The quiet sound of a lonely wind in the desert holds our attention to the images on the screen – a performer's name, a video title, and then the words, “Inspired by 11 million true stories."

Thus begins the haunting and powerful music video, Wake Me Up by hip-hop artist Aloe Blacc, with a visual narrative that captures both the tragedy of deportation facing immigrant families and their courage to overcome separation and borders.  The song itself is the number one single in over 63 countries.

The video was produced by Blacc in cooperation with abc* Foundation and NDLON, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. Its release on October 23, 2013 was partly timed to influence the Congressional debate on immigration reform that has once again become its own tragedy of inaction and failure.  The video will remain a poignant appeal to our better natures – and for action - for a long time to come.

The main characters in the video bring the authenticity of personal experience to their roles as members of an immigrant family torn apart by broken US immigration laws.  Hareth Andrade, a daughter in the video, is an activist in the immigrant youth movement. Margarita Reyes who plays the mother was deported as a child with her own mother despite being a US citizen.  And Agustin Chiprez Alvarez, a real day laborer in Los Angeles, plays a day laborer in the video.

NDLON, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, has good reason to focus attention on immigration laws and their stepped up enforcement during the Obama years. The threat of deportation is a daily reality for day laborers trying to get work in cities and communities all across the US.

“The workers in this industry face extremely high rates of wage theft and extremely dangerous working conditions,” says NDLON Human Rights Program Coordinator, Nadia Marin-Molina.  “Add to that that immigration is used as a tactic by employers – and local government - to threaten workers and to retaliate against them if they organize. Everybody is kind of used to the worst possible situation.”

Day laborers are constantly exposed to these conditions and threats because of the way they have to get jobs and earn a living, mostly doing construction, landscaping and similar kinds of work.
 
“You have a public street corner with cars driving by with clients coming up,” says B. Loewe, NDLON Communications Director. “You’re fired at the end of every single day; you’re placed in conditions where you’re negotiating through a car window.”

The nearly 40 organizations and worker centers that make up the NDLON network are dedicated to creating a grass roots movement to improve the lives of day laborers.  In cities and communities from Washington state to Florida, Texas to Illinois, Maryland to California and Oregon, members are organizing to recover unpaid wages, prevent labor rights abuses, advocate with police and community stakeholders and protect the right to seek work at informal, street-corner, hiring sites.

“I think any of us to be here and to be working in this area need to believe that conditions don’t have to be as they are,” says Marin-Molina. “And so, we can improve the wages, we can improve the working conditions, but I think more and more we see that we have to do it ourselves,” she adds. “It’s about organizing from the bottom and that’s the way we’re going to not just pass laws but also enforce them and to be able to set our own standards.”   

In many cities NDLON member organizations work closely with Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA), AFL-CIO central labor councils and other unions to better the conditions of day laborers.  Together they’ve managed to win wage theft ordinances and in some cases control over hiring conditions. This partnership with traditional organized labor has only grown since NDLON was created in 2001. Early on they were not welcome at the national AFL-CIO convention but a lot has change since.  At the most recent convention in Los Angeles this past September NDLON was one of the key community partners and innovative labor organizations fully embraced by a revitalized federation.

“I think this year you see a real recognition that workers’ rights means workers’ rights for all workers,” said Loewe outside the convention hall in LA.  “It’s a real recognition that dignified work means dignified workers regardless of your profession, ending the division that sometimes people see that these are real workers and those are not, or anything like that.  I think we’re seeing a budding, inclusive labor movement that makes room for everyone who’s contributing, not just to the movement but to their communities and to the country as a whole.”

Both Marin-Molina and Loewe are passionate about the individual dignity and worth of workers, something workers have to recognize and seize for themselves. “The role of an organizer isn’t just to fight back against abuse,” impassioned Loewe, “but it’s to rescue the value that’s been lost in people that make us realize that we’re worth more than the conditions we’re put in.”

“As a human being you have inherent value as a worker that’s contributing to your community or your jobsite," Loewe added. "You’re creating value and you deserve to be respected as such.  So it’s not just fighting against the abuse that one faces but fighting against the internalized abuse that makes someone think that they don’t deserve better.”

Deportation is a signal that you don’t belong, that you have no worth and that the law will come down on you if you stand up for yourself at all.  That’s the point.

Wake Me Up is a welcome antidote, contributing through story and song the notion that immigrants - and all workers - have worth and that they can take action and manage their own futures.  In it we see the bitter results of injustice and the sweet image of standing up to that injustice.  In it we see strength and hope, no matter what our broken political system cannot deliver.