Calero made his way to Charlotte, North Carolina, via a bus returning from the national peace protest in Washington, March 15. While on this bus, Róger Calero addressed the 40 riders, explaining his case and inviting them to participate in the coming meetings. Melissa Winchester from Rock Hill, South Carolina, accepted the invitation and drove up the next day to help set up for and participate in a program on Calero’s fight.
Winchester, 22, said, "I support his struggle and I think it is a horrible thing. I didn’t know these kinds of things were going on. But lately I have been moved to play a part" in fights like these.
Twenty people attended the March 16th meeting at the Better Life Center to hear Calero speak on the fight against the immigration cops’ efforts to exclude him from the United States. Several of those in attendance work at Pillowtex, a textile mill where 40 workers have signed petitions backing Calero’s fight to remain in this country.
Calero’s visit here, part of a nationwide tour, helped build solidarity for the campaign to stop the INS from deporting him to his native Nicaragua.
Calero, 34, is an associate editor of Perspectiva Mundial, a Spanish-language monthly published in New York, and a Militant staff writer. On December 3 he was returning home to the United States from reporting trips to Cuba and Mexico. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agents seized Calero at Houston Intercontinental Airport, told him he was denied entry to the United States, and carted him off to an immigration jail. He was later released after scores of people poured messages of protest in to the INS office in Texas. He now faces exclusion from this country.
Immigration officials began deportation proceedings against him based on a 1988 plea-bargain conviction, when he was a high school student in Los Angeles, for selling an ounce of marijuana to an undercover cop. The INS waived this conviction in granting him permanent residency in 1990, and then in renewing it in 2000.
Calero told the meeting that the INS’s attempt to deport him is part of stepped-up attack on immigrants’ rights and a broader assault on workers’ rights. "The government’s intention," he explained, "is to instill fear in immigrant workers." These attacks are aimed at keeping us "intimidated, unorganized, and isolated from our brothers and sisters. These are weapons to reinforce the bosses offensive against the working and living conditions of all working people."
Calero also spoke of a case reported by Human Rights Watch in 1998 where detainees at the Union County jail in Elizabeth, New Jersey, were beaten, stripped, and made to crawl through a gauntlet of guards while chanting "America is ‘number one.’" Calero said, "You will hear this same chauvinistic call to justify the U.S. slaughter of thousands of workers and peasants in Iraq, and the wars to come."
Jabril Hough, an activist in the Charlotte Muslim community, linked Calero’s fight to that of other immigrant workers. "After September 11," and the government attacks on Middle Eastern and Southeast Asians in the United States, said Hough, "many Muslim immigrants realized they were living an American nightmare." He invited everyone to participate in a demonstration outside the INS office in Charlotte to protest the forced registration of immigrants from countries in the Mideast and Southeast Asia.
Nick Wood, an organizer for FLOC, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, spoke on the fight by migrant farm workers against the Mt. Olive Pickle Company. He described the atrocious working conditions, including lack of drinking water, inadequate medical attention, and decrepit housing. Wood stated that Calero’s deportation and the conditions facing migrant workers is a part of a "corrupt imperialist system that seeks to drive wages down." He announced a protest and march in Mt. Olive, North Carolina, for April 13th to demand that the company negotiate a contract with farm workers, and that farmers improve the conditions in the fields.
Ahmad Daniels, a well-known activist in the Black community in the Charlotte area, sent greetings to the event. Daniels had been forced to resign from his job as Mecklenburg County Minority Affairs director for statements he made after September 11.
Calero also spoke to a class of 20 Concord High School students. A teacher invited him to make a presentation after learning of his case and his trip to the area from a student, Mike Ellis, a member of the Young Socialists.
Two students that heard Calero’s talk at the high school went to the University of North Carolina in Charlotte (UNCC) after school to hear him speak at a meeting cosponsored by The Feminist Union. Six students and several supporters of the antideportation fight participated in this informal discussion.
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For more information or to send a contribution:
Róger Calero Defense Committee, c/o PRDF, Box 761, Church St. Station, New York, NY 10007; phone/ fax, (212)563-0585. On the web: www.calerodefense.org Send messages demanding exclusion moves against Calero be dropped to: Demetrios Georgakopolous, Director, Bureau of Customs and Immigration Enforcement. Fax messages to: (973) 645-3074; or mail to: 970 Broad St., Newark, NJ 07102. Copies should be sent to the Róger Calero Defense Committee. |