Fighting 187: The Different Opposition Strategies

...Some evangelical churches have taken a more radical stance on the issue of immigration...

...Before the election, some elected officials counseled against massive demonstrations...

...And the election results once again confirmed California's political and cultural fragmentation...

...My family is half documented and half undocumented...

...as well, many of the undocumented appear unfazed by the political storm...

...border...

...Latinos must forge ties with African Americans, Asians and progressive whites...

...Still, there's no going back, he says, prompting several men to nod in agreement...

...At Iglesia Evang61lica Latina in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles, the church boasts an immigration office with several counselors and new computers...

...I'm hopeful that all this will change," he says, "and that one day the politicians here are 100% Latino, so that we can be treated better in California...

...asks Olga Miranda, a Belmont lar slogan, "We didn't cross the border, the border High School student leader...

...Yes, times are tough, several of the men say...

...Three decades after the civil rights movement brought us both fire on the streets and major change to our public lives, a new and perhaps just as momentous struggle is upon us...

...Nevertheless, the deep divisions over strategy that emerged a year ago remain intact today...

...Speaker burn...

...politicized from the experience of the anti-intervention Speaker burn...

...While most community organizations speak sympathetically of the undocumented, the practical and political upshot of this solidarity is conspicuous in its lack of definition...

...A growing Central American population, already The WAC representative can't resist: "Speaker burn...

...I know I have to learn English, and I'm taking classes at night, plus I bought one of those homestudy classes with the cassettes...

...Not all the grassroots organizing going on around the issue of 187 is as visionary or radical as the admittedly fringe youth movement at the Peace and Justice Center...

...At a recent INS swearing-in ceremony for new citizens at a football field-sized room in the Los Angeles Convention Center, it was evident that 187 was the driving force behind the increased interest in citizenship...

...They will take to the streets...

...large leather medallion carved with the Aztec Sun Calendar hanging from his neck...

...Nonetheless, the citizenship drive is seen as the principal vehicle for Latino empowerment...

...The Southwest Voter Research and Education Project projects that some 100,000 people will apply for citizenship in California in 1995 alone...

...Many were present at the pre-election October 16 march in Los Angeles which drew over 100,000 people onto the streets, one of the largest demonstrations in modern California history...

...In this, But Angel Cervantes, a student at the Claremont the activists of the 1990s differ from their 1960s foreGraduate School and one of the most prominent youth runners...

...War...

...Asians and African-Americans wound up in the middle, nearly splitting even-a hopeful sign for coalition-minded activists...

...activism...

...But low voter-registration and turn-out rates-along with the fact that a substantial number of Latinos, both documented and undocumented, are not citizens-have historically held back not only a possible swing vote, but a bloc that could, theoretically, become the dominant force in California politics...

...The '96 election will be hot...

...VOL XXIX, No 3 Nov/DEC 1995 Rubbn Martinez is an editor at Pacific News Service and author of The Other Side: Notes from the New L.A., Mexico City, and Beyond (Vintage...

...District Judge Mariana Pfaelzer's courtroom downtown-and perhaps out on the streets with Peace and Justice Center activists gleefully burning things...

...As politicians preach communal values while accentuating the divisions in society [through laws like 187], these Latino Pentecostals bear witness to the true meaning of communal life," says Ramfrez, who, in his secular life, is an administrator at Stanford University...

...So and Tijuana...

...Nationally, applications for citizenship rose 250% from 1992 to 1995...

...Proposition 187 affects me in every way," says Ana Vdsquez, a 20-year-old student at the University of Southern California...

...Political passions are inflamed (literally) at the Peace and Justice Center, a quasi-underground youth hangout just west of downtown Los Angeles...

...bsent from the discourse of most mainstream institutions (and elected officials) is word on Jthe fate of the undocumented, who are, at least ostensibly, the direct target of 187...

...But the table that does the brisker business is presided over by the portly, Zapata-mustachioed Democrat Rudy Montalvo of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor...

...It played right into whites' fears about being overwhelmed by Latins...

...Republicans...

...Most of the advocates for the undocumented are young Chicano and Central American citizens like Ana who feel A thousand high school students in Porterville, California participate in an election- that 187 paints all Latinos, regardless of day student walkout...

...If they have some kind of papers, we do the best we can, but if they're completely undocumented, there's nothing we can do...

...29REPORT ON IMMIGRATION "Let's burn those snitch forms...

...While the crew at the Peace and Justice Center may indeed be a sign of a new coalition politics, the turnout at last year's marches was practically 99% Latino...

...According to a Los Angeles Times exit poll, the divide between Anglo, middle-class California and the soon-to-be-majority Latino population has become an unbreachable chasm...

...Many Latino institutions-energized by 187, like the students-are focusing on politicalA get empowerment through more traditional channels...

...Whatever the decision in court about Prop 187's constitutionality, the battle over the referendum will answer many questions about California's, and by extension the country's, future...

...According to Assistant Director of Hispanic Ministry Louis Velisquez, half of these parishes are helping the immigrant faithful naturalize...

...We have to be there so that they will feel a serious presence," says C6sar Cruz, a Chicano student at the University of California at Irvine who is sporting the latest in '90s Chicano revolutionary chic: a dramatic black tejana (Stetson-style cowboy hat worn by Mexican banda music aficionados), a bandanna forming an inverted triangle from chin to chest, and a up a placard lambasting lilson...

...Latino newspapers, TV, and radio stations went on an unabashed crusade...

...Latinos were once clearly and bitterly divided leaders during last year's massive school walkouts between native-born, mostly English-speaking against 187, is concerned about timing...

...Over a 100 people a week seek immigration services here, a young Salvadoran clerk poring over one family's paperwork tells me...

...With the new laws that they're passing, I was afraid I'd be left defenseless," says Adelaido Vdsquez, a Mexican immigrant who has lived over a dozen years in the United States and had heretofore resisted naturalization-an often painful process for Mexicans whose Many community-based organizations are focusing on increasing the ranks of Latino voters...

...Sounding a clear liberationtheology line, Veldsquez says that the Church is "committed to the mandate of the gospel, which is less a matter of eternal life after death than living life here and now with justice, peace and love...

...Many activists, however, think that mainstream institutions have all but abandoned the undocumented...

...This post-nationalist rhetoric has yet to translate into political reality, however...

...We're still better off here...

...The course we should have been following is to expand our base and create a social movement...

...We want to bring in anyone who's been marginalized...

...With that definition, you're ignoring the biggest problem-the undocumented...

...Snitch forms burning, crossed us"-re-imagines the old Mexico that govspeaker, Wilson burning, or speaker, speaker, burning, erned the Southwest before the Mexican-American burning...

...The Catholic Church is active in the citizenship drive as well...

...While such social services are invaluable, the Church has not yet taken up a more forceful advocacy role on behalf of the undocumented...

...Though they have yet to replicate the masPete Wilson, cover him with those forms, and then burn sive student walkouts and marches of 1994, this small but vocal and potentially galvanizing force represents, for Latinos, the most politicized generation since the Chicano movement born 30 years ago in the picking fields of California...

...Meanwhile, the political temperature in California continues to heat up...

...Republicans register here...

...It is projected that some 100,000 people will apply for citizenship in California in 1995 alone...

...The young activists are planning a demonstration set to take place at the federal courthouse A student protester holds where the fate of Proposition California Governor Pete V 187 will be determined by Judge Mariana Pfaelzer on September 10...

...But, warns David Hayes-Bautista, director of the Alta California Research Center, Latinos will not be able to achieve much alone...

...says a blond, blue-eyed teenager with a Chicago accent whothrough one of those California transcultural miracles-is now a Chicana who goes by the name of "Lucha" (in Spanish, "Struggle...

...Pete Wilson and his all-out crusade for aliens...

...immigration status, as welfare freeloadhim...

...This rate is proving untenable for the Immigration and VOL XXIX, No 3 Nov/DEC 1995 C C 0 s 31REPORT ON IMMIGRATION Naturalization Service (INS), an agency primarily funded these days to "hold the line" at the southern U.S...

...At the center of the controversy are the newest Americans-and their blood relatives who have been here for generations...

...The all-important discussion of march aesthetics begins...

...rift...

...There will certainly be plenty of rhetorical heat in U.S...

...Others question this thinking...

...California will be at the center of the country politically because of issues like immigration-and the Latino vote will increasingly be heard...

...All those angry brown faces on TV, the Mexican flags being waved, it was exactly the wrong image to be sending out," says one political consultant...

...Everything from O.J.-inspired racial tension (prompted by Los Angeles Police Department detective Mark Fuhrman's racist descriptions of African Americans and Mexicans), to continuing chafing between inner-city youth and law enforcement, to Governor Pete Wilson's dismantling of affirmative action has contributed to the growing distance between rich and poor, immigrant and non-immigrant...

...30 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON IMMIGRATION These activists want to reach out beyond the Latino community...

...Who's going to bring the bullhorn...

...C6sar cries out, furiously scribbling notes on loose-leaf yellow sheets that lie on the floor next to his copy of The Diary of Che Guevara...

...By mid-morning, when the possibility of a day's work has all but evaporated, a handful of men wearing paintflecked T-shirts, jeans and workboots respond to the situation with a shrug of the shoulders...

...he shouts in Spanish...

...The definition of political power only through voting is too narrow," says Leonardo Vilchis, a lay worker at Dolores Mission Church in East Los Angeles, a parish that serves some 150 undocumented people through refugee and shelter services...

...Dan Ramirez, a laymember of the Apostolic Assembly, a Pentecostal church, notes that his religious community sees biblical law as taking precedence over the laws of the state...

...and sanctuary efforts of the 1980s, has also informed After more deliberations, the group comes up with a and influenced what was once purely "Chicano" slogan: "Wilson, you liar, we'll set your ass on fire...

...When undocumented brethren are deported, an elaborate network of contacts are often able to return the deportees to the flock in a kind of Pentecostal sanctuary movement...

...The new thinking-reflected in the popuwhat's it going to be...

...It also marks the anniversary of the The representative from the Women's Action biggest student mobilization in Los Angeles since the Coalition (WAC) offers, "I could make a big doll of late 1960s...

...it's getting Today, activists decry the line between San Diego hard to follow exactly what is being burned when...

...Most of the activists at the Peace and Justice Center are veterans of last year's protests-high school and college students who led walkouts, organized teach-ins, and volunteered for get-outthe-vote efforts...

...If you burn Chicanos and immigrant, Spanish-speaking Mexicans...

...Several more proposals are tossed out...

...In the August heat, as skateboarding daredevils go airborne in the parking lot outside, about 20 activists in their late teens and early twenties plot pyromaniacal political theater in a meeting room decorated with posters of revolutionaries including Malcolm, Martin, Che and Marcos...

...It was a waste of time to pander to the angry white voter," says Gilbert Cedillo, general manager of the Service Employees International Union Local 660, which represents over 40,000 County of Los Angeles workers currently facing unprecedented lay-offs due to massive budget cuts...

...A lot of organizers are moving away from race and ethnicity towards issues of class...

...My mother's a citizen, my tfos came across the river...

...When asked about the undocumented population (it is estimated that between 3% and 10% of California's Latinos may lack papers), one Catholic Church official said that the Church continues to provide health care and education through its hospitals and parochial schools to anyone regardless of immigration status...

...Let Pete Wilson hear the voice of the immigrants, of the workers, of the humble...

...He asks me if I know of a good journalism school...

...someone proposes, ovember, 1995 marks the first anniversary of referring to a draft from the California Attorney the California election that placed the issue of General's office of a form to be used-should 187 ever immigration on the national agenda with the reactually become law-to turn in "suspected illegal election of Gov...

...Admittedly, proposals such as a new amnesty similar to that implemented under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 are a political long shot in the current jingoistic climate...

...People are worried that they're going to be kicked out of the country at any moment," she says...

...cultural ambivalence, given the history of conflict and discrimination in the Southwest, is legendary...

...We're trying to break down the image that this is the 'Chicano movement' of the nineties," says Angel Cervantes, a founding member of the Four Winds Student Movement (the group's name hints at Native American spirituality and a multiethnic world view...

...As the newest citizens exit the convention center, they are immediately accosted by partisan voter-registration activists...

...There are 187 (eerie coincidence) Latinomajority parishes out of a total of 290 in the most populous archdiocese in the country...

...Still, the psychological impact of 187 politics has taken its toll on the undocumented...

...We expect to have 2.1 million people registered by next year," says Antonio Gonzilez, director of the Southwest Voter Research and Education Project...

...There will be civil disobedience...

...La Opinion, the country's largest Spanish-language daily, still regularly lists hotline numbers in stories about post-187 discrimination...

...As I'm getting into my car, Ricardo comes up to me out of earshot of the others...

...Despite the recent high-profile crackdown at the border, the incessant sweeps of la migra in the cities, and the increasingly ill political winds blowing not only in California but in Washington, D.C...

...The idea is received with much laughter and ers, criminals, and the cause of the worst economic immediate approval, downturn in California since the Depression...

...Last year, community-based organizations such as the Central American Resource Center, One Stop Immigration, and the Catholic Church-based United Neighborhoods Organization recruited people for marches, conducted letter-writing campaigns, and coordinated media-outreach efforts...

...The immigration debate, after all, includes issues of race relations, class disparity and the global economy...

...on their own behalf-forming, for instance, street-vending cooperatives and independent day-laborer unions...

...White Californians voted nearly three-to-one in favor of 187, while Latinos voted nearly four-to-one against...

...The vast majority of the electorate will still be largely older and Anglo," he says...

...The group approximates a politicized version of the forlorn inner-city waifs of Larry Clark's film Kids-a multiethnic (though majority Latino) crew of youth who are creative, angry, idealistic, and unabashedly radical...

...Many community-based organizations are focusing on increasing the ranks of eligible Latino voters...

...Whether children in classrooms distracted by fears that their families may be torn apart by la migra or working mothers nervous about sending their children to school or to public hospitals when they are ill, a climate of fear has dampened some of the immigrants' stubborn optimism...

...out-the-vote drive organized by opponents of Prop 187...

...The members of the Four Winds Student Movement, La Resistencia (a wing of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA), Youth Breaking Borders, the Affirmative Action Coalition of the University of California at Irvine and the Women's Action Coalition share one vision in common: they want to burn something...

...Why do they put us down so much when they're practically living off of the work we do for them...

...Had Latinos voted proportionate to their population numbers (approximately onethird statewide), 187 may well have been defeated...

...The problem is that demographics don't match up with actual voter turnout, a situation that Mexican political scientist Jorge Castaileda has called California's "electoral apartheid...

...Logistics...

...Vilchis notes that the undocumented have begun advocating A Latino student protests Prop 187 during a rally in support of immigrant hotel workers in Lafayette, California this spring...

...Nods around the room...

...Work's less easy to come by," says Macario Moctezuma, a 28year-old native of Mexico City who lost a job with a construction company when the boss came around asking for "good papers...

...Ricardo Martinez, a 21-year-old man from rural Jalisco, still believes in the promise of California...

...Interestingly, the Protestant evangelical churches are equally involved in a grassroots effort to, at the very least, keep their brethren from being deported...

...Make your vote known...

...Yeah, I think we should fuckin' take the streets...

...Proposition 187...

...shouts Yarda Scudder, a middle-aged blond woman wearing jeans and a red kerchief tied around her neck, attempting perhaps to approximate the Ronald Reagan pastoral look...

...How about the the fact, of economic competition contributed to this speakers first, then burn Wilson...

...Wilson first, the cops might arrest you and then the Cultural differences and at times the appearance, if not media won't get to hear any speakers...

...A visit to a day-laborer site on the corner of Sunset and Alvarado reveals the eternal hope of the immigrant...

...And, they hope, there will be massive media coverage because of the happy coincidence that the federal court building is across the street from the county court building, where every media organization in the country is camped out covering the Trial of the Century...