Voces de la Frontera Leads Four Days of Protests and Education: May 1st Day without Immigrants and Workers (Part 2 of 2)
Top: Christine Newman Ortiz, the head of Voces de la Frontera, speaks at a rally in Milwaukee Below: Luis Rodriguez, head of the Madison chapter of Voces de la Frontera
by Jonathan Gramling
Christine Newmann-Ortiz founded Voces de la Frontera in 1994 as a small bilingual newspaper focusing on maquiladora rights on the Texas/Mexico border while a student at UT-Austin. And since that time, she has grown it into a formidable immigrant rights group in Wisconsin with a statewide presence.
Voces will be hosting two marches on May 1st and May 2nd to protest the treatment of immigrants and immigration policy and the larger issue of the treatment of workers. On May 1st, protesters will be meeting near Voces’ offices on Milwaukee’s south side. The march will then head to the federal courthouse in downtown Milwaukee.
“Our demands this year are focused first on the federal level where we are emphasizing demanding an end to the criminalization and scapegoating of immigrant workers and their families,” Newmann-Ortiz said. “What we need is immigration reform with a path to citizenship. We are also calling for the end of the forced collaboration between sheriffs to serve as an arm of immigration known as 287(g), a program that is being pushed hard. Also we are standing in solidarity with other workers who are under attack right now. We have seen the federal workers, in particular, who are under attack. We’ve seen programs such as the VA cutting benefits. May Day is traditionally the International Workers Day. This year, we’re calling it A Day without Immigrants and Workers to really acknowledge the much broader platform for lifting up the voices of other workers who are under attack right now.”
Voces is empathetic that not everyone can go on strike. But Newmann-Ortiz hopes that people will do what they can to make the impact of May 1st felt.
“We’re still asking them to stay at home,” Newmann-Ortiz said about people who can’t make it to the march in Milwaukee. “We do encourage people to boycott. It’s different this year in that in the past we asked small businesses to close completely all day. What we are focused on this time is also supporting the national boycott against companies that in a cowardly fashion let go of their anti-discrimination policies. We’re focused on supporting the national boycott against large companies that abandoned their anti-discrimination policies. And we’re asking small businesses and businesses in general who are supportive of our demands to close during the period of the march or reduce their workforce and certainly not retaliate against any workers who want to participate. On the contrary, we encourage them to put up posters in their small business and to join their employees and customers. Many businesses would also close due to the lack of consumers of immigrants and their families.”
Luis Vazquez, the Voces organizer based in Madison has been hard at work since Trump was elected. He has been busy organizing Know Your Rights workshops in a broad organizing territory on Central and South Central Wisconsin.
“I visit seven communities monthly,” Vazquez said. “This week I was in Monroe. Yesterday I was in La Crosse, Sparta, Arcadia. I will be in Darlington next Monday and then Eau Claire and Madison. I have seven communities I meet with monthly. And we have leaders who are organizing the base, workers who are bringing people in, making sure that they have the information and that extra layer of support. We try to make sure that the immigrant families know that beyond their rights, which are very limited now — we’ve seen one abuse after another in how this administration is targeting immigrants — and we make sure that people know that you do have rights and agencies and organizing around the protection of your family and those whom you love.”
While immigrants are the ones with the most concern, the people who depend on immigrant labor are also very concerned.
“There is a lot of fear and anxiety from farmers who are owners and are U.S. citizens,” Vazquez said. “They are hearing this chatter with the immigrant workers who are looking for another place to migrate because they are feeling this anti-immigrant sentiment. They could move to Minnesota where there is a driver’s ID for immigrants. They could also move to Illinois with the same situation or they could just move back to their countries. Some of them have that luxury, but not all of them. Farmers are also worried that there may be some persecution against them because they are hiring undocumented workers. There is a lot of concern that is coming after them. There is the recognition that the economy is going to suffer. It’s already beginning to suffer. We have a few Know Your Rights sessions lined up with farmers and immigrant families, so that we can have this conversation on what we can do to advocate for the well-being of our community because immigrants are in our schools. They are in our workplaces. They are an important part in our society.”
One of the biggest impacts that Trump’s immigrant policies is having is the stoking of fear, real or imagined. Vazquez and Voces are setting up Rapid Response Teams to investigate possible ICE sightings.
“The first couple of weeks, everyone went ballistic seeing and hearing ICE everywhere,” Vazquez said. “I was eating in my car and driving an SUV and suddenly people were looking at me as though I was ICE. We have a Rapid Response Team and some of them are verifiers. We’ve divided up into regions in Dane County. We have verifiers in all parts of Dane County, so if there is a crisis call that relates to ICE verification in Dane County we would tap into the volunteers to identify where it is happening, what is happening, how it is happening and then we can send a verifier to corroborate the information and assess the situation. This emergency line has been essential for our organizing because we don’t see it has just a way to provide resources. Even those who are calling with a concern, we can send a verifier and assess. If it isn’t ICE, we call the person back and share the news with them and then we follow up with an organizer who can say, ‘These are our meetings. These are the Know Your Rights workshops that we have lined up for the month.’ I was just counting he number of attendees who have been part of our trainings and it is almost reaching 15,000 people whom we have reached statewide.”
There is also a concern that Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature are trying to require county sheriffs to work with ICE.
“We know there are nine counties in the state of Wisconsin who are working with 287(g),” the ICE program that requires county sheriffs to cooperate in detaining immigrants. “AB 24 is basically 287(g) on steroids statewide. And that would put a lot of workers and their families in jeopardy.
There are efforts to make sure that Madison has an adequate representation in Milwaukee on May 1st. Madison has chartered some buses to take people to the Milwaukee rally.
“For those who are interested in going to Milwaukee, we are making a special invitation to the community, to everyone who would like to attend,” Vazquez said. “To make a reservation, they can call 470-454-4508 and we will be heading out from Madison at 8 a.m. from the Labor Temple to Milwaukee. We are asking anyone who can make a donation of $30 to cover the cost of the bus. We have that option for May 1st.”
On May 2nd, there will be a March in Madison with people gathering in Brittingham Park at 3 p.m. followed by a march to the State Capitol and a rally inside the Capitol.
“For May 2nd, the message that we have is, ‘We have immigrant communities in Madison,’” Vazquez said. “And we know that driver’s ID would make for safer roads. That’s a layer of protection for immigrants who are living here. We know what’s happening in Washington, DC. We know the federal persecution essentially. But here in the state of Wisconsin, we can do our part to defend immigrants, to defend our economy, to defend the well-being of our farms. And so the driver’s ID cards would give that layer of protection to immigrant workers. We’re also asking for accessible education including in-state tuition for immigrant students. And of course the piece that I was talking about with AB 24 about collaboration between ICE and the sheriffs. Obviously we know that this is the case that it is not an issue that there are undocumented immigrants committing crimes. We know that there are individual cases just like anything. But this fabricated case that it is an issue is made up.”
For the organizers of Voces de la Frontera, this isn’t about abstract policies that severely impact millions of people. It’s about real live people whose families and lives are being decimated by politicians far away in Washington, D.C.
“We are hoping to send the message that Wisconsin is united,” Vazquez said. “I know people who have lived in Dane County for over 20 years and they don’t have a pathway to citizenship. There is no line to wait for. People say, ‘Why can’t they wait in line?’ Well there is no line to wait in. I’ve been here organizing with Voces for four years, just advocating for just ways that immigrants can be treated.”
May 1st and 2nd could be a game changer for your neighbors, people who wait on you in businesses and help grow your food. Our futures are bound together.