That clear and concise statement clarified an uneasiness I had felt all week after attending two great conferences marking the emergence of the progressive movement at the Campaign for America’s Future and then the launching at the summit of the Reform Immigration FOR America campaign to win comprehensive legislation on immigration finally.  The meetings were great.  The graphics were excellent.  The plenary sessions brought in speakers that rocked the halls and tents were the meetings were held.  The events were meticulously organized and the staff and volunteers did bang up jobs at both meetings, yet there was still a hollow “but” there for me and many others less articulate that Slim.

Part of it is the Beltway effort to try and “manage” the deep and fierce anger that still lives in the breasts of both progressives and immigrant advocates.  In DC there seems to be an unstated collective consensus to hold one’s breath and tiptoe around the immense popularity and good will generated by the new president which replaced the visceral rejection of the Bush years.  There seems to be something more like the “hope” for reform and a feeling of no one wanting to take a chance of blowing it, rather than a real ramping up and a press for all the change that we can wrest out of the historical moment.

I’ve been organizing too long perhaps, but the evidence I would marshal for this argument is both on the nuts and bolts as well as the soul of the events.

The workshops seemed part of a pacification program, not deliberately, but effectively.  These were places to allow the “troops” to participate, rather than to build consensus or momentum.  20 people talking about fighting foreclosures at the CFAF and 9 on the 287g fight in Phoenix makes the real issues people are feeling seem like sidebar to the stagecraft that the DC-based organizers were trying to create in order to leverage legislation.

Every once in a while something would break out the mechanics mold, and it was hard to miss the response to the moment.

The example that struck me was a speech at the Summit on Thursday evening by  a nun from Postville, Iowa, who read her remarks from the trenches where she deal with immigrants and their issues as individuals and from the lofty position of a clear and stark morality around this issue.  Her speech was an organizer’s nightmare.  She had something to say, had written it all out, and was reading every word.  The mistress of ceremony gracefully stood closer and closer to her as the minutes went on and on, helpless to bring the speech to an end.  There were no histrionics.  This was an expression of faith and justice.  As Sister Mary slogged on, one could see a hustle among the tables, as people started realizing something was happening off-program.  At my table people starting asking “Who is that?” partly in amusement and partly out of curiosity.  They started listening.  They heard Sister Mary turn to Anna Ashley Garcia and say that these were her final comments and then go on for another ten minutes.  Surprisingly when she actually did finish, more than 700 people rose to their feet from their dinner conversations in applause.   Sister Mary was one of their people.  She was someone who was there on her own steam without a care about the negotiations in the back room and the headcounts from the White House or the spin of the war rooms, but who was there because justice had to be won.  The time was now.

Someone from the base was finally on the stage and raising their voice.  Something was happening that was authentic.  They were applauding with the solidarity of understanding that victory for all of us in these critical fights will be in the field and closely allied to real people and real problems that force their messy way to resolution in legislation.

A movement can’t be manufactured, bottled, sold, or even represented.  A movement transcends mechanics and finds its force, expression, and natural level.  Now is the time to take the new shackles off the movement and finally win something real.

The first news was that Obama’s “summit” to plan for the reform had been pushed back from the 8^th, immediately following this kickoff, to the 17^th or so.  Some of my companeros feared the worst, but Congressman Luis Gutierrez from Chicago put the best spin on it in his speech to the opening plenary when he said that gave all of us more time to organize, and frankly despite the enthusiasm, we may need every minute to be ready.

There were battle scarred warriors from the last fight a couple of years ago within the beltway for immigration reform and there were large delegations from some important states like Florida and Arizona, and season leaders from groups like ACORN with a long history of putting pressure on vulnerable and recalcitrant elected officials, but many of these groups were veterans of hard fights locally without much experience on the national scene.  Even on the eve of the battle, some of the lines were still not drawn with boots on the ground in key districts and states to put the pressure on for reform.

Ready or not, here we come seemed to be the motto, and this was a crowd with spirit and grit that made us all believe se si puede, but time was short so I hoped we were moving quickly with full readiness for the war of the knives over the coming months not just on Capitol Hill, but back home where they can feel the edge.

We applauded when the lightening stuck and the thunder roared to the speaker’s cadence outside of the tent where we were meeting, but it was also hard not to wonder if we were also hearing a warning from the gods as well.