Battleangel

No wonder America prefers dismal job security. If people try to exercise democracy, they’re just fired. No rationale has to be given. And there are plenty of desperate immigrants to take their place.

Six employees at a seafood restaurant in Houston were fired this week after skipping work to take part in a pro-immigration march. In Detroit, 21 immigrants lost their jobs as meat cutters after attending a similar protest last month.

And several students at a high school near Tampa, Fla., were suspended this week for walking out of class to go to a demonstration.

Across the country, workers and students have paid a price for attending the immigration rallies that have recently swept the nation. They have lost jobs or been cited for truancy for joining the hundreds of thousands who have protested proposed federal legislation that would crack down on illegal immigrants.

In one case, the family of a 14-year-old Los Angeles-area boy said he committed suicide because he was threatened by a school official for participating in immigration protests. School officials disputed that.

So now, organizers are discouraging immigrants and low-income protesters from participating and “rescheduling protests to weekends and evenings” when they’ll go unnoticed. That’s the way to protest in America. Just like immigrants quietly doing menial jobs on the employment market.

”This is a concern because this is a demographic of people who have historically not come out into the streets to raise an issue,” said Germonique Jones, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based Center for Community Change, an umbrella group behind the rallies.

Alas, the system wins again. The proletariat have been put back in their place. And so Americans can deceive themselves regarding the efficacy of the demonstrations and how people supposedly exercised their civil liberties in a great display of democracy.