By the Time I Get to Arizona
by Rev. Colin Bossen, June 6, 2010
Almost twenty years ago the seminal hip-hop group Public Enemy released the track "By the Time I Get to Arizona" in response to the state of Arizona's failure to observe the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. The holiday had initially been opposed by the state's governor Evan Mecham. Mecham's predecessor had declared Martin Luther King, Jr. day to be a holiday via an executive order. One of Mecham's first acts in office was to rescind the holiday. His intention to do so was included in his electoral platform. A few years later the people of Arizona had the opportunity to vote on the holiday via a ballot initiative. They reaffirmed Mecham's decision.
Public Enemy placed these events within the context of our country's long history of white suprematism, rapping, about the governor: "The cracker over there / He try to keep it yesteryear / The good ol' days / The same ol' ways." Twenty years ago the events in Arizona were part of a long history of the oppression of African Americans by certain segments of the white majority. The recent legislation passed in Arizona can be understood in the same context. It is part of the long history of the oppression of people of Latin American and indigenous descendent by certain segments of the white majority.
Arizona State Bill 1070 instructs the state police to stop and request papers from anyone suspected of being an undocumented immigrant. The bill amounts to racial profiling. Those with white skin will almost certainly be given a free pass. Those with brown are likely to be stopped, questioned and harassed. The stated goal of the bill is "attrition through enforcement." There can be little doubt that if the bill implemented--its implementation is scheduled for July 28th--then thousands of Latinos will leave Arizona. Some, primarily the undocumented, will leave because the state will no longer be safe for them. Others will depart simply because they do not wish to live in an environment where the police can stop citizens at any time on the mere suspicion that they might not be legal residents. Arizona then will become a whiter state, a strange fate for land that was originally part of Mexico.
Criticism of State Bill 1070 has been widespread. Members of the communities affected by it have spoken out. So have the usual left leaning commentators. President Obama has condemned the legislation. The Phoenix Suns temporarily changed their name to Los Suns in a show of solidarity. Even the Major League Baseball Players Association has issued a statement opposing the bill.
Unitarian Universalists have not been absent in speaking out against State Bill 1070. Last weekend, through the Unitarian Universalist Association's Standing on the Side of Love Campaign, hundreds of Unitarian Universalists from across the country traveled to Phoenix to take part in a mass mobilization in opposition to the bill. The President of the Unitarian Universalist Association, Peter Morales, was there as was the Association's Moderator and over 50 ministers. Susan Frederick-Grey, the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Phoenix, has been particularly vocal in her opposition to State Bill 1070. She has cast the struggle against it as a "battle against fear" and called opposition to State Bill 1070 "the moral issue of our day."
The migration of vast numbers of people from the global south--Africa, Latin America, the poorer parts of Asia--to the global north--Europe, the United States, the wealthy oil states, Japan--is one of the great moral issues of our day. It fits neatly together, like a piece of a puzzle, with the other great moral issues we face. People migrate from Mexico, Guatemala or Bolivia to the United States in search of economic opportunity and a better future for their children. They come not because they want to but because they have to. Their communities have been devastated by forces--economic, ecological and political--far beyond their control.
Many of the undocumented come to the United States as economic migrants. Since the passage of NAFTA in the mid-1990s it has become increasingly difficult for Mexican campesinos to eke out an existence as subsistence farmers. Giant agricultural combines from the United States and Canada flood the Mexican market with cheap corn. The campesinos cannot compete. In order to survive, they have to sell their corn for more than it costs them to grow it. The combines, in a practice known as dumping, sell the corn for less than it costs to produce it. Once the farmers have been driven out of business the combines raise their prices, recouping whatever it cost them to sell at a loss.
The countryside is being depopulated. The campesinos are heading for the cities. Some find work there and toil in low wage maquiladoras. In these sweatshops they make things that used to be made by union workers in cities like Cleveland. The conditions are dangerous, the hours long and the possibility of organizing for a better life almost nonexistent. Others are reduced to begging, living in shanty towns and scrounging trash heaps for food. Still others sell their bodies, prostituting themselves in dirty streets and back alleys. Faced with these realities a large number decide to make the difficult trek north in search of something better.
That trek has gotten progressively more dangerous over the last thirty years. Once upon a time it was possible to cross from Mexico to the United States by the way of the border towns in Texas or California. These days urban crossings have been rendered almost impossible by a militarized border patrol and a fence that has been built along much of the California and Texas borders. Many who come to the United States today are forced to come through the desert of Arizona. The way is not easy. It is estimated that more than 200 people die each year en route, falling victim to the desert sun, starvation or human violence.
Let us imagine the experience of an individual migrant. We can call him Enrique. Enrique grew up in a small village in Southern Mexico. His parents, grandparents and great grandparents all worked the land--grew corn, squash and bean on small plots that they tilled by horse or hand. Changes in the economy meant that Enrique could not support himself as a farmer. Incapable of making a life for himself at home he decided to move North.
One day Enrique left his village to catch la tren de la muerte, the death train. The train runs from the city of Tapachula in his home state of Chiapas to the state of Veracruz. As it left the station in Tapachula Enrique, along with a couple hundred others, dashed from the brush surrounding the track and grabbed hold of the side of a freight car. He hung there for hours, trying not to loosen his grip and fall beneath the train. Over the next few days, as the train traveled through the Mexican countryside, he witnessed one of his fellow migrants fall asleep, tumble beneath a freight car and be severed in two by the steel wheels. He heard the cries of a second as she was viciously gang raped. He saw bandits rob a third at gunpoint.
Somehow Enrique survived the train trip unscathed. Once in Veracruz, and with a little luck, he managed to hitchhike the rest of the way to the Sonora-Arizona border. There he met a Coyote, someone who specializes in smuggling humans across the border, who agreed to help Enrique cross into the United States for $2,000. Enrique did not have the money. The Coyote cut him a deal. If Enrique would work in a chicken factory the Coyote knew in Iowa then Enrique could pay him back. Enrique would have to turn over his first several paychecks to the Coyote's agent. It was the only way he could pay for the crossing. Enrique agreed. Navigating the desert without a Coyote was unthinkable. The Coyote knew how to avoid the Border Patrol and the desert heat. Without the Coyote Enrique was afraid that he would be caught or succumb to the desert sun.
One night the Coyote led Enrique and about a dozen other migrants through a gap in the border fence. After passing through the fence they ran for several hours. In the dark of the night it was easy to become separated. They lost one of their party, a young woman named Veronica. Enrique wanted to go look for her but the Coyote told him that they could not wait. Fearful of being separated from the group himself Enrique moved on. Near dawn and exhausted the migrants made it to a dirt road where the Coyote had a truck waiting for them. They crammed in back. Then they traveled, cramped in the bed of the truck, to Iowa to start their new lives.
Once in Iowa Enrique, using documents the Coyote had provided him, found a job at a chicken factory. He worked long hours amid chicken blood and the fumes of fecal matter. He developed a persistent cough. He lost a finger in a chicken butchering machine. He paid back the Coyote. He met a young woman. They fell in love. They had a baby girl. Then one day the factory was raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Enrique was picked up, processed and after a trial that lasted approximately one minute, deported to Mexico. ICE dumped him back in Sonora. He was separated from his family, his wife and baby girl. He was faced with the prospect of crossing the border again.
Enrique's story is a work of fiction. It, however, closely mirrors the reality of many migrants. They leave their homes for economic reasons. Their journeys northward are harrowing. Once they reach their destination they work in dangerous jobs, for low wages and constantly face the risk of deportation.
It is a system with clear beneficiaries and clear victims. Enrique does not benefit from it. The owner of the chicken factory does. He can pay the factory's workers less and spend less money on safety equipment because he knows that all of the undocumented immigrants who work for him are terrified of being deported. The Coyote benefits too. He makes tens of thousands of dollars each time he smuggles a group of migrants into the country. The American consumer benefits as well. We are able to purchase chicken for less than we would if the workers who processed the chicken were paid decent wages or worked under safe conditions.
These same parties benefit from the economic forces that drove Enrique from his family's land in the first place. We are afforded cheap consumer goods because so many of the products we use are made in sweatshops. The manufacturers see high profits while the workers make scant wages. Stockholders are paid high dividends by agricultural companies while campesinos are forced to sell their family lands.
There is a crucial religious question at stake within this system. It is: who does our society consider to be full human persons? The Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations charges us to "affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person." Yet it is clear that the economic system that causes people like Enrique to migrate does not afford each person the same worth and dignity. Nor does our country's broken immigration system. It does not respect the human rights of undocumented migrants.
As Unitarian Universalists we are called to work towards the reform and reconstruction of this broken system. It is not just matter of fixing, as many propose, the laws that govern immigration. It is a matter of making certain that people are not forced to leave their homes in the first place.
This is a great challenge. Truth be told the same forces that victimize Enrique and his family victimize us. Cities like Cleveland have been devastated by the same economic forces that are destroying the rural Mexican economy. Just as the advent of cheap corn in the United States is pushing campesinos off of the land cheap labor in Mexico, and elsewhere--particularly China--is threatening manufacturing as a way of life in Northeast Ohio.
We live in a world where there is free movement of capital but not free movement of labor. At any time a company can relocate its business to wherever it can employ workers at the lowest wages. Workers are not free to move to seek the best wages. This creates what economists call captive labor markets, countries where the wages are held artificially low because workers only have two choices: work for little under difficult conditions or starve.
True immigration reform requires doing away with captive labor markets. If captive labor markets are eliminated then, over time, wages between different countries will equalize. Those in the global south will not need to leave their homes for economic reasons. Those in the global north will not fear having their jobs exported.
Captive labor markets will only be eliminated if we can recognize the full personhood of each human being on this planet. That means acknowledging that everyone has the same rights and needs. We humans are all part of the same human family. We are each descendants of the same ancestors who eons ago first stood upright, developed language, mastered fire, created tools and, in time, gave birth to all of the world's myriad cultures.
Arizona State Bill 1070 does not recognize this fact. It does nothing to address the fundamental reasons for economic migration to the United States. It is a bad bill. Instead of ending captive labor markets it will help them to grow.
The bill plays off of the fears of a large portion of the white majority. They fear losing their culture and their jobs to the migrants. The demographics of this country are changing. By the time I have grandchildren whites will no longer be the majority in the United States. For many being in the majority affords a sense of superiority. It fills them with pride and makes them feel safe. In the face of a changing world they want, in the words of Public Enemy, to " keep it yesteryear" and bring back "The good ol' days / The same ol' ways."
This pride blinds people to the reality that we are all in the same boat. Succumbing to it allows for the exploitation of the many by the few. Captive labor markets benefit only the wealthiest amongst us. Racial pride does not recognize our shared destiny as a single human species on a wild and precious planet. Instead it proclaims that some of us are better than others, are different than others. This allows us to be played off against each other, each struggling for a little scrap, rather than working together to build the best possible world.
The racial pride inherent in State Bill 1070 is a lie. As the indigenous poet John Trudell reminds us, "we all come from tribes." In anthropological language, each person in this room is the descendant of some group of tribal people who migrated out of Africa. In theistic language, we are all equal children of the same God.
As Unitarian Universalists we recognize this fact. State Bill 1070 call us to act upon it. In the face of such racist legislation Unitarian Universalists from throughout the United States are mobilizing. Under the auspices of the Standing on the Side of Love campaign, which "seeks to harness love's power to stop oppression," our Unitarian Universalist brothers and sisters are working to repeal State Bill 1070 and stop similar bills from being enacted in other states.
If our principle of affirming and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every person is to be more than hollow words then we must join with them. Today I offer you one small opportunity to do so. After the service I invite you to write three letters--one to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer pledging to boycott Arizona until State Bill 1070 is repealed; one to Senators Brown and Voinovich asking them to work towards real immigration reform; and one to Governor Ted Strictland asking him to pledge to combat similar legislation in Ohio. You can find sample letters downstairs at the table with the Standing of Side of love posters and buttons. Kelsey will be there to help with any questions you might have.
Butler County Sheriff Rick Jones and State Representative Courtney Combs are currently urging Governor Strictland to support something akin to Arizona State Bill 1070 here in Ohio. Throughout the summer I will be working with our District Executive Joan Van Becelaere to formulate a Unitarian Universalist response. I hope to involve our congregation in that process as much as possible.
Together we can build a world where, in the spirit of the old farm workers song "De Colores," all colors of the rainbow are honored and each human being is afforded their full worth and dignity.
May it be so.
Amen.