A note from Peter Olney Co-Editor The Stansbury Forum

On the evening of the second Saturday in February, Christina Perez and I attended the first Sin Fronteras Awards celebration at Casa Pico in Los Angeles. Casa Pico was the mansion of the last Mexican governor of California who served until 1846. In its time the building was the tallest in Los Angeles at three stories high. The celebration, which featured food and music, honored the lives and contributions of four distinguished individuals who have dedicated themselves to the fight for social and economic justice for all: veteran Chicano movement activist Evelina Marquez, labor leaders Dave and Carole Sicker, the UCLA undocumented student organization “IDEAS,” and late civil and immigrant rights lawyer Jorge Gonzalez.  

They were recipients of the first-ever Sin Fronteras Award, uplifting their relentless commitment to improve the lives of working people, students, and their families. The event was a lively and very moving evening, and the high point was the intervention of the UCLA student organization. A new generation of activists and organizers is rising!

The principal organizer of this event was Joel Ochoa, retired US labor organizer, émigré from Mexico and a member of CASA – Centro de Accion Social Autonomo. He has written a brief description of the Sin Fronteras initiative.   

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Immigrant workers changed the face of Labor in Southern California

On February 11 under the umbrella of the Sin Fronteras Committee we gathered in the historic Plaza Olvera in Downtown Los Angeles to honor some distinguish individuals for their lifelong commitment to the struggle to improve the life of all; and to announce the formation of this new network of community, academia and labor rights activists.

The concept of Sin Fronteras emerged during a 1974 meeting of the National Coalition for Fair Immigration Laws and Practices held in Chicago, Illinois, at the Shoe Makers Union Hall. The name of Sin Fronteras highlights the link between workers justice movements in the U.S. and Mexico.

Sin Fronteras was also the name of a bilingual newspaper of CASA Centro de Accion Social Autonomo (Autonomous Center for Social Action), the pioneer organization in the struggle for the defense and organization of the undocumented workers and their families.

CASA was founded in 1968 by a well-known and respected community and labor leader named Bert Corona. Its purpose was twofold: organize undocumented workers and their families to fight to legalize their status and to make Unions understand that workers are workers, regardless of their legal status; and as such, are part of the working class; Unions have a historical responsibility to bring them onto the House of Labor.

It was a revolutionary idea; but hardly a new one. With the formation of CASA, Corona was following a well-established tradition among Mexican Americans and Mexican Immigrants to fight for social and economic justice even under the most adverse conditions.

Mexican Americans and Mexican Immigrants were influenced by socialists and anarchists in the formation of some of the Mutual Aid Societies, especially in the Southwest of the U. S. This Mutualistas (here and here), as they were known, helped people at the community level to alleviate some of their basic needs, but also filled up a vacuum created by the AFL for their rejection to organize them. By nature, this mutualistas were anti capitalist organizations and the Unions they helped to create organized regardless of trade and nationality.

Mexican Americans and Mexican Immigrants had a clear understanding of the importance of trans border solidarity. Alliances formed by Emma Tenayuca, Luisa Moreno (Guatemalan) and Bert Corona are well documented and paved the way for future acts of solidarity on both sides of the border.

Based on this tradition young Chicano students and activists formed alliances with their counterparts in Mexico and the rest of Latin America; and it was precisely because of this alliances that many activists, first from Mexico and later from the rest of the continent, found shelter in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, and many other cities. 

With the formation of the Sin Fronteras Committee we want to celebrate that tradition. And in doing so, we will honor the contribution of those pioneers who are still among us. We will also engage, by promoting conferences and debates, in acts of solidarity to support the struggle for social and economic justice for immigrants toiling and fighting in the U.S. And, last but not least, we will build support for the struggles taking place south of the border.

Here we are fifty-five years after the formation of CASA, demanding once again for Organize Labor, especially in the private sector, to be more creative and aggressive in their approach to organize immigrant workers. It is not only a question of survival of an institution, but rather way for a significant sector of the working class to find a tool, a collective bargaining agreement, in the struggle for economic justice.   

We should all learn from our immediate past and remember the Justice for Janitors campaign, American Racing Equipment campaign and the Drywallers campaign as the moment when self organized, on two of the above mentioned cases, immigrant workers changed the face of Labor in Southern California and created a more inclusive, colorful and combative movement.

Los Angeles, CA. February of 2023

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