Jerry Ball, a poultry plant worker at Pico Foods, and union steward for the Laborer's Union. PHOTO: © David Bacon 2008

In 1991, seeking to boost its never robust economy, the state
of Mississippi passed a law permitting casino gambling. In short
order, immigrant construction workers arrived from Florida to
build the casinos, and the casinos themselves began using contractors
to supply immigrants to meet their growing labor needs. Guest
workers, eventually numbering in the thousands, were brought in
to fill many of the jobs the developments created.

Throughout the 1990s more immigrants arrived looking for work.
Some guest workers overstayed their visas, while some brought
spouses, cousins, and friends from home. Mexicans and Central
Americans joined South and Southeast Asians and began traveling
north through the state, finding jobs in rural poultry plants.
There they met African Americans, many of whom had fought hard
campaigns to organize unions for chicken and catfish workers over
the preceding decade.

We All Have the Same Rights

It was not easy for newcomers to fit in. Their union representatives
didn't speak their languages. When workers got pulled over
by state troopers they were not only cited for lacking driver's
licenses but also often handed over to the US Border Patrol. Sometimes
their children weren't even allowed to enroll in school.

"We decided that the place to start was trying to get a
bill passed allowing everyone to get driver's licenses,
regardless of who they were or where they came from," says
Jim Evans, the AFL-CIO's state organizer and leader of
the black caucus in the state legislature. In the fall of 2000,
labor, church, and civil rights activists formed an impromptu
coalition and went to the legislature. At the core of the coalition
were activists who had organized Mississippi's state workers
and a growing caucus of black legislators sympathetic to labor.
Evans, a former organizer for the National Football League Players
Association, headed the group on the House side, while Sen. Alice
Harden, who had led a state teachers' strike in 1986, organized
the vote in the Senate.

Their efforts bore fruit when the driver's license bill
passed the Senate unanimously in 2001. "But they saw us
coming in the House and killed it," says Bill Chandler,
then political director for the casinos' union, UNITE-HERE.
Nevertheless, the close fight convinced them that a coalition
supporting immigrants' rights had a wide potential base
of support and could help change the state's political
landscape. The Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance (MIRA) was
born.

One day soon, that black-brown-labor coalition may just be able
to transform Mississippi's politics.

In big US cities African Americans and immigrants, especially
Latinos, often are divided by fears that any gain in jobs or political
clout by one group can only come at the expense of the other.
In Mississippi, African American political leaders and immigrant
organizers favor a different calculation: Blacks plus immigrants
plus unions equals power.

Since 2000, all three have cooperated in organizing one of the
country's most active immigrants' rights coalitions,
the MIRA. "You will always find folks reluctant to get
involved, who say, it's not part of our mission, that immigrants
are taking our jobs," Evans says. "But we all have
the same rights and justice cause."

The MIRA is the fruit of strategic thinking among a diverse group
that reaches from African American workers on catfish farms and
immigrant union organizers in chicken plants to guest workers
and contract laborers on the Gulf Coast and, ultimately, into
the halls of the state legislature.

Immigrant Workers in Crisis

"There was a pretty repressive system in Laurel, Collins,
and Hattiesburg," organizer Frank Curiel recalls. "Plants
had contracts with temp agencies, and all the workers were undocumented.
It was very hard to get a new contract because of the surplus
of Latino labor and low membership." But by building a combined
membership of immigrant and African American workers, union negotiators
in one plant forced the company to get rid of the temp service
and hire employees directly. "That meant that African Americans
gained access to those jobs, too," Curiel emphasizes.

In the casinos, MIRA volunteers worked with UNITE-HERE organizers.
In Jackson, the coalition got six bills passed the following year,
stopping schools from requiring Social Security numbers from immigrant
parents, and winning in-state tuition for any student who had
spent four years in a Mississippi high school.

Then Katrina hit the Gulf.

Vicky Cintra, a Cuban American, was the MIRA's first full-time
organizer and got her baptism by fire on the Gulf Coast. After
the hurricane, contractors began pouring in to do reconstruction,
bringing with them crews of workers.

Cintra handed out 10,000 flyers with the MIRA's phone number,
and the calls flooded in. Thirty-five workers abandoned by their
contractor in dilapidated trailers received blankets and food.
When two Red Cross shelters evicted Latinos, even putting a man
in a wheelchair onto the street, the national news media reported
on Cintra's efforts on behalf of the immigrants. "For
the next year we were just reacting to emergencies," she
recalls. The MIRA fought evictions and advocated for workers cheated
by employers. "When we threatened picket lines, the contractors
would sometimes offer to pay Latinos, but we said everyone had
to be treated equally, and got money for African Americans and
whites, too." The MIRA eventually recovered over a million
dollars. "Eventually," Cintra says, "the contractors
and companies settling in Mississippi got the idea that workers
have rights and were getting organized."

When the national immigrant marches began in the spring of 2006,
MIRA members and volunteers mobilized thousands of people for
a rally in Jackson and even a march in Laurel, a poultry town
of 18,881 people with a progressive black mayor. "There's
still a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment here," Cintra says,
"but when people give the police their ID card they get
treated with more respect, because they know their rights and
have some support."

Not always that different, however. In Laurel and many other Mississippi
towns, police still set up roadblocks to trap immigrants without
licenses. "They take us away in handcuffs, and we have
to pay over $1000 to get out of jail and get our cars back,"
says chicken plant worker Elisa Reyes. And the way the state's
Council of Conservative Citizens demonizes immigrants is reminiscent
of the language of its predecessor, the White Citizens'
Councils. During the 2007 Mississippi elections for governor and
state legislators, the Ku Klux Klan held a 500-person rally in
front of the Lee County Courthouse in Tupelo. They wore the old
white hoods and robes and carried signs saying, "Stop the
Latino Invasion."

Speaking Openly About Race

In 2007 Republicans introduced 21 anti-immigrant bills into the
Mississippi Legislature.

The MIRA, however, defeated all of the proposed laws. "The
black caucus stood behind us every time," Evans says proudly.
There are no immigrant or Latino legislators. Without the caucus,
all 21 bills would have passed in 2007, as would have 19 similar
bills in 2006.

Although the political coalition in which the MIRA participates
is powerful enough to stop the worst proposals, it isn't
yet powerful enough to elect a legislative majority. Changing
demographics is one element of a strategy to change that political
terrain, but numbers alone aren't enough.

Eric Fleming, a MIRA staff member and former state legislator,
notes that a winning majority in Mississippi would require about
80 percent of the African American vote, 20 percent to 25 percent
of the white vote, and all of the growing vote of immigrants and
other people of color. "We live in a conservative state
where people don't accept new ideas easily, so the challenge
for progressives is that we have to campaign and educate people
at the same time. If we want people to move out of their comfort
zone, we need a powerful message."

That message focuses on jobs, health care, affordable housing,
and the basic economic issues affecting working people in a state
with one of the nation's lowest standards of living and
lowest levels of social services. Immigration issues, Fleming
says, are not some toxic topic to be avoided at all costs. "If
we talk about it in the context of protecting jobs, wages, and
rights for everyone, it's something that can bring us together."

Finding common ground among immigrants, African Americans, and
labor is the pillar of the MIRA's long-term strategy. Jaribu
Hill of the Mississippi's Workers' Center argues
that winning in the South requires open discussion of race and
civil rights, even if it makes established institutions --
including unions -- uncomfortable. Before she can start
any campaign in the fish plants where the workers' center
is active, she says, "we have to talk about racism. The
union focuses on the contract, but skin color issues are also
on the table."

For all the differences, Hill still sees a common ground of experience.
"We're both victims of colonialism, we're
both second-class citizens denied our rights. If people could
see how African American people live here, they'd see it's
like Bolivia or Jamaica. On the other hand, it's important
for African Americans to understand why people come here --
because of what's happening in the countries they come
from. If people had a choice, if they could live like human beings,
they wouldn't have to risk their lives to get here. I don't
believe any human being can be illegal."