On Oct. 4, Flushing Meadows Park in Queens will be the scene of an enormous rally, the culmination of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride that begins this month.

The Freedom Ride is a national mobilization for immigrant rights modeled after the freedom rides of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Buses will embark nationwide from eight cities and end in a mass rally of hundreds of thousands in Flushing Meadows Park on Oct. 4.

Immigrant workers not only suffer from employers who ignore minimum wage and hour laws and then cheat them of what little they agreed to work for, but they police and harass the workers and even inflict physical violence against them. Since 9/11 the repression and denial of basic civil liberties against all segments of the immigrant community has increased exponentially.

The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride is an initiative of a broad coalition including the AFL-CIO, national civil and immigrant rights groups, and religious, community, and student associations.

Immigrant workers are demanding a voice on the job without regard to legal status, rights denied them by their undocumented status and outdated laws. They are also demanding the right to apply for citizenship, to reunify their families, reforms of outdated immigration laws, and to enjoy full protection of their civil rights and civil liberties. The road to citizenship needs a new map. The goal of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride is to help draw that map.

When the “riders” converge on Washington, D.C., they will meet with members of Congress and then travel to NYC for the Flushing Meadows rally.

WBAI radio, 99.5 FM, plans live coverage. It will be on the “Building Bridges: Your Community-Labor Report,” produced by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash, on Oct. 4 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and streaming audio over the internet at www.2600.com.

For updated information about the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride nationally visit their web site: www.iwfr.org. And for more information about local events in the NYC area preceding the rally, go to the NYC Central Labor Council web site: www.nycclc.org.