Earlier in the week there was major concern about the continued backward, and repressive, direction that the Obama Administration has taken around immigrants in the United States and its mouthing of reform while it mandated repression.  Loud cries of anger and protest rose at the announcements of a toughening stance by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over the controversial and coercive Secure Communities program which too often has been a fast track to criminalizing economic refugees rather than violent interlopers, as well as a tool for the worst among us on these issues like Sheriff Joe Arpaio and other wannabe police officials that Secure Communities forcibly impresses into being immigration cops.  Some states, many cities, and other political jurisdictions have refused to comply with Secure Communities, rejected its attack on human rights and civil liberties, and refused the money, while the Administration has continued to force feed the program regardless and upped the ante in doing so recently.  Illinois and some other jurisdictions have continued their resistance, but clearly a deeper and perhaps more cynical politics is at work.

What seemed especially traitorous was the endorsement of Secure Communities in a hearty embrace by Cecilia Munoz, who has been a shining light for immigrant rights and before joining the Obama Administration after the election, one of the clearest and most effective voices for change with friends and allies in all sorts of organizations.  We certainly counted ourselves proudly among them at ACORN.   One of my friends speculated earlier this week about whether Cecilia had jumped to this conclusion or been pushed.

Yesterday’s announcement that the Administration will use “prosecutorial discretion” in dealing with deportation cases involving children who have been in the USA virtually all of their lives because they were brought here by their parents, perhaps illegally, families of servicemen and other divided family situations, those trying to serve in our military or attend college or similar situations, and instead only focus deportation procedures on criminal elements with records, gang membership, or similar problems essentially implements much of the promise of the DREAM Act.  Advocates estimated this could impact up to 2 million immigrants in the USA now.  Senator Durbin of Illinois, who has been a consistent and courageous advocate of the DREAM Act, was more subdued and guessed it might impact 100-200,000.  Anyway you count it, the announcement is a major step forward in alleviating a huge injustice and moral insult on the deepest principles of America.  DHS’s Napoliano was quick to point out that it doesn’t change the need for real reform or the DREAM Act, and for the first time in a long time, I have to say I absolutely agree with her on that point!

This is all temporary, and the President is making clear through these actions not only that he wants to hide behind Secure Communities on his right flank, but also that Latino and other voters in 2012 have to see him as the thin line between coming and going for immigrants and their families in this beleaguered category.

Though the details have not emerged, there can’t be much doubt that this was a deal that had Cecilia’s fingerprints all over it, while leveraging Senator Durban big time along with Majority Senate Leader Harry Reid, who still needed to deliver for the huge lift he got from Latino voters in his Nevada re-election last fall.  Obama never seems to understand that you have to give as well as get in politics to hold support, but Munoz, Durban, and Reid all understand the political equation only too well and no doubt knew the anger and frustration at losing everything was disillusioning if the only hope was the thin one of taking back control of Congress.

This was a classic velvet gloved fist political deal.  Give some relief to the the more innocent victims of our failure to enact DREAM and immigration reform, while hitting immigrants hard where they live and work, day after day, in their communities.  As NDLON attorney, Chris Newman, remarked on twitter last night, the new announcements on careful reading, still have moved to criminalize all immigrants in the USA.  The foot has been lifted from some necks with “prosecutorial discretion,” the principle continues to press down on all immigrants that the foot is still there, hovering, and can fall with any misstep or political push in an opposite direction.

There’s little doubt in my mind that Cecilia and the Senators crafted a deal, and it’s definitely better than nothing, so that’s something to celebrate.  Thank goodness Obama is facing an election, so he had to finally deliver something.  The sad part of it has to remain, that this is the best that all of their work on the inside could deliver.

New Orleans

Not so for proponents for the DREAM Act.   This is not to say that some of the troops around the country are not demoralized and depressed, but is to say that the organizers are still moving aggressively and adamantly refusing to accept the possibility of delay or defeat.    Talking to Gaby and Carlos only days past their meeting with over 200 student activists from the United We Dream chapters in Memphis, the old axiom of organizing that acknowledges that when you have a real base, there’s never a choice but to keep fighting was proven once again.

The DREAM team understands that the political stalemate in DC does not dictate the strategy, but whether or not they can build the movement, the heat, the leverage, whatever one might call it, to trigger the change both locally and nationally.  Below the radar for example the visibility and inspiration produced in 2010, have inspired half a dozen fights even in these times of austerity to provide tuition for DREAM-type immigrant students at the state level in places as diverse as Maryland and Colorado.  And, bet on this, they will hang some new scalps on their belt in some of these states, which will help recharge the movement.

As exciting to me is the fact that they are thinking deeply and strategically about ways to continue to force their “story” (as Gaby continually called it) into the political and cultural equation at the grassroots level in 30 or more locations around the country in coming weeks and months.  The stories are compelling, because there is no way to get around the fact that these young people are the classic “innocent victims” of our national systemic policy failure.  Planted in a country through no agency or action of their own, they do their best to adapt and succeed in the new country’s terms until they hit the wall or in many cases the very high ceilings of their aspirations.  Then everything comes down to their status and it is hell to pay.  In building a movement the first key ingredient is the ability to establish “moral superiority,” and this they have in spades.

I wouldn’t bet against them when you look closely at their record to date and when you consider their desperation.  They don’t have time to wait, especially given the astronomical increases in deportations under the Obama Administration.

Before meeting the DREAM organizers I had a cup of coffee with a colleague working with Casa de Maryland, the huge immigrant rights and service organization.  She had a perfect metaphor for the crises in immigration reform.  She described all of us as reaching out of the water to grab at the reform being waved above our hands by the Obama Administration (think Tantalus in the classic Greek myth going for the grapes) and finally looking down to find that we had been eaten away from legs to waist by the deportations in the immigrant community while our eyes were skyward.

They have a shrewd fightback strategy on the deportations and the solid understanding that this is something that President Obama can and should do and the willingness and urgency to push him hard and directly to make it happen.

They are counting their friends and targeting their enemies and organizing widely and deeply outside of DC, in fact Carlos though still executive director of United We Dream has relocated back to Boston to keep it real.

We’re betting they can keep the DREAM alive, and so should you!

Carlos had been pushed into a too early retirement and silencing of his voice and in that interval last year we had had a number of conversations about pieces I wanted him to write for Social Policy.  I urged him to write an overview of the prospects for immigration reform early in 2010, but he continually demurred that he wasn’t up to speed and promised to try with both of us knowing he wasn’t going to do it.  My bigger regret was that he had not delivered on his promise to write the larger piece I had asked for which would give his perspective on his time as an organizer and activist with La Raza Unida Partry, the political organizing and takeover of Crystal City, Texas, and all of the events in which he was so prominent when I knew him in Robstown, San Antonio, and Washington in the 1970’s.  We emailed, phoned, and Facebooked on the project for months through one missed deadline after another as I tried to wheedle him back down memory lane.  He would always counter with an invitation for me to come down to the Corpus area and share his passion for fishing on the Gulf and cooking whatever came up on the line.  That was a promise I often made, which I regret not having kept.

When I Googled for the story of what could have happened, it seems to have mostly been noted by young Hispanic writers he had influenced or who had seen his career as a pioneering breakthrough.  I gathered he had passed suddenly of a heart attack or stroke by himself at a rented condo at Port Aransas, which I remember mostly as a working class small town on the  before you take the ferry to Corpus.

Without a doubt Carlos was a standup progressive voice at the paper.  He gave my work some props in the 1990’s when Local 100 was organizing city and county workers in San Antonio and Bexar, and bought me a couple of lunches thanks to the paper and his friendship.  Nonetheless I was surprised not to see more voices from the days when he was the chief fundraiser and facilitator at the sharp edge of the Chicano movement in Texas as director of the TIED, the Texas Institute for Educational Development, which was essentially the 501c3 arm of the movement.

It is hard for me to believe that any organizer doesn’t know the name Jose Angel Guiterrez, who last I knew was a lawyer in Dallas after a stint in Oregon, but as Mayor of Crystal City was the face and voice organizing the “brown power” political takeover of the city and schools.  Those of us organizing low and moderate income people and people of color followed every detail and made pilgrimages to the city and county deep in the Texas valley to see what power meant in practice.  I can remember driving down there on vacation in either the fall of 1975 or maybe 1976 and camping along the way with my dog at the time, a cocker spaniel named JP (for Justice of the Peace after our own Pulaski County version of a political takeover, but that’s another story) to visit folks and see it all for myself and take away what I could learn from the experience.   Guiterrez was quoted in one Carlos’ obituary where he was only identified as a political science professor at the University of Texas at Arlington.

I think I met Carlos that trip in Robstown, his old hometown, where he showed me around.  I can remember another time visiting in San Antonio for something, where he picked me up in a Mustang and later I stayed at his place on the couch.  I can also remember a cute girlfriend of his and us waking up and almost missing my flight as hotroded me out to the airport.

In those days Carlos was the behind the scenes organizer maintaining the research, communication, and paper trails that provided the financial support work for Crystal City and the movement.  His skilled writing moved the proposals, his silver tongue knocked on the doors in DC and NYC to raise the money, and his time as an activist allowed him to beat it back to lead the David Hunters of the Stern Fund, the Dick Boones of the Field Foundation, and anyone else he could down to the Valley to deepen their commitment and support.

La Raza Unida Party was big stuff.  In 1972 the party fielded a third party effort in Texas behind a 29-year old Ramsey Muniz and while losing garnering over 215,000 votes or 6% of the total establishing its ballot line for years and its position as a force not only in Texas but throughout the Southwest and wherever Hispanics where looking seriously at politics.  Carlos was active in the campaign, though I never can recall whether he was campaign manager on the first run in ’72 or the second in ’76..  I think likely the second shot, since the overt nature of the party effort and his role would have made it harder to protect the tax exemption of TIED.

There is no bigger backer of multi-party endorsement or fusion tactics than I have been, but even the great Working Families Party of New York is only now pushing past 200,000 votes while the La Raza Unida Party had lightening in a bottle almost from the beginning if only the pieces could have been welded together as tightly.  They were the civil rights movement in the Texas Rio Grande Valley and built the inspiration and bridge for majority Latino political constituencies to win empowerment.  Their local base was always contentious given the history of Democratic machine voting and the padrone system in the Valley made so famous in Lyndon Johnson’s elections all the way to the White House.  The push back on their radical empowerment and educational programs from more conservative Latino voices and entrenched business and agricultural interests was intense and still casts a long shadow.

All of these are stories that Carlos should have told and could have told better than anyone.  Almost two decades as a San Antonio journalist and columnist no doubt gave him the skills to weave the pieces together.  Missing his work and writing creates a vacuum.

But this is my disappointment, not necessarily Carlos’ regret.  We got together a few years ago in San Francisco at a dinner where I cadged him an invite to see me and other old friends on the Coast.  He was visiting his daughter who was taking a program at Stanford that summer.  We all laughed about the old times.  We worried about the new times and the usual struggles of jobs and L.I.F.E.  He was happy and resiliently rode good spirits through the struggles and setbacks of the day right to the end.

There are many stories that must continue to be told and learned.  We lost many with Carlos.  Enough said.  Deeply missed.

Shreveport

There is a clearly a strategic split among the reformers that has existed in a dialectic for some time, but is increasingly sharpening in more stark relief between organizers who believe that the chance has to come from local projects and grassroots organizing and resistance versus the policy-lobbyist wonks with the greater resources still spinning the stories of a immaculate change conception with the Beltway.  This division is spoken of in quiet tones behind the scenes but is constantly part of the debate.  With more than 150 organizers in New Orleans the absence of some of the folks from the national campaign “table” was shocking to me, even if there presence had been no more than solidarity.

I hope I’m not grabbing at straws but the best news I heard in my conversations was the increasing confidence that the days of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s reign of terror in Maricopa County, Arizona are numbered.  I heard rumors repeated from Justice Department sources, which has now sued Arpaio for federal violations in recent weeks, is that he will be indicted after the mid-term elections are over in November.  He will be a martyr to the whack right, but given the line drawn in the sand for years by so many in Arizona; this will be a significant victory.  I wish I could report more optimism from organizers on the chances of Attorney General Godard replacing Governor Jan “Brain Freeze” Brewer, but most just shrugged that there was no contest still.  I don’t know.

Good energy and deepening conviction will have to be what we go on now, since the numbers and politics seem aligned increasingly against us.

Dallas

The imponderable would lie in fanning the embers of a real movement still burning from place to place, scaling that work, engaging deeply and fully in the firefights that matter (Arizona, DREAM, enforcement resistance, boycotts, Utah, and more!), and finally getting realistic about both winning and politics.  Like I say, the chances of a change in strategy this radical, regardless of how necessary, are slim and none, but that shouldn’t change the arguments between organizers looking for a real plan.

The various initiatives and campaigns seem to be squandering the opportunity and challenge presented by SB 1070 in Arizona.  There are depressing divisions between the local efforts and the national campaigns.  There are splits around voter engagement and registration efforts which have created two “tables” squaring off in the squabbling for outside resources and funding on a 50,000 new registrant goal.  I’ve been told that SEIU, which had been the largest labor participant in the reform efforts, has virtually left the campaign over the split.  Now the Arizona work has devolved more into a legal battle than a field effort, and this is tragic, regardless of the outcome.  Without full support for a field operation and movement building operation in Arizona, we have lost the messaging war already to preemption rather than human and family rights, and the Governor and the right have done surprisingly – depressingly! – well arguing that they are “little ol’ Arizona” doing what the feds and Congress wasn’t willing to tackle.  Ugh!  I understand messing with the major leagues about the all-star game next year, but I do not understand why there has not been a drastic national step up in the boycott efforts around Arizona?  This seems to be a more critical ball that is squiggling into a blooper pay on the battlefield.

The squandering of resources and beltway bull has created a campaign culture that is better at creating a funding strategy and a something that might sustain a few organizations than accepting the burden and necessity of having to really take the risks to build a real movement.  The arguments around targets between the White House and President, Democrats and Republicans are classic examples of this tension, where the campaign cannot win.  Only a movement recognition that realizes that both have to be common and constant targets so that the movement can build the moral force to transcend partisan politics to demand simple and incontrovertible justice has any chance of breaking through this mess.  And, that is not something that needs to be polled, messaged, and focus grouped.  It has to be organized.

Without a movement the legislative map is bleak.  The President is playing politics with immigration around the midterm election now, and too many of the immigration reform leadership and organizations have moved to toe his line, which is both inappropriate and embarrassing.  There clearly is no chance for comprehensive reform in 2010, and building an organizing plan on sand is a certain disaster.   The President’s decision to make immigration a wedge issue for the elections means that not only will comprehensive reform efforts lose critical votes in the election, but with even fewer supporters is likely to face wildly contentious reactionary efforts that will come out of this politicization of immigration in these polarized times.  Soberly, unless something changes the only slim hope would be a 2^nd term reelection and a realignment of majorities that allowed a real Congressional push in the first six months of 2013 as the #2 or #3 issue after inauguration.

Without a real movement tactically sails need to be trimmed.   Immigrants need some wins now, not in the by-and-by at 2013 or later.  We need to start breaking the parts out so that we can win whatever is possible, no matter how piecemeal.  My vote would still be DREAM works because there has been courage and heat there, and no adequate response from the opposition yet.  We also have to move to our strengths locally, rather than sitting on our hands while the right and our opponents creates one hotspot after another through local initiatives.  We need our own islands in the storm.  We need to start pushing in areas of our core support and strength for “model” programs that go the other way, and polarize the debate on the good side, rather than for the forces of evil.

Voter registration is all well and good, but if not targeted it is unclear how it can build our movement or any movement.  The midterms are looking like a disaster and simple VR efforts will be swept up in that tide if not targeted.  We need to pick 2, 3, 6 races around the country where we can make a difference and punish the enemies of reform.  Regardless of the dominant narrative that emerges for the parties and the President, an autonomous movement for immigration reform needs to be at the podium citing the proof our emerging and potential strength not in statistics, but in a body count with real heads mounted on the wall.

It’s time for some real discussions about field, strategy, and tactics in immigration reform, but it’s also time for some changes so that we can deliver real relief now and build the movement that we need for the comprehensive reforms that immigrants are demanding.  And, we need to do this yesterday!

Leading up to the refusal of the Governor to veto the bill, which even included a rare case of a sitting President speaking against a state legislative matter while it was still pending, there was a huge step up and all hands on board push in Arizona. Immigrants and students also rose up to challenge the racial profiling and apartheid practices that are now on the verge of implementation. Schools may still be vacated and rallying points when the bell rings on Monday. Thousands were on the street, in rallies, and on vigil outside of the State Capitol. More is expected today with a full plate of activities planned for Sunday.

Before the bill the national immigration reform movement also seemed to be stepping hard into the fight, though in talking to organizers in Arizona, it also seemed in some cases they were trying to muscle in from the top on what has been a grassroots and courageous effort with more lessons to teach than to learn. I was relieved to see this, especially because too often it has seemed that strong organizations with a Phoenix base have been isolated in a hand-to-hand struggle over the last several years while too many national operations with capacity have been too aloof from the battle with Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose vigilante activies in Maricopa County are the predecessor of this new anti-immigrant outrage. This is a perfect organizing example of what happens when we don’t protect our own base and hope Hail Mary passes on the White House lawn or in Congress will save us from our own neighbors.

There is a crossroads here between whether this is another immigration movement Alamo or could be an immigration reform Selma. If organizers see Arizona as a “loss” now and try to change the narrative to another venue or an easier issue, they will lose the ability to continue to engage the issue at its most stark and, just as in Selma, use this as a huge lever for change. The elements are there. The rejection of the ex-Governor Napolitano’s strategy of vetoing similar legislation when she was Arizona governor and now hard handling immigrants to try a new posture as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. We already have the President’s attention, so we need to continue to push him to engage and not allow there to be a “beer summit” over tacos and guns at the border. We have John McCain who is in career meltdown having gone from alleged “man of principal” on immigration reform to political shill for anything that might win him a vote or two in his re-election drive.

We have everything but a full court press. We need to throw everything we have into Arizona and find somethings we didn’t know we had to put throw in on top of that. Whether we would have chosen this venue or not, it’s there, and we need to fully engage, hell or high water, at the full level of the potential of this great movement until there is either “death or glory,” as the song says.

It matters, and people are ready.

Silver Spring

Here is the highlight reel:  biometric cards identifying all workers in the USA; more enforcement of workplaces and the border; green lights for green cards for any tech-science types that we can poach from foreign lands after they have gotten doctorates from US universities; some bungee cord programs allowing corporations to snap blue-collar workers back and forth across the border as needed; and, finally, a “survival of the fittest” hard road to citizenship for some of the 12+ million people now in-country if they are willing – and able – to (1) say they are sorry for having come, (2) pay back taxes and fines, (3) prove proficiency in English, and (4) endure the wait at the “back of the line” for citizenship, oh, and needless to say, if they have any record at all, have ever been in gangs, or anything like that, then, so long!  All of that is the upshot.  No coddling of immigrants and undocumented workers can be found in this framework, and that is the point after all.

Remember this is the framework, few details allowed.  Of the four pillars, as the authors call them, only one will give advocates any hope, and it is deliberately vague about many important issues like, what will happen to these “waiting” workers while they are “at the back of the line.”  Will they be deported and then “called back?”  Is there anything that will be offered to the 4 million people here with children born in the USA and now citizens already or will these families continued to be divided and broken up?  4 million people is not a rounding error that can just be lost on the ledger, but I didn’t see any splinter hanging in the framework to address this crisis.

Indeed, the promise made by the President to the advocates in the meeting last week was met.  The framework did emerge.  The White House issued a statement of “attaboy,” though the statement was silent and vague about the time line, which was high on the advocates list, urging only an ASAP kind of sentiment.

Perhaps as my young colleague indicated, something is better than nothing.  Unfortunately, as we all know from the current health care “reform” lesson, if this is where we start, it is going to be the high peak compared to the valley where we might end.  Gulp!

The only imaginable “game changer” now is the revitalization of a genuine mass movement among immigrants and their supporters and maybe even their employers that leavens the language with some justice and empathy to go with tough talk and high tech.  It’s not over, until it’s over, and on Sunday we’ll see if the rally is a footnote in this legislative tedium, or a new chapter that restarts the real debate.