What the last 10 years of organizing has taught me
Ten years ago today, I stood in a tiny cafe in Southwest Detroit with my parents and several other organizers. Our tear stained faces willing the numbers of the screen to hit 60. We needed 60 votes for the Senate to pass a federal immigration bill called the DREAM Act. The bill would have created a path to citizenship for myself and thousands of other undocumented young people all over the U.S. The bill had already passed the House, and needed 60 senate votes to pass. It only got to 55.
It’s been 10 years since that day, and it’s hard not to imagine what my life would be like if the DREAM Act had passed. Mostly, I think about where my parents would be because even though the 2010 DREAM Act required a 10 year waiting period for me to adjust my status from “DREAM Act holder” (term I made up) to permanent resident, it would still offer the opportunity for me to one day help “fix” my parents immigration status. But the DREAM Act didn’t pass. Instead, two years later we fought for and won DACA, a half-hearted compromise that was better than nothing at all. DACA as most people probably know has been through a minefield of legal battles (including one coming up on December 22nd).
Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that ten years later I would still be doing what I started in February 2010, after an oh-what-the-hell decision to attend an immigrant rights workshop. I tell people that I got my start in organizing after attending a weekend long training for immigrant youth, and that I went because I had ‘nothing to do and nothing to lose’. That’s only half right. At that time I didn’t know it, but I actually did have a lot to lose. The last ten years have paved the way for me to become the person I am. Because without organizing I wouldn’t have my movement family, I wouldn’t have some of my best friends, I wouldn’t have the people I trust my life with. Because at the end of the day, that’s what organizing is about - it’s about people and finding ways to come together to make our lives better.
That cold February training in Ann Arbor ten year ago made my life better, and isn’t that what we want out of movements? We’re in this work because we want and expect that our lives, our relationships, the material conditions of our people will be better because of it.
Sometimes it's hard to see these changes, and quite frankly sometimes they never come. In the past ten years I’ve seen incredible wins and heartbreaking losses.
I’ve seen University of Michigan students fighting for in-state tuition policies for undocumented students win, and then go back to the battlefield a few years later to make those policies better.
I’ve seen undocumented young people get arrested to make sure their parents have legal protections, and I’ve seen those same protections rot away in Supreme Court chambers.
I’ve been part of deportation defense fights with wildly successful campaigns that mobilized thousands of people, and somehow we still lost.
I’ve celebrated raising thousands of dollars for undocumented people and celebrated even harder when we gave it all away to families in need.
And I’ve seen undocumented young people, many who fought hard for the DREAM Act, share, reflect, and acknowledge that we made a lot of mistakes along the way. We missed opportunities to build authentically with other movements, especially the movement for Black lives. We often pushed a narrative that focused on the model-immigrant and reinforced the notions that only immigrants who have assimilated, have a college degree, or learned English are worthy of rights. We didn’t know this at the time, but in many ways the push for the DREAM Act dug us into a hole full of colonized narratives that celebrated model-minorities and white washed our immigrant identities.
I’ve spent the last four years trying to repair some of the harm I caused along the way, especially harm, albeit unintentional, to people caught in the criminal legal system. I vividly remember being 20 years old and holding signs saying that I wasn’t a criminal, and that because I wasn’t a criminal I deserved the right to stay in the U.S. It’s been a long journey to understand why this hurt all of us, and an even longer journey to try to repair this.
And in spite of all the long nights into campaign plans, spreadsheets, and frantic phone calls to fight back and keep our people safe, I know for a fact that my life has been better because of organizing. I know that my relationships are better because of organizing. And even though sometimes it’s hard to see, I know that my community is also better because of the work undocumented young people have done over the past ten years.
I don’t know exactly where I’ll be in ten years, but I do know that I’ll still be hunching over planning spreadsheets, thinking through campaign strategies, and making sure that we center the thing that’s most important in organizing - our people.
