And not for nothing, "el pueblo unidojamas sera vencido." (Same cadence as when people chant that in English, enthusiastic but slow and rythmic and unmistakable.) "The people" (half-second pause) "united" (half-second pause) "will never be defeated." If you've heard it in one langauge, you've heard it in all of them. That was one of the fun moments, when my brother and I went to see Stephen Spielburg's movie "Munich" in the theater. There's a scene where a bunch of Palestinians are watching TV and at one point they all start chanting that slogan in Arabic. They didn't subtitle it, so I'm sure 99% of the people who saw the movie had no idea what they were saying, but the second the rythm started up, Dave and I looked at each other and laughed. Spielburg's gift to the 1% of the audience politically active enough on the far left to know that when they hear it, I guess.

So yes, being May Day and all, I'm temporarily lifting my self-imposed effort to keep the political stuff and the sf stuff on separate blogs.

For those living under a rock, today was D-Day for the undocumented workers civil rights movement, when mass walk-outs and wild-cat strikes and street-jamming demonstrations were planned accross the country (but especially, needless to say, in the southwest) to demonstrate support for amnesty for the 5-10% (depending on which numbers you believe) of the American workforce made up of what are hypocritically deemed in official parlance to be "illegal immigrants." (In terms of the reality on the ground, tihs makes about as much sense as the official legal fiction in the Apartheid era that black South Africans were not second-class citizens of South Africa but rather citizens of their own "sovreign homelands" that just so happened to be entirely bordered by the nation of South Africa.) It's kind of been an inspiring sight to see, the sudden emergence of a mass liberation movement of the worst paid, most openly hated and dehumanized segment of the US workforce.

(I keep on remembering all those trips to visit my grandparents in California as a kid. Every once in a while, we'd drive through INS roadside. Every time, without fail, we'd stop, they'd spend maybe a quarter of a second glancing in the car, and, seeing that we were all white, they'd wave us through, no questioned asked. If we looked latino, we would have been questioned, harassed, asked for proof of citizenship, etc., all within U.S. borders. Without skin-color profiling, immigration enforcement as it currently exists would grind to a halt. This is the ugly reality of how the U.S. government, on behalf of big business, keeps 12 million people living in fear, so while the INS turns a blind eye and lets most of them stay here they can provide the corporations and megafarms with cheap labor, they also make sure that they're too scared and powerless to make any demands for higher wages and better treatment. )

In the usual rounds of election-year bullshit, a bunch of Republican congressmen trying to pander to the Mexican-hating element of their base proposed a bunch of lunatic legislation to start cracking heads and deporting all 12-20 million undocumented workers, make it a federal crime for churches and soup kitchens to give charity to them or for people to give them a place to stay, etc., etc., etc. Now, this would never pass in that form, since the megacorporations, who want the cheap labor of powerless non-citizens, don't want it to--they support President Bush's "guest worker" program that would legalize the current situation in which undocumented immigrants can work here but can't vote, can't unionize for fear of being deported, and can be paid less than shit, thus dragging down the wages of every one else.

(The voting thing alone is a reason why, despite the massive social problems "guest worker" programs have caused everywhere they've been tried, Bush is pushing it. 12 million impoverished Mexican workers were given the vote tomorrow, no Republican would ever have a bat's chance in hell of winning the popular vote in a Presidential election. Even if only 1 in 4 of them voted, realistically at least 2.5 million of those 3 million votes would go to the Dems, which in elections that keep on beign decided by a hair's breadth..,)

The effect, however, of Congress's sadistic, scapegoating bluff of an "immigration reform measure", has been to awaken the sleeping giant, and ignite the largest and most aggressive social movement in the US since the Civil Rights movement of the 60s, demanding not "guest worker" semi-slavery (look how well 'guest worker' programs have worked in France!) but amnesty. No one risks being fired from their job, deported to Mexico, etc., and marches through the streets to demand to be a guest worker. They want citizenship and equality. Once, to paraphrase the movie "Ants", you've let that genie out of the bottle, it's not going back.

From the New York Times article:

"Stores and restaurants in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York closed because workers did not show up or as a display of solidarity with demonstrators. In Los Angeles, the police estimated that more than half a million people attended two demonstrations in and near downtown. School districts in several cities reported a decline in attendance; at Benito Juarez High School in Pilsen, a predominantly Latino neighborhood in Chicago, only 17 percent of the students showed up...

"Lettuce, tomatoes and grapes went unpicked in fields in California and Arizona, which contribute more than half the nation's produce, as scores of growers let workers take the day off. Truckers who move 70 percent of the goods in ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., did not work.

"Lettuce, tomatoes and grapes went unpicked in fields in California and Arizona, which contribute more than half the nation's produce, as scores of growers let workers take the day off. Truckers who move 70 percent of the goods in ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., did not work.

"Meatpacking companies, including Tyson Foods and Cargill, closed plants in the Midwest and the West employing more than 20,000 people, while the flower and produce markets in downtown Los Angeles stood largely and eerily empty.

"Israel Banuelos, 23, and more than 50 of his colleagues skipped work, with the grudging acceptance of his employer, an industrial paint plant in Hollister, Calif...."

And on, and on and on.

Happy May Day! It's not just for nostalgic old reds any more.