As some of you may know, US
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents in
Postville, Iowa arrested over 300 workers on May 12th at the nation’s
largest kosher slaughterhouse, Agriprocessors, Inc.
Over the last few years, raids
like the one at Agriproccessors are increasingly common. Our nation
arrested and detained 300,000 of people on the grounds of immigration
status last year alone. The stated rationale behind the mass arrests,
detention, and possible deportation is that they are criminals and threaten
our Homeland Security.
We must be clear; there is
need to prevent criminal acts and enforce just laws. In the pursuit
of a truly safe nation, we ask this nation a simple question: Is it
a crime to be poor?
As the philosopher who so influenced
our founding fathers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, once argued that, “every
man has a right to risk his own life in order to preserve it.” This
is the journey for the immigrant. It is a journey for self-preservation
for those who have traveled here - documented or not – under tremendous
peril, escaping utter destitution, political turmoil, or other untold
horrors to scratch out bare subsistence. For some, it is a risk that
they – in their quest to survive and make a better life for their
families and children – avail themselves to take.
We, as leaders in the movement
to end poverty, unite with the immigrants who risk everything they have,
including their lives, to come here. We take exception to the idea that
a country founded, built, and populated primarily by immigrants should
prosecute so many so harshly while it is policies like North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA),
and policies of the World Trade Organization (WTO) allow companies to
go anywhere in the world where they can pay people the least, provide
the least safe working conditions, and deny our right to organize. These
policies rob all of us, the poor of all races and national backgrounds,
in the United States and worldwide, of our basic human rights to survival:
the rights to jobs at living wages, health care, education, food, housing,
heat and water. However at the same time that companies are allowed
to travel worldwide, we, the poor across the world, are being criminalized
for seeking a better future.
What you can do:
In solidarity, we ask you to consider making donations of cash or supplies to the various organizations/institutions that are directly working with the detainees and their families. The list of needed items comes directly from people working with the affected community in Postville and neighboring Waterloo.