Get on the Bus!

The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride is taking place from September 20 to October 4. For more info, check out www.iwfr.org

The Freedom Rides -- surely we remember reading and learning about them in history class: buses filled with earnest students back in 1961, black and white riding together to draw attention to the brutality and discrimination committed against African Americans.

Unfortunately, racism never ended. There was no final resolution, no cure-all to racism and injustice implemented after the infamous decade of peace and violence was over. If anything, civil rights abuses have become deeply entrenched in American society, and are manifest in different colors (brown), different language ("terrorist"), and different legislation (The Patriot Act).

Having been subtler and sometimes invisible in the last few decades, the civil rights movement is once again becoming vociferous, invoking the passion, courage and outrage that marked the 1960s. Perhaps this is the sleeping lion that awoke after 9/11.

Four decades later, people are back on the buses to continue the struggle for economic and social justice and civil rights for America's most marginalized population -- immigrants. Surprise, America, it's a never-ending tour until we get it right.

This time, it's called the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride (IWFR), and this time, it's nationwide. Kicked-off last Saturday, buses from ten different cities--Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Las Vegas, Portland and Minneapolis--will travel 20,000 miles of highway, drawing a "new map toward citizenship."

"We chose this because it was bold, risky, and audacious," says David Koff, senior research analyst for the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE). "We took it from the Freedom Rides in '61 because of how effective they were in demonstrating to the United States that segregation was intolerable and had no legitimization. So it's the inspiration of the demonstration of a similar build-up of dissent around the status quo of institutionalized racism."

It's not just those living in the shadows -- there are 16 million undocumented workers in the United States -- that will be joining the road trip. The IWFR has a strong, broad coalition of organizers and supporters, including HERE, the AFL-CIO, civil rights groups, students, activists, churches and businesses.

Beyond creating visibility for immigrants' rights, the IWFR is hoping to draw attention to five main goals:

1) granting legalization status to working, taxpaying immigrants

2) clearing the path toward citizenship

3) restoring rights on the job

4) reunifying families torn apart by immigration laws

5) respecting and upholding civil rights and liberties for all

Along the route, these "travelling freedom schools" will stop in 100 cities and towns to educate people about the plight of immigrants, before converging on Washington DC for a hearing with members of Congress on October 1 and 2, and then ending in Flushing Meadows Park, Queens, NY, with a mass rally on October 4.

"The most important thing is immigrants telling their stories," says Steve Williamson, executive secretary of the King County Labor Council, AFL-CIO. "That's what this is a vehicle for. We're going to be doing that in big cities, little towns, all across America, with buses, with megaphones, on street corners."

And they've got stories to tell -- stories of heartbreak, of oppression, of violence and of stark and unabashed racism.

"When I started Hate Free Zone after September 11, one of my first clients was a man from Burundi that came in here and said he wanted to go home," says Pramila Jayapal, executive director of Hate Free Zone. "He had literally walked a year and a half across deserts to get away from an incredibly repressive government. And he wanted to go back. He was 66 and he had tears in his eyes, and he said, 'I want to go back.' And I said, 'Back where? To whom and to what? How can you go?' And he said, 'How can I stay?'"