Classroom to Capitol » Events and Calls to Action

Spend your “extra” day fighting a losing battle

melindaklewis — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 13:59:49 +0000

The way I see it, folks, tomorrow is a freebie.

It’s a totally bonus day that we only get once every four years.

You won’t have a February 29th next year, and you got by without one last year. Since we don’t plan on it, then, it’s essentially a total bonus, right?

So here’s my thought:

Let’s “waste” this extra day fighting some battles we’ll almost certainly lose. You know the ones–they need to be fought, to right a wrong or just stir up some trouble for those who need to be troubled. But we avoid them, because it seems more prudent to focus our energies on more attainable victories.

But not tomorrow.

Those 24 hours are a calendar’s gift, so we might as well throw them away on some of these hopeless causes.

My list, to get the day started:

Public assistance eligibility for immigrant families–can you think of a less popular cause? But economic hardship sentences some citizen children of immigrant parents to a lifetime of reduced life chances, and financial desperation traps some immigrant women in violent homes. Our public assistance systems are designed to reduce hardship and provide a safety net, and these families–part of our communities–deserve that, too.
Tax fairness–okay, so I fight this one on some of the other days, too, but I figure I can spare a few extra hours today. We need a revenue system equal to the challenges that face us, as a state and a country, and maybe this Leap Day can put us over the top.
Electing truly progressive candidates to my state legislature–most of the year I’ll do some campaigning for some allies whose relatively moderate views make them important stopgaps in our current political environment, but I have dreams of seeing some folks with big plans and huge hearts elected, and maybe some fundraising calls on this extra afternoon can help.
Peace on earth–yeah, I know. But, then, I ask myself: what have I done lately to try to stop war and promote peace? The answer, sadly, is not much, even though I very much want my kids to grow up in a safer world. I’ll spend some time today checking out the activities of peace groups local and international, and find a way to contribute some of my time (or, most likely, my money) as an investment in the future I want for them, and for us all.

The way I see it, we spend too much energy talking ourselves out of some of the fights we really should embrace.

Pragmatism is overrated, and the greatest movements for social justice certainly never conducted a feasibility analysis first.

We have to be strategic, but we also have to be bold. And stubborn. And, sometimes, a bit foolhardy.

So, what’s on your list of losing battles for our bonus day?

Happy February 29th.

Mission-driven, Committed to Clients…and we VOTE

melindaklewis — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:53:24 +0000

Which one is a nonprofit employee?

My day with Robert Egger last fall prompted some new thinking, and reading, about nonprofit civic engagement. Where I have long helped nonprofit organizations to unleash the civic participation potential of those they serve, through client-based voter registration and Get-Out-the-Vote activities, I realize now that I had largely overlooked the employees of nonprofit organizations as a powerful electoral force themselves.

Not anymore.

One of Robert Egger’s new projects, as he described it, is to mobilize nonprofit employees for advocacy and social change, independent of the organizations they serve, as those organizations are often difficult, especially in the short term, to pivot to this transformational work. And we face urgent challenges, not necessarily amenable to a long revisioning of the nonprofit sector.

I’m still committed to harnessing the resources–financial, reputational, human–of nonprofit social service agencies, to build a strong and sustainable movement for social justice.

And I think that that’s compatible with efforts to help nonprofit employees integrate their work lives with their whole selves, to become part of something larger than their own work contexts, and to, collectively, create the “army” of social change advocates that we need…today.

A big piece of that, I think, that can be immediate and tangible and, if we are careful with messaging and organizing, a first step towards the kind of engagement we want to see, is leveraging nonprofit employees as electoral agents.

We start from a strong position here: there’s evidence that nonprofit employees vote more regularly than the rest of the public. That means that, if we can organize so that they are voting from the values of the missions that their work supports, and from the knowledge that they accumulate every day that they’re working for the public good–in the arts, education, health, and, especially for our interests, social services, then we will see a much larger and more active “pro-justice” electorate, the kind we need in order to elect public officials who will be our partners in reshaping the policy landscape.

So what will it take to help our employees claim and exercise their civic power? To do so as individuals, in their own capacities, and yet motivated by the same mission that drives them every day (and, OK, some evenings and weekends) in their work?

What we have to do, I believe, between now and November, to lay the foundation for this “nonprofit employee voter brigade”, includes:

Talk with our employees about elections, and about electoral issues–of course we have an obligation to be nonpartisan, and that’s not just the legal thing to do, but it’s the smart thing, too; our employees need safe spaces in which to talk about the connection between their politics (the issues they care about) and Politics (the election cycle that we sometimes want to avoid)
Remove barriers to electoral participation–this means giving people time off work to vote, and providing registration materials at work, and answering people’s questions about the electoral process
Transform our organizations into forces for social change, because working in a climate that focuses on root causes and encourages people to ask “why?” over and over again will push people to think about the kinds of structural challenges we face together
Empower and recognize individuals, because people who are empowered to see that they can make a difference, especially when they unite with others, will be able to transfer those lessons, and that inspiration, to the electoral context, too
Help non-citizen employees become citizens, by providing tutoring on the civics exam, free legal advice, and even scholarships for the naturalization fee

For many nonprofit employees, our jobs are callings. We live our missions every day at work, and we bring them home with us at night, too.

And we can take them into the voting booth.

And we should.

Because when we do, we will be a force with which to be reckoned.

We need to win this on the merits

melindaklewis — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 13:46:41 +0000

Image credit: americasvoiceonline.org

You know I’m not a fan of taking the easy way out.

It’s tempting, sometimes, to think that we can throw the proverbial Hail Mary pass and move down the field (that’s the right sports metaphor, right?).

But in advocacy, as in life, it’s seldom that simple.

And, I’d argue, even when it might be possible, at least temporarily, it’s just not as good.

This is one of those cases.

Around the country, sparked first by the living nightmare that is now Alabama, anti-immigrant forces have been going after what they’ve long considered the Holy Grail:

Kicking immigrant kids out of Kindergarten.

It was at least 8 years ago that I first heard Kris Kobach’s assertion that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1982 decision in Plyler v. Doe, which established the right of every child in the U.S. to attend public K-12 schools, was ‘fatally flawed’, I think along with some pronouncement that he could win a different decision if he had a chance to try the case.

Since then, he has been hoping for his chance.

With the Alabama legislature’s approval of a requirement that K-12 schools verify the immigration status of students, that door was opened, even though that provision was pretty quickly enjoined in federal court.

This legislative session has already seen similar debates in other states, and I guarantee that there’s more to come: in the ‘war of attrition’ that the anti-immigrant crowd has been waging for years, barring immigrant kids from going to school would be a really big deal.

Immigrants and their allies, then, are justifiably hell-bent on stopping these attacks. In our fervor, I think we’re vulnerable to make a serious error.

We have to win this battle on the merits. We can’t take a shortcut, point to the Supreme Court, and just argue legal precedent. Yes, scaring legislators with threats of lawsuits and confusing them with references to previous decisions can sometimes work. And, yes, I fully believe that the U.S. Supreme Court (and I mean this specific one) would still decide a similar case the same way. Absolutely. But precedent can change. Winds can shift. And, so, the foundation can fall out from under those arguments that once looked so solid.

Besides, who was ever motivated to stand up and join a cause to fight against something just because it contradicts Justice Brennan’s majority opinion?

Because the truth is, Supreme Court or no Supreme Court, turning our teachers into immigration agents is a horrible idea. Keeping children, most of whom will eventually qualify for U.S. citizenship, out of school and on the streets is really terrible policy. Sending ripple effects through mixed-status families and communities, depressing the educational attainment of an entire generation, just because we hope that it might make some parents leave the country, is a nightmare scenario. Kicking kids out of Kindergarten because we don’t approve of their mom and dad is not an action of a place worthy to be called the United States of America.

Those need to be our arguments, not recitations of precedent, even that which is based on a legal principle as important as the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

We can win this.

I truly believe that a majority of Americans opposes this idea, and that we can convince state lawmakers that this is not the way to prove a point on immigration reform. I think that we can find new allies–in teachers and administrators and law enforcement officers and business leaders–and that we can emerge from this struggle poised for more success on other fronts.

But we’ve got to fight.

It was bad policy in 1982, and it’s bad policy today.

We don’t need a precedent to tell us that.

Remember: We’re the Sunflower State

melindaklewis — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:37:53 +0000

This Sunflower hangs on a gate at my house, as a reminder of what we must be.

These are tough times, Kansans.

The economy isn’t great (although we ended last year with a healthy balance, thanks to some pretty drastic funding cuts whose effects will be felt for generations).

We’re in the middle of redistricting, which is ugly in the best of circumstances and potentially explosive with a polity as divided as ours today.

We face battles in this new legislative session around Arizona-style “show me your papers” legislation, raids of the Children’s Initiative Fund, an attack on our revenue foundation, and more cuts compounding the cuts.

It’s a good thing we’re the Sunflower State.

Sunflowers were adopted as a symbol of the women’s suffrage movement by Kansas suffragettes, I think mainly to ensconce their movement fully within the social mainstream. It has been used in advocacy campaigns repeatedly since, according to my research, because sunflowers can take the heat.

And they always face the sun.

And that’s what we need today.

As advocates, we’ve never felt more heat. The stakes are high, and the threats are real.

But we know what our vision looks like, too, and that’s the promise, the sun, towards which we must set our sights, unwilting, unbending.

That sounds about right…

melindaklewis — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 14:14:13 +0000

In preparation for the upcoming state legislative session(s)–they’ll be here before we know it!–I’ve been working with some folks who are reviewing policy trends at the state level, nationwide, to identify sources for these new initiatives, messages and strategies that can combat them, and (because I’m ever the optimist!) positive legislative agendas that can chart a way forward, at least in the states where I spend most of my time.

Looking back, especially over the last couple of years, I was reminded of a quote that I bookmarked in Backlash, a book that I read during my maternity leave.

Will Bunch, the author, referred to some of the legislative developments that took precedence in Congress over job creation priorities, as “impulsive acts of rage with imprimatur of law” (p. 164).

And, you know, that sounds about right.

I have an obvious interest, in particular, in the anti-immigrant attacks that are odious not only for their sheer meanness but also for their foolishness, given that almost all of them are completely unlawful (which, if you think about it, is really kind of ironic: What part of “illegal” do they not understand?). Of course, immigrants aren’t the only ones hurt by these attacks: do you want to be waiting in an emergency room in Arizona while personnel are trying to verify proof of citizenship? (SB 1405–I don’t make this stuff up) Or, what–you don’t carry your original birth certificate on you in case of a life-threatening injury? Wasteful, ill-conceived, hateful, ridiculous…and popular, in states with very different demographics and even political landscapes.

But, of course, immigrants were not the only ones targeted by vengeful acts of childish rage. One of my students wrote a paper this year pointing out how the attacks on women’s reproductive rights threaten our economic viability as a nation, given the link, worldwide, between women’s ability to control their own fertility and their labor market participation. People who work for a living, despite their overwhelming strength in numbers, were demonized, devalued, and, in terms of meaningful access to redress for grievances and some power to right tremendous imbalances in the workplace, nearly destroyed.

States went after children’s health insurance, early childhood education, and safety-net services for those with mental illness, in many cases while simultaneously purporting that businesses need tax “relief” because of their horrible struggles. (In this, of course, they were echoed by the U.S. House of Representatives, whose penchant for oil company incentives over children’s health even my 5-year-old called “wacky.” Indeed.)

We cannot afford to bemoan these policy proposals (some of which made it into law, and some of which were forestalled only by the courageous efforts of advocates and policymakers who deserve our support in November 2012). What we need to do, first, is call them what they are: distractions and assaults, not legitimate plans to address the challenges facing our states.

We need organizing strategies that address their root causes–the maligning of the “other” and the fault-finding borne of desperation and preyed upon by those with a horribly unjust way of seeing the world. We need coalitions that see a threat to one as a threat to all. We need an agenda that offers a promise of real solutions.

We need a new year, and a commitment to make great things happen in it.

Election Year Resolutions

melindaklewis — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:58:59 +0000

I’m a resolution-maker.

My husband, quite emphatically, is not. He claims that, if there’s something he wants to change about himself, he just does, and he doesn’t need to wait for a new year to do it.

The crazy-making thing is, he really does.

For me, though, there’s something powerful about the symbolism of committing oneself to a new goal, and of starting fresh towards a new end. And I love, love, love crossing things off lists. I’m eternally grateful for a husband who lets me even cross things off his list, since he just doesn’t get the same satisfaction out of it that I do.

I have some rules about my resolutions, primarily that they have to be things entirely within my own control (so I can’t make resolutions about things that I want done around the house, since it’s seldom I who do them, or about the state of the world, since, regrettably, I’m not in charge there, either), and they have to be concrete (so no, “exercise more” or other vague statements; those are too easy for me to forget about, or to fudge).

This year, I’m setting a special set of resolutions for a special “year”, the countdown to the very important 2012 elections. It’s just about one year until our nation will not only elect a President but also send a strong statement about the direction of the country, and, here in Kansas, of our state Senate, in particular. And there are some things that I simply must do, if I’m going to be able to look myself in the mirror, in November 2012, and feel that I’ve done my best this year. So these are my Election Year Resolutions.

As always, I’m most interested to hear yours. What are you planning to do to make your mark on the electoral process, and how do those goals fit into your overall advocacy vision between now and next November? Or, if you’re not a resolution person, what are you doing today to shape the course of the next election?

Donate at least $100 towards citizenship application fees for a new applicant: It costs more than $600 to become a U.S. citizen, even if you don’t have to pay an attorney. In today’s economy, and given the labor market facing many immigrants, that’s a pretty steep entrance fee to our democratic process. I know many people who really want to become citizens, and whose voices are desperately needed, for whom the fees are a real barrier. We need to provide some financial assistance in order to broaden the scope of political participation; it just might mean public policies that reduce the demand for ameliorative services on the back end, too.

Organize another citizenship workday: One of the most fun and rewarding activities in doing immigrant rights work is helping people become citizens, and, when you can work with dedicated immigration attorneys who donate their time, it’s a true joy. We processed 85 new citizens at a workday last July, and those folks should be eligible to vote in 2012. Individuals applying for citizenship now may not complete the process in time, but it’s about building momentum for the future, and about redeeming the vision of an American Dream.

Register at least 50 new voters: So registering voters can be a drag. I know that all too well. I’ve been cursed at while conducting nonpartisan voter registration drives in 100+ degree heat, and that’s no one’s idea of a great time. But I’ve also received phone calls of gratitude from new voters who relished their first ballot, and those make it worth it. I’ll volunteer my time to work on voter drives, either in conjunction with nonprofit organizations, organized voter efforts, or through my own connections to grassroots groups.

Door-knock at least 5 days for candidates I support: Going door-to-door is abundantly more fun now that I can take a kid with me; people just don’t yell at people with kids as much. We’ll probably do some primary work in June (hopefully before it gets too hot) and again during the general election. My sons like to race each other to see who can get up to the door first for literature drops, too which saves me a few steps!

Make at least 5 campaign contributions, most likely at the state level: We have four kids, so money doesn’t exactly flow abundantly around here, but money is a critically important part of the political process, and there is a real satisfaction in supporting candidates whose vision I believe in. I started to receive solicitations a few months ago, so the hardest part will be winnowing those requests down and being strategic about my contributions, but they’re in the budget, so we can make them happen.

Provide at least 25 hours of pro bono consulting assistance to nonprofit organizations looking to integrate GOTV strategies into their work: I don’t have a lot of time, either, but I know a fair amount about how nonprofit social service agencies can be effective in their voter engagement work, and I know that I can make a contribution in that arena. I’ve started to talk with some organizations that are interested, and we’re working up some strategies that will, we hope, have both a 2012 impact and lay a foundation for years to come.

So, again, what are YOUR election year resolutions? What will you do to influence the world we’ll wake up to on Wednesday, November 7, 2012?

Celebrate your citizenship!

melindaklewis — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 14:22:31 +0000

This year notwithstanding, the 4th of July is all about family and fireworks for us these days; my husband and boys truly love to set stuff on fire, and this is their one chance to do so.

But I make sure to always work in a celebration of our most precious privileges and responsibilities as citizens, especially after having spent years of Independence Days registering voters, rallying folks for comprehensive immigration reform, and reminding others of our shared heritage in this nation where so many are immigrants, or their descendants.

So, this Fourth of July, in between firework displays or family cookouts or parades or however else you celebrate, here are five ideas for how to celebrate this country, and, in the process, keep the true spirit of Independence Day (rowdy uprising against an oppressive power) alive. Happy celebrating!

1. Protest something: Grab some posterboard and a marker or sign a petition, or even dump some tea into the harbor, but make your grievances heard. There’s nothing more truly American than collective resistance, and I can’t think of a better way to celebrate.

2. Register someone to vote: Voting rights are being restricted all over the country, and, if we don’t change the political tide, the kinds of grassroots, community-based voter registration and GOTV drives that have brought people newly into the democratic process for years may become illegal, or at least very impractical. Before it’s too late, print some registration forms for your state and grab some pens. I used to register hundreds of people during some 4th of July celebrations; people are ashamed to say no on this most patriotic of holidays!

3. Help someone become a citizen: There are literally millions of people who would love the chance at what so many of us take for granted–our U.S. citizenship. And there are so many ways that you can help these aspiring Americans: donate to an organization that provides legal and other assistance to future citizens, write to your member of Congress demanding action on humane and workable immigration reform, help someone study for the English and civics exam required for citizenship, babysit while someone takes an English class. It’s truly an awesome thing that so many people long to be part of this great country, and their full participation can only make it greater.

4. Discover your family’s own immigrant story: If your family came here from somewhere else, do you know that story? When I ask my students to trace this journey, they often discover surprises: someone whose arrival wasn’t quite “legal”, stories of discrimination endured and heartaches transcended, and inspiring tales of those who risked everything to start anew in a strange land, much as today’s new arrivals do. If you don’t know those stories, it’s worth exploring them.

5. Make our democracy work better: I can’t imagine a system of governance more suited to human liberation than a democratic one, and, every day when I raise my voice, I’m very grateful for the right to do so. Still, our democracy could be stronger, and there’s much we can do to work in that direction. Today, in honor of those who gave so much to forge a new vision, how about making a donation to an organization working for campaign finance reform or government transparency? Or advocating reform of voting laws to expand suffrage rights? Or investing in organizations that do community organizing and find ways to engage people fully in the system that represents them?

You don’t even have to ride a horse at midnight to make a difference. Although a little “the budget cuts are coming!” might not be a bad idea….

Happy Independence Day!

Use it!

Your 2011 (yes, 2011) Get-out-the-vote strategy

melindaklewis — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 19:18:06 +0000

Yes, I know there’s not a major election in 2011. Here in Kansas, we had some local and school board elections last April, and so I get that very few people are now (as we head into summer!) thinking about voting, and specifically, how their nonprofit organizations should engage in the electoral process.

Except that we must.

Now.

Because waiting until other people are talking about the elections, or we’ve gotten around to thinking about them, will be way too late.

If we expect that the people we serve, many of whom absorb multiple messages a day about their marginalization in our society, will suddenly see themselves as integral parts of the political process when we register them to vote a month before the election….

We’ll be disappointed.

Again.

So, I spent some time last week reviewing Nonprofit VOTE’s 2010 survey of nonprofit voter engagement strategies, and thinking about the lessons learned from that election cycle, and what they should mean for our efforts as we (yes, really) head into 2012.

The finding that, for me, was the most hope-filled, was that nonprofits are increasingly defining their voter engagement work as far surpassing voter registration or even GOTV. Voter education and broader civic engagement activities (sort of the “infrastructure”, in some ways, to later voter registration work) are occupying an increasingly important role in organizations’ approach to their clients as voters. Hurray! We need to make civic participation a default in the lives of those we serve, and we won’t do that if we reduce something as important as DETERMINING THE PEOPLE WHO WILL SET THE POLICY THAT STRUCTURES YOUR LIFE to a transaction that occurs on one day every 4 (or, if we’re lucky, 2) years.

We’re getting smarter about integrating our voter work, including voter registration, into the rest of our operations. If we want to do voter engagement year-round, which we must, then we have to do it sustainably. And that means including voter outreach in intake (which 25% of respondents do!), and finding ways to talk about issues and elections in normal interactions with clients. Still, half of respondents reported that only one staff person was responsible for the majority of the voter engagement work, and, as I’ve seen in my own practice, we have to think more broadly than that, so that all staff (and volunteers, and Board members) understand that we see our clients as co-creators with us of the change we want to see in the world, and that we share a responsibility to help them actualize it.

Nonprofits are starting to practice what we preach. Of course this survey, while it includes several hundred respondents, isn’t statistically representative. I know that. But, still, I’m encouraged by the almost 50% of organizations that encourage staff to volunteer as poll workers (including, in some cases, providing paid time off to do so), and those sponsoring candidate forums so that those they serve can learn more about the issues (bonus: the organizations have a higher profile and a stronger position from which to engage in advocacy, then, too!).

We’re getting serious about process. We know, and have known for more than a decade, that our electoral system needs some reforms, that people need help to figure out how to navigate the electoral process, and that our most vulnerable populations need special electoral protections. More nonprofits are figuring out ways to be involved in that work, too, working for reforms and educating clients about the system and connecting them to resources in the event of problems. That work can lay the foundation for a different conversation in the next electoral cycle.

What about you? What voter engagement activities is your nonprofit organization implementing? Have you started that work for 2012 yet? What are your goals for voter registration, turnout, and education? How do you see voter engagement as connected to your overall mission?

Forgotten Victims: Immigrant Kids and ICE-cold Actions

melindaklewis — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 16:17:50 +0000

He didn't let cameras in when he met with the New Bedford families, but we'll never forget

Saturday is International Children’s Day, so declared by the United Nations in 1954. And, so, it seemed like a good time to draw attention to the terrible consequences of harsh Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and other activities on children, both immigrants and U.S. citizens, who are caught up in our nation’s rush to criminalization.

The Urban Institute has released several reports on the impact of high-profile ICE raids on immigrant kids and on recommendations for how to protect families and children in the conduct of immigration enforcement (hint: it means not whisking away mommies and daddies!). And, while the specific cases referenced were not workplace raids, there has even been an Inter-American Commission on Human Rights decision that U.S. deportation policies violate citizen children’s basic human rights.

This is one of those issues that, despite my years of work on immigrant rights and social justice, I didn’t really “get” until after I became a mom. I mean, did I always think that it was absolutely horrible, the way that a parent could leave for work in the morning and then never come home? Yes. Did I always cry when I heard the story about the woman who was frantic after being arrested on her way to take some food to her husband at work, because she had a baby at home who had never taken a bottle before? Absolutely.

But it wasn’t until my son was born that I could really begin to understand, at least a tiny bit, what some of these parents go through: cross the border illegally so my child had enough to eat? I’d do that. And if someone pulled me away from my child, treating me like a criminal for simply trying to provide a better life for him? It literally gives me nightmares; my stomach hurts when he cries when I have to drop him off at school.

And, so, this mom thinks that this has to stop. That we can’t talk about “workplace enforcement” anymore as though it was some benign policy, the most rational thing in the world, instead of what it really is: a decision to rip families apart and ruin children’s lives in an afternoon. And we can’t conclude that it’s anything other than what it really is: unconscionable.

Among the key findings of this longitudinal study examining how children fare in the aftermath of workplace raids that involved their parents:

Families fall apart–in some cases, children went to the parents’ country of origin, while in others they stayed in the U.S. with other family members.

Families suffer economically–these parents aren’t just caregivers, they’re wage-earners, too. Children suffer housing instability and food insecurity after parents are detained.

Children’s behavior and mental well-being are dramatically compromised–the study finds evidence of sleeping and eating changes, anger, frequent crying, clinging, and withdrawing. These deterioriations were even more pronounced, actually, in kids whose parents were arrested at home. All of these children are expressing their extreme distress in whatever way they know how, and we know that they, and we, will pay the price for years.

Communities and institutions, particularly schools, responded well, but their capacity is inadequate: immigrant children experienced a compassionate response in all of the communities studied in this report, which, to me, suggests the obvious: The American people abhor this kind of heavy-handed, indiscriminate enforcement and decry its effects on kids in their communities.

Obviously, we need Congress to get the message that we need comprehensive immigration reform. These parents, and their children, wouldn’t be vulnerable to deportation and its collateral damages if they had the legal status that CIR would afford.

In the meantime, ICE needs to operate under a regulatory mandate to focus, first, on removing criminals who also happen to be non-citizens, an enforcement strategy that is in all of our interests (and one that could use some additional attention; I know it’s easier to rack up arrests if you’re going after nursing moms rather than hardened criminals, but if you want to call yourself ICE, you’ve got to be tough, right?).

And, second, we need an enforcement strategy that recognizes that these high-profile raids have all targeted the workers, not the employers, sending the message that we care more about, well, sending messages, than we do about getting employers to follow immigration law.

If we’re going to try to enforce these broken laws, we’d better find out some higher-impact, more targeted ways to do it.

And, above all, as the debate rages about immigration policy and how to proceed, we’ve got to agree on one core truth:

First, we’ve got to get kids off the battlefield.

It’s my birthday! Let’s get people clean water!

melindaklewis — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:50:08 +0000

It’s no secret that I try really hard to pass along some of my values to my kids. I can’t imagine many parents who don’t. It’s not about indoctrinating them; it’s about being transparent about who I am, and why, and how that identity is tied to my beliefs about our responsibilities as part of this huge world.

And, while I often wonder, like most parents, where my children get certain traits (except that I know where my daughter gets her impatience, obviously!), I think that I see a lot of my curiosity about others and fundamental interest in others’ well-being in my children, too, especially my oldest son.

The children in our church were invited about a year ago to help to raise money for a water filtration system in Mexico. The kids got these plastic bottles to use for banks, and they collected some coins.

And Sam has been pretty serious about it.

He has shaken down more than a few visitors to our house, darted across parking lots to retrieve lost pennies, and asked mournfully for “paper money” from some of his donors. When my mother-in-law paid him $2 for helping to sell plants last spring, he said, “I’m so proud of myself. I can help with the water!” And when he found a quarter and his father offered that he could keep 12 cents and donate the other 13, he looked at him and said, “Daddy, I don’t need 12 cents.” It all went in the jar.

And, so, for this birthday, I want to not only use my own money to help others (and, I hope, convince some of my friends to do so, too), but also show Sam that Mommy shares his conviction that (as he often puts it in his ‘pitch’), “everyone should have clean water when they’re thirsty.”

You can visit my Facebook cause here. And make a donation if you’re so inclined. And leave a note for me to share with Sam, too. We’ll celebrate my birthday together by writing out our own donation, dumping his bottle of coins in the collection jar, drinking some clean water, and rejoicing in the love of a family that believes together…and helps together.