Lights, Camera, Immigration Rally!

If all the world is a stage, then the White House is a really useful set piece.

That, at least, is how well-organized protesters with a coherent media strategy see it.  In their calculations, the best way to get their message delivered to the government is through television, radio, and written media.  When Casa de Maryland, a group devoted to the welfare of the Latino community, organized a rally on immigration (in coordination with dozens of other organizations), it needed to create powerful images dripping with symbolism to attract the media, and help them deliver their message.  As a result, every detail of the rally was coordinated to send an emotionally appealing and potent message.  For example, the rally was planned to coincide with dozens of other protests across the country on the day that Arizona’s controversial immigration law was slated to take effect (many of its main provisions were struck down by a federal court that morning).

Meghan McNamera, a volunteer with a great deal of experience organizing protests, offered her insight into how a well-planned rally can be an effective aspect of a policy campaign. 

“First of all, it gets media attention, which is really important.”  In what opponents would call an unabashed act of political theater and supporters would call a humanizing exposition of the realities of immigration law, the organizers brought together some 700 children of undocumented workers, born citizens in the United States, from all over the country.

Wearing T-shirts reading “Don’t Deport My Mom” or “Dad,” the kids chanted a variation of a Springsteen classic: “Born in the USA, don’t take my mommy and my daddy away!”  As the cameramen made their way through the crowd, the organizers set up front page-friendly poses behind banners emblazoned with pointed slogans.

“There are about 360,000-400,000 deportations every year, and what people don’t think about is the kids and the families that they leave behind when the Obama Administration deports people,” says McNamara.  “Families are separated all the time.”

Using the White House as a backdrop for the rally conveys that the issue at hand is of national importance and should be dealt with at the highest levels of government.  It also can help the message reach the intended targets.  “If you do it in key areas such as in front of the White House or if you have key speakers, you’re able to target specific members of congress that would see it.” 

Finally, it has a galvanizing effect.  Protest “gives a voice to the people and makes them less afraid to come out of the shadows, and that’s a really important part of the movement, you know, having people who are willing to speak their mind.” 

McNamera’s own experiences have shown her the human side of immigration.  “I’ve had friends who are undocumented.  I worked in the restaurant industry throughout college and I got to know them and see them as human beings rather than as illegal immigrants who need to be deported.”  Protest is important because to those who do not interact with the immigrant community, “it gives us a face.” 

Rodrigo Carreon, a dual citizen who has lived in Houston, Texas for 37 years (and is running for a position as a Judge in Fort Bend County) agrees.  He came to support his community and champion a less punitive immigration policy.  “We prefer more schools than more prisons,” he says. 

Behind the theatrics, the organizing groups have coherent political goals and specific policy recommendations.  They advocate for comprehensive reform that would secure borders, but also provide a pathway to the 12 million illegal immigrants in the country subject to background checks, fines, and taxes.  But in the information age, with its overabundance of flashing news headlines and sound bites, the President will most likely hear about a protest outside his residence if it is spectacular enough to create a story that the media, in any of its forms, cannot ignore.

Even those with serious policy recommendations, then, must put on their costumes, learn their lines, get on the stage, and perform for the cameras.

-Niv Elis

Protest U

The group of young, Hispanic protesters brandishing homemade signs cluster together, intently participating in an act remarkably atypical of protesters: listening.  For the most-part, they are the children of undocumented workers, brought to the United States in their youth and raised, for all intents and purposes, as American.  Due to their lack of citizenship they lack access to significant sources of university funding, including in-state tuition (in some states), and can’t get jobs to help fund higher education. 

The group is participating in the first ever “Dream University,” a project of the United We Dream Network, which is a coalition of 27 immigrant youth groups from across the country.  Dream University is bringing students to Washington to teach, learn, and support a piece of legislation called The Dream Act.  The act would allow a conditional path to citizenship, dependent on completion of University or two years of military service, to the 50,000-65,000 undocumented students who graduate from high school each year. 

There are “65,000 undocumented students graduating every year, and they have nowhere to go but here.  This is their one opportunity, and it shouldn’t be.  They should have all doors open to them for higher education,” says Maricella Aguilar, one of the group’s organizers.

In addition to raising awareness about their political agenda, Dream University’s protesters, hailing from Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Florida, Missouri, and Kansas, have come first and foremost to learn.  The four-day program brings in volunteer professors to give classes, providing a glimpse of the higher education the would-be students seek.

Among the goals of the movement is to bolster the participants’ civic education.  The organizers focus on all-American ideals of civic participation such as protest, petition-signing, self-education, and lobbying, poignantly accentuates the American-ness of the students.  “These students were brought in by their parents when they were younger, and it’s no fault of their own.  They’re American, and you can’t tell them otherwise, but they’re not full citizens,” says Aguilar.  

“We’re trying to make a positive change,” says Elizabeth Floris-Bustomante, a psychologist who travelled 13 hours by van from Wisconsin to support the cause.  “I love volunteering, and if this is what I can do for them, this is what I will do.”

In the nearly 100 degree heat, a few students sit in the shade, coloring bubble letters onto poster boards as they listen to their teacher’s lesson on immigration and electoral politics.  

“I think us just being here is protest on its own,” says Aguilar.

-Niv Elis