Image: Sikh Coalition

Originally posted at CultureStrike

The carnage that erupted over the weekend at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin is the latest stitch in a very long pattern of alienation and hostility that has befallen Sikh Americans over the past decade. Jeers and harassment, violent attacks, and hateful political rhetoric have all woven a mesh of fear and muted outrage around the country’s burgeoning Sikh community. And now, this horrific intrusion into a house of worship marks one of the most brutal violations yet of the community’s physical and psychological public space. The explanations for such a targeted and ferocious attack (which have been linked to white supremacist ideology) aren’t rational, can’t easily be boiled down to simple ignorance. But  many are delicately rethinking how cultural perception shapes attitudes toward the Other.

Democracy Now! has reported extensively on the patterns of violence and harassment against Sikhs since 9/11. Rajdeep Singh explained the history of Sikh immigration to the U.S. The political struggles of this community — entwined with anti-imperialist movements across the diaspora as well as America’s unique brand of nativist racism — long predate the most recent spate of attacks against Sikh, Muslim, Arab and South Asian communities. But Singh points to a powerful thread of historical and social consciousness that has shaped their identity:

Sikhs began to migrate to the United States at the end of the 19th century. Many of them, in fact most of them settled on the west coast and worked as farmers and laborers. In fact, there were some hate incidents. Many people aren’t aware of this but there were actually race riots in which Sikhs were targeted around the very early part of the 20 century; the early 1900s. Notwithstanding some of the bigotry and overt hostility which they faced, they built very successful careers as farmers, agriculturalists, entrepreneurs, professionals. Many people are not aware of this but Sikhs have been in this country for over a century. We are thriving in the professions that we pursue, but unfortunately and ironically, we are still facing existential challenges in the form of hate crimes and other forms of discrimination.

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Photo: Shiho Fukada, Coalition of Immokalee Workers (ciw-online.org)

Originally posted on In These Times

Last month public health advocates and researchers from around the world convened at the International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C. to discuss the state of the crisis. But many of the communities most affected were not in the room. Some, like sex workers, were explicitly barred from entering the country. Others were excluded by their economic and political circumstances. Far from the conference, the country’s farms are quietly stalked by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, but struggling migrant farmworkers may not realize they’re at risk until it’s too late.

HIV is one of a myriad of health issues facing migrant farmworkers, but it’s unique in that so little is known about the scope of the problem. Farmworkers are typically cut off from regular social welfare programs and lack insurance, and there are deep gaps in research about HIV prevalence in this population.

Access to healthcare is virtually out of reach for workers tied down by systemic exploitation. The most marginalized farmworkers, the vast majority of them Latino, face high risks of job-related illnesses and injury, abusive working conditions and, frequently, sexual violence against women.

The most recent research that focuses specifically on farmworkers and HIV is alarming, but sparse. A Centers for Disease Control investigation of about 300 farmworkers in Immokalee, Florida, (an area notorious for labor exploitation on tomato farming operations), found a prevalence rate of 5 percent. Other studies have found rates ranging from less than half a percent to 13 percent. Overall, the new HIV infection rates for Latino men and women are especially high compared to those for the white population. The bottom line is that there is a dire need for more in-depth research. Read the rest of this entry →

Anti-racist demonstrations in the southern suburb of Kalithea, where repeated racist attacks took place against Egyptian immigrants. Three persons where injured, one of whom was hospitalized with multiple injuries from beating. (Image courtesy Zalmaï for Human Rights Watch)

Cross-posted from CultureStrike

Douglas Kesse, a Ghanaian asylum seeker who recently landed in Greece, was bewildered by how he was received in the cradle of Western Civilization. Reflecting on the epidemic of anti-immigrant attacks, he told human rights investigators, ”As human beings, we shouldn’t be treated like this…. I am not an animal to be chased with sticks.”

When anti-immigrant violence flares up in our communities, it may seem irrational, crazy, sometimes outright barbaric. But there’s one universal rule that holds true around the world: xenophobic riots, purges, and state crackdowns throughout history have hewed to a chilling logic; people respond to real threats–primarily economic instability or social upheaval–by lashing out at make-believe threats–like the neighbor who came from Mexico to build your other neighbor’s house. This is hardly unique to the U.S.: the anti-immigrant hatred that has erupted across Europe is actually a chilling parallel to the bigotry exhibited toward immigrants in places like Arizona. And in a place like Greece, where economic crisis is tearing society apart, it’s open season for xenophobia.

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DREAMActivist.org

Cross-posted from CultureStrike

It’s July 4, and wherever you are in the country right now, you’re probably not too far from a burst of fireworks, a parade replete with waving flags and confetti, or a solemn recitation of the pledge of allegiance. You’re also probably not far from the home of someone who is deprived of that sense of belonging, cut off from the privileges of citizenship that others take for granted, and perhaps even reluctant to show themselves in public, for fear of being rounded up and expelled from the country.  In the face of the enormous injustices facing so many who are Americans in all but legal status, the trappings of our 4th of July celebrations may be difficult to appreciate: the commercialized displays of blatant nationalism, the valorization of our wars abroad and unbridled drive for capitalist prosperity at home.  You might wonder why people whose very presence in this country has been criminalized and shamed would feel a sense of cultural allegiance and even national solidarity, particularly when they’re barraged with jingoistic vitriol from “fellow Americans” hell-bent on making them feel as unwelcome as possible. Why would people embrace a country that paints them as “aliens” or dismisses their very being as unlawful?

But again and again, youth who have rallied in support of the DREAM Act and immigration reform voice their desire to be full citizens, to finally be affirmed as true Americans. Which America are we talking about, here? Read the rest of this entry →

Julio Salgado

Cross-posted from CultureStrike

The hardships of being an undocumented immigrant go beyond the threats of deportation, xenphobic racism, or economic exploitation. Those issues are undoubtedly pervasive, but a more subtle undercurrent of the struggle is the constant feeling that you’re not free to just be, the unrelenting pressure to hide. And for many immigrants, the indignity of having to live underground is compounded by other forms of alienation, especially at the intersection of queerness and undocumented status.

CultureStrike’s Julio Salgado, an undocuqueer artist who’s come out twice–as undocumented and gay–has made a point of exposing the cross-cutting barriers he’s encountered. And he uses art to break through them with his incisive poster art and mini-dramas at Dreamers Adrift, a media project for and by immigrant youth.

The challenges facing LGBT immigrant activists tie into discrimination within immigrant communities as well as in “mainstream” U.S. culture and politics. So how do you deal with a fellow activist who’s progressive on immigrant rights but regressive on queer issues? As Dreamers Adrift explains, it can be pretty damn awkward.

The dilemma has spawned an offshoot of immigrant youth activism, the Undocuqueer Project. At America’s Voice, project co-founder Alex Aldana reflected on revelations he experienced on the 3000-mile Campaign for the American Dream Walk:

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Dianne Ovalle

Cross-posted from Culture/Strike:

Was it a DREAM fulfilled, or nothing more than a dream? The morning after Obama announced the halting of deportations of young immigrants, activists are trying to grasp what, if anything, they’ve won.

We have a promise from the White House that it will not deport an estimated several hundred thousand undocumented youth who have completed high school education or the equivalent, have clean records, and fulfill other criteria.  At the very least, DREAMers have less reason to fear being rounded up and deported en masse. But the gingerly worded announcement strikes more skeptical activists as a kind of rhetorical rorschach: is it one step toward full legalization? Is it simply, as Obama himself admitted, a stopgap until Congress acts–and therefore a way to punt the issue to a political black hole?  In the wake of Obama’s previous disappointing initiatives to ease up on deportations, some say the “new” White House position on DREAMers is just restating business as usual.

While the move was clearly a political calculation, many DREAMers are determined to read between Obama’s lines hope for more systemic reforms in the future. It’s a positive and heartening announcement, no doubt. But halting deportations for some does not even begin to answer the demand that DREAMers were pushing all along: an immigration system that redefines citizenship in a way that is humane, equitable, and conscious of the realities of a globalized world. Read the rest of this entry →

DreamActivist via flickr

Cross-posted from Culture/Strike

The news is out–and so are undocumented youth around the country who hope that this time, there may be real change ahead. The Obama administration today announced that he will grant undocumented young people temporary immigration relief via an administrative directive by the Department of Homeland Security. The policy would apparently partially fulfill the goals of the DREAM Act campaign by allowing many undocumented immigrants to avoid deportation if they were “brought to the United States before they turned 16 and are younger than 30,” according to the Associated Press, and have obtained a high school education or served in the military, and have no criminal record. Though it is not a comprehensive path toward full citizenship, the policy would reportedly help several hundred thousand youth avoid deportation and allow them to “apply for a work permit that will be good for two years with no limits on how many times it can be renewed.”

It appears that this is the administration’s effort to respond to this week’s nationwide mobilization for undocumented youth, coupled with the heightened media attention surrounding Jose Antonio Vargas’s TIME Magazine cover story (featuring CultureStrike’s own Julio Salgado).

Jose Antonio Vargas and his project Define American hailed the new policy as a validation of the struggles of DREAMers and their allies–and acknowledged that many others are still seeking a just and humane immigration solution:

The journey is far from over for the remaining millions of undocumented Americans like me–at 31, I am past the age limit–but this is a big, bold and necessary step in the road to citizenship. Read the rest of this entry →

Cross-posted from In These Times

An African man who was attacked following a rightwing rally in Tel Aviv, May 23, 2012 (photo: Oren Ziv/activestills.org)

Israel has always had issues with space, displacing Palestinian populations and carving out new settlements. Now, a growing migrant population has evoked a fresh wave of xenophobic rage. Last month, Tel Aviv was the site of rabid attacks on shops and residents in African migrant communities.

CNN reported:

Israeli protesters chanted slogans such as “infiltrators get out” and “Tel Aviv: A refugee camp”. Three members of the right wing Likud party–part of the governing coalition–were among the politicians who attended. One of them, Miri Regev, was quoted as saying that “the Sudanese are like a cancer in society.”

Amin, an Eritrean migrant whose business, a local bar, was destroyed by rioters, told the Jerusalem Post in bewilderment, “They just smashed the place up. They destroyed everything. Why? What for? What have we done to them?”

In this nation built by refugees of war and genocide, the protesters seemed oblivious to the historical refraction of this display of mob terror and smashed glass. If anything, their hatred for migrants living and working among them resonated with bigotry overseas, particularly anti-Latino jingoist campaigns in the United States.

Haaretz quoted a shoe seller in the Hatikva neighborhood who seemed inspired by America’s legacy of racism.

“It will become Harlem here,” Kuzarov warned. “You walk here on Shabbat and you don’t see anyone our color. This was the happiest place in the world; now it’s become a black grave.” Read the rest of this entry →

Cross-posted from Alternet.

There aren’t many jobs in the U.S. that are tougher than farmwork–spending the day picking crops under a sweltering sun, earning just enough to survive, jumping from one unstable seasonal job to another. But the job is especially unbearable if you have to work yourself to exhaustion all day under the watch of the man who raped you.

There have over the years been numerous reports of widespread sexual abuse of women farmworkers–everything from being called demeaning names by supervisors to brutal sexual assault. Many of the victims suffer in silence, cut off from law enforcement and social services and fearful of losing their jobs if they come forward to authorities, according to a report on sexual violence in agricultural work by Human Rights Watch.

The report, based on dozens of interviews with survivors and advocates, outlines the multiple barriers to justice that women face–not just institutional sexism but also crippling poverty and discrimination in law enforcement. Women may feel they have little choice but to suffer humiliating treatment and abuse in order to support their families. The consequences of reporting sexual violence can be devastating for the whole household, because the boss might fire both the victim and the family members who work alongside her. Read the rest of this entry →