MIRAc: Build Unity to Fight for Immigrant Rights

Build Unity to Fight for Immigrant Rights
A response to Francisco Gonzalez

Introduction

We bring forward this letter in the spirit of encouraging unity in the immigrant rights movement in Minnesota. This is a reply to an email sent to various email lists including the la-mano yahoogroup email list on October 20th (see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/la-mano/message/4879 ) by Francisco Gonzalez, a respected immigrant rights advocate in Minnesota. We feel that parts of his message are damaging to the important task of building unity in the movement, and we wanted to respond.  In his October 17th message, he made a public criticism of anarchists and of the activist group Anti-Racist Action (ARA). He bases his criticisms on a protest in Austin, MN on October 17th, when anti-racists and immigrant rights activists confronted a small anti-immigrant rally organized by the neo-Nazi group, the National Socialist Movement (NSM).

But Mr. Gonzalez doesn't just criticize. He goes further and calls for explicitly excluding ARA and anarchists from the immigrant rights movement. In his email, he says:

Exclusion Creates Division in the Movement

MIRAc strongly condemns calls for exclusion of organizations and entire ideologies from the immigrant rights movement.

MIRAc views the call for exclusion of ARA and anarchists in particular as wrong, harmful, and divisive.

It is wrong politically, because calls to exclude people with radical ideas from progressive movements are wrong in general. It is rehashed McCarthyism and we reject it. Through the history of social justice movements in the U.S., calls to exclude anarchists, communists or other radicals have always resulted in weakening the movement, both practically and politically. 

Confronting racists and fascists is right

It is also wrong politically because the protest in Austin on October 17 was an important effort to confront the neo-Nazi movement in Minnesota on their own turf.  Context is crucial.  A couple weeks earlier, the Austin-based National Socialist Movement had organized a protest in Minneapolis against an anti-racist workshop at the YWCA on Lake Street, in the heart of the Latino community. This was the first neo-Nazi attempt to organize in Minneapolis in years. Progressive, anti-racist community members organized a rally against this Nazi provocation of the immigrant community, and successfully drove the Nazis out of Minneapolis. This was just weeks after the same neo-Nazis showed up at an immigrant rights activity in Austin, something they have increasingly been doing there.

It is important to note that there has been no attempt by neo-Nazis to organize publicly in Minneapolis for years. This is precisely because of the excellent work that many people did (including many anarchists and ARA, people of color and white anti-racists) in the 1980s and 1990s to confront the Nazis every time they tried to get a foothold.  In other cities where this did not happen, neo-Nazis succeeded in gaining an ongoing presence.  MIRAc is thankful to the comrades from ARA and other groups that helped make Minneapolis a city where Nazis aren't able to publicly operate, and we continue to stand with all anti-racist activists who confront Nazis and other racist forces everywhere they try to gain a foothold. The Nazi presence in Austin has not gone away, and is an ongoing hazard to everyone organizing for progressive change. ARA and other anti-racists are right to confront the Nazis wherever they try to organize.

While MIRAc didn't organize the October 17th protest in Austin, we have organized direct action and civil disobedience protests (for example the action at ICE headquarters in Bloomington on May 6th where 31 people were arrested to protest raids & deportations, and an action collaborating with Dakota activists at Fort Snelling confronting ICE officials at a public meeting). We always take great care to ensure that there is a separation of time or space between activities that might risk arrest, and legally permitted protests that are more safe to attend for people who don't wish to risk arrest.  The safety of members of the immigrant community is a central concern when we organize any activity. But this legitimate concern should not be used as a reason to attack anti-racist activists who understand the importance of challenging neo-Nazis. We think we are strong enough as a movement to address the safety of immigrant communities while being able to confront neo-Nazis that threaten immigrants (and many others).

Keep Criticisms Internal to the Movement

Rather than deal with issues within the movement internally, this criticism was made on a public email list, where anybody and everybody can see division within the movement, including the neo-Nazis who literally want to terrorize the immigrant community (among others). We urge him to reconsider this approach of public criticisms and calls for exclusion from the movement. We would point to the St. Paul Principles that were adopted by most progressive activists in the Twin Cities leading up to the Republican National Convention protests, as a model. The key principle in this case was that no activist group would publicly criticize another group in the movement. We have seen in recent years how the right wing and the media love to tell the story about a division between "good protesters" and "bad protesters". We will not play into that story line. Instead we will keep the focus on the issues by refusing to play the game of criticizing other protesters. This worked with the RNC protests. We think the principle should continue to be used -- lets deal with criticisms among progressive forces internally. Direct dialogue helps everybody understand each other better, requires more political maturity, and makes the movement stronger overall.

Build Unity

MIRAc has focused since its inception on winning legalization for all undocumented immigrants, and on stopping raids and deportations. MIRAc is made up of immigrants, our families and allies. We have participants who are Latino, White, Asian, Native American, Somali, and more. MIRAc includes people who identify themselves as progressive, radical, socialist, anarchist, religious believers of various faiths alongside devout atheists, and people who don't define their ideology but just want to work for immigrant rights. We think this is the right approach. We have proven in practice that unity can be built to fight for immigrant rights. Most MIRAc members are not anarchists, but there are anarchists in MIRAc (and in many other immigrant rights organizations) that have dedicated their lives to fighting for immigrant rights, and have made great contributions to the movement. We see calls to exclude some of our comrades in the struggle as politically harmful and personally offensive.

We believe in uniting as many people as can be united to take action for immigrant rights. Calls for exclusion are the wrong way to go.

In unity and struggle,

Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Coalition (MIRAc)
miracmn@gmail.com
http://mirac1.wordpress.com