The Value of Absence

It's May Day, and today we face an important question: what if immigrant workers disappeared for a day?

Activists for immigrant rights are counting on today's "Uno de Mayo" boycott to be a curious handmaiden to the Mexican Day of Independence coming at the end of this week. But whereas Cinco de Mayo has devolved from a day of Mexican (then Latin-American) pride and solidarity, to a polyglot Magaritafest, activist Nativo Lopez told an interviewer, U.S. attitudes toward immigrants have galvanized the May 1 action:

"I have observed that the current protests are the cumulative effect of years of bashing and denigrating immigrants generally, and Mexicans and Latinos in particular. But most poignantly, HR 4437 -- the Sensenbrenner legislation -- proposes to eliminate all social space within which undocumented immigrants could accommodate themselves, work, survive and provide for their families."

Social space is the primary reason that immigrant-rights groups of all kinds, though primarily Hispanic-rights groups, encourage physical absence today. If you plan to go about your business--or if, like me, you're not a recent immigrant and your absence would prove nothing--you can wear white to show solidarity.

The Right's response has been largely dismissive. But news agencies in hotspots like California and Texas are predicting the impact will be felt even if the protest is only partly successful.

I predict otherwise. I think the most dramatic impact will be felt where Americans don't believe there are many immigrant workers. In the Heartland, the Badlands, and the hinterlands.

(Sorry, Sioux City readers, but it's true).

Hey! I don't have any Sioux City readers! But if I did they'd boycott.

Anyways. Absence as protest has a long and proud history, on May 1 and otherwise.

So.

On a lighter note, Aristophanes was the first to discover the dramatic properties of absence.

So make America beg today.