A Call for White People to Step for Immigrant Rights

For May Day and Beyond: White People Step up for Immigrant Rights!

In the past month, five million people, mostly immigrants of color, have mobilized for justice and are making history, flooding the streets in unprecedented numbers. Meanwhile, the most visible participation by white people is coming from the racist and right wing leaders who are defining and dominating the debate in the Federal government and in the news, radio and opinion pages. Where are the voices of anti-racist white people in this crucial moment, when the worst anti-immigrant legislation in decades is still poised to drop?

We, white people who believe in justice and ending racism, have a responsibility and a historic opportunity to stand with immigrant communities and unite behind their demands. As white people, most of us with U.S. citizenship, we call out to our white communities to take to the streets for immigrant rights. We must demonstrate that the rightwing racists, from the Minutemen to in the Congress, do not represent us!

Anyone who has experienced this months electrifying, grassroots explosion feels the power and excitement growing. Working-class immigrants, with their crucial roles in the economy and culture of the U.S., have real power to reshape this country, as a vibrant part of broad multiracial movements for justice and equality. As anti-racist white people, we have a role to play in this struggle.

Immigrants are the direct targets of these policies, and we know enforcement will aim at immigrants of color. But we are all endangered by the accelerating drive of this country towards greater abuse of working people, more criminalization of poor/working-class people, and of all communities of color, particularly African-Americans. Our futures are tied together and now is the time to stand with immigrants fighting for their rights.

The ruling class in the United States has historically led anti-immigrant campaigns to divide working people, getting people to blame one another for stealing their jobs while corporations build their financial empires from all of our labor. Building from a foundation of enslaved African labor and mass land theft from indigenous nations, corporations used anti-immigrant campaigns against the Irish, Italian, Jews. Chinese, Japanese, Eastern Europeans and other immigrants, to deny them legal protections, attack unions and maintain cheap labor to under-cut better waged jobs. These campaigns intensified with the Chinese Exclusion Act in the 1880s and as more and more European immigrants were assimilated into white society, immigrants of color from Asia and then Latin America were targeted to be a permanent low wage, legally unprotected, work force to drive wages down and corporate profits up.

White people have led and rallied behind anti-immigrant campaigns in the millions throughout the history of this country and today a new history for immigrant justice is being written and we have a responsibility to be part of it. Were fighting two racist agendas: big businesses need to retain a vulnerable pool of exploitable labor, and the blatant organized racists want to preserve white political dominance and agitate for mass deportations. This divided right wing unites to dehumanize immigrants of color, working to strip them of any rights or protections. The small handful of mostly white billionaires backing and benefiting from these strategies depends on our complicity. Instead, lets build upon the legacy of anti-racist white people who have refused to participate in divide and conquer strategies, where the ruling class historically uses race to pit us against each other.

White people need to take responsibility for countering the attacks generated by white racists, from the border to the White House.

If youre a white person who stands for justice, we encourage you to step it up. How can you more actively support immigrants fighting for their rights, and encourage your families and friends to get more involved? What local organizing by immigrants can you support with your time, money, and resources? On April 23rd in the Bay Area, and throughout the country on May 1st (International Workers Day) immigrant communities around the country will again take the streets. Lets be there in greater numbers: on the streets beside our friends and neighbors, raising our voices in the national debate, making a commitment to organizing more white people to stand up against attacks on immigrants.

This letter comes to you from two Bay Area-based white anti-racist organizations, Catalyst Project and the Heads Up Collective. Heads Up is a member organization of the Deporten a La Migra Coalition, which is primarily composed of organizations based in working-class immigrant communities. We ask you to act in solidarity with the principles generated by the Deporten a La Migra Coalition, Immigrants Fighting For Our Rights. They are:

The land is for those who work it!
No more displacement
The border is hypocritical
Unity makes us strong
Demand dignity and equality for all immigrants
In every neighborhood, organize!

(please read full text at http://www.liberationink.com/revised/navigator.php?s=2&a=deporten)

If you agree with these principles, we invite you to sign this letter and make your signature a commitment to putting them into action in your work and life.

In struggle,
Catalyst Project and the Heads Up Collective
[email protected]

Endorsed by:
Elizabeth Betita Martinez, Institute for Multiracial Justice
Eric Mar
Eunice Cho
Maria Poblet, St Peters Housing Committee
Sheila Chung, Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition
Renee Saucedo, Day Labor Program/La Raza Centro Legal
Kali Akuno Williams, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
(organizations for identification purposes only)


Catalyst Project and Heads Up Collective were inspired by the work of white anti-racists with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice in New York City, and Italian Americans for Immigrant Rights in the Bay Area, who put out similiar open letters to move white people to stand for immigrant rights. By signing here, we are also joining with the thousands of white people participating in those and other efforts.


Please sign on if you stand with the principles above. To add your signature to those below, go to this link:

(organizations for identification purposes only)

Adam Welch, Industrial Workers of the World
Alexis Shotwell, UAW 2865, Long Road Collective
Andrew Willis, Washington, D.C.
Amy Dudley, Rural Organizing Project, Portland OR
Andy Cornell, NYC, NY
Betty G. Robinson, Baltimore Education Network and Baltimore Algebra Project
Bill Quigley, Professor of Law, Loyola University New Orleans
Brooke Atherton
Brooke DuBose
Camilo Viveiros, community organizer, Fall River, Massachusetts
Cathy Rion, Heads Up Collective
Chris Crass, Catalyst Project
Chris Dixon, UAW 2865 Members for Quality Education and Democracy
Clare Bayard, Catalyst Project/Heads Up Collective
cori schmanke parrish, North Star Fund
Chance Martin, editor Street Sheet Magazine
Dee Ouellette, mother
Diana Block, California Coalition for Women Prisoners
Dan Berger, Resistance in Brooklyn, co-editor Letters from Young Activists
Dara Silverman, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice
Dixie Block, Oakland
Drew Dellinger, Poets for Global Justice
Ellen Chenoweth, D.C. resident
Elly Kugler, City at Peace D.C
Gordon Kaupp
Heather Meader-McCausland
Harmony Goldberg
Heidi Reijm, Ruby Affinity Group, Brooklyn, NY
Ian McCleod, San Francisco Indymedia
Ian White-Maher
Isabell Moore, ESOL teacher & coordinator Anti-Racist Organizing Network of NC
Jackie Downing
James Tracy, SF Community Land Trust
Jen Angel, Clamor, Toledo OH
Jen Collins, mother
Jennifer Miller, Oakland, CA
Jim Ace
Jim McAsey, Director- Jobs with Justice, Farmingdale NY
Joseph Phelan , Miami FL
Jordan Flaherty, Left Turn Magazine
Josh Raisler Cohn, Washington D.C.
Kate Berrigan, Critical Resistance
Laura Close, SEIU Local 503, Child Care Campaign, Portland OR
Leone Reinbold
Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, Oberlin, OH
Marc Krupanski, Immigrant Justice Solidarity Project
Matt Meyer, War Resisters League
Meg Starr, Resistance in Brooklyn
Mica Root, Philadelphia PA
Michelle Foy, Freedom Road Socialist Organization
Noah Gaiser, Free Mind Media
Paul Kivel, educator and writer
Rebecca Johnson
Ruby Affinity Group, Brooklyn, NY
Sasha Costanza-Chock, Los Angeles Indymedia
Sasha Vodnik, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children
Sean Sullivan, Ruby Affinity Group, Brooklyn
Seth Newton, AFSCME Local 3299
Sharon Martinas, Challenging White Supremacy Workshop
Vanessa Sacks, Childcare Collective