Valencia was addressing a rally of 150 people held at the airport February 19 to protest a federal government assault on workers' rights. Under the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, signed by President George Bush last November, the 28,000 baggage screeners at airports across the country are to lose their jobs. Currently employed by a variety of private businesses, mostly for low wages, some will be rehired under federal jurisdiction. The law stipulates that all baggage screeners must be U.S. citizens.

The action was organized by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 790 and a coalition of other groups. Similar events were held simultaneously at the Oakland and San Jose airports with the backing of Filipino organizations. Nationwide about 15 percent to 25 percent of the screeners are noncitizens. Atthe San Francisco airport, 80 percent of the more than 1,000 people employed as screeners are noncitizens. The majority are originally from the Philippines.

Many local TV stations and other media covered the event, which started at noon the day the new law was put in effect and nine months before it is scheduled to be fully implemented.

Daz Lamparas, an SEIU organizer working with the airport screeners, chaired the event. Lamparas introduced four of the nine plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against the federal government to overturn the citizenship requirement. The suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the SEIU. "The citizenship requirement discriminates against hardworking people," he said.

"This suit is brought," the complaint reads, "so that the horrific events of September 11, 2001, do not become a basis for another unwarranted denial of the rights and liberties guaranteed to noncitizens by the Fifth Amendment to our Constitution."  
 
'Fight for workers interests'
Valencia has been working at the airport for 15 years and is a plaintiff. Ruby Gonzales-Boja, another plaintiff, said, "It is important to fight for all immigrants. Filipinos are in the U.S. Army to serve this country. What is the difference?"

Leticia Santo, a union bargaining committee member at Argenbright, explained, "We need to fight for workers' interests. We, the rank and file, must organize against these injustices." Santo led some chants in Tagalog, the language of the majority of Filipino people. Argenbright is an airport security firm that has contracts at a number of large U.S. airports.

In an interview, Santo said she had been an activist in the Philippines in the fight to bring down the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship, but had never been in a union before. After many months of organizing, "we won the union last August," she said. Since winning union representation, workers have fought to increase their wages from $6 to $13 an hour and to win benefits. The federal government is saying that screener jobs will be paid $15 an hour with benefits.

Other speakers included Walter Johnson, secretary-treasurer of the San Francisco Labor Council; Josie Mooney, executive director of SEIU Local 790 and president of the San Francisco Labor Council; Shelley Kessler, secretary-treasurer of the San Mateo Labor Council; and representatives of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, the Philippine Bayanihan Center, and Filipinos for Affirmative Action.

Among the crowd at the airport was Ray Quan, a mechanic at the Bay Area Rapid Transit system and a member of SEIU Local 790. He said that several other people had came from his workplace. "This country has been scapegoating immigrants since it was born," he said, adding that Filipinos are "only one more people" to be victimized. "My father was an immigrant from China and many of my co-workers are also. All workers and people in the community need to stand together to fight against these attacks."

Several dozen students came to show their support. Ethan Wynne-Wade of San Francisco State University asked, "If the screeners have been doing their job right for 20–30 years, why is it a question now?"

"It is like a domino reaction," said Carlos Cajulao, a customer service agent with Argenbright at United Airlines. "First the screeners, who's next? I hope not me, but I can't wait to see if I'll be laid off. I had to come and support them. We fought in World War II with Americans and we came here for more prosperity for our family. But now there is no more American dream," he said.

Rollande Girard is a garment worker Montreal meeting condemns 'antiterrorist' law

BY MICHEL PRAIRIE

MONTREAL--Some 200 people gathered at a protest meeting here February 13 to protest three laws that erode civil rights.

"My civil rights, I won't let them go," was the title of the event organized by the Simonne-Monet-Chartrand Regional Council of the Quebec Federation of Women (FFQ). The FFQ was one of the sponsors of a demonstration of some 4,000 people in Montreal against the imperialist war on Afghanistan in the fall, the largest such action held in Canada.

André Paradis, the president of the League of Rights and Liberties, reviewed the so-called "antiterrorist" law C-36 recently adopted by the Canadian government in the wake of the September 11 attacks, and Bills C-35 and C-42, which are being debated in Parliament. C-35 gives substantially increased powers to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)--"amounting to the right to do what it wants," said Paradis--around major international gatherings like the G-8 meeting that will be held next summer in the western province of Alberta.

Under the guise of combating "terrorism," law C-36 allows preventive arrests, detentions for up to 72 hours without charges being filed, and increased police spying. The measures also deny defendants the right to remain silent and to have access to all evidence against them. The third law, C-42, would allow the Canadian government the right to declare a state of emergency for a period of 90 days before bringing it to parliament, and to establish military zones anywhere in the country.

George Lebel, a law professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal, explained that many repressive measures in C-36 were already part of five bills presented in April 2001 to the federal parliament by the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien. "This fact alone," said Lebel, "is the proof that C-36 has nothing to do with September 11," a point that several people picked up on during the discussion period.

Madeleine Parent, a well-known leader of a series of hard-fought strikes by textile workers in Quebec in the 1940s and '50s, described how the bosses and capitalist rulers launched an anticommunist witch hunt following World War II. They aimed to weaken the unions and to push back a series of labor struggles launched by working people after several years of a wage freeze, forced overtime, and other deprivations during the war. "We are not forced to accept these new attacks," she said. "There will be risks. We will have to organize. But in the end, we will win."

Amanthe Bathalier, from the Congress of Black Women of Canada, drew the parallel between Ottawa's new repressive laws and the War Measures Act imposed in Quebec in October 1970 by the Canadian government in an attempt to stop a massive wave of national and labor battles in this oppressed nation. Ottawa sent 5,000 troops to Montreal, suspended all civil liberties, arrested 500 people, mainly union, nationalist, and socialist activists, and carried out 2,000 searches.

Bathalier explained that she was shocked by this, since she had been in Canada for only two months at the time, having fled the brutal Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti. Other speakers described how Ottawa's repressive laws have especially targeted and victimized immigrants--above all, those of Arabic and Central Asian origin or the Muslim faith.

In the discussion period, Véronique Gauthier introduced the fight she is helping to lead against the deportation of Eduardo Plagaro Perez de Arriluzea, 29, and Gorka Perea Salazar, 27. They are Basque activists who fled Spain after having been sentenced to seven and six years of jail respectively for arson, an act they confessed to under torture. They have been detained by the Canadian government in Montreal since June of last year.

"We should denounce the effort by Ottawa to criminalize immigrants and refugees," said Tess Tesalona from the Immigrant Workers Center. She urged people to join a protest action that the center is organizing March 1 in front of the detention center for immigrants.

Sylvie Charbin, a sewing machine operator who was among 3,000 garment workers who went on strike recently in Montreal, urged people attending the meeting to support the struggle by Michael Italie against his politically motivated firing in Miami. Also a garment worker, Italie was the Socialist Workers candidate for mayor of Miami last fall, and was fired after a televised candidates' debate in which he spoke in opposition to the imperialist war in Afghanistan and in support of the Cuban Revolution.

During the evening some 50 people stopped by an information table at the back of the rally to sign a petition supporting Italie's right to express his political ideas and to get his job back. Nine others took an information package on his case, expressing interest in writing about it in their trade union papers, circulating his petition, or becoming a sponsor of his defense committee.

Joanne Pritchard, a member of United Food and Commercial Workers and of the FFQ. contributed to this article.  
 
 
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