Immigrants Rights

Heading into another school year, students and campus workers are told to prepare for even more budget cuts and tuition hikes. This time, state legislators are cutting all public services to the bone. Attacks on everyone’s right to an education are being waged. These attacks are not only in the form of service cuts and fee hikes, but also include the continued denial of undocumented students’ access to higher education, as well as the increasing efforts to resegregate and privatize K-12 schools.

UNC SDS stands in full solidarity with the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action coalition (MIRAc) and its allies who committed civil disobedience at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Bloomington, MN on May 6, 2009. Exposing and condemning the terror-tactics used by ICE to arrest and deport undocumented workers and rip apart families in the process is becoming more important than ever. The radical right is using the economic crisis as an opportunity to promote xenophobia and attack immigrants and multiculturalism. Actions like the one undertaken by MIRAc last week are an essential part of any strategy to counteract ICE’s secret raids and the racist anti-immigrant hate speech of the radical right that promotes them.

Having recently come under attack from the press and the police here in Chapel Hill for our role in a protest against racist former-Congressman Tom Tancredo, members of UNC SDS have had a taste of the kind of police harassment faced by nonviolent protesters in Bloomington. We condemn police harassment and brutality everywhere and stand together with MIRAc activists who are fighting to make our society safer and more accepting for immigrants and to stop the ICE raids that poison our communities and destroy families.

The daring action undertaken by MIRAc activists on May 6 inspires us to continue in the struggle to make our society more open to immigrants and to counteract the radical terror-tactics of ICE and the hate speech of its right wing supporters.

In solidarity,

UNC SDS
May 14, 2009

Join Carolina students on April 23 to

SPEAK OUT!

... for immigrants' rights
... for diversity in our community
... against hate speech and racism

We will gather at 6pm in the Pit to make signs. A rally and speak out to support immigrants' rights will begin at 6:30pm.

This event is being organized by multiple campus organizations to stand united against anti-immigrant and bigoted views being brought into our community by "Youth for Western Civilization."

Please note: this action is not organized or endorsed by any particular organization, but by members of multiple groups at UNC.

• National Day Labor Organizing Network Solidarity Statement
• LUCHA Solidarity statement
• Solidarity from Tuscaloosa SDS
• Solidarity from University of Central Florida SDS
• Solidarity Statement from the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Coalition (MIRAc)
• FIST Statement: Support UNC Students Against Anti-Immigrant Tancredo
• Statement from United Students Against Sweatshops
• Solidarity from SDS at University of Minnesota
• UNC Asheville's HOLA statement of solidarity
• Chapel Hill Prison Books Collective Statement
• Statement from Palante Action Network, Durham NC
• An Open Letter to Chancellor Holden Thorp
• Solidarity from Tuscon, Arizona
• Solidarity from Students Creating Radical Change in New York
• Solidarity with students & immigrants at UNC

Former congressman Tom Tancredo was invited to speak at UNC on April 14 by Youth for Western Civilization, a newly-formed white supremacist organization on campus. Many student organizations, including Students for a Democratic Society, organized protests and alternative responses to the event. The violence and extreme force used by the campus police against the demonstrators caused an escalation that led to the event being shut down.

Over 200 people, including multiple student and community organizations, used a diversity of tactics to protest Tancredo, who is a symbol of hate, racism, and the scapegoating of immigrants. Some organizations wanted to challenge Tancredo through debate at the event; others, including SDS, marched from the Pit to Bingham Hall to protest outside the event; still others wanted to shut down the event entirely. It is extremely unfortunate that a lack of coordination between the different tactics employed led to the Carolina Hispanic Association and others’ dissent being silenced.

SDS was part of the march to Bingham Hall. Some members also sat quietly in the audience to challenge Tancredo with questions at the end of the event. We are proud to see that so many people came out to participate in the demonstrations. At the same time, it is regrettable that police violence led to an escalation which prevented many individuals and organizations from expressing their dissent towards Tancredo through speaking at the event.

There have been many accounts of what happened outside; some are based in fact while others are wildly speculative and untrue.

As participants of the outside protest, these are our accounts of what happened: