New Clear Vision

Community Action and Immigration Justice

by Angeles J. Maldonado

{Editor’s Note: The following is adapted from a presentation for a keynote panel at the “Local to Global Justice” Conference at Arizona State University. The arrest referenced in the narrative refers to the physical blocking of a government van that was in the process of transferring Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, an undocumented immigrant woman, to a detention facility so that she could be processed for deportation, after she was detained at the ICE offices in Phoenix during what was supposed to be a routine immigration check-in. Seven were arrested on charges of obstructing governmental operations and obstructing a public thoroughfare: Walter Staton, 35; Manuel Saldana, 31; Beth King, 57; Angeles Maldonado, 36; Maria Castro, 23; Kenneth Chapman, 41 and Luke Black, 37. Garcia de Rayos was ultimately deported to Mexico, but her case illustrates the problematic intricacies of immigration law and the new executive orders by President Tr$mp, which make people like Garcia de Rayos a deportation priority.} (more…)

We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident…

by Michael N. Nagler and Stephanie N. Van Hook

When is a person not a person? Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PSR) recently answered this absurd question with the obvious and embarrassing answer: when it’s a corporation. According to PSR’s statement, in case anyone is confused, a human being

“is a complex organism with capacities for joy and pain, reflection, and the compassionate appreciation of others. Mature persons are expected to display reasoned judgment, and are personally responsible for their own actions (our emphasis).  Human beings live, breath, think, experience emotions, and internalize values such as empathy and caring for others. Like all sentient beings, they suffer, and die.”

Corporations possess none of these functions, which make being human sacred, valuable and worthy of dignity. As the Occupy movements grow in remarkably inspiring ways, they have a unique opportunity to raise the human image from the slander and propaganda of the corporate media — where our capacity for consumption defines us and our desire for wealth drives us — to a more promising, and far more accurate conception of what makes us truly human: our capacity for nonviolence, motivated by our most precious desire for freedom. As Gandhi put it, “Non-violence is the law of the humans…” (more…)

Communities Push Back Against Workplace Audits and ‘Silent Raids’

by David Bacon

When the current wave of mass firings of immigrant workers started three years ago, they were called “silent raids” in the press.  The phrase sought to make firings seem more humane than the workplace raids of the Bush administration.  During Bush’s eight-year tenure, posses of black-uniformed immigration agents, waving submachine guns, invaded factories across the country and rounded up workers for deportations.

“Silent raids,” by contrast, have relied on cooperation between employers and immigration officials.  The Department of Homeland Security identifies workers it says have no legal immigration status.  Employers then fire them.  The silence, then, is the absence of the armed men in black.  Paraphrasing Woody Guthrie, they used to rob workers of their jobs with a gun.  Now they do it with a fountain pen. (more…)