The October 14 march here was called by the National Coalition for Dignity and Amnesty. The coalition sponsored similar demonstrations in Chicago, Miami, Seattle, Denver, Washington, Austin, Texas, and other cities.

Speakers at the New York action included representatives of the pro-immigrant rights Tepeyac Association, Local 1199 of the hospital workers union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Laborers International Union, and Local 169 of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees.

Also joining the march were a few representatives of Latin American organizations, including Gilmar Mauro of the Movement of Rural Landless Workers (MST) of Brazil and Blanca Chancoso from the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE). They were visiting New York as part of an international series of social protest actions called the Cry of the Excluded.

Marco, a painter in Brooklyn, took a day off work to join the march after he read an announcement about it in a local Spanish-language paper. A construction worker, who asked that his name not be published, who waits for day jobs on a street corner in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, said 10 of his co-workers attended the march.

While the marchers were predominantly from Latin American countries, contingents also included immigrants from Bangladesh and Poland.

Counterposed protests in Long Island

On October 15, an immigrant rights demonstration took place in Hauppauge, Long Island. It occurred in the context of a rising polarization between capitalist politicians and rightist, anti-immigrant groups, on one hand, and countermobilizations by immigrant workers and their defenders, on the other.

As part of the anti-immigrant campaign, county legislator Joseph Caracappa recently proposed a measure to sue the Immigration and Naturalization Service for not deporting workers, which failed. Earlier, a proposal to prohibit more than one family in a rental unit was passed.

On September 17 two day laborers in Farmingville, Long Island, were brutally attacked by racist thugs who, pretending to be offer work, drove them to an isolated spot and beat and stabbed them.

Police have stepped up harassment by ticketing workers who gather on street corners awaiting job offers from contractors. An ultrarightist group called the Sachem Quality of Life Organization has carried out weekly actions. They picket against the immigrant workers with signs demanding their deportation and that blame them for crime and other social ills. The workers have responded with counterpickets, demanding to be treated as human beings with the right to seek work.

Sachem Quality of Life organized an anti-immigrant rally of 200 October 14 in Farmingville. The crowd noisily cheered the featured speaker from California, Glenn Spencer, president of the group Voices of Citizens Together and host of a radio show called "American Patrol Report." Denouncing the INS and the government as too tolerant of undocumented workers, Spencer said, "The power elite have decided we have to be folded into the world village, we have to sacrifice our sovereignty." He told his audience, "You are in the biggest fight you will have to face."

Many at the ultrarightist rally said they would protest against the immigrant rights action the next day, and displayed signs reading "Peaceful solutions through deportation." The slogan was a derisive reply to a theme promoted by organizers of the antiracist vigil, "Peaceful solutions through toleration." But only one individual showed up with a sign to counterprotest.

The leader of the Sachem group, Margaret Bianculli, was arrested earlier when she crossed a police line in Farmingville where workers were gathered to board buses to the vigil.

At the October 15 vigil in Hauppauge, a group of youth from Islip and other nearby towns said they had been to Farmingville to join the workers at their morning pickets for several weekends in a row. Other demonstrators carried flags from Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, and other countries. Also present were members of local church groups, Local 32B-32J of the SEIU, the NAACP, a gay rights organization, a Haitian rights group, and an organization of agricultural workers.

Travis Sauerbrey, 16, who came with a group of youth from St. Patrick's church, said, "What they did to those two workers was sick. The only original Americans are the American Indians. The Mexican immigrants just want to work. We have to see everybody as equal."

Filomara Serrano, a Colombian immigrant who works at an envelope factory, stated, "The beating was inhuman. We have to unite."

The vigil, sponsored by the Human Rights Commission of Suffolk County and Suffolk County legislator Paul Tonna, featured numerous politicians who spoke.

 
BY BRIGITTE SÉGUIN  
FRESNO, California--Chanting, "Trabajamos noches y días, queremos amnistía" (We work nights and days, we want amnesty), and other slogans in Spanish, 200 people marched through downtown Fresno October 14 as part of the nationally coordinated day of immigrant rights actions. The demonstrators came from throughout the Central Valley. Several were farm workers.

The local action was sponsored here by the Comité ¡No Nos Vamos!, the Indian rights group Frente Indígena Oaxaqueño Binacional, Community/Labor Alliance, Coalition for Immigrant Rights, and other groups. Others participating included the Chicano student group MEChA, janitors and members of the SEIU, the Carpenters Union, and supporters of the Green Party.

One of the speakers was Handy Vang, from the Hmong American Republic National Reform Union, Inc. He said there are 30,000 people of Hmong origin in the region. "The Hmongs need to find a new way to fight against the conditions they face. That's why I'm here at this protest," he told Militant reporters.

Another speaker was Nan Bailey, Socialist Workers candidate for U.S. Senate. "We have something in common with our brothers and sisters in Palestine, the miners and workers of Yugoslavia, and the drivers on strike in Los Angeles, which is that we are more and more one class. Immigrant workers in this country are a key part of the labor movement and the fight for workers rights," she told the crowd.  
 
 
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