Immigration and housing activists tell Sheriff Stanek: ‘Not one more deportation or e

[ckaihatsu]

Immigration and housing activists tell Sheriff Stanek: ‘Not one more deportation or eviction’

By staff

Minneapolis, MN - On Dec. 19, MIRAc’s No More Deportations campaign and Occupy Homes MN joined together to protest deportations and evictions in Hennepin County. They demanded that Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek stop evicting people from their homes and stop cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deport immigrants from the county jail.

The protest started outside the Hennepin County jail, where immigrants are routinely turned over to ICE for deportation, even if they have not been convicted of any crime. Outside the jail, a street theater skit began in which “Mr. Rich” (Mr. Grinch) came to steal the holidays by deporting and evicting as many people as possible in the interests of the 1%. The group then marched to City Hall, went inside the building and marched to Sheriff Stanek’s office door.

The street theater continued there, where Mr. Rich was confronted by three “ghosts of evictions and deportations past,” who spoke about their experiences with eviction and deportation in Hennepin County. The protesters also set up a full-size Christmas tree directly outside the Sheriff’s office, decorated with ornaments with anti-deportation and anti-eviction messages.

“Sheriff Stanek used our tax dollars to violently and illegally raid my home on Election Day, breaking down my door and forcing my daughter to walk barefoot across broken glass,” said Jaymie Kelly, who remains in her home and is currently fighting her eviction with Occupy Homes MN. “We should not be using tax dollars to violently separate families and force them into the streets. It’s time for Scrooge Stanek to change his ways. Not one more eviction or deportation!”

According to Brad Sigal of the No More Deportations campaign, “Sheriff Stanek holds immigrants in the county jail for ICE to come deport them. He doesn’t have to do that. This holiday season, we demand that he stop using the jail as a deportation machine. Everyone should be able to stay in their home with their families for the holidays.”

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]






This email was sent to [email protected]
why did I get this? unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
Fight Back! News · P.O. Box 582564 · Minneapolis, MN 55440 · USA

[Bala Perdida]

There's already homeless people freezing to death and these racist bourgeois want to throw them out to suffer the same fate. To think that people actually call them criminals for trying to raise their living standards, and think that allowing them to stay in their houses is rewarding criminal activity is both stupid and despicable. These conservative assholes who think they deserve privilege for being born on a different mound of dirt than they where make me sick. These democrat assholes are worse in a way for exploiting these people and giving them false hope that they're going to help them.

[WilliamGreen]

Amen

[ckaihatsu]

Immigrant struggle for drivers licenses heats up in Minnesota

By Brad Sigal

Minneapolis, MN - With the new legislative session underway, the drivers licenses for all campaign is kicking back into high gear in Minnesota. The immigrant rights movement is mobilizing to press the state legislature and Governor Dayton to pass a bill that would grant basic equality for immigrants.

Currently undocumented immigrants cannot get drivers licenses in Minnesota. Due to extreme weather and inadequate public transportation, the thousands of immigrants that live in Minnesota are forced to drive for everyday tasks, like getting to work and taking children to school. Many of the immigrants that are deported and separated from their families first get ensnared in the criminal justice system when they are stopped for driving without a license. Once in the criminal justice system, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) intervenes and starts deportation proceedings against many people who have done nothing more than drive to work.

According to Eder Alarcon of the No More Deportations campaign, “I think that as members of the immigrant community we need to struggle for drivers licenses to have access to one of the most important and necessary means of transportation in our state. If Minnesota grants drivers licenses to immigrants it would reduce one of the main causes of immigrants being detained and deported. Drivers licenses are one of the main needs of immigrants to be able to get to jobs that there’s no other way to get to without driving.”

Several other states allow immigrants to get drivers licenses, and immigrants’ rights activists have won recent victories in places like Illinois and Washington D.C. which now allow immigrants to get drivers licenses.

Immigrant rights activists in Minnesota have mobilized for several years to try to get the state legislature and the governor to allow immigrants to get a Minnesota drivers licenses. When the Democrats won control of both houses of the state legislature and the governor’s office in 2012, hopes were high that drivers’ licenses for all could finally be passed after several years without success due to Republican control of the Senate, and prior to 2010, a Republican governor. Yet even with Democratic control of both houses of the state legislature and with a Democratic governor, it has still been an uphill battle to get the drivers license bill passed.

Last year a vigorous campaign succeeded in getting the Minnesota Senate to pass the drivers licenses bill, SF271. Hundreds of Latino immigrants and progressive supporters packed one committee hearing after another until the bill passed the Senate. But as last year’s legislative session wound down, the House version of the bill, HF348, stalled and Governor Dayton signaled he was reluctant to support it. At the end of the session several people staged a hunger strike at the Capitol over the issue, but in the end the House and the governor wouldn’t budge, killing the bill for the year. Since it passed the Senate last session, this year the bill just needs to pass the House and be signed by Governor Dayton.

The driver’s license campaign in Minnesota is led by the community organization Mesa Latina, with support from the whole immigrant rights movement. On March 14, Mesa Latina led a meeting that rallied more than 200 people at the Waite House Community Center to kick off the campaign to win drivers licenses this year. At that meeting a march at the Capitol for drivers licenses for all was announced for Wednesday, March 26 at 3:00 p.m., with more mobilizations to come as the legislative session advances. Mesa Latina is also encouraging people to sign the online petition to support the Drivers License bill in the House, HF348.

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]






This email was sent to [email protected]
why did I get this? unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
Fight Back! News · P.O. Box 582564 · Minneapolis, MN 55440 · USA

[ckaihatsu]

Immigrant rights activists protest Sheriff Stanek fundraiser

By Brad Sigal

http://www.fightbacknews.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/article-lead-photo/_florencio%20julio%2020140604.jpg

Minneapolis, MN - Chanting, “Stanek says deportation! We say no!” 30 immigrant rights activists protested outside Hennepin County Sheriff Richard Stanek’s reelection campaign fundraiser here June 4. Protesters marched around the busy downtown intersection of Nicollet and 9th Street for an hour, while chanting, handing out flyers and engaging the public. Stanek’s fundraiser was inside at the Minneapolis Downtown Council office. Two activists tried to enter Sheriff Stanek’s fundraiser but were immediately confronted by police, threatened with arrest and kicked out.

The protest was organized by the No More Deportations campaign of the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC). Protesters were highly visible marching in the crowded Nicollet Mall area, educating the public about Sheriff Stanek’s role in deporting immigrants and separating families.

More immigrants are deported from Sheriff Stanek’s Hennepin County jail than any other in Minnesota. Stanek has also lobbied for anti-immigrant legislation at the state legislature. Stanek is running for reelection in November so he has been campaigning in many communities, including in the Latino community, smiling and waving on a float in the Cinco de Mayo parade on Lake Street.

Activists with MIRAC’s No More Deportations campaign say they will continue to pressure Sheriff Stanek until he agrees to stop cooperating with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement’s ‘hold requests’ on immigrants in the Hennepin County jail. The activists see this as a way to prevent deportations that separate families. 2 million people have been deported since President Obama took office in 2009, more than Bush deported during his entire eight years in office, and more than any other president in U.S. history.

While immigrant rights activists continue to push President Obama to take executive action to stop deportations nationally, campaigns are gaining momentum on the local level to pressure sheriffs to stop cooperating with ICE in detaining and deporting so many people. These campaigns have been successful in several major cities and counties around the country.

On June 4, the same day as the Minneapolis protest, there was a victory in San Diego county in California where Sheriff Bill Gore said in a statement, "The Sheriff's Department will no longer hold someone past their release date based on an ICE detainer alone.” A recent federal court decision has bolstered activists’ efforts to get local sheriffs to stop honoring ICE hold requests. The court decision held that a local jail had violated the Fourth Amendment by granting the detainer request without probable cause or a court-approved warrant.

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]






This email was sent to [email protected]
why did I get this? unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
Fight Back! News · P.O. Box 582564 · Minneapolis, MN 55440 · USA

[ckaihatsu]

Immigrants demand Minnesota drivers licenses on opening day of legislature

http://www.fightbacknews.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/article-lead-photo/Mirac_OneStateOneLicense_2015_OpeningDay_crowd_tak en_by_Kim_DeFranco-1%20%282%29.jpg

By Brad Sigal

Saint Paul, MN - Chanting “What do we want? A license! When do we want it? Now!” more than 60 immigrant rights activists protested at the State Capitol on the opening day of the 2015 legislative session. They demanded that legislators pass a bill this year to give immigrants who live in Minnesota equal rights to get a drivers license like all other Minnesotans.

The protest was organized by the new One State One License Coalition, which includes organizations, unions and community members.

The group rallied outside on the Capitol steps, braving below-zero temperatures. Representative Karen Clark spoke to the protesters. Clark has championed the drivers license bill since 2009, and she thanked the protesters for being there and pledged to push to pass a bill this year for an unmarked drivers license. Other speakers included Maria Cisneros, one of the initiators of the Minnesota drivers license campaign in 2008; Luis Candela, who spoke about families that need to drive their children for medical appointments and emergencies; and Florencio Campos, a leader in the drivers license campaign.

When the outdoor rally finished, the protesters moved inside the capitol where they marched silently with fists raised, stopping in front of the House and Senate chambers.

Before the protest, members of the One State One License Coalition (http://fightbacknews.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a29530af96a02fc55d345e735&id=5d87f6965e&e=d323598fe4) also talked to legislators about the need to pass a drivers license bill this year. Another group, Mesa Latina, also lobbied for drivers licenses on the opening day of the session.

The movement for drivers licenses in Minnesota is part of a nationwide movement demanding that states allow immigrants to get drivers licenses so they can drive without fear of harassment, arrest and deportation. While President Obama’s recent immigration executive action will help some people avoid deportation, those people are only protected temporarily and there are still an estimated 7 million people who won’t be covered at all. They will still be at risk of arrest and deportation every time they drive to work or to pick their children up from school. So struggles for drivers licenses at the state level are continuing. Recently there have been successes in several states including a huge victory in California, which just started issuing drivers licenses to immigrants this week after a years-long struggle there.

The question of whether to accept a ‘marked’ drivers license that’s significantly different than the license everyone else has emerged as a point of controversy in many states. Immigrant rights activists are having to struggle with resistant state legislators and federal Homeland Security officials. This controversy played out in California over the past year where activists struggled against proposals to make immigrants’ licenses a different color, and also struggled over whether to have a marking on the front or the back of the license which reads, "This card is not acceptable for official federal purposes." During this controversy in California, State Sen. Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles) spoke out in the media against these markings saying, "covering the fronts of licenses with this information that Homeland Security is demanding would subject the holders to unnecessary discrimination and possible harassment.”

Other states debating drivers licenses for immigrants have also proposed substantially different licenses for immigrants, like in North Carolina where politicians proposed to add the words "No Lawful Status" in red on immigrants’ licenses, and in Alabama where officials proposed marking the licenses with "FN" for Foreign National.

The original Minnesota drivers license bill introduced in 2009 called for an unmarked drivers license, but the version of the bill that almost passed last year had been amended to be a drivers license that would be marked.

Immigrant rights activists have cautioned that police and other institutions could use such marked licenses to identify people’s immigration status and possibly use it against them. According to Marco Cruz Blanco, a member of the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC), “More than a driver's license to secure our roads, having an unmarked form of identification empowers individuals of diverse backgrounds to assert their cultural and ethnic identity against a system that too often racially profiles, resulting in unjust arrests or even deportation.”

In summing up the day, Florencio Campos of MIRAC said, “this protest helped kick off our work this year at the legislature. We let them know we are demanding an unmarked drivers license like any other Minnesota resident has. We’re working to make our communities and families more secure.”

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]