While only six years old, the Mexico Solidarity Network has a proud history of accomplishments that provide a solid track record for building in the future. 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 Juarez, where over 380 young women have been killed in the past decade, generated a Sense of the Congress Resolution sponsored by Hilda Solis (D-NY). 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 is on the verge of winning a workers center in Chicago.

Over the past two 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. 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. Over 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 NoPPP, 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 works 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 organizes 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 promotes the Taco Bell Boycott as a concrete way to take action in support of immigrant workers. The workshops resulted in meetings and rallies in a dozen cities aimed at pressuring the administration of local campuses to withdraw contracts with Taco Bell. Seven new local committees have formed as a result of the workshops. Early in 2002, we also worked with the CIW to organize a cross-country "Truth Tour" focused on exposing Taco Bell's exploitation of immigrant labor. The two-week tour, featuring almost 100 farm-workers, included educational events and rallies in 17 cities across the country and a major protest in front of the Taco Bell headquarters in Los Angeles, which drew nearly 2,000 people and pressured Taco Bell into holding their first meeting with the protesting workers. In November 2002 we organized a national delegation to Immokalee to investigate the working conditions and build support for the boycott. In 2003, we coordinated local actions around the February "Truth Tour" focused on exposing Taco Bell's exploitation of immigrant labor. Like the 2002 tour, the program included educational events and rallies cities across the country and a major protest in front of the Taco Bell headquarters in Los Angeles. The largest and most important rallies were in Louisville, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco and Los Angeles where members of our Steering Committee played key organizing roles.

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 provides office space, assists with press work, and fosters leadership skills within the day labor movement. Weekly day labor meetings are held in the MSN office. MSN staff coordinates neighborhood petition campaigns and volunteers who work with the day labor movement. The movement is on the verge of winning a long struggle to establish the first city-funded worker center in Chicago.

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.