Sounds like a bad movie, a very very bad movie.
Most of the discussion around issues facing the Xicano/Mexicano community is focused on immigration and how it is being handled by and rightfully so because the thought of doors to our homes being knocked down in the night while we are dragged in the dead of the night with our families to some unknown detention center is a bone chilling beginning to one of the worst scenarios I can imagine. Separated from our families and children the uncertainly of their safety would be paralyzing. It panics me just to think about it.
This makes the discussion on how we begin to build a party in the United States placed within a context of real world happenings.
According to an July 31, ICE press release the "Scheduled Departure" program ran from Aug. 5 to Aug. 22. and, "may be expanded as ICE continues to evaluate the program." The program was piloted in five cities around the country.
Immigration agency scraps self-deportation programAMY TAXIN / Associated Press | August 22, 2008
SANTA ANA, Calif.—U.S. authorities have drawn sharp criticism for showing up at homes before dawn to capture illegal immigrants who have skirted court orders to leave the country.
A three-week pilot program in five cities was intended to show a softer touch by allowing illegal immigrants to surrender. But after getting only eight volunteers, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the plan doesn’t work.
ICE is ending its “Scheduled Departure” program when the trial period concludes Friday.
“Quite frankly, I think this proves the only method that works is enforcement,” Jim Hayes, acting director of ICE’s detention and removal operations, told The Associated Press on Thursday.
ICE said it hatched the plan to give illegal immigrants more control over their departure and to quell criticism by immigrant advocates that its enforcement efforts were disruptive to families.
“They want amnesty, they want open borders, and they want a more vulnerable America,” Hayes said.
While immigrant rights activists ridiculed the program, they’re now worried its failure will embolden enforcement.
“My hope is it isn’t going to empower them or fuel their enforcement even further,” immigration lawyer Lisa Ramirez said Thursday.
“We do not believe they were really interested in having people turn themselves in,” said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, director of community education for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.
There, but for the grace of God goes I. (wikipedia)
A "more vulnerable America"? The burden of holding the line against the heathen hordes must be almost unbearable for someone like Jim Hayes, acting director of ICE's detention and removal operations who has vowed, "We are going to continue our enforcement of immigration law whether it is convenient for people, or whether it's not conveinent. Congress has mandated that we enforce these laws and that is what we intend to do. (Article)
Noble. Upholding the force of law. This is what makes America great.
So how do we work this out? First by (1) acknowledging we will not protest ICE into submission, because actually it is not about ICE. Remember, "congress has mandated we enforce these laws" so (2) any changes we force ICE to make are limited reforms. Reforms that bring immediate relief to some people but do nothing to provide long term fundamental change in society. (3) We must develop a different way of looking at community organizing.
Low Intensity Organizing (LIO) is non-traditional approach to solving or reforming issues within the community based on theories of Low Intensity Conflict (LIC) which gained prominence in U.S. military thought during the 1980s.
In practice Low Intensity Organizing would follow the same guidelines as LIC the emphasis being on: political considerations with the stress on ideology and ideals including propaganda and psychological operations; non-organizational and organizational mechanisms are brought into play; “conflict is viewed as a long-term endeavor and therefore strategy and tactics must be flexible and adaptive.”
This model adapted by the U.S. government was derived from military anti insurgent theories and is completely opposite of prevailing methods of organizing within community and labor organizing. In particular, communities, regardless of race or class, working for change have been derailed over and over again by reformist issue and needs base organizing. (1)
The following is a beginning discussion of how Low Intensity Organizing might be theorized, “into the category of indirect strategy” and then implemented as “a total strategy in the indirect mode” that views conflict “as having a dual nature” and understands strategy is like music that “can be played in two keys. One is direct strategy and the other is indirect strategy.” LIO is the second and organizes people for change through indirect resistance. Some initial thoughts on how LIO could be discussed are as follows.
LIO is educational: The primary goal of low intensity organizing is to politically educate the people. Since it has been shown that no substantial change or action can be supported to its conclusion without the understanding and support of the community this is the first step. Education and an understanding of their/our personal relationship to the greater structure are paramount.
LIO builds structure through political education: Only after the people and organizers have become educated can the physical structures we need to create as a distinct people emerge. Until we work to build these institutions through political education we will be locked into the dominant reactionary activist/protestor paradigm constantly playing out the role of the squeaky wheel.
LIO is total resistance: Every facet of the community must be mobilized or attempted to mobilize.
LIO maintains: a constant presence and teaches resistance to accepted paradigms, creates new norms, and free spaces for the participant.
LIO questions everything beginning with our personal and group relationship to the greater structure.
This is the beginning of an urban insurgency – not one with guns but an educational and organizing insurgency where the colonial paradigm is exposed and challenged outside reformist liberal frameworks on a daily basis. In building this popular will to resist insurgents should understand concerning their efforts to educate the people that “revolutionary propaganda must be essentially true in order to be believed… If it is not believed, people cannot be induced to act on it, and there will be no revolution.” (2)
-----Footnotes----
(2) Taber, Robert “The War of the Flea: A study of Guerilla Warfare Theory and Practice” p. 172
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