As I waited in the bus for the rest of our riders to come trickling in, two middle-aged, men, Ricardo and José, slowly walked in, clearly fatigued after the pre-march rally, immigrant rights march, four-hour rally and long hike to the stadium where hundreds of buses were parked. As they stumbled in José asked “and now what do we tell Obama”? “Nothing more for now”, responded an exhausted Ricardo as he plopped on his bus seat. “We have already spoken with our bodies”.
(Image from Messay Photography @Flickr – excellent slideshow here)
Four years ago when I started researching the immigrant rights movement in Chicago, a march of this magnitude in DC was barely imaginable. I was one of a group of scholars at the University of Illinois at Chicago who were closely studying the megamarches in Chicago while observing from afar the multitude of marches in cities large and small throughout the country. Spurred by by a loose coalition of organizations, churches, religious groups and unions in light of the collective fear of a bill that would have criminalized immigrants and those who supported them, the megamarches were a sign of Latino political potential, albeit ones that relied primarily on the strengths of each home base. The kind of national organization and coordination of grassroots efforts that a megamarch on DC would have required still seemed quite distant. Moreover, after an immigration reform bill introduced in the Senate failed in the summer of 2007, some feared that perhaps the Latino muscle shown would be hard to revive. The marches continued, but dwindled significantly in numbers in 2008 and 2009.
However, interpreting this decline in the number of marchers as a decline of the immigrant rights movement would be a serious mistake. Post-2006 activism and advocacy continued in many forms. Throughout the country new community organizations proliferated in many major cities but also were created for the first time in small cities, suburbs and villages that had great immigrant demographic growth but low preexisting levels of organization. For example, last year, in the Chicago metro area, PASO, the West Suburban Action project, was founded, bringing together two large churches and several suburbs to organize for immigrant rights among other issues. Barely four months ago, a group of undocumented youth created the Immigrant Youth Justice League (IYJL) , born out of an arduous and ultimately successful campaign to prevent the deportation of a local college student. Eleven days before the DC march, the IYJL staged its first major action, a march and rally. Stating that they were undocumented and unafraid, eight undocumented youth publicly came out of the shadows, telling their painful stories of what it means to grow up undocumented in the US, emphasizing their need to speak for themselves about their lack of freedom and opportunity in the only country they consider their home.
Meanwhile, older organizations continued their steady work. Centro Sin Fronteras continued to focus on the family separation issue, working closely with Continue reading…