Monday, April 23, 2007

Towards a new Freedom Summer: Exploring race, class and media in North Carolina's civil rights movement

What a wave (literally, in some places) of intense energy passing through the East. Last month I watched reports of my home state in the throes of a Northeaster and heard stories of cars being sucked into the ocean in an environment I truly love and miss. In North Carolina we have all felt the surf of humanity at its worst: violence at Virginia Tech, the murder of an important and much loved activist in Mexico. It's always hard to be away from home while the people you love are in the middle of a bad storm, unless you are also in the middle of one.

Every time I walk into town I see the above image. It is a relic that speaks to the legacy of labor and power in Durham, North Carolina. The old tobacco warehouse was once the financial backbone of a downtown now rebuilding, a small city shaking off a bad rep and evoking an era when it was great.

I longed to come to North Carolina ever since I began to work with Mexican clients who spoke of going back to "Norte" to visit family and friends or to look for work. So many people discover North Carolina along the route to the true "Norte", back to Maine and Massachusetts. If you ask immigrants in this state why they decided to come to North Carolina, many will answer that they have an uncle, a brother, or other family settled here. This is unique from Maine, where many people settle knowing no one, forging connections in factory warehouses, immigrant-owed businesses or the local shelter.

Despite the fact that North Carolina was labeled the fastest growing Latino state in the country, communities here are facing extreme and devisive anti-immigration legislation. My first week I read in the local newspaper in Spanish that among others, there are really strong proposals to obligate employers to comply with ICE's database on "illegal"immigration, which we know is not accurate and often ends up incriminating all kinds of innocent people. I also woke up one morning and realized I was living in a death penalty state, which wouldn't come us a surprise unless you knew what it was like to live in a state all your life where that sort of news feels so far away.

Moreover, a turn in the local homeless shelter, the Urban Ministries of Durham, provided more disturbing news about the city where I am staying in general. I had no idea as I walked through it's sleepy center that there was any sort of trouble with crime, but the counselors there assured me, almost for shock value, that Durham has a state-wide reputation for violence and gangs. This occurs for two reasons. First, Durham lies in the middle of I-85, and is a convenient stopping ground between the north and south for the introduction of heroin; secondly, people come back from northern cities, such as New York, in hopes of returning to their roots in the south, bringing drugs and crime with them. I spoke with one woman who had come back who fit this description and who told me she wasn't able to receive any support up North. Although staff consider the shelter block to be a neutral zone, the staff at UMD pointed to a surrounding four block radius where gang activity occurs. At the shelter they hold the opinion that such gang violence originally began in mostly black gangs, until immigrants such as Latinos were targeted. Now the violence is also perpetuated by Latinos. They pointed to the surrounding area and proceeded to try to convince me that I could never really be safe on its streets.

My first week was very much about comtemplating my own safety in that sense of Durham's image, which is largely propagated by the local media. If I felt so happy and welcomed as I walked into town, what made others feel the need to warn me? Would I too be picked off at random by gang thugs? Or as I had also been told, would the color of my skin make me invisible to that type of violence? I read an article in the local rag that gave credit for the negative stereotypes to the media in the Triangle area, which includes Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. It described how violence in Durham has been emphasized over other events. Let us not forget that this was also a place scarred by the news of the Duke lacrosse scandal. Hmm...could racism play a role here? Durham downtown was once a great bastion of strength in the black economy in the south. If I was willing to talk about violence and race, I was in the right place. It seemed I would learn more here than learning how and where to walk down the street.

So why come to this place to find the good fight? I was asked this question my very first week when I visited a class at Duke University all about immigrants rights and labor in the South. Tennessee, the friend who is currently hosting me, works at the Center for Documentary Studies. I shared with a group of undergrads that I was asking myself the same question: what can I learn about solutions is this wild southern state?

Initially, I was interested in the connection between a new population of worker's advocates and its legacy of civil rights work. It was in Greensboro, North Carolina where four black students sat down at a "whites only" lunch counter and didn't budge. Thus began student civil disobedience. Durham itself is known for having been one the first and most prominent black financial districts in the south; Black Wall Street is one of its historical sites. And I have literally become addicted to my morning black radio show, listeners calling in to discuss race as often as Whitney Houston's new divorce. North Carolina has a history of power, pride and struggle that I need to hear more about.


I am interested in how race intersects with labor issues in the South. On my route (read as "root") through the US thus far I have been really focused on trauma and human rights, delving only marginally into labor issues in Providence. I began by speaking to academics in the ivory tower of the North, then becoming more politically active as I worked my way down south. In this state, the worker's rights movement is leading the struggle for a just immigration policy.

North Carolina is a right-to-work state. It also has the lowest rate of unionism in the country. There are a couple of theories about this: one, that the violence stemming from the civil rights movement dissuaded more potential squirmishes resulting from pickets; also, solidarity didn't occur because of the isolationism in rural communities that caused people to feel dissasociated from each other. There's a great interview I heard on NPR down here about a book just published on female unionizers in North Carolina. Most notable was Ella Mae Wiggins, singer/songwriter for the movement, who worked in the Turpentine Mill in Loray Mills and joined the union after her four children died because she couldn't stay home to care for them. The author suggests that the stories are few and far between, with fear for being turned in still a huge reality for some.


North Carolina's economy had been based on agriculture, textiles, and the furniture market. We know how free trade works. With the institution of NAFTA in the 1990's, these jobs that were primarily held by African-Americans and low-income folks left the state, let's say they went to Mexico. Then folks in those towns employed by the same companies had wages so low, they could not survive. So they moved to North Carolina, creating a population of workers earning low wages and without the ability to vote on any of this.

North Carolina is the largest contracter of migrant workers in the country. There are maybe 95-100 Latino organizations in the state. As the state economy has moved away from manufacturing and agriculture, there are many existing low-paying jobs that only Latinos will do. The whole political and economic reality of the south creates rivalry and conflict between African-Americans and immigrants as they compete for low-wage jobs. Alliances are formed when you have collective conciousness about labor and organizing.

On May 1st, many of us congregated in the courtyard in front of the state capital in Raleigh. A large portion of the population were wearing bright yellow shirts that read, Justice for Smithfield, union organizers at the largest pork packing plant in the state. A team of young people organizing stood at the pulpit and each one made a speech. One teenager pointed to a bronze plaque on a monument behind him, depicting something like the fall of slavery in the south and cried in Spanish, "we will not be slaves because of the color of our skin!"

The idea that agricultural work has "always been about slavery" (i.e. no rights, low income, etc) is what my new friend Tony in SAF (Student Action for Farmworkers) is trying to change. SAF traces its history back to the 1970s, and was started by African-Americans laborers in the rural south. Today SAF also does a lot of work with immigrants and hopes to continue to build a black/brown alliance.





I talked further about ally-building in the state during an inspiring informational interview with Marisol and Tony of El Pueblo, Inc. El Pueblo is involved in political advocacy, public health and safety, and gang prevention for Latinos in North Carolina. They are based in Raleigh. Marisol is coordinator of the legislative campaign. With her deep stare and elegant poise she reminded me of a comic-book Latina superhero. She is one of the best spoken individuals I've met here.

Marisol stated that El Pueblo's campaign focuses on educating the state of North Carolina that we have a broken immigration system. The 2000 census that measured a period of ten years, gave information that led to the proclamation that North Carolina was the current "newly emerging Latino state". According to Marisol, this information fueled the fear that led directly to the anti-immigrant legislation. Because this is a primarily non-voting community, such legislation is hard to squash and voting registration campaigns similiar to the one I wrote about in Providence are extremely important.

When Latinos across the country started to feel more empowered to speak out in last year's wave of marches, folks in NC initially jumped on board. Now they are more afraid, and have been dropping out of the rallies. One reason is that this year door to door raids increased. Nearly 18 years after the census began, Marisol wonders about Latino youth turning 18 and voting in the next elections: will they perceive voting as power?

How does violence and race play into our current lunch counter leanings? As workers nationwide are discriminated against by the color of their skin and delegitimized by the term "illegal", we are reminded in the south of a time when Black people and communities were treated similarly. Marisol talked about the possibility of these peaceful movements shifting as people become more and more marginalized. The original Civil Right's Movement didn't have the same parameters with citizenship and voting rights, but they also weren't always peaceful. People were volunteering to "step up to the violence", which is a shift we too might experience someday soon. El Pueblo hears a denial of racism over and over again when politicians hide behind the phrase "this is about the law". Duke lacrosse scandal, case in point.

In North Carolina, as in other states, they make immigrant's lives more and more illegal so they can't survive here, and will eventually deport themselves, or disappear. Marisol labelled this nasty political tool the theory of attrition, and said that it is being shared between states. First they create a law making it illegal to get driver's licences. Then they make it impossible for landlords to have immigrants as tenants without reporting them. Finally, they lobby for measures that make it obligatory to report people seeking the police or medical care. The idea is that in six years, people will stop coming. Sounds like cancer running through a family, right? She said this could happen in Maine (it's already started).

I'm only a political lobbyist out of need. I really want to support people doing social work. How does the clinical work I do with Latinos directly relate to all this? Well, if you limit public safety and health for a whole group of people, the the safety and well-being of the whole state is in jeopardy.

Tony, from El Pueblo works in the Public Safety part of El Pueblo leading a campaign to educate Spanish speakers about the dangers and legal consequences of drunk driving, the biggest social problem involving Latinos in the state. It's about education and equality of the law. If you have no legal rights and you are young and angry, why would you want to respect the law? Except for Latinos, getting caught even once may mean deportation. And experience tells us that crminalizing this behavior, such as deportins an offender, doesn't necessarily mean they won't come back and re-offend.

We conversed about what we both know from our respective communities about people and addiction. If you are isolated from your community and feel alone and have that tendency, you are more likely to drink. The number one response I would get from my clients says as much: I was lonely and starting thinking about what happened in...fill in the blank. Tony confirmed that this also a result of young people leaving home, testing boundaries.

AGAPE is a gang prevention program that works with youth. They said that every week more and more Latinos are arrested for criminal activity. Although anti-immigrant groups want us to think they begin this violence, Latino youth joining gangs is a direct result of downward mobility. There is discrimination and exclusion in public schools that makes immigrant youth feel unwelcome and less likely to join activities. (I am using "Latino" and "immigrant" interchangibly because our conversation was about Latinos, but concerns all immigrants) One of two dangers can happen: they either quit school or are successfully recruited by gangs that provide fraternity and security. The media further fuels their alienation with it's assumption of dangerous Latino youth. AGAPE works with youth to create clubs.

As you can see, I am really intrigued by life and work in this state. Labor continues to be the revolutionary buzzword. And folks are doing some amazing work to organize around labor rights. Up to this point I have studied and learned from these great conversations. But I knew that I was coming to the south to literally get my hands dirty, to insert myself into this workforce. I felt that in order to appreciate what it might be like I needed to be connected to the people and the land in this state and in my own homeland. I needed to farm.

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