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 |  Subject: Good News: Stevedores off the job for war protest; immigration march begins  Thu May 01, 2008 7:59 pm | |
| Hundreds of Washington stevedores at the ports of Seattle and Tacoma did not report to their day shifts Thursday, joining a West Coast union protest of the war in Iraq.
The union's midday rally was part of divergent May Day demonstrations in Seattle that will culminate in a rush-hour march through downtown to support Latino workers, whether they are in the U.S. legally or not. The march of several thousand people began in the Rainier Valley after 4:30 p.m. and will head through downtown to Seattle Center.
Activists in cities across the U.S. held demonstrations to keep the issue of immigration reform in the spotlight during a presidential election year.
Members and supporters of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 19, including peace activists and socialists groups, marched along Alaskan Way South to Pier 66, beating drums and carrying signs.
"I'm here to support ending the war, not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan. It's a backwards thing because it doesn't help anything," said a 60-year-old protester who said his name was Joe Hill, which also is the name of the iconic labor organizer of a century ago.
He toted a sign that read, "Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Blood!"
Herald Ugles, president of ILWU Local 19, said that 400 to 500 local longshore workers did not arrive for their day shifts but will work Thursday night. Along the West Coast, more than 25,000 stevedores took the day off, according to the union.
"Let's rebuild America and not Iraq," Ugles said.
A Port of Tacoma spokeswoman said the shut down was not unexpected because many workers celebrate International Worker's Day on May 1.
Officials of the Pacific Maritime Association, which employs longshore workers, called the work stoppage an illegal strike. By defying their contract and an independent arbitrator's order to report to work as normal on Thursday, the protesters are damaging "an already fragile U.S. economy," association spokesman Steve Getzug said.
About 100 students met up with the longshore workers following an anti-war demonstration at Seattle Central Community College.
Some of them took part in a rally for immigration rights at 3 p.m. in the quad at Seattle University. The day's main rally started at 4 p.m. at Judkins Park south of downtown.
The theme of this year's Seattle rally: "We are not undocumented. We are not illegal. We are workers."
The main demonstration was organized by El Comite Pro-Amnistia General y Justicia Social (The Committee for General Amnesty and Social Justice), a nonprofit Latino organization made up mostly of local social justice, labor and religious groups.
The May Day demonstrations, like the one last year in Seattle, were expected to draw far smaller crowds compared with 2006, when immigration reform legislation was simmering in Congress.
While waiting for the immigration system to be repaired, families of undocumented workers are being torn apart following raids and deportations, organizers said before the rally.
Whether legal immigrants or not, Latinos are being hassled by federal agents, aided by local police, simply because of the color of their skin, said Jorge Quiroga, spokesman for the El Comite group.
Leaders of some Washington groups that oppose illegal immigration planned to be in Yakima on Thursday to protest a pro-immigration rally.
Bob Baker, state director of Washingtonians for Immigration Reform, said the state government is paying millions of dollars a year to provide health, educational and other services to illegal immigrants.
"I really view it as insanity how we as a nation are handling this," he said. "They're not assimilating."
Baker, a Mercer Island resident and airline pilot, last year led an unsuccessful effort to gather signatures for Initiative 966, which would require that state and local governments verify the identity and eligibility of applicants for public benefits that are not federally mandated.
He now is pursuing an initiative to the Legislature that attempts to ensure that applicants for driver's licenses are legal residents. Two bills with similar aims died in legislative transportation committees in the 2008 session.
Tacoma resident Leon Donahue, secretary of Baker's organization and a retired property manager, said he is "not anti-immigrant but anti-illegal alien. There's a distinct difference. We get tired of hearing that we're playing the race card."
Conservative blogger Doug Parris of TheReaganWing.com said America has changed from a nation that was built by legal immigrants who sought freedom and opportunity, to a country that permits lawbreakers who want to benefit from taxpaying citizens.
The U.S. economy would be "swamped" by expanded illegal immigration, said Parris, a Shoreline resident who retired from a career in real estate.
Donahue said it was essential for opponents of illegal immigration to act because help won't come from the next U.S. president. Democratic Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton supported Republican Sen. John McCain's 2006 bill that offered illegal immigrants a pathway to legal status. All three candidates also favor building a fence across the U.S.-Mexico border.
Over nearly the past six months, 3,314 illegal aliens from Washington, Oregon and Alaska have been deported or returned voluntarily to their native country, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Nationally, nearly 120,000 individuals during that period have been removed from the U.S.
At that rate, the number of deportations and voluntary returns in the 2008 fiscal year would fall short of the previous year's regional and national totals of about 7,500 and 282,500, respectively.
Illegal aliens who are deported are banned from returning to the U.S. for 10 years. Some individuals without criminal records are eligible to go back to their native country voluntarily and could return legally to the U.S. in less than 10 years.
Granting voluntary returns saves the government the cost of detaining and removing illegal aliens, who must check in with the U.S. embassy or consulate in their home country by a specified date, said Lorie Dankers, a Seattle spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Nationally, the federal agency said that 4,077 illegal aliens were arrested in the 2007 fiscal year for entering the U.S. unlawfully, with 863 other people -- both legal and illegal residents -- arrested for allegedly harboring or knowingly hiring illegal aliens, money laundering and other crimes.
The number of arrests in each of the past two years was more than triple the amount in 2005, as the agency increased its emphasis on work-site enforcement.
While some opponents of illegal immigration wanted federal agents to scoop up participants in Thursday's demonstration in Seattle, Dankers said her agency's enforcement activities are based on investigative leads.
Those in the country illegally "should not be surprised if they are arrested," she said, "but we don't randomly pick people up and load them in the back of a truck."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/361433_march02.html |
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