Bring Them Home Campaign: Today five deported DREAMers attempted to cross the border into the U.S. to return home. They are joined by undocumented activists Lizbeth Mateo, Marco Saavedra and Lulu Martinez,who returned to Mexico this week to test the Obama administration’s policy on deported immigrants. They are asking the administration to grant discretion and allow them to return to their families in the U.S.
UPDATE: The “Dream 8” have been detained by border patrol. Help make 10,000 calls to Senator Durbin @ (312) 353-4952 or (202) 224-2152 and Rep. Grijalva @ (202) 225-2435 or (520) 622-6788. Ask them to call CBP and request that the Dream 8 be brought home now!
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By Nicolas Gonzalez, artist and activist
This week we began a new journey with one goal in mind–to BRING OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS HOME. As a community that is struggling for their basic human rights, we as the most affected by these harsh immigration laws and the ones fighting side by side with our people have decided to escalate and unite to keep our communities together. We cannot compromise any longer; we are tired of all political parties promising us the American Dream. Our families breathe the American Dream. The dream that many have followed for hundreds of years, the dream that our parents saw for us. With 1.5 million deportations that aren’t looked as lives but rather statistics gives me a chill down my back. When will our community wake up? When will we fight the oppressor that only allows us to feel like we are living half lives? Where we feel that we have no options in this country and that this is all we can ever strive for? NO! We are a community of culture and deep roots that seep through the soil, that are strong like our ancestors. Ancestors that some of us will only wish we had spent more time with, our elders that bring us back to la Lucha.
For many centuries our people have learned to fight those coming into our lands. We come from people who know what it’s like to have nothing, to eat nothing, to live in fear, to teach their kids fear. Our ancestors knew one thing and that was to DREAM BIG. Those are the lessons that we need to learn and as a separated immigrant rights community we will never achieve anything.
We have learned to come out of the shadows, take it to the streets, to Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina to Washington DC. We have gotten arrested together in actions of non-violent civil disobediences supporting one another until organizations, politicians and young egos thrive on the attention they get forgetting about the communities they spoke about to begin with. We have cleared our spaces of those who only pollute and hold us back. We will no longer wait, we will no longer wait for those intellectuals who sit around talking about our communities and the border, we will no longer wait! For some of us it’s been over 20 years that we haven’t seen our families, from our Abuelitos and Abuelitas that pass away and all we will ever know is the stories that were told to us. Some of us like me lost our loved ones in this land, where they are buried and sons like me will fight to be able to visit our mothers’ grave. To make sure that those who passed on in this land with unfulfilled dreams and hope of a better life get to see these Dreams fulfilled through the future generations.
For far too long the border separates families. The time to ask for real Immigration reform is NOW!
Nicolas Gonzalez, Mexican-born and raised in Chicago, artist and activist who advocates the adoption of the DREAM Act and just immigration laws. Through art and activism, he has had the opportunity to contribute to larger actions around the country, where undocumented youth have been defending their communities to protest through nonviolent civil disobedience actions. It is important that we strengthen, educate, and lead side by side OUR people to be more aware of the positive impacts we can have on our community.