Chasing Romney Summary

This year has been perhaps best summed up by Newt Gingrich as “total chaos,” with zombie campaigns kept alive by creepy control-freak billionaires made the news alongside Donald Trump and pizza kingpin Herman Cain. The politics have never been uglier, the money flowing to buy time on television to attack opponents has never greater, and the coverage of the characters involved has never been more intense. Starting with Michelle Bachman, the political spotlight of the primaries was then shared by Newt Gingrich, Rich Perry, Hermain Cain and Donald Trump, while more moderate and reasonable men like Buddy Roehmer and Jon Huntsman who refused to jump far right on social issues were pushed to the fringes.

Immigration has always been one of the most controversial topics in United States history, ranging from when the impoverished Chinese were discriminated against while building the California railroad, to the attempted legislative repulsion of the invasion of the fiendish, green-blooded Irish on their potato boats headed for NYC to the abuses of today’s day laborers, maids and housecleaners who are often targets of people who know that they’re unlikely to be able resort to legal recourse.

For years, the demographics of the United States have been shifting toward a more diverse population, with Latinos being the fastest growing section of the population. There has been divisive rhetoric in politics in general as of late, but nowhere is it more palpable, or ugly, than on immigration. This is because immigration brings with it a unique mix of economic, social and racial issues that is enough to make a man snarl at his own brother. The rhetoric has often ignored the dignity of the humanity of stakeholders involved, and we now find ourselves at a point in history that a surging group that is strongly associated with immigration, Latinos, are poised to decide the presidential election.

The members of DRM Capitol Group, a startup created by a few graduates fresh from law school and a few community organizers, were present in Washington, D.C. during the Lame Duck session for the debate on the DREAM Act, a measure to give undocumented immigrants brought here as children apathway to citizenship. Since then, they have followed Romney starting with his appearance in New Hampshire in January. DRM trailed Romney through his immigration gaffs on the primary debate stage as a right-wing base demanded him to jump further and further to the right. We have seen Romney stretch himself as far right as he possible could on the immigration question and, since he has clinched the nomination, we have watched him push for an Etch-A- Sketch moment where he can create a narrative to make Latino voters forget that he’s trying to deport a large portion of their community.

We’ve seen the political process at many different levels, from local politics, to state politics, to national politics during an election year, speaking with immigration icons such as Dolores Huerta, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas and the very charming Rosario Dawson along the way. This is the story of a group of immigrant’s rights activists, traveling across the country from primary to primary, fundraiser to fundraiser, driving sleeplessly into the endless highway night and chasing Romney as hard we possibly could.