about MSN-history
Foundational principles of the Mexico Solidarity Network
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Foundational principles of the Mexico Solidarity Network
Part I
A critical historical review of MSN
History of MSN
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| While only eight years old, the Mexico Solidarity Network has a proud history of accomplishments since its founding in 1998. We have organized thirty delegations to Mexico, including students, teachers, labor organizers, activists, religious leaders, members of Congress and congressional aides. Four Congressional delegations had a particularly strong impact on our relations with Congress and our capacity to use mechanisms like Sense of the Congress Resolutions and Dear Colleague letters to influence bilateral issues. Our speaking tours and popular education programs reached over 200 cities in the United States and directly impacted over 150,000 people, with tens of thousands more reached through the media. Our campaign around the expulsion of foreign human rights observers from Mexico won the return of the first "expulsado," our Director Tom Hansen, in June of 2000, along with a commitment from government officials to review all previous expulsions. Our human rights campaign to demand justice for women in Ciudad Juárez, generated the passage of House Concurrent Resolution 90 (H. Con. Res. 90), legislation authored by Congresswoman Hilda L. Solis to address the disappearances and murders of more than 400 women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Senate Concurrent Resolution 16, an identical resolution introduced by Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, was also approved in the U.S. Senate. . Our fair trade campaigns generated $120,000 in sales for women's cooperatives in Chiapas. Our human rights work in Chiapas generated media coverage and offered protection for indigenous communities threatened with expulsion. Our work with undocumented workers in Chicago was the catalyst for the opening of the Albany Park Worker Center and the Chicago Autonomous Community Forum, a community center that serves one of Chicago’s most diverse neighborhoods and is the future site for the Autonomous University for Social Movements. Over the past 4 years, the MSN served as the domestic coordinator for the Alliance for Responsible Trade (ART), coordinating grassroots opposition to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). ART is a national network of labor, family-farm, religious, women's, environmental, development and research organizations that promotes equitable and sustainable trade and development. ART is a founding member of the Hemispheric Social Alliance, a coalition of civil-society organizations that shapes common strategies and actions related to the FTAA. By combining protests with proposals, ART and the HSA are demonstrating that the prevailing model of corporate globalization is not the only - and certainly not the most constructive - approach to integrating the hemisphere. Working through ART and the HSA, the MSN played a leading role in the coordination of an international ballot initiative on the FTAA. Network staff provided important leadership and organizing around the FTAA ministerial in Miami from November 19-21, 2003. MSN staff played a pivotal role in developing a national call for actions in the US on September 13 around the WTO ministerial that took place in Cancun. The MSN coordinated ART's grassroots outreach/education campaign that included 70 public hearings on the FTAA covering New England, New York, Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, California, Oregon and Washington. The MSN took a leading role in coordinating the first annual Latin American Solidarity Conference (LASC), in Washington, DC on April 15, 2000 and will take an equal role on the planned Spring 2007 conference. Over 600 activists exchanged information on the struggles of our southern partners and developed common strategies. We were the lead organizers for the second annual LASC meeting in Chicago on March 17-18, 2001. More than 200 representatives of US-based Latin America solidarity groups and their Latin American counterparts spent two days developing common strategies around eleven international themes: democracy, globalization, militarization, trade, labor, environmental justice, immigration, indigenous issues, women's issues, human rights, and rural/agricultural concerns. The coalition agreed to prioritize: 1) confronting the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and 2) opposing militarization of the hemisphere. In April 2003, we co-organized the 3rd LASC conference in Washington, DC, where 500 activists came together to develop new strategies in the post-September 11th context. The LASC is an ongoing coalition that provides a framework for regular exchange of strategies and ideas. Partly as a result of our organizing around the LASC, the Network helped to found a national coalition organized around Plan Puebla Panama, a corporate-centered development plan for the Isthmus of the Americas. The coalition, dubbed No PPP, is currently promoting an international petition initiative written mainly by MSN staff. The MSN plays a central role in the National Coalition for Amnesty and Dignity for Undocumented Workers. This is the only national immigrant rights coalition in the US led predominantly by undocumented workers. The Mexico Solidarity Network serves as the Washington, DC office for the Coalition. We interact with Congress and provide grassroots organizing and logistical support for national mobilizations organized by the Coalition. Before September 11, the Coalition had a great deal of success promoting legislation calling for a general amnesty for undocumented workers. In the aftermath of September 11, we altered strategies somewhat and are discussing several legislative initiatives that would normalize the status of some undocumented workers. Much of our work is devoted to raising consciousness around the various proposals, both Republican and Democratic, that have arisen in anticipation of the 2004 presidential elections, with particular emphasis on raising consciousness of immigrant rights in the post 9-11 environment. Since September 11, we have organized 4 series of regional consultations and 5 major events focused on building support for a general amnesty for undocumented workers. Each year MSN staff coordinates logistics for a national lobby day on May 1, where hundreds of immigrants visit members of congress and White House staff to discuss amnesty legislation. The MSN worked closely with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a group of immigrant farm-workers in southern Florida, and their national boycott of Taco Bell. The MSN organized three speaking tours and about 50 popular education workshops each year with the CIW, exposing the real-life problems of undocumented workers in the context of corporate-centered globalization. Our program promoted the Taco Bell Boycott and now the boycott against McDonald’s as a concrete way to take action in support of immigrant workers. As the immigration debate rages in the halls of Congress and in streets across the country, it is helpful to review lessons from the past. Our Immigrant Rights tours also focus on current issues by looking at past US government’s guest worker policies such as the so-called Bracero Program. Working with partner organizations in Mexico such as the National Assembly of ex- Braceros, we are able to link past mistake with current policy. The Mexico Solidarity Network hosted two tours in 2005 of ex-Braceros. These distinguished gentlemen in their 70s, visited Washington, DC, where they met with grassroots groups, university students and Representatives, plus held press conferences to press for their retirement benefits. In 2006 three tours similar tours were organized on the West Coast, DC area, and Midwest. The Mexico Solidarity Network works closely with the Latino Union in Chicago organizing day laborers in struggles to win worker centers around the city. The Network provided office space, assisted with press work, and fostered leadership skills within the day labor movement. Weekly day labor meetings were held in the MSN office until they were able to establish the now famous Albany Park Worker’s Center. MSN staff coordinated neighborhood petition campaigns and volunteers who worked with the day labor movement. MSN continues to support the Center by providing ESL classes to laborers during low work seasons. The MSN is a founding member and active steering committee participant in the International ANSWER Coalition, the largest grassroots anti-war coalition organizing against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are also active in the Latin America Working Group, a coalition of organizations focused on legislative issues related to Latin America, and the Border Working group, which is focused on legislative issues regarding the protection of human rights of immigrants crossing the US-Mexico border. More recently in 2005, the Mexico Solidarity Network developed our Alternative Economy program in coordination with Zapatista women’s cooperatives. The AE program is based on an understanding of the problem of commodity fetishism, in which producers are separated from their products and consumers see only commodities rather than the complicated social relations that go into their production. Our 20 AE interns make public presentations each week on the Zapatista movement and women’s artisan cooperatives, directly linking consumers in the US with women producers in Chiapas. The interns also offer artisanry in exchange for donations to the communities, which help improve the standard of living and the standing of women. The results have been impressive, with one cooperative growing from 150 to over 600 members in a year. The Mexico Solidarity Network also supports the Zapatista autonomous education system by promoting the language school in Oventic. Spanish and Tzotzil classes are offered for foreign students in exchange for three days minimum wage in the country of origin. In 2005, the Mexico Solidarity Network filled many of the classes to near capacity, a dramatic increase over the previous year. Student tuition supports the Zapatista teacher-training program, while students receive the best political education possible in addition to excellent language classes. Also in 2005 the Mexico Solidarity Network started a Study Abroad Program in a new area of work for us. The program is a 16-credit, 14-week program focused on Mexican social movements with important lessons for organizing in the US. The program provides the theoretical and practical tools that young activists need to be effective organizers in the US/Mexico context. The first semester we had 16 students the following semester we had 18 students and now have 19 signed up for the Summer 2006 semester. |
