To our Compañer@s in the Other Campaign in Mexico:
To our Compañer@s in the Zezta Internazional:
To our supporting allies in solidarity with
Movement for Justice in El Barrio and the Other Campaign:
We send our embrace from New York, from adherents of the Other Campaign, from Mexicans who have been expelled from our beloved Mexico and forced to live here in this city.
Compañer@s, we want to inform you about the activities we held last week as Movement for Justice in El Barrio and as part of the Other Campaign in New York.
We held the first part of our program in support of the International Actions against Repression and for the Liberation of Political Prisoners that took place last week in Mexico and other parts of the world. Here in New York, we united in a public forum to remember the men and women who, without having robbed the national inheritance, without having caused the death by starvation of millions of Mexicans, without being criminals and without having defrauded the nation with pacts involving millions of illegal dollars, are imprisoned or have disappeared, tortured or assassinated, by the bad governments that the three political parties, the PRI, PAN, and PRD, impose. These companer@s that are imprisoned or disappeared have done nothing other than expose the crimes of politicians and oppose the theft of their lands; their only crime is protesting against the abuses of fraudulent criminals and thieves, they have been given longs jail sentences and have been made objects of torture and sexual assault. As part of our campaign against the misinformation coming from the distorted media, we distributed a flyer exposing the repression and we joined together in a public forum to remember our compañer@s who, fighting for social justice, have been made victims of repression. We held a minute of silence for the deceased and vowed that their deaths would not be in vain. At the end of this month, we will take part in the second part our activities against repression with a street protest here in New York.
Along with remembering the political prisoners and keeping a minute of silence for those killed, in this Public Forum on the Other Campaign in New York for the immigrant community, we screened the video message from the Zapatistas to Mexicans in New York. The event was well attended by a diverse public made up of Chicanos and Mexicans that included restaurant workers, artists, poets, teachers and construction workers, among others.
During a community dialogue around how our struggle as immigrants is included in the Other Campaign, people spoke up about their hope and excitement in building this important movement together.
It was a very exciting and hopeful act, above all because it reached out to many who before have not participated in a social struggle. Now we prepare for the next part of our actions against repression, at the end of this month.
Compañer@s, you are not alone. Count on our support.
DEMOCRACY!
JUSTICE!
FREEDOM FOR POLITICAL PRISONERS!
From The Other New York
Movement for Justice in El Barrio.
From the Other Side. July, 2007.
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The Other New York Against Repression Part 2
Submitted August 10, 2007 - 1:58 pm by RJ MaccaniTo our Compañer@s in the Zezta Internazional:
To our supporting allies in solidarity with Movement for Justice in El Barrio and the Other Campaign:
We would like to inform you all about the public action and street theatre that we, the members of Movement for Justice in El Barrio, Mexican residents of New York City, held on Tuesday, August 7th of 2007, against repression and for the liberation of the political prisoners in Mexico.
On a street in East Harlem, in Manhattan, we held a performance protest to let the people know what is happening in Mexico and to demand the liberation of the political prisoners. On this day, we remembered the men and women that have bee brutally beaten, raped and arrested while protesting in the streets, have been at times disappeared and at other times, submitted to illegitimate and cruel sentences. Their supposed crimes are: to oppose the construction of illegal airports and privatizations that would displace them from their lands, demand the resignation of corrupt politicians, or simply to record or report on street protests. In protest of the fact that hundreds of civilians have been beaten, raped, tortured, disappeared, and unjustly imprisoned, we held this piece of street theatre in which we enclosed ourselves in a symbolic prison with signs stating “We are all Atenco” and “End to the Repression in Mexico.” Other members, played the role of the members of the military that torture and follow the orders of the corrupt politicians of all three parties: the PAN, the PRI, and the PRD.
While we performed our protest street theatre, we handed out flyers to people watching about the reasons behind our action and about who we are. The objective of this public action was to inform the community about what is happening in Mexico that is not reported on commercial television either here or over there, nor in the written press in English or in Spanish. The repression against The Other Campaign has been ignored by all of the capitalist press of the right and of the supposed left in Mexico and by television here and over there, but not by us, we do not forget the men and women that are serving an unjust sentence in prison for defending the national patrimony or those demanding the resignation of criminals with positions in the state government.
We are asking that everyone circulate this chronicle to other compañeros and compañeras in The Other Campaign. We send you our embraces wherever you are and will stay in touch.
For a Mexico where government thieves and criminals do not run free:
For a Mexico where those who struggle for social justice and who defend our country are not tortured:
DEMOCRACY!
JUSTICE!
FREEDOM FOR POLITICAL PRISONERS!
Movement for Justice in El Barrio
New York, August 9th, 2007