By Lu Chun-Chiao, 2/22/07
Today at NYU, the College
Republicans played a “game”. As students went in and out of the
Silver Building, one person wore a nametag
saying “illegal immigrant.” The goal was for someone to catch
that person and get a gift certificate. This is eerily reminiscent of a nursery rhyme taught to white children in the south during jim crow days: “Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe, Catch a nigger by the toe.”
Hundreds of students, mainly from
NYU, but also from Columbia
University and NY City
College showed up to protest this event. Black student organizations,
Latino student organizations, anti-war organizations, and revolutionary
organizations all threw in to this protest, as well as a lot of students
without any affiliation. A large number of the signs said “No Human
is Illegal,” “Who’s the immigrant, pilgrim?” and “Racism is
not a game” and there were a lot of other good sentiments expressed.
The arguments against
illegal immigrants – including that illegal immigrants leech off of the
“taxpayers” and that every day 12 “Americans” are killed by
illegal immigrants – turn reality on its head. People need to be
recognizing the immense poverty that billions of people on this planet are
subject to everyday, the desperation that goes with that, and the fact that for
many, illegal immigration is the only chance for survival in shit-jobs.
And the multi-faceted fascist program for immigrants of the US government
right now: the unleashing of vigilantes, the roundups and escalated
deportations, the attempts to put together an apartheid-like temporary worker
program. All this need to be actively challenged. It is very good that on an
elite campus like NYU, the protest against this disgusting event was powerful and diverse, and
the College Republicans weren’t allowed to carry the day with their racist
“game”.
