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 New Orleans Don’t take my word… how about a sample from Randy Shaw’s piece from Beyond Chron today entitled, “New Immigrant Rights Campaign to Launch Largest March of Obama Era:”
“Having written about how the immigrants rights movement was built, and then exploded onto the public stage in 2006, the reassembling of this movement in Washington DC next Sunday is significant. It means that many of the nation’s most strategic organizers from diverse fields — labor, immigrant rights, faith-based activism — are again working in concert to protect the over 10 million undocumented immigrants who face deportation and the break-up of their families due to the government’s failure to legalize their status.
And while the march sends a powerful message, [Gabe] Gonzalez and key organizers know that even more important is what happens afterward.
Continue Reading Biggest March of Obama Term
 New Orleans Frankly, I don’t read editorials in the New York Times. Usually they just made me mad. Saturday though there was one that was mad enough already under the headline: “Republicans Wanted.” The editorial was about the meetings last Thursday between President Obama and advocates for immigration reform.
Telling it like it is, the Times laid it our clearly: “Enough with the talk.”
Amen to that!
The notion that the President would ask the advocates to go round up Republicans I hit on the other day, and the editorialist was reading over my shoulder the other day when he correctly says, “…that’s enough to make anyone want to reach for the plug and pull it.”
The March in March is a game changer, but only the starting innings, the first quarter, the early round, but in truth winning or losing is now all in the streets, all in the barrios, all in the bodegas, and all at the grassroots now. Let’s take the “governor” off of the accelerator and stop downplaying the pain, tragedy and anger of the immigrant experience.
In the meeting with the President, all reports indicate Angelica Salas from CRLA , the great immigrant rights organization in Los Angeles, hit hard and wouldn’t back up on her insistence that deportations had to stop and the President had to lead. We need this and more. The charm offensive has to end. The cajoling has to take second seat.
Enough with the talk!
 New Orleans Maybe “following the leader” is going to be once again, as it is so often in movements, to allow the courage and immediacy of the young to finally dictate the tempo, and maybe even the targets, in the push to find a real path for comprehensive immigration reform?
Two things bring that to mind. The first has been the huge resolve – and wild media attention – to the four young undocumented young men and women from the Miami area who have been on the Trail of DREAMs to try and bring attention – and resolution – to the problem of higher education for immigrants. This is not a mass movement but it is shamefully inspiring. Last week I happened to be passing CNN and saw them show up in rural Georgia at some hard shell, moss backed sheriff’s office to ask him some hard questions about his enforcement of 287g deputized roundups for immigrants in his county. Lucky for him, he was out of pocket. What was he going to do? Arrest them as criminal offenders? Of course not! This is the courage of the bus rides, the lunch counters, and a thousand other points of civil rights pride. And, this is a demand about now.
The same thing can be said about the couple of hundred young people who marched – with all of our hope and support – a couple of days ago in Chicago – demanding a real solution to the immigration crisis with their banner unfurled: “Undocumented and Unafraid!” These are the kinds of actions that pop the bubbles of complacency around the go-slow, legislative stalemate and finger pointing on all sides in Washington.
And, why should we be surprised at any of this?
Continue Reading Following the Young on Immigration Reform
 Washington There is finally hope for comprehensive immigration reform if only because the inside-the-beltway strategy is crumbling and the anger and hurt if finally forcing itself into the open and driving the debate. Many activists and advocates have been pleading for a rally, march or some show of strength and purpose since exactly such an event was squelched for Inauguration Day 2009. Now a year later with some small progress in tone, but mostly some severe disillusionment with the lack of progress on the local vigilantism sanctioned by 287g, the increased punitive enforcements and senseless family breakups from unnecessary deportations, and the thousands pushed out of jobs the base knows the score no matter what lipstick DC players might put on this pig.
Not surprisingly on the eve of the March 21st Rally and March, the President and his people summoned a dozen advocates for a meeting Thursday at the White House to try to soften some of the blows. Parsing the statements after it was over from participants was no easy task, especially reading the snarky line in the Times claiming the advocates were mainly happy to have had the President there for an hour of the session. I’m sure there’s a way that could have been written more patronizingly, but I’ll have to think about it. An hour from the President is frankly no big deal when dealing with the problems of 12 million plus undocumented immigrants and what this means to a core part of the progressive – and Democratic – constituency among Latino voters in this country.
Continue Reading Obama Feeling Heat on Immigration Reform
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New Orleans Don’t take my word… how about a sample from Randy Shaw’s piece from Beyond Chron today entitled, “New Immigrant Rights Campaign to Launch Largest March of Obama Era:”
