Let's imagine a day in which four and a half million of immigrants working in Italy decide to fold their arms and not work. Twenty-four hours in
which thousands of nurses, pizza makers, baby sitters,
cashiers, waiters, receptionists, construction workers, teachers,
doctors, politicians and journalists all will stop working. A nightmare? No, only what will happen in France and Italy, on March 1st, 2010.
In these days more
than 240 immigrants have been conducting a hunger strike to demand
shorter time fot the renewal of residence permits. Because without this document, the
immigrants can not work regularly, rent a house, have tax deduction. Without this permit they can't take part at the socio-economic life of our country and they can only be
exploited. Despite
the Consolidated Act on Immigration provides a period of only 20 days, hundreds of thousands of people are waiting for a residence permit that does not
arrive before 7-8 months. And while these people are on hunger
strike to try to get something, there are those who are planning of doing like
in France: go on strike collectively for an entire day.
If we are used to organize ourselves when the public
transportation go on strike (and they even have so many articles in the newspapers), why not try to get the same attention to an issue that
affects nearly five million immigrants that run Italy?
1st March 2010
wants to organize a major event in order to show Italian public
opinion how the contribution of migrants is important to the running of our society. Foreigners but also Italians, all united by the rejection of racism and discrimination towards the weakest, have met and have started to organize this day of immigrants' strike in Italy. So it was born a website and a facebook group.
The goal? Prove that
if all immigrants in our country cross their arms and, with them, the Italian colleagues who share a sense of inequality, then the country would go crazy. The
initiative was launched in France by Nadia Lamarkbi, a journalist of
Moroccan origin, and it arrived in Italy thanks to Daimarely Quinterno,
Cuban, and Stefania Ragusa, an Italian journalist.
The objective is to demonstrate that without immigrants around us, as many would like, there would be hundreds and hundreds of
children and elderly people suddenly without assistance, hectares of
not cultivated land and many other problems. Because contrary to what racist propaganda says, the growing number of foreigners in Italy "has not been reflected in lower employment opportunities for Italians." According to the Unioncamere 2009 report, 48% of immigrants is employed in unskilled or semi-skilled work.
The aim of the strike would be to match the 12 million people who stopped working in the United States, on May 1st, 2006. They were mostly Hispanic and they protested against the introduction of the illegal immigration crime into the American law.
There are still two
months to see how things will turn out, but you can already predict
that on March 1st, 2010, the immigrants strike will create a lot of problems for the Italian racist society. Because without immigrants we do not live better.
But it is certainly easier for a government doing nothing,
humiliate and expel the foreigners, rather than resolve the
immigration problem with an appropriate law.
Marianna Lepore
Safer Italy. Innocents in jail up to six months
Refugees aren't criminals. The monstruosity of rejections to Lybia.
First results. The security decree doing its damages
Small tales of dangerous criminals. Who the illegal immigrants really are
Welcome to a inhuman country. International organizations against the decree
Humans and not. The security decree deprives illegal immigrants of basic human rights
The colossal lie, it is not true that immigration increases crime
Blame the weakest, immigrants on barges used as scapegoats for all the problems in Italy
Criminals, the ineffectiveness of the criminalization of illegal immigrants
Appeal against the return of racial laws in Europe, from Camilleri, Tabucchi, Maraini, Fo, Rame, Ovadia, Scaparro, Amelio
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Comments
Whether you are from England, Bangladesh, Australia, the Philipines, the USA, Peru, France, Sri Lanka, China or anywhere other than Italy. Regardless of whether you teach English, do translations, clean houses, do business, pump gas, pose for pictures, run an embassy, perform, shop, conduct a radio show, make or spend money in any way…
If you are not Italian and are in Italy…
March 1st is the day we all shall strike…
…to demonstrate what would happen in a world without foreigners.