August 13, 2002	Tuesday	Jamadi-us-Saani 3, 1423

LOS ANGELES: More than 40 years after the famous civil rights Freedom Riders challenged segregation in the southern states, a new Freedom Ride is being planned to champion the rights of millions of illegal immigrants in the United States.

The aim is to bring hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their supporters from all corners of the country to Washington to press politicians to grant them a new legal status.

Surviving members of the original rides — who in the early 1960s rode buses to flout laws that prohibited racially mixed groups from travelling together — and relatives of immigrant workers who died in the World Trade Center are among the leaders of the new Freedom Ride.

The purpose of the ride, which also has the backing of the major unions and churches and will take place in the spring, is to draw attention to the plight of millions of immigrants who work in the shadows for meagre wages and live in fear of deportation. There are an estimated eight to ten million undocumented immigrants in the US.

“A freedom ride is a great idea to make our land live up to the ideal of equality of all,” said the Rev James Lawson, one of the original freedom riders, a colleague of Martin Luther King, a student of the teachings of Gandhi and the pioneer of non-violence in the civil rights struggle in the US.

“Our business is not primarily in Afghanistan or the Middle East, but to secure equality and justice here.”

Lawson spoke at the launch of the new Freedom Ride last week at a gathering of union and church leaders, civil rights activists and relatives of workers at the Windows on the World restaurant who were killed on September 11.

He said that many people in the US had been unaware of the horrors of segregation until these were brought to their attention by the Freedom Rides in 1961. “We have something of the same thing going on with the matter of immigrants,” he added.

Another leading original freedom rider, Congressman John Lewis, will also take part.

Before September 11, moves were under way to legitimize the millions of undocumented immigrants in the US. But since then, immigration controls have tightened and the issue has dropped off the political agenda. Organizers hope the Freedom Ride will revive the issue.

Freedom riders will board buses in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Houston, Miami, Chicago, Minneapolis and Boston and will converge first on New York and then on Washington. The manifesto of the ride stops short of asking for an amnesty for illegals and suggests instead a programme that includes the right for all immigrant workers to apply for citizenship and to reunify their families.

The situation of many immigrant workers was highlighted by what happened in the wake of September 11.

All 43 workers at the Windows on the World restaurant were killed, and some of their relatives were afraid to ask for help because they had been in the country illegally.

The new film was screened at the Freedom Ride launch at Dreamworks animation studios in Glendale, California. The widow of one of the workers, Carmen Mejia, called for support for the ride.

John Wilhelm, the president of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (Here), many of whose members are undocumented, said the ride offered Americans the chance “for opening our arms and welcoming the people who make this country possible”.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.