Chris Roesel spent two weeks in El Paso volunteering at Annunciation House helping immigrants dumped there by ICE. He kept a diary while he took dozens of immigrants each day to the bus station and airport for travel to family members throughout the U.S. He had to explain how you go through security, find your plane, change planes in other airports for people who come from remote mountain villages in Guatemala. Listen to his interview on KKFI-Kansas City Community Radio
Issues / Cuestiones
The Cross Border Network aims to educate and build movements that challenge corporate driven globalization. Specifically, we are worker-focused but aim to bring other social issues into our larger platform. Our core issues remain the same, but the ways we address them change. We choose these issues based on community requests and personal testimony. When investigating targets for a campaign or specific issue, we use a power structure analysis similar to what’s been developed in union and anti-sweatshop corporate campaigns over the last 20 years. For example, we are in the research stage of a campaign we hope to launch later this year in partnership with the CGT maquila union and CODEMUH - The Honduran Women’s Collective, a feminist organization that focuses on health and safety issues in the Honduran maquiladoras. The campaign will expose working conditions at Hanes maquiladoras in Honduras and pressure for change. We are analyzing Hanes’ global supply chain, their allies (such as the US based Fair Labor Association), their financial structure (including largest clients and banks they have relationships with), their weaknesses (such as public relations), associated corporations via their board of directors and more.
In a larger context, we at CBN understand that the larger neoliberal attacks on workers are what we are inevitably fighting. This includes US-backed militarization, trade policies that cater to corporations, the privatization of public services, forced austerity measures, and the forced dislocation both internally and externally of millions. We understand that modern-day neoliberalism is a new form of imperialism, which directly benefits corporate interests in the US. This is driving the declining conditions for workers here at home and across the world especially in “developing” countries. Our end strategy is to continue building relationships to help create a global movement vested against this corporate neocolonialism.
We are unique in this area in discussing the direct connection between neoliberalism, trade policies, attacks on US workers, militarization at home and abroad and the subsequent human rights violations and theft of democracy that follow. We see immigrants often as economic refugees of neoliberalism and migration as a reaction to systemic plunder occasioned by such policies. Wherever we focus, however, we discover inspiration and hope in the resistance of the plundered and we draw strength from the solidarity that we see in countries such as Honduras. Thus we aim to educate US movements to work intersectionality, recognize that their issues are connected and that we must unify to change systemic injustices.
In a larger context, we at CBN understand that the larger neoliberal attacks on workers are what we are inevitably fighting. This includes US-backed militarization, trade policies that cater to corporations, the privatization of public services, forced austerity measures, and the forced dislocation both internally and externally of millions. We understand that modern-day neoliberalism is a new form of imperialism, which directly benefits corporate interests in the US. This is driving the declining conditions for workers here at home and across the world especially in “developing” countries. Our end strategy is to continue building relationships to help create a global movement vested against this corporate neocolonialism.
We are unique in this area in discussing the direct connection between neoliberalism, trade policies, attacks on US workers, militarization at home and abroad and the subsequent human rights violations and theft of democracy that follow. We see immigrants often as economic refugees of neoliberalism and migration as a reaction to systemic plunder occasioned by such policies. Wherever we focus, however, we discover inspiration and hope in the resistance of the plundered and we draw strength from the solidarity that we see in countries such as Honduras. Thus we aim to educate US movements to work intersectionality, recognize that their issues are connected and that we must unify to change systemic injustices.
