ICE raid in Englewood??!!

by: lsanchez490

Tue Mar 27, 2007 at 12:23:28 AM EDT

END THE ATTACK ON IMMIGRANTS!
DEFEND THE RIGHTS OF ALL WHO LIVE AND WORK IN NEW JERSEY!

STATE-WIDE SPEAK-OUT AND PROTEST MEETING

Saturday March 31 1:00 PM
Paul Robeson CenterBusch Campus
600 Bartholomew Rd
Piscataway, NJ

Immigrants in New Jersey, as in the rest of the United States, are facing increasing attacks. ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids are being stepped up, tearing families apart, detaining and deporting those who have lived here for years. Demagogic town governments are taking anti-immigrant measures. Morristown, for example, is planning to deputize its police as ICE agents.  Massive workplace raids like the recent one in New Bedford, Mass. can happen at any time. A New Jersey radio station, 101.5, has called for people to turn in their neighbors as suspected undocumented immigrants, encouraging vigilantism.

The attacks on migrants are attacks on all of us. They are aimed at maintaining an underclass of workers who are too terrified to assert their rights to decent pay, working conditions and living conditions.  No one, not even the government, wants to deport 12 million undocumented immigrants who are vital to the economy. The attacks and anti-immigrant laws aim to drive down the cost of all labor, benefiting employers, pitting worker against worker, and hurting us all.

We are fighting back, immigrants and native-born united!  We are speaking out against the attacks and the demagogic proposal in towns like Morristown's and Freehold.  We are starting to organize a Rapid Response Network which will give aid to those confronting ICE raids or employer abuses of immigrants. We are joining with organizations across the country to organize a Second Great  Boycott.

Speak out for the rights of ALL!

We invite your organization's endorsement and participation in this event and in an April 3 noon press conference in New Brunswick

Endorsing organizations(list in formation):
NJ May 1 Coalition
IRATE/First Friends
NJ Civil Rights Defense Committee
Philippine Forum
United Day Laborers of Freehold

Interested in reading about progressive Morristown:
Town seeks new power over illegal immigrants
Morristown wants to give its police the same authority as federal officers

Much respect to Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo.
Hispanics steamed by shock radio stunt

And from a New York Times Article, good old Freehold.

PUBLIC LIVES; Back in the Fight He Picked Decades Ago
Article Tools Sponsored By
By LYNDA RICHARDSON
Published: March 17, 2004

CESAR A. PERALES, the president of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, is revved up. But he is not losing his cool. (He is too cool for that.) He is talking about the fund's wranglings in federal court over the attempt by Freehold Borough in Monmouth County, N.J., to prevent day laborers from gathering at a vacant lot to scout for work.

''The question of the treatment of day laborers is so flagrant, I feel it viscerally,'' Mr. Perales says, leaning over to emphasize the point. ''This is to me as horrific as the segregation that the government imposed in the South. We're seeing local governments treating undocumented workers in a similar fashion, marginalizing them, not wanting them to live where they live. This is a fight that will take a long time.''

F.A.I.R. and Current Nativist Trends in New Jersey

by: lsanchez490

Fri Jan 26, 2007 at 06:00:03 AM EST

This will be an evolving and lengthy diary. I can't help myself. I should probably tell all of you that I was born in Pereira, Colombia. My family crossed the Mexican border to escape the puppet state that is Colombia. I love Englewood because it is as diverse a municipality as you will find in all of Bergen County.

From Wikipedia:

As of the censusGR2 of 2000, there were 26,203 people, 9,273 households, and 6,481 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,056.3/km² (5,322.0/mi²). There were 9,614 housing units at an average density of 754.5/km² (1,952.7/mi²). The racial makeup of the city was 42.49% White, 38.98% African American, 0.27% Native American, 5.21% Asian, 0.05% Pacific Islander, 8.50% from other races, and 4.50% from two or more races. 21.76% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

7.17% of Englewood residents identified themselves as being of Colombian American ancestry in the 2000 Census, the ninth highest percentage of the population of any municipality in the United States.

That is not including the massive Colombian-American colony found in the other D37 municipalities, namely Hackensack, Bergenfield and Bogota.

I'm not sure where this post will go. Inevitably, this will all conclude with more thoughts on the Hispanic leadership in Bergen County. And some of the policies that many of the organizations in New Jersey that claim to represent us support that are a betrayal to our community. But before I get there, I will indulge myself with some personal reading/references/musings. I hope to refute absolutely every single conclusion in FAIR's report.

And yes, I will have to comment on LADA (The Latino American Democratic Association of Bergen County)and why LASO-NJ must succeed and move beyond our seemingly inauspicious birth.