This week is Lucha's Immigration Week. Check out the great events planned! Below is our statement in solidarity...
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On June 6th, 1993, a rusty freighter named Golden Venture ran aground in Queens after nearly circling the globe with almost three hundred Thai and Chinese immigrants. Most of these immigrants had paid thirty thousand dollars to be able to work in this country free from China's coercive reproductive policies. But as the Golden Venture crashed, these passengers jumped a mutinous ship to freezing waters and swam toward shore, where the immigrations services laid in wait.

Among the passengers of that fated vessel, ten drowned, six disappeared, and the rest were detained, to be deported to a punishing homeland or left in a difficult legal limbo in this country. Like most Asian immigrants, these people came to the United States primarily to earn a living. They were met instead with years of detainment, deportation, and forced sterilization in their home country.

Today, the individuals who remain help make up America's evolving history of migration, one which is already shared by Asian American Alliance and Lucha's predecessors. Just as Filipino and Mexican farm workers came together in 1936 to form a dual-ethnic AFL charter, just as Philip Vera Cruz and Cesar Chavez fought side by side to improve working conditions of migrant workers, so are we coming together today to build coalitions against the forces that weigh us down.

Tonight, we celebrate not just the rights of immigrants but the rights of all people of color. Let us take this time not only to remember our privileges deprived but also the ones received, thanks to those fighting since before our time. Without our predecessors, our teachers, we would not know the true meaning of what we deserve. Let us thank and remember them for the history which they made, for the history which we will continue writing.