Chicago to SF - Immigrant community resistance growing

On March 10, 2006, hundreds of thousands of immigrant community members and grassroots organizations marched and rallied in Chicago to demand Immigrant Rights and Dignity now. On February 25, 2006 hundreds marched and rallied in Oakland, CA's Fruitvale district as well. People are resisting the Post 911 scapegoating of immigrants and our communities all over this country.
Over 10 years ago I participated with numerous grassroots organizations in an immigrant rights hunger strike in the aftermath of the passage of CA's Prop 187 [1994] and in the wake of the racist federal immigration policy changes [1996] at that time as well.
In San Francisco today, many of my comrades in the immigrant rights movement - from groups like the SF Day Labor Program, Chinese Progressive Association, Filipinos for Affirmative Action, Asian Immigrant Women Advocates and others - are supporting a new hunger strike beginning on Tues March 21 at the Federal Building in San Francisco.
More info on the anti-immigrant bills.
Please do what you can to help spread the word - SOLIDARITY NOW.

Hunger Strike for Immigrant rights - Join Asian American/Pacific Islander Contingent

March 21, Tuesday, 5 pm - Opening March, Dolores Park to Federal Building, SanFrancisco

March 22, Wednesday, 12pm the Chinese Progressive Association (415-391-6986) is coordinating participation of the May 1st Alliance, a multi-ethnicalliance of worker-based organizations, and the PressEvent in front of the SF Federal Building connecting African American and immigrant struggles and spotlighting the bills' impact on workers.

March 27, Monday, 11am Filipinos for Affirmative Action (510-465-9976) is coordinating the March toSenator Feinstein's office (Montgomery & Market) and the Press Event. You can also contact FAA if you want to volunteer to be a hunger striker.

For more information re the API Contingent at theMarch 21st Opening March, contact: Miriam Ching Yoon Louie (chinglouie@igc.org) and Elisa Gahng theangelswereastronauts@gmail.com) , Korean Youth Cultural CenterEunice Cho, National Network for Immigrant and RefugeeRights, & Jamae Sori (echo@nnirr.org) Sheila Chung, Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition(sheila@immigrantrights.org)

Check http://www.immigrantrights.org for updates about HungerStrike Action Week

SF and Bay Area Teachers are mobilizing to support the hunger strike -

This is from Karen Zapata of Teachers for Social Justice -
Hi all! At our last meeting we decided to mobilize tosupport the actions of the Bay Area Immigrant RightsCoalition in the fight against HR 4437*. Let’s get ateacher contingent out to make a statement againstthis attack on immigrant rights! (visithttp://www.immigrantrights.org/ for more info on the weeklong events they have planned)

RALLY: Saturday, March 25th, 2006, Noon at the FederalBldg. (Golden Gate and Larkin, SF) Teachers 4 SocialJustice will have a banner, RSVP if you can make it!
If you are interested in hunger striking, even for 1day (Friday eve till Saturday eve for example), pleasego to their planning meeting: Monday, March 20 from5-8pm, St. Peter’s Housing– 474 Valencia St., Room120, SF
*The Sensenbrenner Bill (HR 4437) would:

• Turn any person or organization that helps, employs,or provides any service to an undocumented immigrantinto a criminal, including family members.
• Promote collaboration between federal immigrationagents and local police agents, promote the use ofstereotypes and discrimination against anyone that“seems” or “sounds” foreign.
• Promote racial discrimination in employment,housing, and facilitate retaliation against anyimmigrant that defends her/his legal rights.
• Militarize the border even more, which doesn’taddress the root causes immigration, but has causedmore than 4,000 deaths since 1994.
• Will make it illegal to enter this country withfalse documents, which puts refugees and asylumseekers at risk, among others.

for more info visit http://immigrantrights.org/