On this day in 1852, the day following the spectacular celebrations of July 4th, the great abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass delivered one of the hallmark speeches of the anti-slavery movement, the Fifth of July speech. The speech is a profound work that weaves together both irony and powerful demands for human liberty. It is often overlooked, however, that Douglass was invited to deliver this address by the Ladies of the Rochester Anti-Slavery Society. In understanding the significance of this speech, it is thus crucial to recognize the interconnectedness among social justice movements and how the long-fought struggles for racial equality and women’s rights were able to transform popular consciousness by drawing upon principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence- namely the existence of inalienable rights and the Right of the People to alter or abolish government if it becomes destructive of securing the rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. While the speech is a most pressing condemnation of the hypocrisy of the United States- in proclaiming freedom and liberty while profiting from the cruel and exploitative practice of slavery- the echo at the conclusion of the speech inspires critical reflection of the Declaration and resounds a call to action to uphold the nation’s most fundamental principles.

“Fellow citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them… To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American Slavery…

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which lie is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.”

“Immigration” is an issue that embodies many of the concerns and issues that are central to any discussion of human rights. It touches on many of the worries that people have about their lives. Nobody wants to experience discrimination, any form of degradation or torture, or have their movements restricted based upon nationality, religion or ethnicity. Everyone wants to be free to make a living.

There are two core questions in the current immigration issue that are not being addressed: 1)  How does someone prove their citizenship in the United States? 2)  What are the fundamental causes of illegal immigration and how do we prevent them?

Every country has the right and responsibility to protect its borders and to determine who has a legal right to inhabit the country and therefore legitimate claims on the resources of the nation and how those resources are to be distributed. In the United States, we have only one method of identifying citizenship. Only an American passport, or the newer passport card, can irrefutably identify someone as a citizen of the U.S. However, very few U.S. citizens have passports, and if they have them, no law exists that requires them to carry them on a daily basis. Many countries have national-identity-cards that details an individual’s citizenship status, but in the U.S., any talk of anything that approximates such a card, or something that might become a proxy for such purposes, instantly raises fears about government intrusion and control of personal information.

Without some national-identity-card, how does someone prove citizenship? Attempts to visually identify non-citizens, who may or may not be illegal immigrants, automatically requires a form of ‘racial profiling’, and is so arbitrary, that it leaves it to the enforcement officer to make judgments based upon their own perceptions and biases. This becomes a particular problem in the U.S. because the popular perception is that ‘illegal immigrants’ are Latinos crossing the Southern borders into the US. However, approximately 50-percent of illegal immigrants are people who have been legally admitted into the U.S. but have overstayed their visas. Therefore, most American citizen contact with illegal immigrants, are with people who are from countries not commonly associated with illegal entry, such as European and Asian countries.  Unfortunately, there is no reliable entry/exit tracking-process for people who have visited the U.S.

Ultimately, undocumented immigrants exist in the U.S. because of the ease of acquiring employment from the many businesses that hire them as cheap labor. Those businesses are also reluctant to participate in any efforts to identify undocumented immigrants.  It is likely that people would not seek to breach the U.S. borders if there was not a potential job awaiting them.

The appropriate questions for this dilemma are: 1)  Is there a form of citizenship identification that would be acceptable to U.S. citizens? 2)  How can the government enforce a process that punishes businesses for hiring undocumented  immigrants?

It has been an interesting two weeks, to say the least, since Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed SB1070 into law, a law which effectively makes the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and gives police broad power in detaining anyone who is “reasonably suspected” of being an “illegal immigrant.” I do not aim to provide a perspective that has not already been articulated by former Nobel peace prize winners or millions of recent immigrants whose lives will be directly impacted by such legislation. However, I would like to highlight Arizona’s recent ban of ethnic studies, which underscores what is really at the heart of Arizona’s immigration law: legalized xenophobia, targeted not at the immigration system, but at human beings of a different color, origin, and linguistic heritage than those who have the power to identify themselves as “real Americans.” This is why, on May 1st, also recognized as International Workers’ Day, hundreds of thousands of people around the country rallied for immigration reform that respects human dignity. In Washington DC, the four students who marched 1,500 miles from Miami along the Trail of Dreams were joined by thousands in their rally at the White House; in Los Angeles, more than 60,000 marched; in Atlanta, more than 5,000.

Of course, media coverage and public discourse on this issue end with the person who claims: “It’s simple. Those people are illegal.”

As a person of conscience, however, I can’t help but ask myself: Looking back in history, who gets to decide who is us or them? Who writes the laws? What happens when a certain group of people is dehumanized and made into the scapegoat, the root cause of all of the society’s problems? How would an honest, and thus radical, reading of human rights principles interpret the concept of ‘illegal people’?  Not surprisingly, the only source I am able to find that seems to make some sense of this current immigration ‘debate’ is in the form of brilliant satire:

This week I saw a provocative ad at a bus stop in my Washington, DC neighborhood. A picture of George W. Bush gazing out an airplane window alongside a battered piece of cardboard with “AIDS is DC’s Katrina” scrawled across it. The ad is intended to prod President Obama to act on AIDS, specifically in DC where HIV prevalence rates are at least 3% (higher than in Lagos, Nigeria). This video reinforces the message that “56,000 new US infections each year symbolize neglect and indifference.” Race played a critical role in the devastation in New Orleans and it is a central factor in the HIV epidemic in the US. African-Americans make up 12% of the population yet account for more than 45% of new infections and 46% of people currently living with HIV. AIDS is currently the leading cause of death for Black women ages 25 to 34. On March 10th –National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day – set your phone or computer to alert you every 35 minutes. This is how often an American woman tests positive for HIV. Hurricane Katrina illustrated that natural disasters are neither gender- nor color-blind. The same is true of HIV/AIDS.

AIDS Healthcare Foundation Ad Campaign

This past Saturday, I had the opportunity to attend a welcome party for the four students who are marching from Miami to D.C. for immigration reform. It was a beautiful event filled with music, food, and people from throughout the Atlanta community. The event was organized by the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights and the Georgia Association for Latino Elected Officials, among others. The four students shared with us stories of their march thus far, including a recent encounter with a KKK anti-immigrant rally in south Georgia. Luckily, the students were accompanied by local NAACP members, and were able to sing freedom songs together while surrounded by the KKK. As they move through Atlanta, supporters are worried for their safety as they pass through Gwinnett County, where Sheriff “Butch” Conway has instituted serious anti-immigrant measures in his police force. According to Georgia immigrant rights leader, Adelina Nicholls: “Sheriff Conway is one of the most dangerous figures in Georgia, who has turned Gwinett County into a place of fear, racial profiling, arrest, and deportation.” While the welcome party was a time of celebration and fellowship, there was also recognition that there may be further incidents of fear and intimidation for the students on their long journey to the capitol. However, the students shared their unwavering hope and commitment to their cause with the audience and will proceed north in the days to come…

Fifty years ago today, on February 1st, 1960, four black students in Greensboro, North Carolina refused to leave a segregated lunch counter in a direct challenge to Jim Crow laws in the South. This tactic of civil disobedience spread like wildfire, especially among students- by the end of the year, more than 50,000 students defiantly and strategically used the sit-ins to protest racial segregation and injustice. A great article by Hasan Kwame Jeffries in Race-Talk rightfully highlights the importance of recognizing that the students were not only protesting against something, they were also positively asserting their human rights and actively living out their alternative visions of a free and just society. (Photo: Courtesy of Greensboro News and Record)

Many are eagerly awaiting the debut of CNN’s new “Latino in America,” hosted by Soledad O’Brien. In the recent weeks however, Latino communities and organizations, such as GALEO here in Georgia, have spoken out against CNN’s hypocrisy in shedding a brief light on the stories and contributions of Latino-Americans in America while continuing air time for Lou Dobbs, who often equates “Latino” with his xenophonic phrase “criminal illegal alien.” Every time I hear this phrase, broadcast to millions of households, I am reminded of conversations I had with friends in Rwanda, for instance, who remember hearing Tutsi’s being referred to as ‘cockroaches’ in the media in the years leading up to the 1994 genocide. I am taken back to discussions with my professors who assert that the first step before mass human rights violations is the dehumanization of a group of people. To be clear, I do not in any way equate genocide with the situation of Latinos in the US, but rather, I want to highlight a very important trend in the propagation of hatred and violence in our world and question if such trends are present here in the United States and in our media.

What is the line between free speech and hate speech in news programs? Is crossing a border to seek a better life, often times because of rural poverty resulting from U.S. free-trade policy, criminal? What does it mean for a human being to be illegal?  And I won’t even begin to address the connotations of the word alien. When I witnessed the immigrant marches of 2006, I saw people holding signs that read “Ninguna persona es ilegal” (No one is illegal), and was reminded of those held by sanitation workers in 1968 as they marched behind Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., declaring: “I AM A MAN.” To me, both groups were challenging the hegemonic names given to them and were demanding to be regarded equally as human beings, and therefore, worthy of all the rights guaranteed therein. Roberto Lovato of the Huffington Post has written a powerful critique of CNN’s double-message, which also features the following video:

While many of us are enjoying the Columbus Day holiday, it is perhaps appropriate to use such free time to consider the differing perspectives of what this day signifies both to the history of the United States and the world. Consider this passage from Christopher Columbus’s log book: “[The natives] do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance…They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” While Columbus’s ‘discovery’ marked the beginning of contact between Europe and the Americas, it also signified the foundations of imperialism that spawned the global slave trade and the genocide (the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, any national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such) of indigenous peoples in the Americas that has continued for more than 500 years. In Costa Rica, October 12th is celebrated as Día de las Culturas (Day of the Cultures). In Venezuela, it is recognized as Día de la Resistencia Indígena (Day of Indigenous Resistance). For a man who never set foot on what is now U.S. soil, what is at stake in the United States maintaining a day of honor for Christopher Columbus? Whose history does this holiday represent?

Here is a (rather long) excerpt from the first chapter of Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” entitled Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress. A Youtube video entitled “Reconsider Columbus Day” has also been circulating in the human rights/indigenous justice blogosphere.