Mobilize for September 29 Protest in Los Angeles!

by jon@rokcircle.com Friday, Sep. 28, 2001 at 6:53 AM

Now More than Ever We Need to Stand with Our Immigrant Brothers and Sisters!

Resist the politics of cruelty, repression, war, racism and anti-immigrant hysteria!



Now More than Ever We Need to Stand with Our Immigrant Brothers and Sisters!

Unleash the spirit of resistance to Operation Gatekeeper and all deadly "Border Operations!"

Help stop Plan Columbia and the FTAA In Their Tracks!

Mobilize for September 29 Protest in Los Angeles!

March with the joint contingent of La Resistencia and Refuse & Resist!, gathering at Olympic and Broadway starting at 10 a.m., march and rally at 11 a.m., Sept. 29th.

Today we must not let the state exploit our grief and other emotions over the loss of innocent lives in the World Trade Center disaster. In the name of the war on terrorism, massive assaults against civil liberties are already underway. While there is an attempt to suspend people's rights, there has been no suspension of Plan Colombia or the moves to enact the FTAA. In the name of national security, Operation Gatekeeper and the other deadly border

operations, which have already claimed the lives of over 1800 innocent people since 1994, are being intensified. The threat of the loss of tens of thousands of innocent lives through US military intervention in Afghanistan and other countries is real. A climate of fear and hatred of Arab people and extending to all Muslims is being reinforced. There are escalating racial attacks on Arabs, South Asians

and Muslims from the government and from civilians. Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh originally from India, was murdered in Mesa, Arizona. A gunman drove into Balbir's service station and fired three shots, killing him. The assailant then drove on to another service station where a Lebanese-American employee was working and to a house, firing shots but injuring no one else.

With the help of the media, law enforcement has taken the racial profiling that we have seen for years directed towards Black and Latino people to new levels with the recent arrests of more than 350 so-called "suspicious

people!" The Federal Government is giving the INS extraordinary powers to detain immigrants indefinitely without charges! And the state is promising us even more legislation upholding racial profiling! This is a new form of McCarthyism through "guilt by association," and is meant to have a chilling effect on opposition throughout the Americas. But we will not be silenced in our determination to stand shoulder to shoulder with our immigrant brothers

and sisters!

Meanwhile, along the U.S.-Mexico border, NAFTA, and deadly border "operations" including Gatekeeper, have been responsible for ruined lives and untold havoc, in the name of imposing a U.S.-dominated market on the entire Western and Southern Hemispheres. Operation Gatekeeper was developed by the Department of Defense and the Border Patrol; its goal is to reduce the number of crossers by forcing them further and further east, into extremely harsh

terrain which takes the lives of hundreds every year. For the "lucky" ones who make it to the United States, being "illegal" in America often means living underground in a kind of shadow existence, forced to accept slave wage

jobs and treatment less tolerable than many animals receive. In border states like Arizona and Texas, vigilantes stalk and kill border-crossers, knowing the penalties will be minimal. Texas rancher Sam Blackwood received no jail time and a "fine" of only ,000 for shooting to death Eusebio De Haro, an unarmed Mexican! Crossing the border should not carry a death sentence! We categorically reject and resist the notion that some of us are legal, and others "illegal;" That's why we say: TODOS SOMOS ILLEGALES! We are ALL illegals!

In Latin America, under the sacred myth of our "War on Drugs," Plan Columbia calls for U.S. Green Berets and other so-called military advisers to train paramilitary death squads and a national army with the worst human rights

record in the hemisphere, to suppress indigenous resistance to obliteration by Multi-national corporations. Plan Columbia has meant spraying, in the name of eradicating the coca crop, a lethal herbicide that has already resulted in the deaths of hundreds and the permanent destruction of crops and soil in affected regions. Now Bush seeks to expand this pacification program throughout the Andes! This is the time to speak truth to power, and enlist the support of millions! March with us on Saturday, September 29 in Los Angeles to:

Oppose ALL attacks on ALL immigrants!

Counter the xenophobic hysteria being whipped up against all innocent practitioners of Islam!

Stop Operation Gatekeeper! No to the FTAA! No to Plan Columbia!

To car pool from San Diego or for more information call La Resistencia - SD at (619) 497-1035 or, in Los Angeles, call Refuse and Resist! at (323)962-8084

Original: Mobilize for September 29 Protest in Los Angeles!