The DREAMer Campaign Trail, Part 1

Monday we flew in from Oakland to New York, then drove to Boston and back. Wednesday we flew to Arizona, then drove 5 people to Los Angeles.  Thursday, we drove to Las Vegas.  Friday, it was Vegas back to Arizona in the car again.  Saturday morning was the lightest day so far, with us waking up at 6am after 5 hours of sleep, the most we’ve had all week, to a 4 hour drive, the least we’ve travelled.  Monday we all flew back to New York.  Tuesday, the Bolt Bus took us back to Boston.  It’s been a very busy week.

In New York on Monday, DRM put together an event in the center of Hoftra’s campus.  Strolling around Hofstra the day before the debate, we had Congresswoman Veazquez, another Congressman and a few local DREAMers say a few words.  The podium was jimmyrigged by a Long Island DREAMer, and is more of a dresser with a cloth put over it.  The entire campus is buzzing with heightened security giving us dirty looks, telling us to make it short and not have any of the “DEBATE 2012” signs in our video or photos.

DRM At Hofstra

The Congressmen spoke at the podium about their disappointment with Republican tactics on immigration and reiterate how they’re the party fighting against the DREAM Act.  The Long Island DREAMers shared their stories next.  They were brought in to the U.S. from Mexico and Peru at an early age, denied nearly every legitimate avenue of success imaginable and yet still working toward their degrees.  A few guys from a national Latino fraternity at Hofstra come over and tell me about how they’re planning on wearing shirts that say “legal” or “illegal” depending on their immigration status tomorrow during the debate, and explain what that means as far as education and employment.

Scott Brown Campaign HQ

The day after Hofstra, we drove to Boston and caught up with Serge, a DREAMer from Ukraine living in Massachusetts most of his life.  It’s good to see him again; I haven’t since he and my friends were hauled off and nearly arrested during a demonstration at a Romney rally.  We were helping him to prep for a demonstration the next day against Senator Scott Brown, who had come out strong rhetorically against the DREAM Act on his own website.  We would have had more people, but in Connecticut the DREAMers were organizing a protest of Linda McMahon, whose comic candidacy has gotten horribly serious.  In an age of YouTube, however, the misogynistic, white-trash world of professional wrestling (to which I belong as a long-time Hulkamaniac) where she fought Stone Cold Steve Austin in the ring and popped a beer with him right before he flipped off the crowd simply isn’t going to help.

Brown’s currently in a tight race with the mountain of integrity that is Elizabeth Warren.  Her straight talk on financial regulation gained much of the country’s confidence when our economy was being raided by banks like the Lindisfarne monastary the day the Vikings landed.   To be sure, there were still Teabagger lunatics protesting against her, mostly funded by the Koch brothers.  Some would say they were the stereotypical Jerry Springer fan, but I think they’re more like the guests.

Arizona was up next, but only briefly: I’m the only one with a license, so I needed to pick up the AZ DREAMers and bring them to Los Angeles.  My undocumented friends, though many can finally get one legally due to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals put in by Obama, haven’t gotten licenses yet.  In Arizona, however, they won’t be able to: Gov. Jan Brewer, embodying the crazyness that is Arizona’s state legislature, issued an Executive Order to block licenses for undocumented immigrants.  They’ll still drive when they have to because, let’s face it, modern day life requires it at times, they’ll just face arrest and deportation every time they do.

After 2 hours of sleep, we’re on the road over to a recording studio in the outskirts of Hollywood to record a political campaign ad.  Caeser and Erika (my partners and co-founders at DRM) talk about their stories, along with Mitzi, Julian and Jerssay, the DREAMers who joined us in AZ.  They speak in Spanish into a microphone about the opportunities that passed them by despite their merit, and honestly, I’ve very rarely seen anyone earn something so hard as an undocumented immigrant: they work twice as hard for anything they get, while dealing with a small army of Rush Limbaughs the entire way.

These political ads will tug at the heartstrings of Latino voters in a way that Craig Romney will never be able to: these are the children that Kris Kobach, immigration advisor to Mitt Romney and author of the notorious racial profiling law SB 1070, wishes Latinos would completely forget about. Theirs are the sad stories of merit denied that all the money in the world can only add static to, but not completely drown out.  The Latino community has responded to them with overwhelming support for the DREAM Act, and the DREAMers continue to hold the ear of their communities as it’s most sympathetic members, especially as local and national organizations have popped up to help them tell their stories.

The next day’s drive was only 4 hours from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.  We joined the Nevada DREAMers at their HQ at the end of the strip, and soon made our way out to the demonstration outside of Sen. Dean Heller.  Heller’s voted against the DREAM Act, and supports SB 1070, promising to bring a version of it to Nevada if given a chance.  If there are two single issues that will get a politically-savvy Latinos blood boiling, feeling that their human dignity is worth less to the Republicans because of his race and bringing up venom from decades-old racial battles, it’s those two.

SB 1070 is a racial profiling law that allowed Joe Arpaio to stop someone and ask for their papers, putting them in a jail cell if they didn’t have them.  Arizona universities have reported a lower rate of Latino applications from out of state, largely because nobody wants to spend the night in jail while Arpaio and his posse (most of his guys that he gets into trouble with are a volunteer “posse,” the same disconnected assholes that went digging for Obama’s birth certificate with Trump) checked their immigration status.  The law was partially struck down by the Supreme Court, but is still a racial profiling law and a slap in the face to the Latino community.  Meanwhile, on the DREAM Act, if you can’t give a break to someone who was brought across the border at 6 months old, trying to deport her to a country she can’t remember whose language she can’t speak where she has no friends or family, you either don’t understand the issue or just don’t have a heart; there’s no other way to explain a “tough on babies” policy, and the DREAMers have been publicizing their stories well.

The DREAMers talked about how Heller was known for saying something in English to a crowd, and then something completely different in Spanish like Knucky Thompson making the rounds between a black church and KKK rally.  Some local media turned out to record the event and interview the demonstrators, though it wasn’t until we were leaving that we were approached by one of Flake’s aids.  He was the typical tool in a suit that constitutes the rank and file of the Republican Party that aren’t being fooled by Frank Luntz into voting against his own interests, but he scraped up enough courage to come out in daddy’s suit, so he’s a tool with a sliver of my begrudging respect.  He talked with us and said he’d take a message to bring to Flake, so my friends told him that they were upset about how he’s two-faced in translation, and want him to change his position on the DREAM Act and immigration in general.

We drove back to Arizona to drop off our new friends, then Erika, Caeser and I was left of me piled into a car a few hours later to drive to Tucson from Mesa.  We’re all profoundly exhausted, but we’ve been broken into the nomadic life thoroughly and can walk through most of getting ready in the morning on autopilot without wasting any time.

Jeff Flake is a Senator in Arizona running for re-election.  He’s also a Senator who voted no on the DREAM Act despite pressing for comprehensive immigration reform in the past, and came out publicly putting pressure on the Supreme Court to uphold SB 1070.

The DREAMers in Tucson were waiting for us in Starbucks.  They tell me about how Tucson is a Democratic stronghold, and so Flake is trying to steal some votes by setting up shop here.  We lined up outside of Flake’s office and waved signs that we had brought that read “SHAME ON YOU JEFF FLAKE FOR KILLING DREAMS.” A few DREAMers had brought their own signs as well, my favorite being 3 luchadore masks sprayed onto posterboard reading “Lucho por ser Libre: Support the DREAMers.”

After an hour or so of having cars honk and cheer at us (which was far better than what they did to us in Mississippi), we walked over to Flake’s office, handed them a poster and shared our stories.  This time, it was a woman in a Flake shirt who received our message, writing down some of the details of the DREAMer’s stories as a few other campaign workers watched nervously, one of them recording us on her phone.

The next morning Caeser and I boarded a plane for NYC, talking about the states we’ll drive to over the next few days.  Boston was the next day, meeting with DREAMers to confront Scott Brown’s campaign.  After one DREAMer explained how his uncle was blown to pieces by a landmine planted by the FARC, and how terrorists chased him out of his country when he was 5, the Communications Director explained “we just have a difference of opinion and will have to disagree [on the DREAM Act].”