Migrants’ Strike: An Audacious Moment. An interview with Valery Alzaga, from the 2006 US May Day to present challenges

Dear all,

here is an interview with Valery Alzaga, migrants' organizer and tradeunionist, towards February 20th, One Day Without Us in the UK.

Enjoy!

Eleonora - Precarious (dis) Connections

Migrants’ Strike: An Audacious Moment. An interview with Valery Alzaga, from the 2006 US May Day to present challenges

As part of the discussion opened by the call for a «day without us» on the 20^th of February in the UK, and after the publication of an analysis of the strike of migrant labour of the 1^st of March 2010 in Italy, we interviewed Valery Alzaga, trade unionist and organizer for migrants’ rights with experience in the US and Europe, now member of UNISON (UK). With Valery, whose experience as migrants’ organizer spread from the US to several European countries, we begun by discussing the «24 Hours without us» of 2006 in the US. Valery told us about the organization of the strike, the meaning of that May Day and how, from Chicago to Los Angeles, the fear and the anger daily felt by migrants were transformed into something politically productive: the migrants on strike understood that they had power, the power not to be alone. This struggle, that was essentially social and transnational, speaks to our current struggles and offers useful insights in the search for a strike that is able to overcome the boundaries of the workplaces and of the national dimension. How can we strike when the strike is less and less a right and must hit both the production and the reproduction in order to be effective? How can we fight back a neoliberal model in which the government of mobility becomes an integral part of a process that defunds welfare state and precarizes the labor force? How can we create political connections between EU and non-EU migrants, between migrants and non-migrants going beyond sheer solidarity and overcoming the divisions that weaken us all? In the end, how can the «si se puede» force resonate in the present, starting from the 20^th of February? These are some issues at stake in our talk with Valery. A continuation of this discussion will take place during the TSS Assembly in London on 10th-12th February…read more.

http://www.connessioniprecarie.org/2017/02/07/migrants-strike-an-audacious-moment-an-interview-with-valery-alzaga-from-the-2006-us-may-day-to-present-challenges/