David Bacon: The Right To Stay Home: How U.S. Policy Drives Mexican Migration

KPFA Radio 94.1 FM presents

DAVID BACON on Mexican Migration
“The Right To Stay Home: How U.S. Policy Drives Mexican Migration”
Hosted by Miguel Guerrero
Thursday, Sept. 26, 7:30 pm
Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 Ninth Street, Oakland, CA
$12 advance tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/451564 :: 800-838-3006 or Marcus Books, Pegasus Books (3 locations), Mrs. Dalloway’s, Moe’s Books, Walden Pond, DIESEL, A Bookstore, and Modern Times ($15 door)
Information: http://www.kpfa.org/events Benefits KPFA wheelchair access

Co-sponsored by: Alameda Labor Council, East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy. El Tecolote newspaper, Filipinos Advocates for Justice, Global Exchange, Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights, Pájaro Latinoamericano – KPOO, Radio Bilingue, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5, UNITE HERE Local 2850

A compelling examination of Mexican immigration to the U.S., both legal and illegal.” —Kirkus Reviews

“David Bacon’s book, The Right To Stay Home is a must read for organizers, immigrant advocates, …and citizens who care about our history and values as a nation. This book puts a human face on the immigration debate, its impact on people on both sides of the border, and the indispensable elements of real comprehensive immigration reform—who got us into this mess, and what we need to do to fix it.” — Eliseo Medina, International Secretary of the Service Employees International Union, former vice-president of the United Farm Workers

More than 25 years since the last significant revision of national immigration policy, comprehensive reform is finally being debated in Congress, offering the promise of a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living and working in the U.S. However, until such reform is official, those millions of workers are “illegal” people, denied basic rights in the country in which they have lived for years.

Now investigative reporter and labor activist David Bacon - in his brilliant new book “The Right To Stay Home: How U.S. Policy Drives Mexican Migration – reveals how globalization and U.S. policy propel the forces that drive Mexican migrants across the border. Through his own analysis and migrants’ dramatic stories in their own voices, Bacon proves the decision to migrate is rarely voluntary. He demonstrates exactly how indigenous communities across Mexico struggle with the brutal human cost of globalization, and then must cope with the U.S. criminalizing of migrants driven from their homelands.

“Combining evocative personal narratives with penetrating geopolitical analysis, this compelling book vividly reveals the devastating effects on Mexico of the global class war of the past decades, and their impact on the United States. Perhaps the most striking demand of the victims is ‘the right to not migrate,’ the right to live with dignity and hope, bitterly attacked under the neoliberal version of globalization.” — Noam Chomsky

Award-winning photojournalist and author David Bacon spent twenty years as a labor organizer. For the last two decades he has been a reporter, documentary photographer, and longtime radio host. He appears often on KPFA Radio. His previous books included The Children of NAFTA, Communities Without Borders, and Illegal People. Presently an associate editor at Pacific News Service, he also writes for TruthOut, The Nation, The Progressive, The American Prospect and The San Francisco Chronicle. As an immigrant rights activist, Bacon helped organize the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights and the Labor Immigrant Organizers Network.

Miguel Guerrero is the Producer and Host of the weekly show Rock en Rebelión and also KPFA's Web Producer.