The National Council of La Raza offers a blistering and trenchant critique of Bush's immigration reform proposal: The President’s proposal is limited to creating a potentially huge new guestworker program for immigrant workers with no meaningful access to permanent visas or a path to citizenship for those working, paying taxes, and raising their families in the United States. Immigrants would be asked to sign up for what is likely to be second-class status in the American workforce, which could lead to their removal when their status expires or is terminated. Labor rights for temporary workers have historically been weaker than those afforded to workers in the domestic labor force. Under this proposal, workers would be vulnerable during their temporary status, and even more vulnerable when it expires, which would also have a negative impact on wages and working conditions for their U.S.-born co-workers. That said, President Bush, by adopting the rhetoric of the left to advance a proposal unsatisfying to left or right, has created an opening for those concerned with true progressive immigration reform to hold him accountable for the failings of his proposal to live up to his rhetoric. Left advocates are effectively doing so - it's time for left politicians to do so as well, particularly because this legislation will never pass without their votes. Let's keep in mind that Bush pandering for votes by playing at offering more immigrants a path to legalization beats Clinton pandering for votes by throwing them off welfare eight years earlier. The difference has everything to do with the popular movements mobilizing since then for progressive change - and it's those movements that will bring a reform far better than the one Bush offered today. As the Immigrant Worker Freedom Ride coalition argued today: If there is any reform here, it is of “old” temporary worker programs, including the notorious and discredited “bracero” program...President Bush said our immigration laws must be “more humane.” But a policy that measures an immigrant worker’s stay in America in three-year increments is far from humane. Why buy a house or start a family, why open a business or put down roots in a community, why build up seniority on a job or train for higher skilled work, if you will have to leave it all after three or six or nine years? Why pull yourself up by your bootstraps only to have the boots themselves taken away when you’ve succeeded? The IWFR Coalition will continue to work for comprehensive immigration reform based on the great American tradition of welcoming immigrants through an open door, not a revolving one.

Dick Gephardt responded to Bush's immigration plan today with a call for "comprehensive immigration reform that is fair to undocumented immigrants" rather than half-way measures. Here's hoping other Democrats - including the others running for President - respond in kind.

Josh Marshall just posted a transcript of a conference call between journalists and "senior administration officials" about the contours of the immigration policy President Bush plans to propose tomorrow. I'm glad to see a shift back towards the White House's September 10, 2001 position on immigration, and have no doubt that the organizing coalition and voting bloc mobilized most visibly through the Immigrant Worker Freedom Rides has been vital in that achievement. The framing of the problem - the imperative of family reunification, the centrality of undocumented labor to our economy, the humanitarian crisis - is improved, and the approach is certainly more consonant with the Freedom Riders demands than it once was. A "temporary worker" status, however, opens up new avenues for abuse and exploitation, and simply creating a legal process for undocumented workers to go "above ground" and air labor grievances does little to change the facts on the ground about employers' power over immigrant workers. That would require the right to organize, which is conspicuously absent from the discussions of "senior administration officials." Josh Marshall closes by asking whether "the president expects to or even wants this 'policy' to pass." We'll have to see. Meanwhile, the coalition for progressive immigration reform will have to keep fighting for an immigration policy that truly enshrines the best values of this country.

The Immigrant Worker Freedom Ride rally in Queens today was amazing, inspiring, and empowering. There looked to be hundreds of thousands of people there; it was also the most racially and economically diverse crowd I've ever seen at a rally of this size. We accomplished what IWFR Director described to me a few months back as an "intervention" in the American political process, and started the important work of recapturing the historical moment and building historic momentum for progress. That work continues tomorrow.

Nathan Newman offers a new report on declines in unionization by state, and makes - by ranking states by unionization and coding them by 2000 election results - what should be a succinct, compelling, and visceral arguments for why progressives should prioritize unions and unions should prioritize organizing so that both can build over the next decades. Much of the recent coverage of the Immigrant Worker Freedom Rides has contextualized them as a last-ditch effort by an anemic American labor movement to scrounge for new members and national attention. They're right perhaps to the extent that a departure from the priorities and strategies of the old CIO bears partial responsibility (along with hostile governments, destructive international trends, and such) for the weakening of American labor over the past few decades. What the corporate media tends to miss is that what the rides represent, as much as anything else, is a historic return to the values and approaches which have brought every triumph that labor has acheived - organizing the unorganized, whoever they are, wherever they work, and building durable coalitions based on common interest and shared vision. Has a sense of crisis in the AFL-CIO played a role in making the "old guard" receptive to the focus on organizing and political mobilization that Sweeney - who won the first contested race for his post in a while - and even more so the "New Unity Partnership" - represent? Certainly. But they stand for is an old idea, not a new one, and in returning to it, the AFL-CIO is only catching up with the locals that compose it. This is the future of the labor movement.

The Boston Freedom Riders were here in New Haven last night for a beautiful and inspirational service. As the YDN reported: Immigrants like Vaquerano said they will try their best to promote freedom democracy, and that they need to see a change. "Everyday I cry, my heart cries," Vaquerano said. "God made us all equal -- we are all brothers and sisters. I look on our bus, and all of us are different colors, but when I look at us, how beautiful we are. That's what God created." Tonight, these freedom riders had a potluck and celebration in Philadelphia with many of the people I was privileged to work with this summer. Tomorrow night, they and several hundred others will converge in DC to prepare to spend Thursday lobbying for a renewal of the vision which brought my grandparents and great-grandparents to this nation. The students buses to New York for the culminating rally on Saturday are filling up quickly - now's the time to reserve your ticket for Saturday. Or, as the Rev. David Lee would say, "10-4!"

From a piece I had published this month in the Irish Ledger and the Democratic Left on the Immigrant Worker Freedom Rides: This fall, workers, families, clergy, and men and women from throughout the greater Philadelphia area will have the opportunity to participate in a historic mobilization for social justice – the immigrant worker freedom rides, which will bring together hundreds of thousands from around the country to defend immigrant rights from fearful and opportunistic politicians and reclaim the historic moment as one for progress and equality. Starting in late September, buses leaving from ten cities – Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Minneapolis, Chicago, Miami, and Boston – will travel across the country to converge in Washington, DC on October 2 to lobby, and in New York, NY on October 4 to rally for equal rights and reclaim the American dream. The rides have four broad policy priorities: a path to legalization and citizenship, family reunification, immigrants’ rights at work, and civil rights and civil liberties for all. On the way to the capitol, buses will stop at sites dramatizing our national struggle: cemeteries with unmarked graves for men and women who died crossing the border; factories where management has tried to use immigration status to divide workers and keep them from organizing; sites where civil rights freedom riders of the 1960’s were gunned down while fighting for civil rights. Over the past few months, a Philadelphia steering committee has begun planning our city’s role in this incredible project and historic opportunity. Our Philadelphia mobilization will be integral to the national mobilization, and will call attention to the American dream born in our city, to the immigrant legacy of our neighborhoods, and to the modern struggle of immigrant workers throughout our state. We’re planning a powerful event for September 30, when freedom riders from Boston will be coming through our city, and we’ve already confirmed Mayor Street for the day. We’ll also be sending Philadelphians on buses to lobby in the capital on Thursday October 2, and many more for a several hundred thousand person rally in Flushing Meadow Park in Queens, New York on Saturday the 4th. These freedom rides, modeled on the freedom rides of the 1960’s, present us with a historical opportunity to change national policy and shift the national consensus. On the national level, these rides are the most dramatic evidence of the historic change in AFL-CIO policy on immigration, from decades of seeing immigrant workers as a threat to jobs to a modern realization that immigrant workers are the natural allies of all working Americans, and that immigration status remains a powerful wedge in the hands of employers only as long as workers allow themselves to be divided. The rides are sponsored by a broad coalition which includes the AFL-CIO, the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, and the National Interfaith Committee for Interfaith Justice. We’re eager for you to participate, both by getting involved in planning with us and by showing up this fall to take part in making history.

Thom Hartmann has an interesting piece on the potential and prospects for talk radio on the left, and the role that organized labor can play in such projects: KKBJ-AM Talk Radio 1360 discovered the union-owned network's liberal programming on a stormy night back in June when one of the Minnesota talk station's satellite receivers died. To avoid dead air, the station flipped to the program stream coming down on a second satellite receiver, tuned in to i.e. America Radio Network's 9 pm-midnight host, Mike Malloy. Malloy was in fine form, ranting about the "Bush crime family." The next day, KKBJ's Chuck Sebastian got some feedback from listeners who had just heard their first bit of liberal programming on a station that otherwise carries mostly right-wingers. "One guy said that it was a breath of fresh air to finally get somebody who knows what he's talking about," Sebastian said. He added, "Another said it was 'nice to hear somebody with an opinion the opposite of Michael Savage's ranting and raving.'" We have two union radio shows broadcasting weekly in Philadelphia: Talking Unions on WHAT 1340 AM from 10 to 12 AM Saturdays, and Labor to Neighbor on WURD 900 AM from 1 to 4 PM Mondays. Both shows are focusing this month on immigration, building momentum for the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride this fall. I was lucky to be in the booth when the National Chairperson for the rides, Maria Elena Durazo was on last month; the Reverend James Lawson will be on Talking Unions in a few weeks. The Labor Heritage Center has a useful, though slightly out of date, table of union shows nationally.