War, drug cartels and starvation have forced unaccompanied children to flee Central America at the US/Mexico border in unprecedented numbers. Dominating the news are images of government buses filled with frightened children and mothers being blockaded by xenophobic “Minutemen,” and some Murrieta, Calif. residents screaming “America for Americans.” The press never reports that these brave… Read more »
immigrant rights
Éxodo de niños de América Central
Sesenta mil niños de América Central cruzaron la frontera México-Estados Unidos y, por unos días, el mundo desvió la vista de la guerra en el Medio Oriente y los problemas entre rusos y ucranianos y pusieron atención. No eran niños cualesquiera. Aunque algunos de ellos estaban todavía en pañales, tenían los poderes más inusuales …. Read more »
What drives Latino children to El Norte?
From 2014, a column that recognizes the suffering of child immigrants – and the determination of those who come to the U.S. on their own — and addresses the all-important question: Why?
Freedom Socialist Letters to the editor, October 2014
WOMEN WARRIORS Mary Anne Grady Flores for free speech We sat stunned in the packed courtroom on July 10 as a town justice sentenced longtime Catholic Worker activist Mary Anne Grady Flores, grandmother of three, to a year in prison. Her crime? Being the first to allegedly violate an Order of Protection, issued to over… Read more »
Freedom Socialist Letters to the Editor
UNITED FRONT Needed today The political resolution of the FSP [“A world to win, a planet to save,” Vol. 35, No. 5] references the need for “united front” action, as well it should. No one socialist party in this nation today can hope to take on and defeat the capitalist ruling elite on any national… Read more »
From graffiti girl to organizer: my revolutionary education
I am from drive-bys, sirens, and the cries of a desperate mother asking for help. From the city of lost souls, the city of angels. I am from beans, rice, and leftovers to the endless streets of taco stands. I am from Aztec dancers. I am from feminism and activism. I have witnessed first-hand how… Read more »
Germany’s balancing act on immigration policy
Angela Merkel, Germany’s conservative chancellor, is steering a cautious course between two conflicting pressures. On the one hand she must convince the German people to pay — with their taxes and their lives — for NATO’s Mideast wars. This is no easy task because the misery of two world wars has left them with an… Read more »
No welcome here: an immigrant’s saga
If you have not been an undocumented immigrant from Central America making your dangerous way through Mexico only to face vigilante hate groups and la migra at the U.S. border, you don’t know what hell is. Fleeing poverty or persecution at home, you are exploited and persecuted again by Mexican police trying to rob your… Read more »
Immigrants found buried in mass “graves of shame” in Texas
Seventy miles from the Mexican border in dirt-poor Brooks County, Texas, the human remains of hundreds of asylum seekers, mostly from Central America and Mexico, were uncovered in 2014 in a mass grave. Hundreds more are believed elsewhere in South Texas. Desperate people died while escaping police violence, civil war, all-powerful street gangs, and take-no-prisoners… Read more »
Freedom Socialist editorial — Obama’s deportations surge ahead
As politicians in the U.S. call for banning all Muslim newcomers, and in Europe plot to get rid of fleeing émigrés from the Middle East and Africa, the Obama administration ushered in a cruel New Year for refugees from Central America. Federal agents are rounding up these refugees for quick deportation, while unprecedented militarization is… Read more »
