Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: And you'd better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone 'cause the times, they are A-changing!

Negli USA, manifestazioni di centianaia di migliaia di persone, in
decine di citta', per i diritti degli Immigrati.
La "novita'" (da noi non lo e', ma da loro si!) e' l'enorme
partecipazione giovanile.   Ragazzi, principalmente ispanici, ma non
solo, hanno in molti casi forzato l'apertura dei cancelli delle scuole
e si sono uniti alle manifestazioni.     Molti immigrati, illegali e
non, hanno informalmente scioperato per un giorno (un molti casi col
permesso del loro datore di lavoro) per far vedere la loro importanza
all'economia.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/us/10cnd-rallies.html?hp&ex=1144728000&en=37b7d3df75737f2e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Immigration Advocates Rally Across U.S.
By MARIA NEWMAN
Crowds of immigrants and their supporters predicted to total in the
hundreds of thousands marched today in more than 100 cities throughout
the country, casting off the old fears of their illegal status to
assert that they have a right to a humane life in this country.
The marches were taking place in big cities like Washington, New York
City, Houston, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Atlanta, and in smaller
communities like Hyde Park, N.Y., Garden City, Kan., and Belle Glade,
Fla. Some of the marchers invoked the tactics and slogans of the civil
rights era, and others were trying out a new voice for an emerging
constituency that in the very recent past has hidden from authority
because of their lack of papers, afraid to speak up, willing to work
for wages that American citizens will not accept.
In Madison, Wis., a rally drew 25,000, organizers said. The police, who
estimated the crowd to be closer to 10,000, nevertheless said it was
one of the largest rallies they have seen in 10 years there.
One man, José Piñeda, 30, who works at the American Girl doll factory
in Madison and was at the rally with his wife and two young children,
was asked if they were not afraid to march in a rally where they might
be identified as illegal and therefore subject to capture or
prosecution by authorities.
"No," Mr. Piñeda said. "We are not criminals."
It has become the rallying cry of demonstrations that have grown in
size and frequency in the last month, as Congress has considered the
thorny issue of immigration legislation.
The rallies, part of what some organizers were calling the National Day
of Action for Immigrant Justice, drew factory workers, domestic
workers, laborers at dairy farms, construction workers, older people,
and babies in strollers. The marches were peaceful, and many of them
had a picnic-like atmosphere, with Spanish music providing a backdrop
to the assertive talk of new rights for a group that has until recently
lived in the shadows.
No rally was more diverse than New York's, where the thousands who
converged at City Hall park in Manhattan were greeted in Spanish,
Chinese, French and Korean, and heard invocations by a rabbi and the
leader of a Buddhist Temple.
"We are inseparable, indivisible and impossible to take out of
America," Chung-Wa Hong, director of the New York Immigration Coalition
told a spirited crowd that included hotel housekeepers from El
Salvador, Senegalese street vendors, Chinese restaurant workers and
Mexican laborers. "We are New Yorkers."
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who is running for
re-election this year and possibly for the Democratic presidential
nomination in 2008, won cheers early at the four-hour rally when she
thanked immigrants for their everyday work. "Your faces are the faces
of America," she told the crowd.
Among the marchers crossing the Brooklyn Bridge to the City Hall rally
was Manuel Gomez, 32, who acknowledged that as an illegal immigrant, he
was nervous about attending the rally. "But we have no choice," he
said. Mr. Gomez, a carpenter, said that because he did not have the
proper legal papers, he had not been back to Cuenca, Ecuador, since
1990 and could not go to his father's funeral two months ago. "I
haven't seen my mother in 16 years," he said. "It hurts on my heart."
The rallies today followed by a day demonstrations in San Diego, Miami,
Birmingham, Ala., and Boise, Idaho. The rally in Dallas on Sunday drew
as many as 500,000, far more than organizers and the police had
expected.
"I think that the incredible turnout in places like Dallas is just
reflective of the deeply felt sense in this country that we have a
broken immigration system that desperately needs to be fixed," said
Eliza Leighton, with Casa of Maryland, an immigrant advocacy group that
is one of the organizers of the Washington rally.
"It needs to be fixed in such a way that the millions of immigrants who
are in this country now and are strong contributing members of our
society and our economy have a clear path toward citizenship and one
that unites families and keeps our country strong," she said.
In Washington, several thousand people had gathered on the National
Mall between the Capitol and the Washington Monument well before the
rally's late-afternoon start. While there was no telling whether the
throng would number the 180,000 that organizers had predicted, people
were streaming onto the Mall beneath a glorious blue sky.
Many people carried both American flags and the banners of their
homelands - Mexico, Peru, Panama, Guatemala, the Honduras. The
collective mood seemed to be one of hope and good cheer. "I believe in
the American dream," one sign read. "We are America," read another.
Other demonstrators carried signs with pointed messages. "G.O.P. Not
for Me," one read. "Sense, Not Sensenbrenner," read another, referring
to Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican
who heads the House Judiciary Committee and helped shepherd a tough
border-security bill through the House.
National Park police officers on motorcycles and horseback mingled
easily with the crowd, stopping occasionally to chat or give
directions.
There was a sense of purpose even among the young demonstrators. Asked
why he was there, Luis Salazar, who is 8, replied simply, "My mom needs
papers." His Guatemala-born mother, Amelyva Salazar of Gaithersburg,
Md., said, "I am dry-cleaner" and motioned as though wielding a steam
iron.
Another native of Guatemala, Brenda Sic of Hyattsville, Md., was there
with her three children. Asked whether she was a citizen, she replied,
"I hope," then explained that her paperwork is working its way through
the bureaucratic pipeline.
One of the first rallies today was in Atlanta, where demonstrators
marched beginning at 9 a.m. A sea of demonstrators, most of them in the
white T-shirts that have become emblematic of the nascent immigrant
rights movement, moved along a two-mile route, with marchers carrying
signs about their rights and the competing bills in Congress. Most of
the marchers carried American flags, as the word has gone out to
demonstrators over the last few weeks over the Internet and flyers that
they needed to show more willingness to assimilate, although some
carried flags from their home countries of Mexico, Honduras and
Nicaragua.
Before the march began, police had said they expected it to draw a
crowd of 40,000. Afterward, organizers said they believed the size of
the crowd might have reached 80,000; the police put the number at
50,000, according to news agency reports.
Most of the participants had taken the day off work to attend the
demonstration, leaving chores unattended that they said many people,
including some who want undocumented immigrants to be kept out, take
for granted. There were house painters walking on the metal stilts they
use for their work; there were domestic workers who clean houses or
care for children in private homes; there were construction workers and
their children.
"We are in a situation that Rosa Parks was in several years ago: enough
is enough," said Fabian Rodríguez, 38, who came here from Mexico and
now lives in the Atlanta suburb of Norcross and works as a landscaper.
"I want things to work out in our favor, or we go back to our country.
But we can't keep living the way it is now." They were supporting
immigrant rights nationally and protesting state legislation awaiting
Gov. Sonny Perdue's signature that would require adults seeking many
state-administered benefits to prove they are in the country legally.
There were many signs here that marchers were aware of the South's
history as the cradle of the black civil rights movement. At the
beginning of the march, demonstrators held a banner that spanned the
width of their procession that read, "We have a dream too."
Someone else carried a sign that said, "I eat grits. You eat tacos," a
message meant to convey how integral immigrants have become to
Atlanta's culture and economy.
The rallies are coming at a time when Congress - and indeed, the
nation - seems torn about what to do about the burgeoning numbers of
immigrants who are coming into the country every year.
A poll released today by The Washington Post and ABC television showed
that 75 percent of Americans believe United States authorities are not
doing enough to stop illegal immigration.
In Congress, an effort to enact the most sweeping immigration changes
in two decades was derailed on Friday by feuding over amendments and
other issues.
This came after a bipartisan Senate compromise last week that Democrats
and Republicans hailed as a breakthrough. The Senate bill would open
doors to citizenship for most illegal immigrants if they paid fines and
learned English. It would also create a guest worker program for
325,000 people a year to meet the needs of business, and would tighten
border security to satisfy conservatives.
But the agreement fell apart just before Congress went off on a two
week break, casting its future in doubt. Senator Arlen Specter, a
Pennsylvania Republican and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee,
pledged to have the measure ready for debate when Congress resumes.
In Atlanta, some of the demonstrators took note of Congress's failure
to come to an agreement before members left on vacation.
A woman hoisted a sign that said, "Congress, go back to work."
"I feel very disappointed because they're supposed to work for the
people," said Georgina Rodríguez, 33, a domestic worker from Mexico.
"Instead of solving this problem of 12 million immigrants, they've gone
on vacation."
In Madison, the demonstrators, who marched from Brittingham Park at
Lake Monona to the state capitol about a mile away, were joined by the
mayor, David Cieslewicz.
"I want to express support for the Madison Latino community," he said.
"And I want to help send a message in opposition to the mean-spirited
immigration bills currently before Congress."
http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/124067
 500 teachers, thousands of students are absentees
By Daniel Scarpinato
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Nearly 15,000 students and at least 500 classroom teachers were absent
Monday, leaving some local schools with less than half their normal
attendance and one school missing its entire faculty.
But officials stressed that to the best of their ability, the school
day went on as normal.
The largest impact from the immigration protests was on Tucson High
Magnet School, 400 N. Second Ave. There, 1,500 of the school's 2,600
students were absent, with 200 more walking out Monday morning.
Forty-six teachers were absent.
At Davis Bilingual Magnet School, 500 W. St. Mary's Road, the entire
staff of 19 teachers took off and substitutes were brought in to cover
their classes.
"I think it's a well-educated staff," Davis Principal Christopher Loya
said about the faculty absences. "These are people who know the issues,
and they are also activists. All teachers are activists."
For the most part, students opted to just skip school rather than walk
out as they had in student walkouts in late March. Part of the reason
was the different nature of Monday's protest, where many students
joined their families to march. But there were still some small
walkouts at Rincon, Cholla and Pueblo high schools. Estimates for
student and teacher participation in Monday's rally did not take into
account people who may have protested from the many independently run
local charter schools.
Many traditional schools were left with fewer students and 30 or more
with missing teachers.
Despite the huge number of absentees, school officials played up the
work they had done in preparing for the protest. The Tucson Unified
School District, in particular, spent considerable time last week
preparing privately for Monday's effect on schools and urging students
and their parents not to miss school.
With nearly 20 percent of students in the largest district absent,
those efforts didn't appear to have had a huge impact. District
officials, however, said there could have been even more students out
if they hadn't urged them to stay in school. The district was still
confirming the typical Monday absentee rate but believed it may have
been around 4,000 - or 7 percent.
The most normal school day at a centrally located high school Monday
may have been at Amphitheater, 125 W. Yavapai Road, in Amphitheater
Public Schools. Despite previous walkouts, teachers and students came
to school as normal, said Principal Patsy Harris.
"We made a big personal plea," especially to teachers, said Harris. If
the faculty had not come to school, "it would be tacky" to expect
students to attend, she said.
Sunnyside Unified School District had nearly 3,000 absent students
compared with less than half that the previous Monday.
Two districts - Flowing Wells and Marana - are off this week for
spring break. TUSD will be off later in the week.
http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/124084
 Many local businesses close in support of rally
Some employers give workers the day off to march
By Scott Simonson and Joseph Barrios
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Many Tucson businesses closed in sympathy with Monday's
immigrant-rights rally, and other employers labored with a depleted
workforce as employees joined the march.
More than 60 employees of W.G. Valenzuela Drywall Inc.'s approximately
290 employees attended the rally, said Mark Cordova, vice president.
About half worked this weekend at various sites around town to make up
for the lost day of work.
"I had a bunch of my guys who did want to make prior arrangements with
me. It gave me some time to call some of my contractors and let them
know," Cordova said.
"I can understand why they want to be part of it. They feel like they
should be part of it," Cordova said.
Along the South Side's business strips, many businesses were closed
when they are usually open. Along South 12th Ave- nue, the effect of
the march could be seen in the signs that appeared in store doors and
windows.
Some were hand-written; others were laser-printed. Some carried
messages. Others just said the date and "cerrado," or "closed."
At America's Beauty Salon, 4725 S. 12th Ave., a sign could be read
behind iron security bars that blocked a locked door. Written in
Spanish, the sign said the salon "will be closed April 10, 2006,
supporting our people's cause."
Peter Gonzvar said he closed the Gonzvar Tax Service office at 4107 S.
12th Ave., so he could attend the march.
"I thought it was important," Gonzvar said. The office re-opened by
mid-afternoon, he said.
At Pescaderia y Carniceria El Capitán, 4562 S. Sixth Ave., the sign on
the locked door said, "supporting la raza."
The ratio of closed to open businesses varied block by block.
At Walter Center, which has about a dozen retailers near the
intersection of South 12th and West Nebraska Street, about half the
businesses remained closed at 1 p.m. A block or two away, many
businesses operated as usual.
Terry Carson, owner of Benchmark Concrete Co., said he had a meeting
last week with his roughly 45 employees.
"I said, 'Those of you who feel like you need to do it, if you're
passionate enough to go ahead and do it, I'm going to give them a get
out of jail free card. You've got one chance, get it out of your
system. But be back to work on Tuesday,'" Carson said.
Only three or four employees failed to show up Monday, Carson said.

Altre testimonianze:
Un giornalista della stampa Ispanica USA:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/11/1426236
Uno studente che ha organizzato la protesta:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/11/1426244
Una tragedia:  Uno studente quattordicenne, minacciato dalla scuola
dopo aver organizzato una protesta per i diritti degli immigrati, si e'
suicidato.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/11/1426249
Queste manifestazioni, ENORMI per gli USA, potrebbero essere l'evento
storico della nostra epoca.
Gli immigrati urlano, a chiara voce, che nessun essere umano puo'
considerarsi "illegale".   Che la liberta' di movimento, di emigrare,
di cambiare paese per riuscire a sostenere la propria famiglia, e'
importante quanto il diritto di parola e di stampa, se non di piu'.
I muri fra stati sono da abbattere.   Tutti.  Questo vale sia per
Berlino, sia per Gaza, sia per l'Arizona, sia per le vedette
sull'Adriatico.       Un Messicano dovrebbe avere lo stesso diritto di
lavorare negli USA che un'Italiano e un'Americano.  Lo stesso vale per
l'Italia o qualunque altro paese.   Amenoche' l'immigrato non commetta
crimini, imprigionarlo _solo in quanto immigrato_
e' un'abuso.
Per milioni e milioni di persone, colpevoli di essere nate nelle parti
del mondo piu' povere delle nostre, questa non e' un'astrazione, ma un
diritto concreto per il quale vale la pena lottare, al pari dei diritti
civili e sindacali.
Le manifestazioni da parte degli Ispanici USA potrebbero essere,
letteralmente, il primo atto della lotta principale del nuovo secolo:
La lotta per la liberta' di movimento e di emigrazione.
GT

La lotta per la liberta' di movimento e di emigrazione.
Si, con tanta fantasia e immaturita'.
-Stefano