Los Angeles Indymedia : Activist News

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MARCH AND RALLY
Saturday, June 30th, 2007

Beginning at 12 Noon at the corner of
3rd and Grand in Santa Ana
Ending in a RALLY and PRESS CONFERENCE
At the Orange County Jail

• Stop the Kidnapping Raids
• Make California a Sanctuary State
• No More Second-Class Treatment
• Build the Power of the New, Youth-Led,
  Integrated Civil Rights Movement

On June 25, an emergency meeting was held to respond to kidnapping raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents and Orange County Sheriff’s Deputies over the last week. One hundred and seventy-five people were arrested in the raids. At the meeting, which was attended by people from numerous organizations, a plan was launched to march against the raids this Saturday June 30th to declare our determination to stop the raids and to spread the new civil rights movement that was born in the marches and walkouts for immigrant rights last year.

We will march through the streets of Santa Ana saying – enough, no more of the raids terrorizing the people of the Latino/a community of Orange County – no more racial profiling and splitting up of families. Young and old from different communities, churches and organizations – raise their voices and expose the moral bankruptcy of these kidnapping raids. Our movement is strong. On Saturday we must use our power and build the strength of our movement. This is how we can stop the raids.

A society whose state resources are expended to break up families and tear mothers and fathers out of the hands of their children must be saved from its own moral depravity.

Millions of immigrants work, live and go to school under a cloud of fear every day in California, fear that federal immigration officers will drag off one of the people they love. The rank inhumanity of that policy is becoming clear to more people. The mainstream media has begun to tell the real story of families being split up and torn apart by the raids. Churches across the country have joined the sanctuary movement.

More and more municipalities throughout California have recognized officially what is increasingly obvious to millions of people, immigrants, irrespective of official status play an integral, indispensable and overwhelmingly positive part in our state, and in our nation economically and socially. The cities across California and across the country that have officially declared themselves as sanctuary cities are simply recognizing a practical reality of modern economic life. The new civil rights movement stands at the front of the effort to achieve sanctuary status for cities and states all over. Our movement and organization stands at the front of the effort to stop the anti-immigrant raids.

People who are a contributing part of the society are citizens regardless of where they come from, what forms they have filled out or what government office they have waited in. The attack on Mexican and other Latin American immigrants is just bigotry and racism. The corrosive effect of having a section of people in a society with separate, unequal and inferior legal rights is unacceptable. The new immigrant rights and civil rights movement will fight and defeat any attempt to impose an inferior double standard of rights on immigrants.

March on Saturday to stop the kidnapping raids! March on Saturday for an end to second-class treatment! March on Saturday to demand full and equal rights for all immigrants. March on Saturday to demand that our entire state become a sanctuary for immigrants. Together we can win!