The information below is an example of how the Southeast Michigan Latino community is trying to organize and react responsibly in the face of extreme governmental pressure. Frequent raids have left many families separated and without hope of reuniting. Across the country people who have come here mainly as a result of failed trade policies enacted beginning with NAFTA in 1994 are increasingly marginalized and criminalized.
How we chose to respond to this as a community will have a profound impact on this nations politics in the immediate future.
August 12, 2008
Detroit Latino March
Contact information:
Elena Herrada - 313-974-0501
Julio Cesar Guerrero - 517-304-2743
A coalition of Detroit Latino community members working through El Centro Obrero are making a public statement against a series of recent incidents in the southwest Detroit Barrio.
Also know as Mexican Town, southwest Detroit has historically been home for Latino families dating back to the boom of the auto industry in the early 1900's to migration waves of recent years.
Post 911 times, however, have created a climate of animosity and inherent repession against the other wise well adapted Latinos in Diaspora. Elena Herrada, a local community organizer says that this anti immigrant attitude affects all Latinos in general driving some deeper into the underground economic system where they become victims of unscrupulous employers, predatory businesses, slum landlords, insensitive bureaucrats, and targets of a variety of law enforcement units.
"As activists in spirit of the great civil rights movement we have decided to publicly protest current conditions of fear and oppression in our community," said Herrada explaining that local activists and concerned citizens will march every Friday afternoon in Clark Park to educate people about the unique conditions in el Barrio Latino.
The marches will begin this Friday August 15 at noon and last throughout the general election in the hopes of sending a message to all candidates on the need for immigration reform.
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