Preschoolers for immigrant rights

I AM writing this letter to share my amazing experience at this year's May Day protest for immigrant rights. I am a teacher at a Head Start preschool in New York City and on May 1 over 30 of the students, their families, and teachers organized to attend the May Day march.

To start with I wanted to highlight the ways in which the border, economics and racism affect the families and children at my school.

I have worked at my preschool for over three years now and the majority of the families at my school are immigrants from Mexico, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti and various other parts of Latin America. A majority of these parents are undocumented and the brutal and racist immigration laws of this country affect every aspect of their life.

To start with, a large number of children at my school (who are between the ages of 3 and 6) have never known their grandparents or other family members, and their parents have not seen their families in years, if not decades.

What is it that is keeping families from knowing and loving and seeing one another you ask? Short answer: Massive walls, guns, racism and poverty. Because a majority of their parents are undocumented, if they return to their home countries they face the risk of never being able to return to their jobs, lives and families in the United States, as crossing the border is both incredibly dangerous as well as expensive.

Recently, I visited Ecuador and volunteered to bring gifts to relatives from a family at my center, as one mother had not seen her entire family in over 15 years! Imagine not being able to see your loved ones for 15 years because you don't have the right "papers" or are considered "illegal."

Another father of a child at my school recently returned to Mexico to deal with family issues. I cannot help but worry and question if this child will ever be able to see her father again. In order for him to return he will have to pay a huge sum for the border crossing and navigate massive border walls, the U.S. military, vigilante militias and cross a brutal desert.

Since the 1990s, when the border was further militarized under then-President Clinton, thousands of immigrants have been forced to cross through the brutal conditions of the Sonora Desert in Arizona. At least 400 people die trying to cross the border each year, as they try to evade the U.S. border patrol and vigilante groups, often getting lost or dying of dehydration in the desert. One former student's older brother died of complications related to crossing the border. When crossing through the desert with his mother and father, the brother suffered intense heat stroke, leading to long-term internal organ damage; a few years later, as a result of these complications, the brother died.

In my eyes U.S. immigration laws murdered his brother, not the desert.

IN 2009 alone, more than 300,000 immigrants were detained and deported by the Obama administration. This has also had a direct affect on the families at my school.

In particular, one child in my class has been separated from her mother for over a year since her mother's deportation. The child was living with her mother in Texas when, one night, her mother was at a club and was caught up in a police raid. She was then handed over to immigration and deported immediately. The child was then sent to New York City to live with her grandmother and has not seen her mother in over a year.

Just imagine the emotional impact on this child having her mother literally disappeared--or, rather, kidnapped. No good-byes, no explanations, just "Mommy is gone and you can't see her anymore." Yet another family ripped apart from one another.

This of course is just the story of one child at my school--but I am sure if you began to ask others, many would have or have heard of similar stories. The constant threat and fear of being deported keeps many of these families from reporting or standing up to abuse by landlords, employers or the police.

From my short years teaching at this school it has not been hard to figure out how these families have been forced to come here by U.S. economic and military policy. One particularly amazing banner at the May Day march said, "We're Here Because You're There" and it had a picture of U.S. helicopters and tank firing at villagers.

This one banner summed up the entire economic system which forces people to come to the United States. None of the families came here because they had an actual choice; unless by a choice you mean questions like: "Should I accept grinding poverty or try to escape it?" "Should I accept U.S.-backed police and military violence and murder against me or try to escape it?"

One family that I am close with emigrated from Oaxaca, Mexico, a number of years ago. To me it is no coincidence that the North American Free Trade Agreement destroyed the lives of over 300 million Mexican farmers and peasants over the past 15 years and that this family was forced to come here. Nor is it a coincidence that only four years ago, in 2006, the Mexican police and military (with tacit U.S. support and funding of course) brutally crushed, murdered and tortured a mass movement in Oaxaca lead by teachers for better wages and more democracy.

This is true not only in Mexico, but I have a coworker who lived under the reign of a U.S.-backed dictator in Haiti and remembers death squads eliminating anyone who spoke up. Another grandmother at the school remembers her neighbor being murdered by the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic for simply cursing him in public one time, when he was drunk.

U.S. economic measures and support for death squads, dictators and brutal police have made many of these countries so crushingly poor and violent that these families felt they had no other choice but to seek a better future here. And yet, immigrants are blamed for selfishly coming here to "steal" jobs.

THE REASON I wanted to write this letter was to both put a face and story on the inhumanity of the U.S. immigration laws and also to show that immigrants are not necessarily helpless, but will fight and can and do stand up for their rights.

A few weeks before the May Day march, I began talking with my coworkers about the racist SB 1070 in Arizona and the May Day marches that were happening. All of my coworkers had been outraged at the law and how immigrants are treated in this country and a few of us began to discuss how we could organize to go to the march and bring the families at the school with us.

We decided that teachers would introduce the topic to their monthly class meetings and motivate why people should come out to the march. Almost every class was covered and we received resounding support from both parents and staff about the need to fight back. In the days preceding the march, parents were reminded and encouraged to attend.

On the day of the march over 30 parents, staff and their families attended. We met outside the school and waited about half an hour until everyone gathered. As we walked to the train we began some chants like "Arizona, escucha, estamos en la luncha" (Arizona, listen we are in this fight!). As we chanted, a mother and her three children asked where we were going, when we replied "La marcha" she jumped on board with her three kids and stroller in tow.

We were quite the sight to been seen--over 30 parents, teachers and children in strollers carrying signs and flags from various countries. As we rode the train I conversed with the parents and asked questions about how they came to the U.S. and what they thought it would take to win immigrant rights.

In one amazing story, a grandmother revealed that in the 1960s she remembered the U.S. military invasion and the Trujillo dictatorship in Dominican Republic and because of that decided to join the Communist Party to fight for a more just world. She went on to describe that she was subsequently fired from her job at the post office, which forced her to move to the U.S.

When we finally got to the march, there was an air of excitement among all of us and we started chanting "Sí, se puede." While we had to wait a few hours before the march, once the march began the excitement re-emerged. As we marched with thousands of others down Broadway, I felt an amazing sense of solidarity and power amongst marchers and the families from my school.

The march brought out thousands of others to stand in solidarity with undocumented immigrants and against the racist bill in Arizona. Even though it was very hot, and a long march, we went the whole way, baby carriages, toddlers and preschoolers in tow, demanding our voices be heard.

I felt a huge sense of pride when a 5-year-old former student of mine chanted "Obama, escucha, estamos en la lucha!" while holding her mother's hand. That day, we were part of building the movement to fight for her family, and thousands of other families like hers.

After the march everyone eagerly gave their phone numbers to keep in contact for future actions, boycotts and marches. From that day, it was so clear to me that no matter how difficult people's circumstances, people will stand up and fight for their rights. Even though not every family came to the march, the fact that so many did was a huge step forward of people stepping out of the shadows to fight for their own freedom.

After an amazing day of action with coworkers, students and families from my school I had one thought on my mind: "Arizona, you better watch out because we are just getting started! La lucha sigue!"