After the defeat of the DREAM Act last year, William Gheen, the leader of ALIPAC, who deplores undocumented youth and wants to deport all such students, issued a call for us to stay down: “we should never gloat, but it is time to rub these losses in to our opposition. They need to stay down, instead of forcing us to knock them down again and again.”
These are the values of ALIPAC—immense hatred towards children that were brought here through no choice of their own, American children who want to serve this country, who are the future leaders of this land.
The subaltern has answered Gheen’s coarse demands. In one year since the failure of the DREAM Act, undocumented students have come together in larger numbers than ever before, setting up organizations, networking online, making videos, blogging and petitioning for change.
Youth in the usually-somber waiting rooms of history are bustling with renewed enthusiasm and energy. Trapped as a marginal status, ignored by the mainstream media, with their backs to the wall and everything to lose, undocumented youth are emerging as leaders in their own movement. Take a look at the Ideas for Change campaign at Change.org–the DREAM Act is ahead by a landslide (don’t forget to register and vote), thanks in no part, to the efforts of undocumented students and allies. Following the early success of the Change.org organizing, DreamACTivist will be back with a spree of actions very soon so remember to get on our twitter and the Passage of the DREAM Act application on Facebook. Check out what our ally BAMN is doing as well and get involved.
In a paper on alternative nationalisms this past year, I wrote:
The ‘politics of waiting’ initiated by stringent United States immigration laws has indeed spurred the rise of a community of undocumented students. United in their desire to be recognized as Americans who deserve the chance to apply for citizenship, they question the ‘alien’ assumption of their character, the ‘otherness’ label that is given to them as an ‘a priori.’
The beneficiaries of the federal DREAM Act are anything but alien—from their slight to unaccented discourses, their spirit to fight their own battles, survival in the face of great opposition and obstacles, these students are American in every way besides a piece of paper: a piece of paper, a green card, that would confer the arbitrary privilege of ‘citizenship’ on these students, a social construct that students are organizing and fighting to achieve by all means. As the Oscar Wilde quote goes “we live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.” In effect, these students are fighting to inherit a large tax burden, serve and die for a country that refuses to acknowledge them, pay hefty loans and mortgages, and to be the force of change and innovation in an eroding Pax Americana. ‘Freedom’ does come with its burden of ironies.
When and how did this happen? Roberto Gonzales traces the emergence of undocumented youth organizing to the immigration marches in 2006. This is not to say that undocumented youth organizing did not exist prior to that movement, but that they cemented a place and social category for themselves. Gonzales writes,
“Civic activity has been on the rise among undocumented youth on college campuses and in communities. New generations of activists are being born out of the very struggle to become ‘American’ and in the process, they are rewriting their own stories.”
Branching out across the United States and the web, undocumented students are now using emerging media technologies to organize for the DREAM Act. And the subaltern is not monolithic but it is united in its goals — Take a look at SIM from Massachusetts, New York Student Youth Leadership Council, the UCLA-based Underground Undergrads, BAMN on the DREAM Act, A DREAM Deferred, DreamACTivist, One DREAM 2009 and the main online social network–DAP. This small list is just scratching the surface of the many student groups that exist. These are youth based movements—online and offline—led and charged primarily by undocumented students. The subaltern is speaking, telling her/his stories and logically putting forth arguments for change.
The undocumented youth movement embraces all segments of its population: the best and the brightest but also the ones that are struggling through school, the ones without any papers and even the ones that are sponsored. BAMN organizer Ronald Cruz has called for a rally in solidarity with Day Without A Gay on Dec 10, the leaders of DreamACTivist.org are openly queer and pinpoint the diversity of DREAM Act students in their short biography listings for the media. Political ideology is not a hindrance; the students range from Democrats to Republicans, conservatives to progressives, fundamentalists to atheists and truly come from all walks of life.
For far too long, these students have been betrayed by mainstream DC ‘pro-migrant’ organizations in the fight for the DREAM Act. It is analogous to the NoonProp8 campaign in Campaign: a blatant failure of top-down organizing, horrendous outreach, and keeping the ‘subaltern’ in the shadows while trying to argue for the subaltern. This time the fight for the DREAM Act and for immigration reform, is likely to be different. As Kyle from Citizen Orange states, “nativists better watch out, because this is going to be a much different fight the next time comprehensive immigration reform comes up. We’re much more organized than we were just a year ago.”
A more comprehensive post detailing the growing power of the sanctuary sphere and the defeat of nativism is here.
After graduating with a Masters last year, I fretted about how to turn the state of limbo and desperation into a tool for positive and productive social change for everyone. A year later, our hard-work in the face of adversity has translated into gains. While many have been denied the American dream, we must follow the advice of our parents, seize the day and mold our own dreams. Lets not get complacent or overconfident, lets not work separately from each other. We must continue to strive forward with our backs to the wall, support each other and grow together as a movement if we want to win our Dreams, and together we can and we will.
In solidarity,
Keep voting for the DREAM Act and also these ideas:
