by Jose Ma. Sison c/o Pesante-USA
Sunday, Apr. 30, 2006 at 8:58 AM
magsasakapil@hotmail.com 213-9891629 300 W Cezar Chaves, Los Angeles, CA 90012
We, the International League of Peoples' Struggle, hereby express our solidarity with and support for the millions of immigrant workers on the day of the Great American Boycott 2006 when they and their supporters do not go to work, to school or to any shop but hold protest marches and rallies against institutions and symbols of anti-immigrant discrimination, exploitation and oppression in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, San Jose, San Francisco, Seattle and 100 cities all over the US.
MESSAGE OF SOLIDARITY TO THE IMMIGRANT WORKERS ON THE DAY OF THE GREAT AMERICAN BOYCOTT 2006
By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson, International Coordinating Committee
International League of Peoples' Struggle
April 30, 2006
We, the International League of Peoples' Struggle, hereby express our solidarity with and support for the millions of immigrant workers on the day of the Great American Boycott 2006 when they and their supporters do not go to work, to school or to any shop but hold protest marches and rallies against institutions and symbols of anti-immigrant discrimination, exploitation and oppression in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, San Jose, San Francisco, Seattle and 100 cities all over the US.
We join the call for amnesty and full rights for the undocumented immigrant workers who are estimated to be 12 million, mainly from Latin America and Asia in terms of global regions and from Mexico, China and the Philippines in terms of countries. By dint of hard work, mostly at bottom jobs, they contribute significantly to the US economy and to the well-being of the American people.
They must have the right to reside and other rights in the US. They must benefit from their own social contributions (in tax and social insurance payments). They must be relieved of the anxieties from attempts to criminalize them, subject them to racial discrimination, keep them down at bottom jobs and low wages and to blame them for the socio-economic crisis that the monopoly capitalism inflicts on the American people.
The US monopoly capitalists are the most rabid exponents of the freedom of movement of capital, especially their exploitative kind of capital extracted from the working people.
The original source of capital, which is labor, should also have the freedom of movement on a global scale. It is certainly unjust for the imperialists to prate about the need of capital to move freely and yet put up all sorts of obstacles to the migrant workers in the global market.
If there is really free trade within North America, why put up walls between the US and Mexico? The lopsided relationship of the US and Mexico becomes more obviously unjust when we recall that so many large states originally belonged to Mexico and were grabbed by the US by force of arms and chicanery.
We call on all participating organizations of the ILPS in the US to join and support the mass actions on the Day of the Great American Boycott 2006. We also call on all other ILPS participating organizations, while celebrating May 1 as the International Workers' Day, to express solidarity with and support for the immigrant workers in the US in their struggle for amnesty and full rights.###