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Student Immigrants Use Civil Rights-Era Strategies
BOSTON — They gather on statehouse steps with signs and bullhorns, risking arrest. They attend workshops on civil disobedience and personal storytelling, and they hold sit-ins and walk out of class in protest. They're being warned that they could even lose their lives.
Immigrant youth activists announced a hunger strike this morning outside of Sen. Schumer's New York City office to push for the DREAM Act. (PHOTO: JAISAL NOOR) Students
fighting laws that target illegal immigrants are taking a page from the
civil rights era, adopting tactics and gathering praise and momentum
from the demonstrators who marched in the streets and sat at segregated
lunch counters as they sought to turn the public tide against racial
segregation.
"Their struggle then is ours now," said Deivid Ribeiro, 21, an illegal immigrant from Brazil and an aspiring physicist. "Like it was for them, this is about survival for us. We have no choice."
Undocumented students, many of whom consider themselves "culturally American" because they have lived in the U.S. most of their lives, don't qualify for federal financial aid and can't get in-state tuition rates in some places. They are drawing parallels between themselves and the 1950s segregation of black and Mexican-American students.
"I think it's genius," said Amilcar Shabazz, chairman of the W.E.B. DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts. "If you want to figure out how to get your story out and change the political mood in America, everybody knows the place to start your studies is the civil rights movement."
For two years, Renata Teodoro lived in fear of being deported to her native Brazil, like her mother, brother and sister. She reserved her social contact for close friends, was extra careful about signing her name anywhere, and fretted whenever anyone asked about her immigration status, because she been living illegally in the United States since she was 6.
Yet on a recent afternoon, Teodoro gathered with other illegal immigrants outside the Massachusetts Statehouse with signs, fliers and a bullhorn — then marched the streets of Boston, putting herself in danger of arrest by going public but hoping her new openness would prompt action on the DREAM Act, a federal bill to allow people like her a pathway to citizenship via college enrollment or military service.
"I don't care. I can't live like this anymore," said Teodoro, 22, a leader of the Student Immigration Movement and a part-time student at UMass-Boston. "I'm not afraid, and I have to take a stand."
The shift has been building, said Tom Shields, a doctoral student at Brandeis University in Waltham who is studying the new student movement.
"In recent months, there has been an interest in connecting the narrative of their struggle to the civil rights effort for education," Shields said.
The movement has gained attention of Congress. Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Richard Lugar, R-Ind., sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano in April, asking her to halt deportations of immigrant students who could earn legal status under DREAM, which stands for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors act, and which they're sponsoring.
Last month, three illegal immigrant students demanding to meet with Arizona Sen. John McCain about DREAM were arrested and later detained for refusing to leave his Tucson office. High school and college students in Chicago and Denver walked out of class this year to protest Arizona's tough new law requiring immigrants to carry registration papers. In December, immigrant students staged a "Trail of Dreams" march from Miami's historic Freedom Tower to Washington, D.C., to raise support for DREAM.
Similar student immigrant groups have sprung up at the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Houston.
By attaching themselves to the civil rights movement, Shabazz said, the immigrant students can claim the moral high ground and underdog status of the debate.
"The question now is ... can they convince moderate, middle-of-the-road, independent voters to support them?" he said.
The Rev. William Lawson, an 81-year-old civil rights leader and retired pastor of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston, called the student activists' tactics courageous and said he'd like to meet them. But Lawson, who marched with Martin Luther King Jr., cautioned student immigrant activists to prepare for peers getting arrested, deported or possibly killed.
"You do have to expect consequences. Many civil rights activists faced injury, sometimes death," said Lawson. "And I'm not sure how many of these (students) understand the fundamental philosophy of nonviolence."
Students have to keep in mind the audience they're trying to win over, said Lonnie King, 73, a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the group responsible for sit-ins at segregated restaurants across the South in the 1960s.
"They need to understand that the bulk of folks are in the middle," King said. "They have to coach their message to make it broadly appealing."
In Massachusetts, hundreds of student activists have gone through training by Marshall Ganz, a public policy lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School and a former organizer with the late Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers movement. At special camps, students attend workshops on civil disobedience, storytelling and media outreach.
Students who have attended the workshops even continue to use the well-known farm workers' rallying clap at the end of organizing meetings.
"They know that clap," Ganz said, "because I taught them that clap. It's all about the experience."
Teodoro said the training changed her life and showed her the cause was larger than herself.
During the rally last week in Boston, she led a march from the Massachusetts Statehouse to Sen. Scott Brown's office at the John F. Kennedy federal building, which also houses U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices. Along with Carlos Savio Oliveira, 22, of Falmouth, Mass., another illegal immigrant, the pair walked into the federal building to hand Brown's staff 1,500 letters of support for the DREAM Act.
Outside supporters wore T-shirts with the words "Brown is beautiful" — a pun referring to the Chicano movement chant and Brown's well-publicized nude photo spread in Cosmopolitan magazine as a college student.
Brown, whose office was previously the site of a sit-in by the same group, has not said whether he supports the bill.
In September, Teodoro and a dozen other students also took a weeklong trip from Boston to the South, with Shields driving.
Along the way, they met with black former students who desegregated Clinton High School in Tennessee and Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. They visited civil rights museums and filmed the journey for a planned documentary. But the highlight was meeting Carlotta Walls LaNier, a member of the Little Rock Nine.
Teodoro cornered LaNier at a book signing of her memoir, "A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School."
"I went up to her at the signing and told her my story and tried not to cry," Teodoro said. "She listened. Then, she hugged me."
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34 Comments so far
Show AllTo hell with all of it. Cancel all immigration laws. Throw the doors wide open. Come one come all.
Correct!!! there are no borders when you look at Earth from space...
Good luck! You folks have an uphill battle. The US is not the same place it was during the civil rights movement. Americans today have decades of "I'm for me-ism" encrusted on their psyches.
"Can I help?" has been replaced by "What's in it for me?" This is not a blanket statement. There are still lots of compassionate, empathetic, people in the nation, but their influence has been reduced to negligible.
Our "Brown Shirts dressed in Blue" don't give a rat's patootie about anybody's rights. We live in front of an equal opportunity steamroller. It will crush anybody regardless of race, creed, or national origin.
"There are still lots of compassionate, empathetic, people in the nation, but their influence has been reduced to negligible"
To indicate that if anyone opposes cheap labor they are not "compassionate, empathetic" simply means you support the illegals exploitation and abuse. Thats straight out of the talking points memo of the racist organizations, democrats and Corporations that want to keep the cheap labor flowing.
Minitrue says it all. I can't add anythig ecept that I wish all would read it and repeat it and recite it to those who can't or won't read.
"They are drawing parallels between themselves and the 1950s segregation of black and Mexican-American students"
There is no parallel between illegal aliens and the civil rights struggle of blacks and Mexican-Americans in this country. They were citizens being discriminated against.
These people are here illegally and have no rights as citizens.
"By attaching themselves to the civil rights movement, Shabazz said, the immigrant students can claim the moral high ground and underdog status of the debate."
We all understand thats what they would like to do, but there is no morality in their position and they are not "underdogs".
There will be no blanket amnesty, no legal status granted except on a one by one case consideration. Never again.
The civil rights movement was about equal rights for all AMERICAN CITIZENS. We have not invited millions of foreign people to move here and share the same rights as citizens, share the social programs, share the taxpayer funded, limited seats, college education, share the few jobs available for the 15 million unemployed AMERICANS. It is time for illegal immigrants to move back to their home countries.
Jump on a bandwagon - voice your opinion at
http://immigration.civiltalks.com/
I prefer the term "undocumented" to "illegal."
Acts may be illegal; no human being is "illegal."
I prefer the term "criminal" to "undocumented" or "illegal".
When the individual illegally crossed the border the individual became a "criminal" person, not an "illegal" person or an "undocumented" person.
One might want to consider the laws of other countries regarding illegal crossing of borders, especially countries directly adjacent to one's own, in an effort to learn and decide whether one's own country's laws make sense.
"I prefer the term "criminal" to "undocumented" or "illegal"."
Renata Teodoro became a criminal at the age of 6, 16 years ago or somewhere around 1994. I recall reading on this site that the statue of limitations on torture, which is said to have ceased within the US in 2004, was about to expire this year.
Makes me wonder what the statue of limitation is for Renata's childhood criminal act, which she committed at an age when she could not have appreciated its significance?
When Renata enrolled at the University of Massachusetts, an AMERICAN working class student was denied a college education, and the taxpayers have to subsidize the college education of a foreign student. Her parents made the choice to move their family here illegally, why do we have to pick up the bill for her education and higher education.
That is why the correct term is illegal alien.
Over the long weekend AP posted 4 articles about Immigration on Yahoo's homepage. Within a few hours 30,000 people had commented and I can only tell you that the anger expressed toward illegal aliens by 99% of them is shocking.
Now before you amnesty and no borders people start reaching for the keyboard, go to YouTube videos and search Ron Gochez then ask yourself if your ready to accept the consequences of a open door policy. The related links showing Mexican high school students throwing the American flag to the ground and many others similar videos just might wake some of you up.
When you start descending to projection, ardent, it shows you are far too identified with an issue to be objective. One might think that you, yourself, are an activist shill.
Once again ardent, you have to stop taking these comments so personally. By attacking the messenger instead of the message you essential remove youself from any intelligent debate.
Upon reading your posts two lines from plays come to mind "He doth protest to much" and "Art thou gone so", im not sure which one applys.
As many immigrants can come here as they want, as long as there isn't a net job loss for real citizens.
If these people are stealing American jobs, they should not be here.
Call my views 'protectionist' if you want, but at least YOU people on your high horses have a job that didn't ship overseas.
If your job is threatened by employers using legal immigrants you must be getting too much money for whatever it is that you do. Or maybe you have one of those jobs that Americans don't want. I can't blame you for burnout as I've experienced that myself. If you just don't want that job anymore, at least you'll have no objection when you are replaced by a legal immigrant. Would you object if your job was taken by a person who has entered the country illegally? Would you object if a native born American offered to do your job for 30% less than you are paid, and you were subsequently replaced by that person? What's the difference?
No borders, no walls, get the US out of other countries now? But, but, but, with no borders then former US citizens could still go anywhere. Do you think removing borders will also remove politically controlled armies? How would you like a few hundred companies like Blackwater/Xe roaming the world? Do you really think that without borders and some kind of organized political entity called a government a system of warlords and serfs would not arise?
The Dream Act would be a total ripoff for American taxpayers, and working class students, and poor AMERICAN students who have a dream to get a college education. Most AMERICAN families can't afford to send their own kids to college, yet these people seem to think AMERICANS should be made to pay for foreign students to take the places of AMERICAN students at State, taxpayer funded colleges. Most of the STATE - taxpayer funded colleges turn away more than 50% of students applying. There are already thousands of illegal immigrants enrolled in STATE colleges, who have caused thousands of working class AMERICAN students to be denied a college education. Go to college in your home countries, stop taking the seats of working class AMERICANS students, and making the taxpayers pay for foreign students' college education.
Prohibition will not work. You can,t stop people from migrating any more than drinking, drugs, gambling etc. As long as people can improve their lives by moving about no borders will stop it.
You wonder if the people who are pro-open borders would be willing to pay more taxes to help subsidize those businesses benefiting from the cheap labor. The same issue came up regarding Wal-Mart; people working received low pay an no benefits, so social services had to pick up the tab. If work permits are needed lets grant them; then the employers would be forced to show that they cannot find anyone local to fill the positions. And if the employer is caught employing illegals, he should lose his business and serve jail time. Isn't this how the Canadians work it?
Do illegals have a 'right' to subsidized college? The answer is obvious, no?
As a Latino I am conflicted on this issue. No human being should be subjected to criminal charges for simply existing, however, resources aren’t limitless. Most of my Latino students are also conflicted on this issue; the Mexican-American students actually argue with me on this issue and call me too liberal. Their arguments while not as romantic and intellectual as most here on CD they are practical. How do I argue with a student who is a Latino born American that tells me he cant find a job because the local businesses will not hire him due to his status as a citizen and when they do offer a job the salaries range from $2.50 per hour to a modest $4.00 per hour. As for the issue of their treatment we have to look at the hypocrisy behind it all, intellectual dialogue aside, I have many friends that crossed the border illegally and became legal and while they completely empathize with the Latino citizens of Arizona they too argue with me due to my lack of experience that I possess. They tell me their road to legal status was difficult and that people like me enable the lazy ones and make life harsher for them. A friend of mine from Colombia detailed to me her experience through la frontera (the frontier) her experience was horrifying she was beaten several times and raped. The racism she experienced by the Mexicans was criminal. Yet her fear is that she will be discriminated against because she will be confused for an illegal alien. To reiterate my point this is a complex issue that the nation will be confronted with and will probably overshadow the civil rights movement in its violence and resistance due to its economic impact on the nation especially during these economic crises. We will all have to make a decision the question is what will that decision be?
You are correct pablo. Here is what Nader says about the issue:
"Q. Do you support a guest worker program?
NADER. "Yes, under work permits, so everything is above board. So they are not exploited. Right now, employers have the best of both worlds. They exploit workers, they make huge profits, and they escape prosecution. Farm labor, whether American or unlawful immigrants, don’t have the protection under labor laws that industrial workers have. The idea is to bring all farm labor under the Fair Labor Standards Act."
On open borders:
"We cannot have open borders. That’s a totally absurd proposition. It would depress wages here enormously, and tens of millions of people from all levels, including scientists and workers, would be pouring into this country. One way is to provide work permits for people who come in and do work for short periods of time that Americans don’t want to do instead of criminalizing the border."
--And even the Latinos here now would have to compete with a large number of people who might be willing to work for less than they do, meaning the 'race to the bottom' would continue. There are always limits. I believe it is possible to be compassionate and practical at the same time. In fact, it is foolish not to be.
The slavers hire top PR firms, but still their messages drip with irony.
How cruel that illegal migrants try to associate themselves with Civil Rights, when black Americans are the ones most often losing their jobs to the low-wage replacement workers.
"I am a man," said Memphis sanitation workers when they struck for a living wage in 1968. Forty-two years after that victory, black American citizens are forced to compete for slave wages with illegal migrants who live in barracks-like hovels, take government subsidies and charity available to migrants only, send every extra penny to their home countries, and return to those countries to live after amassing enough dollars. Living wages are no longer. Now black Americans see high unemployment rates, high poverty rates, high child hunger rates and high incarceration rates.
How cruel that employers reject black Americans for illegal migrants, whom they pay slave wages and fire if they attend a union meeting or are injured at work. Even in rebuilding their own city after Katrina, qualified black Americans were passed over for illegal migrants.
How cruel that illegal migrants try to a associate themselves with Cesar Chavez, the great latino labor organizer who led the struggle against employment of illegal migrants during his lifetime.
How cruel that they take the word "Dream" from Martin Luther King's speech and misappropriate it in an attempt to normalize slavery.
Published in September 2007, before the Bush/Kennedy/Obama Dream Act was defeated in Congress:
"If the Dream Act passes, middle class Americans attempting to obtain an education will lose benefits due to the amnesty granted to millions of illegal aliens in this country.
...If passed, the Dream Act would grant green cards and instate tuition benefits to illegal aliens who previously entered the state as minors and then graduated from high school.
...American children would be forced to compete with these illegal aliens for what are already limited spots in state universities. The Dream Act provides that most [illegal migrant] students ... would qualify for conditional permanent residency status upon acceptance to college, or upon graduation from high school or being awarded a general equivalency diploma."
I say no to amnesty for those who break immigration law, no to slave wages, no to taxpayer subsidized education exclusively for illegal migrants, no to retroactive forgiveness of fines and penalties for illegal employers, and no to normalization of slavery ... no matter how the slavers' PR firms spin their tales.
Good post, naturally. We never seem to hear the end of the spin and the lies. I recently attended an award ceremony at my daughter's elementary school. I'd say easily a third of entire school was Hispanic. To assimilate so many new students, the schools are constantly having 'money-drives,' and pushing the little kids to sell for them. Many of the schools have to go to year-round schedules. They have to provide bi-lingual interpreters for parent teacher meetings, and print all the bulletins in two languages. Our state has just implemented a lottery, and is still complaining about not having enough money for educational needs. Does this budget busting also affect teacher pay? I do not know.
It is no secret that the Hispanic birth rate is significantly higher than that of the general population, yet many deny that this puts a strain on social services. The businesses that employ them must have some excellent PR firms hard at work.
You wrote about the impact of migrant workers on the African-American community. This fact was verified by a friend of mine in the cleaning business. He said that his livelihood had been undercut by immigrant crews (both Hispanic and other). He could not work for so little money and, being a contractor, lost some good-paying sites.
There is an extreme irony here when we talk about civil rights--did them mean the right to work without any labor protections? I also did not know that they were considering letting employers off the hook with 'retroactive forgiveness.' This is just the action we need to maintain business as usual.
It's is also an extreme irony for those who would consider themselves otherwise compassionate.
Retroactive forgiveness of fines and penalties for illegal employers—that reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars (some say billions)—is the core reason for every new "comprehensive immigration reform" bill proposed. It is why the bill keeps coming up. Illegal employers are lobbying and campaign-contributing hard for it.
The penalties were part of the 1986 comprehensive immigration reform law (signed by Reagan) which granted amnesty to the 3 million illegals (including family members then outside the U.S.) here at the time. That bill was a "compromise" bill that provided for amnesty on the one hand, and ending illegal employment of illegal migrants on the other. (We'll allow those here to stay, but we're slamming the door, turning off the "jobs magnet," and saying "no more.")
Unfortunately, the amnesty happened, but the penalties were rarely enforced by Reagan and successive administrations, finally reaching an all time low under G.W. Bush (close to zero enforcement), when the number of illegals jumped to 12-20 million. Wink-and-a-nod enforcement, on top of the amnesty, is what caused the tidal wave. Slavers are happy with the result, and only want their system perfected by removing even the threat of fines and penalties from the law.
As I've said here before, we already have comprehensive immigration reform on the books. It's been law for 14 years. We just need to enforce it. What's more, enforcement would more than pay for itself, considering the vast amounts of uncollected fines that are out there.
No offense to immigrants (my parents were immigrants) but I just find it so interesting that when immigrants draw parallels with the civil rights movement, that's "genius", but when gay people draw parallels with the civil rights movement, we're "co-opting".