Jorge Mújica on Immigrant Organizing in Chicago: A Video Interview

I first met Jorge Mújica about forty years ago when my wife and I were living in Mexico. I was working with and writing about Mexican workers and their unions and my wife Sherry Baron was studying workers’ health and safety. Jorge was then organizing workers just as he is today. I remember he gave the two of us a wonderful educational talk about mapping health and safety hazards in the workplace.

Since 1987 he has lived in the United States and for more than a dozen years, he has worked for Arise in Chicago as a strategic campaign organizer with immigrant workers. It is estimated that Chicago has 820,000 Latino immigrants and that the metropolitan area has over two million. Three quarters identify as Mexican. Most are workers, many of them employed in service industries, manufacturing, warehouses, construction, landscaping, and cleaning. Employers often take advantage of immigrant workers and today the U.S. government is threatening to deport undocumented immigrants. Jorge and his colleagues teach them their rights and help them find union representation.

I interviewed him for a Swiss organization interested in knowing more about and supporting the immigrant movement in the United States. – Dan La Botz