The weekly newsletter of the México Solidarity Project

April 20, 2022/ This week's issue/ Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

What Every Child Needs: The Power of Questions

If you’ve ever been around little children, you know that they go through a stage where they pester you with questions — and often come up with their own radical answers. I remember once looking out our window with my three-year-old, and in a window across the street we could see just the legs of a man. She pointed at them: “What’s that?” Probably just a man standing on a chair, I told her. She asked why.

“Maybe he’s fixing something,” I answered.

Then she put forward her own hypothesis: “Maybe it’s just legs.”

The adult world tends to discourage our children’s constant desire to know as they grow. Teachers, not kids, are supposed to ask the questions. Right-wing zealots today don’t just want to ban “critical race theory.” They don’t want children to question, to think critically at all. No wonder we have so many adults afraid to ask questions or trust themselves to have answers.

Immigrant rights activist Alejandra Domenzain is doing her best to help adult immigrant workers regain that ability to ask questions. In her workshops, they gain the courage to bring their questions straight to the employers legally responsible for their safety. Questions that matter: Why are you keeping the exit door locked? What’s that dust in the air? Why do I feel so nauseous after work?

But wouldn’t it be wonderful if we never lost our spirit of inquiry, if we continued to trust our own powers of analysis throughout our lives? Alejandra believes that children’s books — hers included — can foster that self-confidence. I think her idea has legs!

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For All/Para Todos — and By All/Por Todos

Having Mexican immigrant parents, you’ve been drawn to helping other immigrants. What issue did you work on first?

In the early 2000s I started working at the Los Angeles Garment Worker Center. Most workers came to us because they were facing wage theft, not being paid minimum wage or overtime. The garment shops where they worked all operated in the “informal sector.” If workers at these tiny companies filed a claim for wage theft, let alone tried to organize a union, the company would simply close and then reopen across the street.

You shifted shifted your prime focus to occupational health and safety. Why?

We’ve come a long way in addressing wage theft. No one disputes that this theft has become a well-documented problem and no one disputes that wage theft violates a fundamental right. But employers continue to treat instances of workers getting injured, sick, or even dying on the job as just one of the unavoidable costs of doing business. Even workers at times normalize health and safety violations as “part of the job.” Maybe we need a different framing. “Health theft” or “life theft”!

Immigrant workers find themselves concentrated in some of the most dangerous jobs. As farmworkers, they get exposed to pesticides, excessive heat, and wildfire smoke — and injuries from long hours doing repetitive motions and working in awkward postures. Immigrant workers in cities labor in food processing, janitorial services, and construction work. They often work as day laborers and domestics.

Employers often have immigrant workers use dangerous equipment without proper training or safeguards. The heavy workloads these workers get lead to injuries and stress and expose them to chemicals — like cleaning products — that have hazardous short- and long-term effects. Mental health hazards figure in here as well. Workplace discrimination, harassment, and violence, including sexual assault, all take their toll.

How do these workers learn to stand up for their rights?

r/OSHA

I see my job as, first, letting immigrant workers know they have rights — and then helping them learn how to exercise these rights and “take action.” Our program uses “Popular Education” methods. We encourage participants to surface the knowledge they already have and build upon it, practicing new skills and then applying these skills to solve problems they’re facing at work. Role playing and interactive activities allow people to learn with and from each other.

We give workers a range of options, since they face unique situations in terms of risks and resources. As a first step, they may be willing to simply document a problem, something that involves zero risk. Next, they may go to a meeting with other workers to discuss the situation or get help from an organization. They then might be ready to talk to a manager, file a complaint with an agency, or talk to the media or public officials or shareholders. Some workers become ready to organize other workers or lead campaigns.

You’re also not waiting for people to become adults before they learn how to speak up. You’ve written a bilingual children’s book about immigrant rights. Why?

As a parent of school-aged kids and as a former teacher, I have faith in the next generation. I want children to feel needed as participants in democracy. The starting point is asking: “What do you find meaningful? What changes do you want to see?” Then, they need information and help developing the skills — like story-telling or talking about the problems with others — to make those changes a reality. Teaching how to participate actively in a healthy democracy should be like teaching basketball, with real-life demonstrations and hands-on practice. Don’t give lectures, no boring blah blah blah.

Children’s books need more than just more diversity in their characters. I wrote my book because we need more books that help young people question the systems, policies, and laws behind the situations individual characters face. One example: Many books talk about the immigrant experience, but not many children’s books invite kids to change the policies that affect immigrant workers and Dreamers.

Books can be mirrors, windows, or magnifying glasses that expand our vision in so many ways. I want children to realize that they can lead, they can make the rules, they can create a better world.

Are you feeling optimistic about stopping “life theft?”

Yes! COVID has elevated the issue of health and safety for “essential workers.” Workers — including immigrant workers — are demanding that their lives be considered just as valuable as the lives of owners and investors. They’ve shifted the narrative. Employers can no longer normalize worker deaths and injuries and act like there’s nothing they can do.

But we need to remember that stopping “life theft” needs to involve all of us — as consumers, voters, community members — and not just workers. Anyone who buys fruit or goes to a clean office or uses electronics has a responsibility here. These workers are our relatives, our neighbors, our people. We’re all responsible for saving workers’ lives.

Al Fin: Biden to End Racist Policy Against Asylum Seekers

Many of us thought that the Biden Administration would move quickly to reverse all of the racist anti-immigrant policies put in place by the Trump regime. Sadly, that did not happen. 

One of the worst of these Trump-era policies has been Title 42, the measure used to block 1.7 million people from crossing the border, under the bogus rationale that we needed this blockage to prevent the spread of Covid. The truth? US public health officials unanimously saw no such health reason to implement Title 42. 

Instead of following the advice of these experts, the Biden Administration continued Title 42 last spring, forcing asylum-seekers to go back across the border to languish in the miserable conditions of Mexico’s migrant camps.

The Biden Administration caved here — to the racist anti-immigrant ravings of the Republican Party. Republicans don’t just want to keep immigrants out. In many states, they’re also proposing policies to restrict the rights of minority voters. Latin@s represent the fasted-growing sector of the US electorate, and the Republican Party is doing its damndest to suppress Latin@ votes.

Biden and the Democratic Party need to wake up and smell the frijoles. If Biden fails to come through on his promises to implement a truly humane immigration policy and defend the democratic interests of the 60-million-strong Latin@ people, now overwhelmingly Mexican-American/Chican@, the president risks handing over the US Congress, Senate, and White House to the most racist and neofascist major party ever seen in our country. And that would be spell enormous trouble for Latin@s in the US and for México as well. 

Now finally — al fin — Biden has promised to end the use of Title 42 as of May 23, 2022, after enormous pressure from Latin@ immigrant rights organizations, civil liberties organizations, and Latin@ members of the US Congress. About time! But ending Title 42 ought to be only the first step in changing a very dangerous course.

Recent news reports and commentaries, from progressive and mainstream media,
on life and struggles on both sides of the US-México border

James Goodman, The Fight for Labor Rights in México, The Progressive. Activists are beginning to undo the damage done by NAFTA.

David Barkin and Alberto Betancourt, Integration with the United States or Latin American Independence? NACLA. At the last Community of Latin American and Caribbean States meeting, Mexico’s president proposed contradicting relationships with North America.

Kurt Hackbarth, American Think Tanks Are Fueling the Mexican Right, Jacobin. In México, Andrés Manuel López Obrador faces an uphill battle in getting his energy reforms through Congress. American interests, vehemently opposed to the idea of a public energy sector in Mexico, stand in the way.

Nick Corbishley, As Bilateral Trade Between Mexico and US Hits Record High, Diplomatic Relations Sink to Lowest Point in Decades, Naked Capitalism. Large companies have a huge cost advantage over their small business competitors under the Mexican energy status quo. The AMLO electricity reform, as it currently stands, will do away with that, much to the horror of the companies affected.

Ulises Rodríguez López, AMLO firma iniciativa para nacionalizar el litio, el plan B de la Reforma Eléctrica, Polemón. Esto con el fin de proteger el litio, para que solo pueda ser explotado por  el gobierno de México, porque es un recurso de los mexicanos.

Felipe De La Hoz and Gaby Del Valle, Texas Gov. Abbott doubles down as GOP states go to war over immigration policy, Border/Lines. Anti-immigration fanatic Greg Abbott has snarled incoming commercial traffic along the border with heavy-handed inspections by state personnel.

The Mexico Solidarity Project brings together activists from various socialist and left organizations and individuals committed to worker and global justice who see the 2018 election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president of México as a watershed moment. AMLO and his progressive Morena party aim to end generations of corruption, impoverishment, and subservience to US interests. Our Project supports not just Morena, but all Mexicans struggling for basic rights, and opposes US efforts to undermine organizing and México’s national sovereignty. 

Editorial committee: Meizhu Lui, Bruce Hobson, Bill Gallegos, Sam Pizzigati, Courtney Childs, Victoria Hamlin, Agatha Hinman, Steven Hollis. To give feedback or get involved yourself, please email us!

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