Thread: ALIPAC: Waukegan's Immigration battle of boycotts

Waukegan's Immigration battle of boycotts
Activists take immigration issue to businesses

BY BOB SUSNJARA
bsusnjara@dailyherald.com
Posted Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Money is the tool being used by opposing sides of the illegal immigration issue in Waukegan.

Hispanic activists continued to travel the city Wednesday asking business owners to place signs in their windows against a plan for city police to acquire federal deportation powers. The activists last week started calling for illegal immigrants to boycott businesses without the signs.

In a counter-move, Americans for Legal Immigration plan to stage a "shop in Waukegan" effort Sunday and boycott businesses displaying the signs distributed by the Hispanic activists.

All the rhetoric is leading up to a Waukegan city council meeting Monday night. That's when aldermen intend to take a formal vote on whether to let police submit an application for the special power to enforce federal immigration laws.

Lilia Paredes, vice president of the Chicago metropolitan chapter of Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, said her group and others will continue pressuring the city with boycotts and other economic-driven actions if the immigration enforcement idea isn't scrapped.



"This is going to be an arduous battle, but we're ready for it," Paredes said.

William Gheen, a spokesman for the Raleigh, N.C.-based Americans for Legal Immigration, contends most U.S. citizens want local police to have deportation powers.

Gheen said his group will try to thwart the Hispanic organizations backing the illegal immigrants by leading a day of shopping in Waukegan. It starts noon Sunday outside city hall, 100 N. Martin Luther King Drive.

"Chicago is the next Los Angeles," Gheen said. "Chicago is invasion central. You have a very, very serious problem with illegal immigration in Chicago."

Emma Lozano, a leader in the Centro Sin Fronteras organization that's involved in local immigration issues, said more than 150 stores and restaurants have displayed the placards against the Waukegan police plan.

Lozano and Paredes contend the boycott appears to be an early success and aren't worried about the plans by Americans for Legal Immigration. They say some businesses that initially declined the signs are now asking for them.

But Gheen said he doesn't think the Hispanic activists' Waukegan effort will go far. He said similar boycotts flopped in the Southwest.

If Waukegan gains approval from the Department of Homeland Security, the special federal program would allow police to identify, process and detain immigration offenders they encounter on the job. Mayor Richard Hyde said it might take up to a year for the city to receive federal permission, with rejection a possibility.

Waukegan's proposal was the subject of a town-hall meeting last month that drew about 1,500 mostly Hispanic spectators to Holy Family Catholic Church. Another 5,000 people stood outside because of fire code regulations. Hyde attended the meeting an in effort to ease tensions in the Hispanic community.

He told the crowd Waukegan won't participate in or condone raids on employers or community institutions. He said police would use the special deportation authority only in the effort to prosecute suspects in felonies, such as homicide, rape and child abuse.

Lozano said there is no reason to trust Waukegan police based on its past treatment of Hispanics. She said she also doubts Hyde's commitments would pass muster with federal officials, which is another reason she contends the police shouldn't seek deportation powers.

"You're not going to be flexible with Homeland Security," Lozano said. "You have no choice. You have to go by their rules."

http://www.dailyherald.com/story.asp?id=330599

Emma Lozano, a leader in the Centro Sin Fronteras organization that's involved in local immigration issues, said more than 150 stores and restaurants have displayed the placards against the Waukegan police plan.

Emma needs to send us a list of these stores because ALIPAC members have been looking for the yellow signs in Waukegan and they have only seen 2. More OBL leg pulling?

Dixie

Oh really...you could not mean Emma is exaggerating...why they would never do that ...just ask the OBL's the number of illegal aliens in our country and the will give you a honest count of 12 million...maybe she just can not COUNT
maybe in their math 2= 150
12 million =30 million
aztec math

A little historyon Emma Lozano


Author: Emile Schepers
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 06/12/03 12:03
Opinion

On the morning of June 8, 1983, Rudy Lozano, chief Midwest field organizer of the old International Ladies Garment Workers Union, was murdered in cold blood in his house in the Little Village neighborhood on Chicago’s southwest side. The forces behind his killing have never been conclusively identified.

Rudy was one of the most important political figures in Chicago at that time, even though he was seldom seen on the evening television news or on the front pages of the big newspapers. This young Mexican American, born in Harlington, Texas, had grown up in Chicago and contributed much to the city’s progressive politics.

It was Rudy, more than anyone else, who united Chicago’s Mexican and Puerto Rican communities behind the campaign to elect Harold Washington mayor of Chicago in 1983. Washington won the election and became Chicago’s first African American mayor and the most progressive mayor in the city’s history. Rudy himself, just a short time before, had fallen just seven votes short of entering a runoff election for a seat in the Chicago City Council. Had he won, he would have been the first Mexican American alderman and one of the few not controlled by machine patronage politics.

Furthermore, Rudy was doing pioneering work in the effort to bring union recognition and justice on the job to immigrant workers, including the undocumented. He was an effective organizer of low-paid workers in the city’s tortilla factories, among other places.

Twenty years have passed since the tragic day of Rudy’s murder. Have we advanced in the causes for which Rudy Lozano fought and with which his name will always be identified?

We have to acknowledge that there have been many retreats, defeats and disappointments, particularly in politics. Harold Washington died in office in 1987 and Chicago politics has generally taken a turn for the worse. On a national level, the Bush administration is even more ferociously reactionary than Ronald Reagan was in 1983 — something that Rudy would have probably found hard to believe. The Soviet Union and many other socialist countries are now capitalist backwaters. This would have distressed Rudy, who was an ardent fighter for socialism.

But there have been advances, too. There are now eight Latinos in the Chicago city council, seven in the Illinois House, and four in the Illinois Senate.

One thing stands out that would have made Rudy very happy: organized labor in the U.S., from local unions all over the country to the top leadership of the AFL-CIO, has now embraced the cause of the undocumented workers 100 percent. What at the time was a controversial, difficult position for Rudy to take has now become a major priority for labor.

[b]Last year, Sin Fronteras, an organization in Chicago headed by Rudy’s sister Emma Lozano and modeled on his example, turned in 12,000 “Reward Workâ€

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