On September 1, under pressure of a lawsuit filed against the ordinance by city residents represented by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF) and American Civil Liberties Union, the city agreed to postpone implementation of the act. In exchange, the plaintiffs said they would not seek an immediate court injunction to stop it from taking effect but vowed to press their suit to declare the law unconstitutional.

Mayor Louis Barletta said his administration will rewrite the ordinance. “We have assembled one of the best legal teams in the country,” Barletta told the press. “We will enforce the finalized ordinance.”

“Hazleton has no business in regulating immigration,” said Cesar Perales, president and general counsel of PRLDEF. “The ordinance has only succeeded in creating a divisive atmosphere in the community.”

The rally and prayer vigil drew people from Hazleton, Allentown, and the surrounding area. Four busloads came from Philadelphia, filled with activists from a number of labor and Latino organizations, including the Pennsylvania Statewide Latino Coalition and the Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ.
 

Socialist Workers Party Pennsylvania candidates Osborne Hart, running for governor, and John Staggs, running for the state House in district 198, have campaigned extensively in Hazleton and in Riverside, New Jersey, where struggles are unfolding over the rights of immigrant workers and for the unity of the working class.

“These demonstrations, and the massive working-class mobilizations this spring, point the road to unity for the working class,” Hart said, as he joined a contingent from Riverside to participate in a September 4 demonstration for immigrants’ rights in Newark, New Jersey. “Labor must not only demand the legalization of all immigrants, but above all throw the power and resources of the union movement into this fight.”

Staggs said SWP campaign supporters have joined other working people in the Hazleton area to defeat that city’s anti-immigrant ordinance.

On August 27 The Philadelphia Inquirer ran an article by political reporter Thomas Fitzgerald on the front page of the Sunday local section reporting on the victory won by the Socialist Workers campaign forcing the state of Pennsylvania to discontinue use of its “loyalty” oath (see above).

The article was picked up and run by many papers and other media here and across the country.

On September 4, the Philadelphia Inquirer followed up with an editorial, headlined, “The End of the Loyalty Oath: Taking a stand,á forcing a change.”

“Staggs, 59, is a meatpacker from northwest Philadelphia who is running for a state House seat on the Socialist Workers Party ticket,” the editorial said. “But even before the first vote is cast, Staggs already has had an impact on Pennsylvania…. What’s the problem? Well, it’s an ancient truth that one man’s ‘subversive’ is another man’s ‘courageous reformer,’” it said. “Thanks to him,” it concluded, “candidates for public office in Pennsylvania no longer must pledge to conform to a faded test born of fear.”
 
 
Related articles:
1000s at U.S. immigrant rights actions: ‘Legalization now!’
Elvira Arellano, worker in Chicago defying deportation order, stands up to rightists  
 
 
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