From Mississippi to Arizona: For Freedom and Human Rights



By Linda Burnham



Immigrant Rights News



June 10, 2010



http://nnirr.blogspot.com/2010/06/from-mississippi-to-arizona-for-freedom.html



The room was small, but it was filled with enormous

possibility. And everyone in there knew it.



On Saturday, May 29th, after a long, hot day of marching,

chanting and rallying, a group of activists met in a

windowless room at the Phoenix Doubletree Inn. Many had

worked non-stop for weeks on end, mobilizing the tens of

thousands who poured out of their homes in support of

justice for the migratory workers and families whose lives

and livelihood are threatened by Arizona immigration policy.

Their phone-banking and door-knocking and e-mailing and

community meetings had produced sea of people who filled the

streets with their bodies and their voices.



Obama, escucha. Estamos en la lucha.



Que queremos? Justicia. Cuando? Ahora.



And now, though their day had started before sunrise, here

these activists were, 14 hours later, eager to engage in an

historic dialogue with veterans of Mississippi Freedom

Summer.



MacArthur Cotton came to Phoenix from Kosciusko,

Mississippi, Jesse Harris from Jackson, Mississippi, and

Betty Garman Robinson from Baltimore, Maryland. These

Freedom Summer vets came to march and rally against

Arizona's punitive legislation and to share their stories

and their wisdom, gleaned from decades of struggling for

justice. Arizona activists from the Puente Movement

www.puenteaz.org <http://www.puenteaz.org> and the National

Day Laborer Organizing Network www.ndlon.org <

http://www.ndlon.org> have called for an Arizona Human

Rights Summer to intensify non-violent resistance to SB1070,

due to go into effect July 29, 2010.



The Doubletree meeting was meant to forge a vital connection

between the summer of 1964, a season that changed the course

of U.S. democracy, and the summer of 2010, a season that may

yet do the same. The times are oh so different. For young

activists -- the high schoolers who organize their massive

walk-outs via text messaging, the college students trying to

negotiate a college education without documents -- 1964

might just as well be a century or two ago. 21st century

Arizona is not the Mississippi that clung for dear life to

its profound distortions of democracy set in place in the

post-Reconstruction period. And yet, the resonances are

many.



Gross abuse of power by local law enforcement? Check.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio is the modern-day incarnation of the

despotic, mid-20th century southern sheriff charged with

keeping the Negroes in their place, even if that meant

encouraging violence and vigilantism. Megalomania plus

racism was a lethal combination then; it's just as lethal

today.



Unjust, anti-democratic policy enshrined in law? Check.



A white population that is subject to being driven by fear

of the brown tide, and that, consequently, has a very hard

time getting on the right side of history? Check.



Demagogues bent on mobilizing mistrust of the federal

government, gaining power through a states? rights agenda,

and building the influence of a right wing populism firmly

grounded in race hatred? Hate to say it, but check, check,

check.



But there are hopeful resonances as well.



The massing up of the power of poor people who have had

enough. Basta ya!



People in motion despite their profound vulnerabilities to

the arbitrary exercise of state power.



Committed, tireless organizers, young, old and in between,

who have decided to throw down, dig in, hold the line.



The creativity and fearlessness of young leaders coming into

their own.



And the Arizona activists link themselves directly to the

black freedom struggle and the civil rights movement.

Placards for the march, quickly silk-screened by the dozens

at Tonatierra community center, carried a trio of images:

Cesar Chavez, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma

Gandhi. A portrait of King, along with one of Chavez, held

pride of place in the restaurant owned by Mary Rose Wilcox,

Maricopa County supervisor, immigrant rights advocate and

Joe Arpaio's nemesis-in-chief. A banner reading "From Selma

to Phoenix, from Civil Rights to Human Rights" was on

prominent display at the main stage for the rally in front

of the state capitol.



So when MacArthur talked about the years of organizing that

went on before the Mississippi Summer Project, the

uncapitalized summer projects of 1961, 1962 and 1963,

Arizona's on-the-ground organizers could relate to the slow

and steady aggregation of forces and experience that

constitutes the groundwork on which mass transformational

movements are built. And they listened closely as Jesse

described how Mississippi activists earned the trust of

communities marked by both poverty and fear, and learned to

marry a single statewide programmatic objective (the right

to vote) with a wide array of locally generated tactics.

Betty shared her experience with mobilizing resources in the

north - people, money, public opinion - to support the

southern struggle.



As the discussion opened out in that small room overflowing

with both the past and the future, 45 activists grappled

with tough questions: How do we protect the integrity,

trusted relationships and hard-won gains of deep community

organizing while situating that work as a building block in

a burgeoning national movement? How do we reconcile

different approaches, different organizing methods,

different cultural and spiritual traditions in ways that

build mutual respect and strength? How do we organize in

communities where residents are so demoralized and

despairing that they see no point in coming out to a

meeting?



Those questions were certainly not definitively answered,

but as one participant put it, "Anytime we get together and

put our deepest challenges on the table, it's a good thing."



The Doubletree meeting brought activists and organizers

together across regions, across generations, across races

and nationalities, and, perhaps most importantly, across

sectors of the social justice movement whose alignment

cannot be taken for granted, but must be nurtured with care

and broad vision. Our conversation prepared us to walk on a

path cleared by the elders while at the same time breaking

brand new ground.



Visit www.altoarizona.com for the latest news about Arizona

Human Rights summer. Visit www.mscivilrightsveterans.org for

more information about the ongoing activities of the

Mississippi Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement.



My thanks to Puente for receiving us with such grace, and to

all the Mississippi Summer veterans who could not travel to

Phoenix, but who were generous with their time and sage

counsel. Special thanks to the Urgent Action Fund, whose

quick turn around made the Mississippi-Arizona exchange

possible.



Linda Burnham 

Consulting at the Crossroads 

www.lburnham.com



[Linda Burnham is a co-founder and former executive director

of the Women of Color Resource Center. She has worked for

decades as an activist and writer focused on women’s rights

and racial equality. She was a leader in the Third World

Women’s Alliance, an organization that grew out of a women’s

caucus in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee

(SNCC), and that, early on, challenged the women’s movement

to incorporate issues of race and class into the feminist

agenda. Burnham has participated in conferences and meetings

with women in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, and Cuba, returning

with insights about the global factors that affect women’s

status and the unique ways in which women organize to create

change in their communities. She has written extensively on

topics of Black politics and women’s rights.]



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The song that lies silent in the heart of a mother sings upon the lips of her child..

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Rodney D. Coates

Professor