotels in Chicago.

Seattle’s local union movement spearheaded the creation of a broad-based community coalition committed to working together beyond the Freedom Ride. “Labor is saying that immigrant issues are union issues, and other groups are talking about unions as never before,” says Steve Williamson, executive secretary-treasurer of the King County (Wash.) Labor Council. “The energy is growing exponentially.”

Building alliances
Building momentum for the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride across the country, unions are joining for the first time with many organizations.

In Houston, the local central labor council reached out to several immigrant and community organizations. As a result, “we are building ties with groups that have never had a relationship with the union movement before,” says Richard Shaw, secretary-treasurer of the Harris County (Texas) Central Labor Council.

Throughout Maryland and Washington, D.C., the new Freedom Ride served as a catalyst for a Labor in the Pulpits program at 125 religious services emphasizing immigrant rights over Labor Day.

“Just as the Freedom Rides in the 1960s set the stage for a national movement to secure the rights of African Americans in this country, the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride can create the platform for a real national dialogue about immigration reform,” says Fred Mason, president of the Maryland State and D.C. AFL-CIO.

Freedom to join a union

“We need a way to make sure law-abiding immigrants who work hard get respect.” —Kyron Parris, member, Operating Engineers Local 15c

U.S. employers routinely use threats and harassment to deny workers, and especially immigrant workers, the freedom to decide whether to form a union. At various stops along the way, the new Freedom Riders will support workers seeking to gain a union voice at work, including hotel workers in Palm Springs, Calif., meat packers in Omaha, Neb., and workers at Smithfield Packing Co. in Tar Heel, N.C.

Many undocumented immigrants are afraid to seek change at work because they face the constant threat of harassment, deportation and abuse. Often employers threaten to have immigrants deported if they vote for a union.

Employers use undocumented immigrant workers’ fears of deportation to exploit them, says Kyron Parris, a equipment repair engineer and member of Operating Engineers Local 15C in New York City. “They work longer hours, get the hardest jobs and the least pay. We need a way to make sure that law-abiding immigrants who work hard get respect,” says Parris, 26, who migrated from Trinidad in 1995.

The 153 Taiwanese immigrant workers at the Chinese Daily News in Los Angeles who chose the Communications Workers of America through a card-check in March 2001 still face the company’s refusal to recognize the union.

“Those of us who testify about illegal practices or speak out for better working conditions have our pay reduced, work increased and are humiliated in front of our co-workers to set an example,” says Lynne Wang, a reporter with the Chinese Daily News.

Faces of freedom: Linda Chan from Taiwan, Ivanei Nascimento from Brazil and Zelda Jeffrey from Trinidad are all members of SEIU District 1199NY.

Vehid Husejnovic knows the value of joining a union. A member of Electrical Workers Local 595 in San Francisco, the Bosnian immigrant is one of 17 former employees of LIS Electric Inc. who recently received court-ordered back pay from the company. The San Francisco Superior Court ruled LIS had paid the workers less than the prevailing wage required on construction contracts.

“When I came to the U.S. six years ago, I spoke no English and LIS took advantage of me and many other people. I am so proud that the IBEW was able to fight for our rights and win,” Husejnovic says.

Unions provide protection for all workers, especially immigrants, says Linda Chan, 57, a home care worker and member of SEIU District 1199NY. “There’s no way we can protect ourselves alone. We need a union,” says Chan, a U.S. citizen who came to this country in 1975 from Taiwan.

Gaining legal status
Immigrant workers are an essential part of the American economy, making up 12.4 percent of the nation’s labor force in 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And they work in some of the lowest paying jobs: Almost 43 percent of immigrants are paid less than $7.50 an hour, compared with 28 percent of all workers, according to the Urban Institute.

Immigrant households contributed an estimated $133 billion in direct taxes to federal, state and local governments in 1997, according to the CATO Institute, a conservative Washington, D.C., group.

Trying to become citizen: For 30 years, Henrietta Castillo has raised her family and paid taxes here but has not been able to become a citizen.

They are hard workers like Henrietta Castillo, who for more than 30 years has raised a family, paid taxes and supported her Houston community. Castillo, 45, has 25 years experience as an electronics assembler and cashier—yet never has made more than $10 an hour.

Although she has a work permit, each time Castillo has tried to become a citizen, she has run into endless bureaucratic delays and exorbitant filing and legal fees. She applied for citizenship in 2001, but because of new national security measures enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, her application and those of thousands of other immigrants have been delayed. The new measures require all males from more than 20 Muslim and Arab countries to register and have all their documentation checked. That has caused a shortage of immigration officials available to review citizenship applications.

“There are a lot of people like me who have been here for years and haven’t had the opportunity to become legal,” says Castillo, who left Mexico at age 14 with her siblings, arriving here in 1972 without documentation after her parents died.

The post-Sept. 11 rules have made conditions for Arab American immigrants even worse than those for other immigrants, says Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian who immigrated here in 1979.

Immigrants who are permanent residents or on work visas are being deported on technicalities—so far, 13,000 immigrants have been deported since Sept. 11, 2001—and many who are not deported are subject to harassment and threats, says Qumsiyeh, a U.S. citizen and director of the genetics research lab at Yale University in New Haven, Conn.

Ready to roll: AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson helped kick off the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride in Minneapolis.

Destination:
Washington, D.C., New York
On the last legs of their trips, the Freedom Riders will converge in Washington, D.C., in early October, and the workers and their supporters will spend Oct. 2 lobbying members of Congress for immigration law reform. The workers will then travel to New Jersey to attend a reception hosted by Gov. James McGreevey (D) Oct. 3 in Liberty State Park and finish with a massive day-long Celebration of America’s Immigrants in New York’s Flushing Meadows Park Oct. 4.

Castillo says she’s looking forward to visiting Washington, D.C., and New York because those two cities symbolize the spirit of freedom. Pointing out that the Freedom Ride’s logo is Lady Liberty, she says she wants to remind lawmakers that “America is not just for one ethnic group. It stands for freedom for all around the world. And immigrants deserve to be free, too.”

For more information on the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, visit www.iwfr.org. @

Two Freedom Rides, One Goal   Original Freedom Rider: Robert Farrell sees similarities between the Freedom Rides in the 1960s and the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride. In 1961, hundreds of student activists rode Freedom Ride buses to cities throughout the Deep South to challenge segregation on interstate transportation and in transportation terminals. The rides helped change the nation”s laws to allow everyone in this country to use those facilities. Modeled after the 1960s rides, the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride could have as strong an impact on American politics and culture in the 21st century, says Robert Farrell, one of the original Freedom Riders. Farrell, 66, is a former member of the Los Angeles City Council and now works as an aide to a state assemblyman. In 1961, fresh out of the University of California at Los Angeles, he joined several other college students on a bus from Los Angeles, headed to Mississippi. The buses were diverted to Houston, where the black and white students attempted to integrate a coffee shop in the local railroad station. They were all arrested and spent 10 days in the Harris County (Texas) jail. The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride is challenging the strong anti-immigrant atmosphere that emerged after Sept. 11, 2001, Farrell says. “The way we treat immigrants is a far cry from the poem on the Statue of Liberty—'give me your tired, your poor.' Part of our challenge is to make people aware of immigrant workers' issues. It is complex, and we have to put the issue of immigrant rights on the political agenda as we go into an election year.”