Maybe I’ll get back to this later, but I have an issue with the framing in this I can’t even start to articulate rn.
It’s a very pragmatic and calculated framing, but familiar. I talked about this on my last podcast. On one hand it’s great to see all these white people showing up, when say eight years ago, I’d go to an immigration protest and there’d be hardly any. On the other hand, what is that going to translate to? To really help immigrants and refugees in the here and now, we need to translate all this energy into policy proposals and successful bills and so on. If you’re a refugee family and you’re trying to get your mom into the US from somewhere like Dadaab none of this protest stuff means jack shit to you unless it produces a positive change in your life. And for that to happen, Democrats need to get back some degree of power AND there needs to be a concerted effort to make them keep their immigration promises. The fact that there are so many Democratic politicians with deep ties to immigrant communities makes this project possible, but it still can’t be ignored or taken for granted.
I can’t read the article because it’s behind a paywall but what you said on the podcast reminded me of when I went to a meeting about helping out undocumented people in my local community. There were a lot of immigration activists and faith leaders there. One thing that was emphasized repeatedly by the people who had been going to the meetings for years was that they were happy everyone was there (we were in an Elementary school classroom and it was so crowded that about half the people there couldn’t find seats) but disappointed that only a handful of people had been putting in the work during Obama. They also reiterated that White English speaking citizens needed to stay active in the fight and not disappear when there is a Democratic administration again.
‘I’ve never seen that before’: Activists marvel as calls for immigrant rights enter the mainstream
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