August 17, Thursday, 5:00. at 8th and Santee Streets in downtown\r\nLos Angeles in the \"March to Stop Sweatshops, For a Living Wage and\r\nImmigrant Rights\" hundreds in the crowd held up white crosses\r\ncommemorating immigrants who had died crossing the Mexican border into the\r\nU.S. and a garment worker called for a general strike in the garment\r\ndistrict. The marchers were calling for a general amnesty for undocumented\r\nworkers, a living wage, and an end to sweatshops in Los Angelees in this\r\nmarch that linked up the anti-globalization movement with the immigrant\r\nlabor movement in Los Angeles.\r\n<\/p>
\r\n As the crowd swelled to five thousand in the garment district with\r\nboarded up shops a helicopter hovered overhead. In the milling crowd at\r\n8th and Santee besides the sea of white crosses many held picket signs:\r\nWho's the illegal alien, Pilgrim?; Honor Labor; People Before Profit;\r\nRespect Worker Rights; Support the General Amnesty. Many wore colorful\r\nt-shirts: Justice for Janitors' members, who just won their strike, wore\r\nred shirts; Green Party members wore green; health workers in S.E.I.U.\r\nLocal 399 wore purple. In the intersection the organizers 40 foot sound\r\ntruck played upbeat Latin music and had a large banner draped across it\r\nthat read \"Southern California Fair Trade Network,\" one of the rally's main\r\norganizers who fight against sweatshops.\r\n<\/p>
\r\n Tom Hayden, who stood near the sound truck, said, \"At least 500\r\npeople have died crossing the border and it's important that they be\r\nremembered. It's a good opportunity to reassess the government's\r\nanti-immigrant policy. Most Irish, Jewish, and Italians came the same way.\r\nIf they got off their duffs and came here to rally, they would recognize\r\nthemselves with the same issue.\"\r\n<\/p>
\r\n The crowd continued to grow as more people were holding the white\r\ncrosses with the names of immigrants who'd died crossing the border: Jose\r\nGonzalez de Santos; Irma Hernandez; Olivia Cruz Jaurez, Jose Medina\r\nContreras, Jose Aguilar. Many of the crosses said simply \"No\r\nIdentificado,\" not identified for a body found on the border whose name was\r\nlost in the crossing.\r\n<\/p>
\r\n The rally began when a woman sang two spirited songs in Spanish\r\nfrom the sound truck. Then the first speaker announced some of the names of\r\nthe rally's sponsors which was a roll call of immigrant and anti-sweatshop\r\nadvocates: Central American Resource Center; Coalition for Humane\r\nImmigrant Rights of Los Angeles; Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates;\r\nSweatshop Watch; Thai Community Development Center, United Students Against\r\nSweatshops; Central American Coalition. The rally was supported by the\r\nGarment Workers Justice Center and International Longshore Workers Union\r\nLocal 34. The crowd was mixed, Hispanic, Anglo, Asian, and\r\nAfrican-American, looking like typical multi-cultural downtown LA crowd.\r\nAll the speeches were Spanish and English.\r\n<\/p>
\r\n On the sound truck Martha, a downtown Los Angeles garment worker\r\nsaid, \"The bosses were telling workers not to come out today because it's\r\ndangerous. It's not dangerous to come out. It's dangerous to cross the\r\nborder.And it's up for us to decide what we want. And we decide for amnesty\r\nand a general strike. We want a general strike to do away to exploitative\r\nbosses. And we want a worker-student coalition.\" The crowd cheered her.\r\n<\/p>
\r\n The garment worker from Saipan next spoke briefly about how people\r\nwere building an international anti-sweatshop movement. Next, a spokesman\r\nfrom Occidental College United Students Against Sweatshops described how\r\nstudents researched where the clothing sold in their campus came from and\r\nfound out that the clothing was made in sweatshops. He demanded that the\r\ngarment companies use independent monitors to monitor their contractors\r\naround the world. Mike Garcia, head of Justice for Janitors which are\r\nService Employees International Union Local 1887, said, \"We showed the\r\nworld that poor immigrant workers can fight back and win. Los Angeles leads\r\nthe country in low wages, immigrant and uninsured workers so that's why we\r\nmust lead the country in organize these workers. We in Los Angeles will\r\nlead the fight for a general amnesty of immigrants.\" After he spoke the\r\ncrowd chanted: \"Immigrant workers under attack. What do we do? Fight back.\"\r\nAnd Councilman Jackie Goldberg said, \"We need to address the gap between\r\nthe rich and the poor. There's more billionaires living in L.A. than any\r\nother city, yet people are trying to live on $11,000 a year. \"\r\n<\/p>
\r\n Five thousand people began to march through the garment district\r\nholding their sea of white crosses and they chanted \" What do we want?\r\nAmnesty. When? Now.\" Above the street garment workers hung out of the\r\nwindows of six-story and eight-story buildings waving their\r\nproducts--sweaters, socks, pants and t-shirts. A group of bike police led\r\nthe march. More people in the windows of brick buildings waved\r\nhandkerchiefs and shirts. The crowd chanted: \"What do we want? A living\r\nwage. When do we want it? Now.\"\r\n<\/p>
\r\n At each intersection a line of cops in riot gear stood, but\r\nprotecting the crowd was a line of monitors holding hands. The sea of white\r\ncrosses passed the Beaux Artes brick buildings of the old downtown and\r\nwalked past the glass skyscrapers of the new downtown. The sea of crosses\r\npassed Macy's plaza with Macy's Department store and the Hyatt Regency\r\nHotel, past the Seventh Market Place with Robinson's\/May department store.\r\nThe dead were walking through the streets of downtown Los Angeles. Finally,\r\nthe sea of crosses entered the four fences surrounding the parking lot\r\nprotest area next to the Staples Center Many put their white crosses on\r\nthe eastern fence until that fence was crisscrossed by tens of crosses.\r\n<\/p>
\r\n Thousands of people milled in the protest area when two more\r\ncontingents entered the protest area: the Puerto Rican marchers and allies\r\ncarrying signs protesting U.S. bombing of Vieques, where the Navy had\r\nbombed for sixty years; and the Black Bloc, about a sixty person contingent\r\nof one anarchist group who dressed in black shirts, black sweatshirts and\r\nblack bandanas. The Vieques protesters had met in Pershing Square at 4 p.m.\r\nfor a rally and then marched to the Staples Center. Near the south fence\r\nclosest to the Staples Center four drummers sat on the ground in a circle\r\npounding away while a few danced. Toward the center Filipino activists held\r\nup their multi-colored banner and Mecha, Chicano student activists in red\r\nbandanas massed in a group of about thirty. A few enterprising Hispanics\r\nhad carts where they sold hot dogs and one man rolled his ice cream cart\r\nthrough the crowd. The black helicopter flew very low overhead and tens of\r\nriot police stood in the intersection of Olympic Boulevard and Figueroa\r\nAvenue.\r\n<\/p>
\r\n The concluding rally of the four days of protests began with a\r\nYaqui Indian from Arizona on stage who said that they would do a ceremony\r\nfor non-violence. Then he did the deer dance from Northern Sonora which\r\ncelebrates life. The next speaker said, \"Because there are many\r\nundocumented people in the crowd, do not engage in property destruction. If\r\nanyone does property destruction stay away from them or banish them.\"\r\nAfter a short set by an East Los Angeles rock 'n roll band where people\r\ndance, Raul Galina, a Guatemala human rights activist gave the crowd the\r\nsolidarity of the Guatemala people and thanked the North Americas for their\r\nwork supporting Guatemala ns in their decades-long struggle for social\r\njustice and democracy.\r\n<\/p>
\r\n Next Lisa Fithian, from Rise Up\/Dan and D2K, the two main\r\norganizers of the four days of protests, spoke: \"We did what we said we\r\nwould. We put our issues across. We came from all over Los Angeles.\r\nWherever you go we have to rise up and say truth to power. We have to take\r\nsteps everyday until we have the justice we need.\" As Gore was giving his\r\nacceptance speech for the nomination for president with the Democratic\r\nNational Convention, Don White, from Committee in Solidarity with the\r\nPeople in El Salvador, spoke on the podium outside, and told the crowd that\r\nin Central America there's a custom to say the name of people who had died\r\nand then respond with \"Presente\" or \"present\" that they're here. He would\r\nlist the names of peoples around the world who have suffered from U.S.\r\nmilitary policy arming local dictatorships and U.S. corporate exploitation\r\n. As Gore spoke inside, Don White said outside, \"The people of Honduras.\"\r\nThe crowd said \"Presente.\" The people of Haiti who sew clothes for 38\r\ncents\/hour.\" \"Presente.\" \"The people of East Timor who died from arms the\r\nUnited States gave to the Indonesian military.\" \"Presente.\" \"The people of\r\nEl Salvador.\" \"Presente.\" \"The people of Iraq.\" \"Presente.\" \"The people of\r\nColumbia.\" \"Presente.\" \"The people of Africa who die from AIDs when\r\nAmerican and European pharmaceutical companies deny them low-cost drugs.\"\r\n\"Presente.\"\r\n<\/p>
\r\n Next, the speaker named the list of people who died crossing the\r\nborder and for each name the crowd said \"Presente. Presente. Presente.\" All\r\nthose who died were now present in the protest area of the Staples Center.\r\nThe next speaker from D2K said that in Los Angeles \"We creating a\r\npolitics of community, courage, a resistance.This is a politics of\r\nparticipation, not passivity.\" Then he asked for the crowd to link hands\r\nwhich they did and lift their hands up to the sky. Linked hands faced the\r\ndark night sky.\r\n<\/p>
\r\n As I walked through the gate out of the protest parking lot\r\nsurrounded by high wire fence, I saw that two lines of police in riot gear\r\nhad blocked off two sides of the intersection and the third street had been\r\nblocked off all week. So the only one way to leave was to go north on\r\nFigueroa Avenue. My friend and I walked down a block with a line of riot\r\npolice on both sides making Los Angeles look like a Third World\r\ndictatorship. At the 7th and Metro subway stop the area waiting for the\r\ntrain was full of protesters. One man proudly sported a red button which\r\nsaid, \"DNC Protester, 2000.\"\r\n\r\n<\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/html","summary":"The Dead Walk in Los Angeles--\r\n Anti-Globalization Links up with Immigrant Labor","numcomment":0,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/2000\/08\/the_dead_w.html","filesize":"10.1 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2000\/08\/2916.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[]}