An open letter to the leadership of Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and Service Employees International Union

On May 1, 2014  the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) organized a large number of trained volunteers and staff to act as "parade marshals" of the traditional May Day march in Chicago. Marshals were used to control the event: determining who could move, when and where, and what messages would be be visible. Marshals surrounded people, physically pushing or blocking movement, and pulled down several banners. Marshals also visibly directed police officers to kettle in and block specific groups of autonomous participants. During this ongoing harassment, immigrant rights activist Jose "Zé" Garcia Puga was physically blocked and verbally assaulted by groups of marshals from ICIRR, SEIU and Fight For 15. Zé debated with the marshals and asked to move freely within the space of the event. Zé also informed the marshals of their status as a person under deportation proceedings. Marshals restrained Zé and the police arrested them along with Ann-Meredith Wootton.

Two groups were the main targets of police-marshal collaboration: an autonomous group gathered around banners denouncing the militarization of the border, and a contingent affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) feeder march. Cynically, ICIRR, SEIU, & Fight For 15 coopted the anarchist history of May Day, parading pictures of Emma Goldman and Lucy Parsons, both anarchists,  and at the same time creating fear and directing police attention towards "anarchist-looking" participants. The appropriation and policing of the May Day movement represents a serious injury, and perpetuates a history of violence that we in Chicago know all too well.

ICIRR has a well-documented history of calling the police against activists who are outspoken critics of their organization, with full knowledge that some of these activists were under deportation proceedings at the time. Three such well-documented attacks were experienced by organizers from the Moratorium on Deportations Campaign (MDC). On May Day, Zé was carrying flyers and a small banner accusing ICIRR of deceiving public opinion about Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) legislation, and of promoting this project for their own political and financial gain. Police collaboration of any kind cannot be tolerated; in this case, it was also politically-motivated to silence dissenting and critical voices.

This pattern illustrates a larger, systemic crisis provoked by an NGO bureaucracy that has installed itself as the "leaders" of social movements. On May Day we witnessed what ICIRR are officially defending in their statement as "standard protocol" for coalition-building: co-opting emancipatory movements, undermining the collective potential for political expression, kettling our bodies and the social imagination, and resorting to direct repression to ensure a predetermined order. These organizations create specific types of activists and scripts of social resistance. They  prevent people from organizing structures of existence and resistance beyond the logic of corporate patronage and electoral politics.

We denounce the co-optation of people’s autonomous struggles. Spontaneous, dynamic, unencumbered social interactions -- free from paternalistic, supervised, and threatening “leaders” -- are the soul of any genuine process that we can enact in order to create the conditions that can transform our lives from a state of hopelessness to an arena of empowerment. We denounce the policing of social movements.

We invite ICIRR member organizations, as well as rank and file members in various branches of SEIU and Fight for 15, to reflect within their communities and take action against their own leadership. We call on communities everywhere to refuse to collaborate with either organization, as a first step in establishing collective self-defense against the police state within our movements. We invite communities to take their own actions against sell-out, co-opting and top-down organizations that restrict possibilities for political expression and autonomous organizing.

This letter is formal notice that the "standard protocol" will not be tolerated by our communities. We invite any individual, group, or organization concerned to sign the petition. We make the following demands:

1. ICIRR and SEIU should assume responsibility for police collaboration against activists.

2. ICIRR and SEIU should issue a formal apology for co-opting the anarchist history of May Day.

 3. SEIU and ICIRR should refrain from any future role in coordinating or organizing within the May Day Movement, and should refrain from marshalling political expression.

 4. ICIRR should give full disclosure as to the ways they stand to benefit financially and politically from promoting Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) proposals, and a full account of the ways they have used police to silence outspoken critics of this legislation. We demand an immediate end to the misinformation campaign around CIR.