Tag Archives: history

Remember: We’re the Sunflower State

Posted on January 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

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.

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The Legacy of Brown: We Must Not be Bought

Posted on January 16, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Not long ago, I stood with my oldest son at the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in front of a photo that contrasted a segregated school for African Americans in South Carolina (one-room schoolhouse with sagging shingles and missing boards) with a rather opulent school (large brick building) for white students.

The “unequal” part was obvious, and even more glaring than the “separate”.

Looking at those pictures, I remembered a section of The Race Beat, a book I read recently about journalists who covered the civil rights movement, that described the efforts of some segregationists in both the North and South who were eager to spend more on schools for children of color, especially in the lead-up to the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Because they were willing to pay a lot to maintain the status quo.

That’s how much maintaining an oppressive system was worth.

Holding hands with my son, who started Kindergarten in public school this year, I was thinking about those brave parents, the ones whose names are on the collection of lawsuits that, together, became known as Brown v. Board. And wondering whether they were ever tempted, as I would have been, if my child had been in that rickety schoolbuilding, to take the money.

Even knowing what it cost.

Obviously, our entire country has benefitted tremendously from their refusal to be bought. They understood that separate could never be equal, and they knew that their little boys and girls deserved integrated schools and the access to power and full participation that only integration can bring, rather than a spiffed-up segregated school, with better-paid teachers and textbooks in the classrooms.

They were right, and they were patient in that impatient about injustice but amazingly able to wait for real solutions way, and their intransigence was a witness that sparked the greatest movement for social equality our country has ever seen.

And the next thing I thought, as my son’s attention moved on to the next part of the exhibit, was…

I hope we can be as brave. And as tough. And as smart.

Times are tough, these days, for social service nonprofit organizations and for many of those we serve. We’re perennially out of money, and in begging-mode, and we are confronting serious challenges in a political context that’s often impervious to our sufferings.

That’s a dangerous combination, because it can breed a desperation that can push us to accept compromises that we know take us backwards, concessions that violate our most honored principles.

I see it when private organizations join together to pay for public services that the state has abandoned–we’re reaching for a Band-Aid because the need is so urgent, but we’re excusing public abdication of responsibilities core to our social contract.

I see it when organizations scramble to align themselves with even objectionable programming opportunities (“marriage promotion“, anyone?), because they’re trying to find ways to stay afloat, and to curry favor with government officials.

I even see it in myself, when I’m reluctant to take an Administration on on one front because we’re still negotiating on another–no, it’s not money at stake, but something arguably more valuable–my integrity.

I’m sure Linda Brown’s parents wanted her to go to a nice school. They may have even been approached with offers of upgrades, if they would just “be quiet”.

We need to all be thankful that they did not.

And we must, in the words of the song to which my 3 oldest kids and I danced in the gallery of the Brown site, in what used to be a school only for children with a certain color skin, we must not be moved.

Or bought.

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Truth and the cult of objectivity

Posted on January 5, 2012 by | Leave a comment

This is going to be one of those not-quite-fully-developed posts, where there are just too many ideas in my head to say something terrifically cogent. As usual, that’s where you all come in.

But my core message (in case it doesn’t come through clearly!) is this:

We can’t let our obsession with objectivity, and our equation of it with “fairness” or “even-handed treatment”, obscure our search for truth.

I thought about this the other day when I was internally railing against coverage of our nation’s ongoing immigration debate. I was reading yet another article that quoted some immigrant students’ ories of their own lives and hopes for meaningful reform in the coming year, followed by a few quotes from a restrictionist group about how the “pro-illegal immigrant” groups were hoping to blackmail members of Congress with electoral threats related to the 2012 elections and the rising prominence of Latino voters. Or some nonsense like that–I kind of stopped reading.

And it reminded me of part of The Race Beat, where some of the reporters charged with covering the civil rights movement found it increasingly difficult to do so to their editors’ satisfaction, because the issue had crystallized to such an extent that, truly, there wasn’t a legitimate “other side.” In their quest to provide the balance that their newsrooms demanded, they were giving voice to actors who truly didn’t have a real place in the debate, morally or politically. I mean, people of color were being killed for trying to register to vote, and we’re somehow supposed to give credence to an alternative explanation–something other than the evil of racism? Really?

I’m not arguing that we’re in exactly the same place with immigrants’ rights. I don’t get into the “whose injustice is worse?” game. Ever.

But I do think that we’re beginning to find ourselves facing some of the same quandries, at least with elements of this debate. Who do you find who is a legitimate voice arguing that amazingly bright and hard-working immigrant youth should be rounded up and sent “back” to a foreign country? Who represents the “other side” in a question about how we should handle the deportation proceedings of mothers with young U.S. citizen children? Where do you put a shrill nativist voice clamoring for sealed borders and harsh detention conditions? And why can’t we have this national conversation without including them?

Truth obviously means being open to inquiry, curious about alternative views, and willing to engage in an earnest dialogue, including with people who disagree with us. But, in order to fuel the knowledge on which we rely for those conversations, I just don’t think there’s any rule that we should have to try to give equal time to those whose views masquerade as opinion, when they are really dangerous attempts to dress hatred up as dissent.

Objectivity is just not necessarily a virtue.

Our values are a valid lens through which to view our world.

And giving more attention to those voices our values compel us to heed does not mean that we’re so hopelessly biased that we cannot think.

That might make me a terrible newspaper editor.

But I think it serves me fairly well as a seeker of truth.

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Even when we don’t like the outcome…

Posted on November 7, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress

Maybe you’re not like me, but some moments stick in my mind, serving as powerful lessons of critical truths, primarily because…

I was so totally, abjectly, entirely wrong.

One of those moments came back to me last week when I was talking with some students about judicial policymaking and the significant strides for social justice that have been made through the court system (yes, I have the coolest job ever).

One of my students responded pretty vociferously that such decisions, while fortunate and even laudable from our particular perspective, are still concerning, because they happen in an “undemocratic” judicial system over which we have very little influence, in terms of the traditional levers of public pressure. She raised the Citizens United ruling on campaign finance as a glaring example of how court decisions can, in their trademark “fly in the face of public opinion” way, just as easily go against us, as for us.

And she’s not wrong, of course. From Plessy v. Ferguson to the present day, the annals of judicial policymaking in the United States (whether or not the courts want to acknowledge it as, in fact, “judicial policymaking”) are littered with cases that, from the perspective of social work values or our vision of justice, went the “wrong way.”

And yet.

The moment that came back to me was when, as I crafted the press release about the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s lawsuit against Kansas’ instate tuition law for immigrant students, I was powerfully reminded of the role that our judicial institutions play in protecting the rights of the vulnerable, and serving as a true check on other forms of power. I thought that my line, in the release, about opposing this “appeal to the courts to overturn legislation adopted democratically by elected Kansans” was a strong argument. After all, what’s not to like about majority rule?

A lot, actually.

One of our partners on the legislative advocacy to pass the instate tuition law was quick to call me, in response to the draft I circulated. He pointed out that we were, at the same time, hoping that the Kansas Supreme Court would call the legislature on its woefully inadequate school finance formula, in particular the way that it fails our lowest-income districts. He (pretty kindly, it must be said) noted that the instate tuition case would be heard down the street from the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic site, a brick and mortar representation of how majority rule can be so dangerous, and how courts can, in fact, spark a revolution.

He didn’t say, and he didn’t have to, that we can’t have it both ways.

Our judicial system is an indispensable part of our governance, when we celebrate it (thanks, SCOTUS, by the way, for refusing to hear the appeal of the California instate tuition lawsuit last summer!) and when we loathe it.

And access to that judicial system, and continual attention to its integrity, must continue to be rallying points for social justice advocates. Like it or not.

I took that line out of the press release.

And we won the case. And the appeal.

But even when we lose, I’m glad the courts are there.

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Kiss me, I’m Mexican?

Posted on March 17, 2011 by | 2 Comments

After you put on your green shirt and your “Top ‘o the Morning” button, check out this political cartoon, from the 19th Century.

Any guesses as to the not-very-subtle message here?

Maybe it will be easier to decipher if we shift the thinking forward to, say, 2011.

It looks like “America” is one big happy place, with people from all over the world coming together in a diverse and prosperous stew, except for the troublemakers from one part of the world, who are loud, prone to violence, and, most significantly, refusing to assimilate. They look not quite human, really, certainly not at all like “us”.

They even insist on waving their own flags.

Now does it sound a bit more familiar?

Except, of course, that, in this cartoon, the anti-American, “bad immigrants” are the Irish, not today’s most common culprits, Mexicans (and the Latinos everyone assumes must be Mexican, even if they’re from Central or South America).

Yes, it’s true; at one point in our nation’s history, there were “No Irish” signs in shop windows, rampant anti-Irish employment discrimination, and widespread anti-Irish stereotypes. They were blamed for violence, bringing down wages, raising uneducated children, and other, assorted, generic anti-immigrant ills.

And that’s what I’m thinking about today, as my Internet browser banner displays four-leafed clovers and people take off work to drink green beer…about integration, and what becoming “American” really means, about how immigrants shape this country as they are simultaneously shaped by it, and about how what once seemed strange and fearsome and literally foreign can now be as co-opted and thoroughly distorted as the other elements we’ve woven into this American composite.

And about how THAT’S the real American way, to me, a sort of fluid and dynamic sense of “we”, rather than a strictly defined and unchanging identity to which one is forever bound…or from which one is forever excluded.

I mean, who among us doesn’t love a little Cinco de Mayo celebration, granted, but many in the U.S., particularly in the context of the current (ongoing) debate over immigration reform, continue to bristle at any notion of separateness, any claim to distinct ethnic and national identity, evidenced by Mexican immigrants in the U.S., inspiring loathing and disdain in a way that seeing an Irish flag at the front of a St. Patrick’s Day parade just doesn’t.

It reminds me of an incident during a debate on our instate tuition legislation in Kansas, when one of the bill’s opponents was in the middle of a particularly virulent outburst about how “these children” can’t speak English anyway, and how they are just waiting until they can go back to Mexico as rich landowners, or maybe it was something about La Reconquista (I’ve blocked some of this part out). A now-retired state legislator stood up and talked about her own Irish heritage, and about how culturally and politically acceptable it is to claim and celebrate that identity now, when it was not at one point in her family’s history.

And then she made the point that, to me, is really worth celebrating this St. Patrick’s Day:

It’s just as wrong now, with today’s population of new Americans, as it was then.

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Of economic justice and dreams unfulfilled

Posted on January 17, 2011 by | 1 Comment

When my oldest son and I were in Washington, D.C. for a vacation last fall, we passed a tour group at the Lincoln Memorial. There, we overheard the tour guide explain to his guests, “Here, a man said he had a dream. That dream came true.”

It struck me that this rather stunningly incomplete and, indeed, extraordinarily inaccurate, statement is, in fact, not that far from how many Americans perceive Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy: a sort of fuzzy, feel-good, “can’t we all just get along” dream, that, for the most part (since there aren’t many lynchings anymore, and African-Americans can use whichever public restroom they choose, and, for crying outloud, we have a black president) is a resoundingly successful piece of our country’s history. While we’re at it, much of that history counts the civil rights movement, and the gains it achieved, as a shared victory for Blacks and Whites alike, ignoring the years of violent, organized, and entrenched opposition and oppression endured by freedom fighters and ordinary folks.

I would certainly never seek to deny the tremendous progress we’ve made on racial justice, although King’s dream, as I understand it, is far from totally realized. But what I lament even more than the uncritical characterization of our society as “color-blind” is the almost complete forgetting of Dr. King’s stance on economic injustice and the violence that poverty wreaks on the lives of people of all racial backgrounds, even in this, the richest society in the world.

While not the Communist that many, including powerful figures in the U.S. government, tried to paint him, he had admittedly “anti-capitalistic feelings”, and he was as deeply troubled by unemployment, hunger, and economic desperation among African-American households and communities as by the overtly racist policies and practices to which they were subjected. He moved his entire family into a tenement in Chicago to dramatize the poor housing conditions, and, of course, he gave his life during a witness for the economic and human rights of garbage collectors in Memphis.

And that’s the part of Dr. King’s dream I’m spending the most time thinking about today, because it’s the part that we have not only failed to reach but, really, failed to keep reaching for. It’s the part that we’re all too willing to forget, to wash out of this memory we want to claim for ourselves, even though it was in the middle of this struggle that he gave his life.

This video clip features some of Dr. King’s thinking on poverty in the United States, and its evils, overlaid with video footage of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, uninsured people waiting in line for health care, and other images of economic injustice in modern-day America.

This year, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, here’s to his dream.

All of it.

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Whatever happened to the Mink Brigade?

Posted on December 17, 2010 by | 1 Comment

I’m closing out this week (and my blogging year) with some reflections on what I hope is to come in 2010, a sort of Christmas list for social justice.

It can’t hurt to ask, right?

And while I’m thinking bold and grand, I figured it wouldn’t hurt, either, to at least wonder aloud why we can’t revive something out of the Progressive Era that sounds like a riot, and just the thing to shake up political coalitions in this shifting age.

As described in The Woman Behind the New Deal, the Mink Brigade was a group of wealthy, liberal young women who used their money and political connections to support progressive political causes–women’s suffrage, workers’ rights, workplace safety, children’s issues. They bailed out striking workers, pulled strings to get access to public officials, and even went to jail to protest unsafe conditions, unfair treatment, and unjust laws.

As I’ve said before, I still think our best bet is to restructure our society so that there are not such extremes of wealth and poverty.

But, as long as there are still divisions between rich and poor, organizers for social justice would be well served to figure out how we can elicit support from those who money and position make powerful allies.

While this might seem like an impossibly tall order, given the unlikeliness of these alliances, there are at least some signs of hope and some pockets of people with wealth committed to using those resources as a tool, and a platform, for good. There’s the “Gang of Four”, for example, which, while certainly not socialites risking arrest for social justice, is a promising example of really rich people investing in progressive politicians and just causes, because they want to make a long-term commitment to social change and see politics as a way to leverage more than mere philanthropy (one of them is even a member of Congress now).

Still, if what we’re after is real alliances between rich and poor, I see the obstacles to building a sort of “21st Century Mink Brigade” as multiple:

  • The distance between people in poverty and those in wealth (and how such distance makes true solidarity harder)
  • The changed profile of social workers (and the fewer connections that many social workers, especially macro-practice ones, have to rich people)
  • The decline in structures and institutions that have the ability to pull people together around social justice issues (this is connected to the first challenge; our churches and political parties and even many social justice organizations are highly segregated along class lines today)

    I would never assert that organizing such a “grasstops” strategy should be an advocate’s first priority. Our key work has to focus around amplifying the voices and stories and experiences of those most affected by the social problems we’re addressing, not providing wealthy people with opportunities to “make a difference” or “find meaning” in their lives.

    But we also have to get over ourselves, a little bit, and think strategically about how we can build bridges to those whose position in this society and economy can make, if combined with politicization and a consciousness that makes them authentically committed to social good, valuable partners in an egalitarian coalition. Just because someone has money does not make them an enemy of social justice, and writing checks is not the only role for wealthy people in a struggle for social change.

    Will this mean some uncomfortable conversations about privilege and power and ill-gotten gains? Will it mean confronting our own prejudices about people with money, and those without? Will it mean vigilance to protect our messages and avoid shortcuts that can sell out our own power?

    Yes, yes, and, of course, yes.

    But I think that the lessons of history, and some of those of history in the making, suggest that it still might be worth it.

    And, besides, you never know when you might need bail money.

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    Forgetting Perfection

    Posted on November 11, 2010 by | Leave a comment

    I wrote last month about how advocates need to get over what we don’t know, to jump into the fights where we, and what we know (partial though it is), are so needed.

    I guess I’m on a “trust me, you’re good enough” kick, because one of the pieces of Soul of a Citizen that really spoke to me is this theme, that the only two things that differentiate those who are actively engaged in social change, from those who are not, is (1) how they see the world, as demanding their involvement and (2) how they see themselves, as integral, albeit small, parts of the solution.

    In part, it relates to the concept of “good enough”, which comes from the parenting idea that caregivers should forget striving for perfection, because it really will make things worse, and should instead celebrate “good enough”, because that’s all kids really need to thrive, anyway.

    And it’s also connected to the importance of understanding and accurately assessing activist leaders and social movements current and past, because unfairly and incorrectly viewing them as larger-than-life not only inappropriately reifies them, but, more importantly, it’s also a major deterrent to the activism of the rest of us, mere mortals though we are. (That’s a big part of the reason why I care what students today are and are not learning about our history, including the history of the fight for social justice.)

    It’s not enough, then, to say, “we don’t all have to be (fill in the blank–Jane Addams, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day)”. The consolation we should instead be showering on each other goes more like, “who were they, anyway, but flawed human beings, just like us, who, nonetheless, did amazing things for justice, just like we can, too”. As an activist said in Soul of a Citizen, “it does us all a disservice when people who work for social change are presented as saints–so much more noble than the rest of us. We get a false sense that from the moment they were born they were called to act, never had doubts, were bathed in a circle of light” (p. 37). Shattering that myth reminds us that we stand just as good a chance as they did to change the world…maybe, given today’s technology and advances in human rights, even better.

    And then, we start.

    We start knowing that our skills are inadequate and our knowledge incomplete and, even, our commitment imperfect.

    We stop trying to be martyrs, always focused on the cause, because we know that others are drawn to those struggles were people are having fun and living the kind of whole, full lives that they want for themselves, too.

    We realize that standing up for our most sacred values isn’t about making ourselves into some, more noble person, but about becoming more fully human…more purely us.

    We start treating ourselves a lot more like we treat our clients–as worthy, just as we are.

    And, in so doing, we shed the last remaining excuse not to act.

    And that’s…perfect.

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    The next frontiers for voting rights

    Posted on November 9, 2010 by | Leave a comment

    President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965

    Amidst rather uniformly dismal election results for those of us committed to a vigorous collective response to the challenges that face us, including the truly concerning recall of judges over disputes of ideology in Iowa (a major blow to the doctrine of judicial impartiality and separation of powers), there was one bright spot:

    Kansas voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to strip the legislature of the power to deny Kansas citizens with mental illnesses the right to vote.

    It’s one of those things that I can’t imagine 289,740 people voting against really, but it’s still encouraging that 482,222 voted for it, and especially rewarding to see the grassroots campaign that mental health advocates, including a strong consumer contingent, put together to take advantage of this opportunity to educate the public about mental illness, civil rights, and the importance of equality.

    So, see–something good from November 2, 2010.

    But, especially in the aftermath of Election Day, we’ve got serious work to do, and not just to protect critical policies and continue to push for progressive advances in tax policy, the social safety net, economic recovery, entitlement reform, health care reform, K-12 and higher education and, well, just about every other aspect of American life.

    We’ve also got to make voting rights a top priority.

    We need to expand suffrage, and vigorously defend it, not just because increasing the number of people who can and do vote is a good way to ensure that we’ll be happier with the outcome. We need to prioritize voting rights, too, because it restores the American ideal of an engaged citizenry, and it makes us proud of who we are and what we can do, together.

    Our finest moments have been when we realize that the rights of citizenship are the most secure, and the most honored, when they’re extended broadly and valued deeply.

    On the list that demands our attention:

  • Commitment to easing the process of re-entry for ex-felons, and revisiting the process of even temporarily denying voting rights to those who commit crimes–this is important not just because it expands the right to vote but also because it sends a message to those who are incarcerated: “we don’t want you cut off from the society into which we’ll expect you to successfully reintegrate”
  • Defense against restrictive photo ID requirements–I want to scream every time someone says, “but you even need to show ID to see a movie.” Um, last time I checked, seeing an R-rated movie is NOT a constitutionally-protected right. Voting is. Unless we’re going to provide free, easily available photo identification to all American citizens, with exceptions for those with religious objections to photographs, requiring photo identification to vote is a poll tax, it’s abhorrent, and we can’t stand for this attack on democracy masquerading as concern with (largely invented) “voter fraud”. I almost wrecked my car when I heard about the Obama Administration dropping its legal challenge to Georgia’s voter identification requirements. This could move us back to 1964, and our nation can’t afford that.
  • Aggressive protection of voter privacy and the integrity of the election system–I am not a conspiracy theorist. I don’t think that the private companies that manufacture voting machines are intent on overtaking our elections. But I am very concerned about two things: first, that there’s enough truth to the threat of that scenario to make some people wary of the election process and, second, that it does represent another example of turning some of our most sacred public functions over to private companies. There are some things that government should just do itself, whether or not it’s the most efficient, because to farm it out just looks bad and, well, running the democratic process is one of those.
  • A constitutional amendment specifically guaranteeing the right to vote–108 democratic nations have this language, while the U.S. and 10 others don’t. Words do matter, and having these words in the U.S. Constitution could provide the legal foundation for challenges to all of the exclusions above, too, setting the stage for a reorientation towards an affirmative right to civic participation that has to be disproven, rather than the effective opposite, which is the status quo.

    It’s time for a national conversation not just about the results of our elections but the process of them: do we want paper ballots again? what about open-source electronic voting technology? should we have mandatory public audits of elections? if so, who should conduct them? how would we engage the public in oversight of elections, and how could this make a difference in how people engage in the acts of democracy? why can’t people register to vote on Election Day?

    Did you see any violations of voting rights this past Election Day? Did your clients vote? If not, why not? What changes to voting laws might facilitate their participation? What are your thoughts about expanding suffrage rights in the next decade?

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    Posted in Analysis and Commentary, Events and Calls to Action, My New Favorite Thing

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    The more things change: the case for CIR, then and now

    Posted on November 8, 2010 by | Leave a comment

    When I gave speeches about the need for immigration reform, I used to talk about how we were revisiting a lot of the same issues that plagued the nation in the early 1980s: the need for legalization for undocumented immigrants working in the country, the toll that family separation takes on our communities, and the insecurity born of a system showing obvious signs of strain. I used the point to reinforce the need to really fix the nation’s immigration system, so that we wouldn’t have to revisit these same debates and fears and tragedies every couple of decades.

    I should have gone a bit farther back in history.

    When I read The Woman Behind the New Deal last summer, there were several passages about Frances Perkins’ work overseeing the immigration department, which then fell under the Department of Labor (kind of interesting, really, given how we continue to view immigrants as valuable chiefly/solely for their labor contributions, but subsequently moved the INS to the Department of Justice (connected to our criminalization of immigrants) and then to Homeland Security (consistent with our conflation of migration and terrorism). My guess is that we’re not moving ICE to DHHS any time soon!)

    What I found most stunning was her statement to Congress when she was questioned about failures to deport some foreigners viewed by Congress as possible communists (and, therefore, deportable):

    “The problems which the immigration laws present are serious, intricate and of the highest public importance. They have a peculiar significance to the future of our country, for it is incumbent upon those who administer the immigration laws to aim at two important goals: First, to preserve this country, its institutions and ideals, from foreign forces which present a clear and present danger to the continuance of our way of living; and second, to show those aliens who together with their families are soon to become our fellow citizens that American institutions operate without fear or favor, in a spirit of fair-play, and with a desire to do justice to the stranger within our gates, as well as to the native born.” (p. 281)

    I’d stress the themes of family reunification and workers’ rights and civil liberties a bit more explicitly than she did but, in all, it’s almost eerie how easily this statement could have been made 70 years later. We still wrestle with immigration policy as a core question related to American identity: who gets to be “one of us”? And what does that decision say about the nation we present ourselves to be?

    Unfortunately, it seems that the prejudices and misperceptions about immigrants and their contributions to this country have not changed much in the past seven decades, either:

    “Many refused to believe government statistics, and they circulated reports alleging that 1 million foreign sailors jumped ship in the United States each year, or that five hundred thousand Mexicans strolled across the border in the previous decade. In her annual report in 1935, Frances blasted these accounts as “fantastic exaggerations”" (p. 191). I can picture her today, decrying those horrible “undocumented immigrants are stealing Social Security” email forwards that periodically get sent to me for debunking.

    So, here we are, generations later, still fighting the same struggles for basic decency, due process, and equal opportunity for those who happened not to share our good fortune of being born in the United States of America.

    And, here we are, as far away from an upcoming congressional election as we’re going to get, staring at two years to get comprehensive immigration reform done in this Congress.

    We’ve got to make it happen–for the families torn apart, for the bodies strewn in the desert, for the workers (immigrant and not) whose wages and bargaining position are undercut by the existence of so many who have so few rights, for the security we all deserve in knowing who’s in this country and allowing law enforcement to focus on those who truly mean us harm, and for the still-salvageable American Dream, which has never been limited just for those who’ve always been here.

    And we’ve got to make it happen because, otherwise, we could still be making the same case, and combating the same myths, in 70 more years. Except that I’m not sure we can withstand it.

    Call your members of Congress today. Tell them (you have three–call all three!) that now is the time. Do it for those who long to call America home, for those who long have but are still afraid to come out of the shadows, for those who fear change but know that this isn’t what welcoming the stranger looks like. Do it for social work, which can’t afford to sit out this important struggle for social justice and the definition of what our nation will mean. And, do it for Frances.

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