Summer 2006 PJA Newsletter

It is almost impossible to predict an earthquake.  Suddenly, with no warning, everything begins to shake; in a single instant, landscapes and cities are transformed.  And so it was that many Americans were understandably surprised on March 25th when 500,000 people gathered in downtown Los Angeles – the supposed American epicenter of apathy and escapism – to march for immigrant rights. 

It was the biggest demonstration in LA history, and it touched off a series of similar demonstrations across the country.  Not even the Washington legislators who proposed draconian anti-immigrant bills and their Minutemen supporters anticipated the immigrants rights-economic justice movement that their xenophobic nativism would produce.  No one thought that immigrant America was about to step into the political headlines.  But California is earthquake country, and anyone paying attention ought to have seen this one coming.

Today, entire industries are sustained by immigrant labor.  Many, if not most, of the people who pick our fruits and vegetables, clean our hotels and homes, sew our clothes, mow our lawns, cook and wash dishes in our restaurants and care for our children and our elderly relatives come from Mexico and Central America.  Many of them are undocumented, “illegal” immigrants.  They come to America for the same reasons people always have:  to build a better life for themselves and their children.  They work backbreaking jobs and earn low wages.  They are resented for taking jobs from American citizens, and are sometimes defended as “taking the jobs nobody else is willing to do.”  But the truth is more complicated:  many corporations benefit from the low wages they can get away with paying undocumented immigrants, workers that can be squeezed harder due to their precarious circumstances.  This issue is as much about economic justice as it is the kind of borders we want to have.  While we talk about border control and security, we have become addicted to ensuring a steady supply of cheap labor.   Immigrant workers fuel our economy; without them, our cities would grind to a halt. 

That’s just what happened on May 1st, when over 650,000 immigrants and their supporters flooded the streets of Los Angeles to march for comprehensive immigration reform.  If the mood of the March 25th demonstration was solemn, the May 1st march was joyful and patriotic.  Immigrants and their supporters waved American flags, cheered and sang.  Their message was simple:  we want to join you. 

It was probably the biggest rally in support something as simple and basic as the right to pursue the American Dream since the Civil Rights era.   It was also LA at its best, and a snapshot of the changing face of America.  And we were right there in the middle of it.  PJA cosponsored the massive March down Wilshire Boulevard, and PJAniks walked alongside Angelenos from every conceivable background.   This was our march, too, a day to celebrate a vision of the progressive America we are all working to build.

In 1963, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel preached that Jewish leaders had erred in viewing the civil rights movement as, essentially, an inter-Christian struggle. Far from positioning Jews as helpful bystanders on the sidelines, he declared that the soul of Judaism was at stake in the struggle for equality for African Americans.  The challenge is no different for us today.  We must see the movement for immigrant rights and for comprehensive, sane and humane immigration reform through the lens of our history as wanderers, immigrants who worked hard to build a future in America.  We must see it through the lens of our ethical obligation to welcome the ger, the stranger.  We must see it through the lens of our own essential story, the Exodus, which stands for the radical notion that reaching the Promised Land is always possible.  Most of all, we must see it as our struggle.  On Passover we recite, “My father was a wandering Aramean.”  On May 1st we chanted, “si, se puede!”— yes, it is possible.   We are all immigrants today.