The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 72/No. 19      May 12, 2008

 
‘More people are
standing up to say: Enough!’
Flor Crisóstomo presses fight
against U.S. gov’t effort to deport her
(feature article)
 
BY JORGE LERTORA  
CHICAGO, April 26—“Some people say marching won’t accomplish anything except to cause a backlash and bring more deportations, but they are wrong,” said Flor Crisóstomo, 29, in an interview today. “I believe the May Day march is necessary because we need a voice.”

On January 28, factory worker Crisóstomo announced her refusal to report to immigration authorities for deportation. She accepted sanctuary in the Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago’s predominantly Puerto Rican Humboldt Park neighborhood.

“My act of resistance is an encouragement not to accept these laws, not to accept the exploitation of a ‘cheap’ workforce, to fight to win better services,” she said.

Crisóstomo was one of more than 1,100 workers arrested in an April 2006 raid of 40 plants owned by the pallet manufacturer IFCO Systems. Of the 38 workers at the plant where Crisóstomo worked, 6 participated in a March 10, 2006, demonstration for legalization. “The boss didn’t give us permission but we went anyway,” she told the Militant in February.

Pointing to ongoing struggles by workers against Social Security no-match firings and immigration raids, she said, “More people are standing up to say they have had enough of all this.”

“The struggle of the workers at Wheatland Tube in Chicago, the Micro Solutions workers in Van Nuys, California, the farm workers in Immokalee, who are of indigenous origin like me—they are marching onto the stage and taking the floor with confidence, not waiting for anyone to call on them to struggle,” she said. Tomato farm workers in Immokalee, Florida, have been organizing protests against low pay and bad working conditions since the 1990s.

“This May Day people of many nationalities will march, not only Latinos. Moreover, this is how we will continue to forge the alliances necessary to continue fighting after May 1st,” she explained.

“More people understand that we live under the same oppressive system,” she said. “African Americans have the same problems we have—jobs and working conditions, education, health care, other benefits. For that reason it’s necessary for us to unite and not allow ourselves to be divided.”

“When we work together we can always figure out a way to communicate, even though we speak different languages,” Crisóstomo said.

“It would also be good if the truckers stopped work and protested the high price of fuel,” she added. “That’s what May Day is truly about.

“It is important for us to unite because we are all under the same boot of the same oppressor,” Crisóstomo said. “I liked the sign that I saw at the May Day march in 2006 ‘The giant wasn’t sleeping, he was working.’ That has a lot of meaning for me.”
 
 
Related articles:
Legalize all immigrants now! Stop the raids and deportations!
Statement by Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate
California students protest move to deport Vietnamese
Restaurant workers in UK protest raids, deportations
YS builds May Day actions on campuses, at protests  
 
 
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