Immigrant workers board bus to D.C.

The bus pulled out of the Northwest Oregon Labor Council parking lot in Southeast Portland Tuesday morning, Sept. 23, bearing 42 immigrants and allies on a 3,000-mile trip to Washington, D.C., and New York City. Portland was one of 10 kickoff points for the trip.

Known as the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, the national event is sponsored by the AFL-CIO and was created by Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees to enlist the spirit of the 1960s civil rights Freedom Rides in a campaign to improve workplace protections and reform the nation’s immigration laws.

“These are Portland’s heroes,” said Jeff Richardson, financial secretary of Portland-based HERE Local 9 and chair of the Freedom Ride Committee in Portland.

Richardson said the idea of a Freedom Ride started in 2001 at HERE’s national convention.“We never thought it would turn into this. It’s incredible how it’s grown,” he said.

“There’s a recognition that civil rights for all did not end back in 1964 with the passage of the Civil Rights Act,” coalition member Samuel Davila, executive director of the immigrants rights group CAUSA and former head of the Oregon Commission on Hispanic Affairs, told the Northwest Labor Press. “We have millions of workers — men, women and children —who are denied civil rights.”

Among the riders on the Portland bus was one woman who had taken part in the 1960s freedom rides as well: Ruth Beale, a 79-year-old African-American who lived in Chicago during the civil rights struggles.

“It was frightening,” she said of the two rides she took part in then. “One of our buses was set on fire, and a lot of people were taken off the bus and beaten.”

“I’m very sad to say that after 40 years we still need to organize a freedom bus ride — to demand the rights of immigrants and people of color.” Beale rode as a member of Oregon Action, one of the community groups that joined the local coalition.

Also riding the Portland bus were a handful of union members, including two from United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555. Olga Medvedeva, a 23-year-old Russian immigrant and 5-year employee of Dennis Uniform, said she rode for the sake of her family; so did Hamid Abu-Adas, a 73-year-old Palestinian immigrant and former school principal who has worked as a courtesy clerk at the downtown Safeway Store for 12 years.

Abu-Adas said he lost his home twice — once to the Israelis in the 1948 war and again in 1985 during the Lebanese civil war. Now he just wants to reunite his family. He has 14 sons and daughters living in Jordan, Syria, Denmark and California, but attempts to get permission for his sons in Jordan to come to the United States have foundered because of mistakes by U.S. immigration authorities, he said.

Soon after leaving Portland, the Oregon contingent joined up with buses from Seattle and then made their way to Pasco, where they rallied with dairy workers at the Threemile Canyon Farm who want to join the United Farm Workers. They then headed to Walla Walla for a shift- change rally at a Smith’s Food Processing plant. Similar events were held along the route, which ran through Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio and West Virginia before converging with all the other buses in Washington, D.C.

A convoy of two buses from Los Angeles was delayed for several hours Sept. 26 after being stopped by the U.S. Border Patrol just outside El Paso, Texas. The passengers were ordered off the buses and into the Border Patrol offices, where they then refused to provide the documentation officials were demanding, said Freedom Rider leadman Leone Bicchieri.

“They were asked for their identification but the passengers felt it was racial profiling and exercised their right to remain silent,” Bicchieri told reporters. “Almost everyone on both buses are people of color.”

The buses were released following the intervention of El Paso Bishop Armando X. Ochoa and two members of Congress, who called on the Border Patrol, which is now a part of the Department of Homeland Security, to allow the passengers to proceed.

Altogether, more than 900 people were expected to join the ride, which had nine routes and stopped for events in 80 cities in 42 states.

Riders were expected to arrive in D.C. Oct. 1 and to meet with members of Congress before heading to New York City for a rally in front of the Statue of Liberty and an Oct. 4 mass rally at New York’s Flushing Meadows Park. Organizers predicted the rally will draw 10,000 people.

The campaign’s aim is to show support for five principles that would guide immigration reform. The coalition wants to see immigration laws that:
• Reward work by granting legal status to hardworking taxpaying workers already in the country.
• Renew democracy by clearing a path to citizenship to new Americans.
• Restore labor protections so that all workers get fair treatment on job. [This is a call for legislation to overturn the Supreme Court’s Hoffman Plastics decision, which held that laws protecting workers don’t apply to workers who are in the United States illegally.]
• Reunite families by streamlining outdated immigration processes. [Right now the average waiting time for a lawful permanent resident to establish residency is 10 years.]
• Respect civil rights and civil liberties, so that immigrants aren’t singled out for suspicion by police and government agencies. [After Sept. 11, immigrants from Middle Eastern countries were required to register with authorities, even those who are refugees from oppressive regimes the United States opposes.]

“Right now, we have bad laws that harm good people,” Davila said, noting that the overwhelming majority of immigrants, like earlier generations of immigrant arrivals, are workers coming to the United States to find jobs.

Three years ago, the national AFL-CIO passed a historic resolution that asked the federal government to rescind sanctions against employers who hire undocumented immigrants. It also advocated amnesty for immigrants already here.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that there are eight million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, and some immigrant rights groups think there may be as many as 11 million.

Based on agreement with the five principles, Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride coalitions formed across the country. The Oregon coalition included the Northwest Oregon Labor Council, HERE Local 9, UFCW, the farmworkers union PCUN, Jobs With Justice, CAUSA, the Rural Organizing Project and Oregon Action. “The coming together in Oregon around this project is really unprecedented,” Davila said.

© Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc.