BY BILL KALMAN
DES MOINES, Iowa - "Going after immigrants is a way to permanently install a second class, to get us to accept it as okay that some people will never be equal under the law," Socialist Workers vice presidential candidate Laura Garza told the Sioux City Journal. "That's dangerous for all workers."
Garza expressed her campaign's support for immigrant rights during her visit to Sioux City October 18. Her three-day tour of Iowa came against the backdrop of several raids by the immigration police on packinghouses here over the last several months. Garza's tour began in Perry, Iowa, where IBP operates a pork slaughter and processing plant that employs hundreds of immigrant workers.
The vice presidential candidate and two campaign supporters met with nine immigrant packinghouse workers at two house- meetings in Perry. One of those attending was a young Mexican woman who is filing a lawsuit against the company because of physical abuse by a supervisor.
In between the house meetings the campaign team leafleted the busy plantgate where a number of workers stopped to talk.
The following day the socialist campaign team hit the road and drove almost four hours to Sioux City, Iowa. Thirty faculty and students heard Garza speak at the Little Priest Tribal College in Winnebago, Nebraska, just outside of Sioux City. All of the students at the college are Native American. The meeting was chaired by Roxanne Gould, leader in the fight for justice for Kimberly Frazier, a Santee Sioux murdered by city cops. Gould explained that most Indian reservations in the country have extremely high unemployment rates; in fact, the two poorest counties in the United States are Indian reservations in South Dakota.
Garza told the meeting, "Our party stands with fighters from oppressed nationalities to defend their rights. Native peoples have the right to self-determination, including secession if they so choose."
Garza's Iowa tour ended on Saturday in Des Moines, where she spoke to 25 people. She explained that while in Sioux City she read about a meeting of three dozen members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 71 in Sioux Falls protesting the John Morrell packing plant's decision to terminate company health benefits for retirees. "Nothing signed in the past means anything anymore," Garza said. "Whatever we hold on to is based on the current strength of our unions." The audience included 6 students, including 4 from area high schools.
John Findley, a locomotive engineer who works at Union Pacific in Des Moines, asked about that railroad's plans to buy part of the Mexican rail system. "The fight for Mexican workers is not simply against the privatization of that county's industries, but to fight to nationalize them under workers control," she said.
Bill Kalman is a member of United Transportation Union local 867. Gerardo Sánchez and Young Socialists member Verónica Poses also contributed to this article.