Departments

United Auto Workers Annual Civil Rights Conference
Edison Walthall Hotel
Jackson, Mississippi September 9 – 10, 2008
Speech by Father Jerry Tobin
Priory of St. Moses the Black
7100 Midway Road
Raymond Mississippi

I begin my remarks by saying that I am honored and grateful to address organized labor and human rights activists here in Jackson, Mississippi, a place that bled and died to set the people free. These 2 days we honor the civil rights struggle of the last century, and the continuing struggle in this, the 21st Century. We especially focus on the role organized labor played in furthering the struggle. We also see this in a global perspective. The legion of labor organizers and activists of the 19th and 20th Centuries saw the struggle to make the United States responsive to honest work for honest pay.

Today the struggle is global. The partnership between labor and corporations extend beyond America, extend beyond American citizens. To truly move the struggle forward, labor unions must become international just as the corporations have become international. This further reaches beyond labor laws of the United States, but demand an international code of labor legislation that safeguard the rights of workers everyone. The last century made a beginning. The focus includes civil rights, but now we fight for human rights.

The United Nations Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) speaks of rights that come from birth. They are not subject to human law, but to Divine Law. They are the law that is written in your hearts, as it says in Jeremiah 31/33, “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel, after those days, says the Lord, I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” (cf. Ez.36/28b) The Prophet Joel further says, “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men dream dreams, your young men see visions. In those days I will pour out my spirit.”

So what does the Bible say? What does the United Nations say? They say that the Law of God is written in your hearts and you know it. They say that human rights come from within, and you know them too. The Bible says, in the day of the Lord, your sons and daughters shall prophesy, what is that! They shall witness for justice! They shall speak out and demand justice! They shall stand up for rights, for fairness, and remind the powers that they are men and women made in God’s image, not to be exploited!

In unity is strength. We don’t speak of unions for nothing. We know the chants, “ Mighty, mighty union! Mighty, mighty union!” We speak of solidarity. Without it we fail. The enemy knows this and always finds ways to divide us. Systemic ways: they use foreign labor and cheat the workers, but make citizens feel robbed. It is an old con. We saw it work in Laurel, Mississippi. Yet we are not fooled. We educate all workers not to fight with each other over crumbs. They all lose. They work in fear. Then the bosses manipulate them. All of you here know all that.

When workers unite for just and fair wages, for just and humane working conditions, they engage in God’s work. We stand with all who stand up for their human rights. We say to the world, immigrants have rights! We say that immigrants do the nation’s work and have the right to a just and living wage. We say that these do not conflict with citizen’s rights. In fact they safeguard citizen’s rights. If immigrants can be led away in chains, so can citizens. Doctor King said, when one group is oppressed all are oppressed.

Oppressed workers do not stand alone! We here, activists for human rights, and members of the UAW, stand with workers both citizen and immigrant. We speak out with them, and together we are the conscience of the nation! We make no distinction between immigration status. Honest work is not a crime! Those who do honest work have human rights that transcend distinctions that can be used to exploit workers. We say that unjust laws that oppress immigrants violate the law of God! We say NO to nativism. We say NO to international agreements that drive Guatemalan farmers into bankruptcy. We say YES to the right for all workers to provide for their families and children. We say NO to those who put fear into the American people, and tell them lies to make them believe that immigrants are a threat. We say NO to those who wave the crossed flag of racism, and seek to dehumanize immigrants and people of color.

Yes, even among us in the labor movement, there are those who appeal to baser emotions that pit citizens against immigrants. These go back to nativist and racist and xenophobic ideologies that are all too familiar in Mississippi. I will go further and say that their precious “Stars and Bars” are symbols of all that is evil about America!

This is not about terrorism. This is about what is the noblest ideals of the labor movement. This is about providing for families, for honest work that deserves honest pay. We represent people who believe in the United States, even though they are abused by Americans. They believe in the American dream. America became great by immigrants, whether they came in slave ships, whether they came in steerage in the holds of steam ships, whether they swam across a river. Immigrants built the nation, and continue to build it.

The very symbols and hallowed buildings of America were built by slave labor. Their descendants sit in the seats of academe and power. The railroads were built by Chinese laborers, kept in camps and worked in slave-like conditions. Their descendants are scientists and specialists.

Were they legal? What is legal? It could be argued that slavery was legal, but it was an abomination that split the country and we still live with its curse. Does legal make any difference in the work they do?

We honor the heroes and sheroes of the civil rights movement here in Mississippi.
The Mississippi Center for Justice will honor Unita Blackwell and her heroic contributions.

This city honors Medgar Evers who died to free the people, and whose office still is the state office of the NAACP.

Now it is immigrants. Slavery by any other name must be destroyed. The International Conventions must be upheld. If it moves from the plantation to the chicken plant, it’s still slavery. If it moves from the plantation to the catfish farm it is still slavery. If it moves from the plantation to the sweat shop in Hong Kong or Thailand, it’s still slavery. Until it is eliminated in all its forms, the labor movement will not succeed. In fact it will fade away.

The label “illegal” makes Mexicans and Guatemalans and other people from Central America into an invisible underground, doing the hardest menial work, without which the country would stop. This label makes them the new “slave class” to be persecuted and exploited, but still the new masters lure them here with hopes of merely feeding their families.

International treaties render decent work in their own countries impossible. They migrate to survive. The companies create this for cheap labor. Unions must stand against this.

This system is cruel and unjust, and we say NO! The unfeeling nativists would further label them criminal, and label churches and other social advocacy groups criminal for helping them. Cardinal Mahoney told Congress that he would order his priests and religious agencies to defy the law, for it is an unjust law! We say YES to Cardinal Mahoney! People are not illegal, things are illegal.

We demand fair and just immigration reform! We oppose racists and nativists who seek to exploit us for profit, and put fear in the American people! We oppose CNN and the likes of Lou Dobbs and others who pander to the basest elements, racism, nativism, fear. For what? To make the rich richer. To use the American people like fools only to profit from it.

We ask organized labor, all the unions to stand for human rights of all people. We ask organized labor to forge a union between all people. We must educate them in order to understand how they are being manipulated. We do not need to see poor whites and poor blacks pitted against each other as they were by the powers for so long. Break this system! We demand justice! We demand fairness!