CWA 1180 - News

CWA 1180 rallies with 'Freedom Riders' to call for immigrant rights
October 2003

On Saturday, October 4 in Flushing Meadows Park, Queens, NY, 1180 members joined tens of thousands of immigrants and their advocates gathered to demand civil rights for immigrant workers living in the Untied States. The rally was the culmination of a 12-day long coast-to-coast busride made by close to 1,000 immigrants and mirrored the1960's Freedom Rides of the civil rights movement. The event was organized by a coalition of immigrants, immigrant advocates, politicians, and labor leaders who stopped at more than 100 cities to push their agenda of a clear path to citizenship and legalization, more visas to ease the process of family reunification and worker's rights for the millions of immigrants living in the United States with no legal protections.

The Freedom Riders spent October 2 and 3 in Washington lobbying Congress to support their immigrants rights platform.

Undocumented immigrants contribute an estimated $730 million each year to the U.S. economy and have been the backbone of the country's workforce since its inception. Many of the country's immigrants are from locations such as Mexico that provide resources and cheap labor that affords the United States its comfortable lifestyle. These countries cannot develop while maintaining this relationship with the United States and other highly industrialized countries—these third world conditions drive citizens out of there own country to seek a better life in the US. Unfortunatley, most immigrants find a rough road when they arrive in the States—one of backbraking work for subsistence wages and the threat of deportation is constantly looming.

Just as the Freedom Riders of the 1960s built a movement for disenfranchised African-Americans, the Immigrant Freedom Riders used this symbolic act to capture the attention of this country about the immigrant plight.

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