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Cross-posted at DreamACTivist. After the defeat of the DREAM Act last year, William Gheen, the leader of ALIPAC, who deplores undocumented youth and wants to deport all such students, issued a call for us to stay down: “we should never gloat, but it is time to rub these losses in to our opposition. They need to stay down, instead of forcing us to knock them down again and again.” These are the values of ALIPAC—immense hatred towards children that were brought here through no choice of their own, American children who want to serve this country, who are the future leaders of this land. The subaltern has answered Gheen’s coarse demands. In one year since the failure of the DREAM Act, undocumented students have come together in larger numbers than ever before, setting up organizations, networking online, making videos, blogging and petitioning for change. Youth in the usually-somber waiting rooms of history are bustling with renewed enthusiasm and energy. Trapped as a marginal status, ignored by the mainstream media, with their backs to the wall and everything to lose, undocumented youth are emerging as leaders in their own movement. Take a look at the Ideas for Change campaign at Change.org–the DREAM Act is ahead by a landslide (don’t forget to register and vote), thanks in no part, to the efforts of undocumented students and allies. Following the early success of the Change.org organizing, DreamACTivist and Co. will be back with a spree of actions very soon so remember to get on their twitter or join the new BAMN DREAM fanpage. In a paper on alternative nationalisms this past year, I wrote: The ‘politics of waiting’ initiated by stringent United States immigration laws has indeed spurred the rise of a community of undocumented students. United in their desire to be recognized as Americans who deserve the chance to apply for citizenship, they question the ‘alien’ assumption of their character, the ‘otherness’ label that is given to them as an ‘a priori.’ The beneficiaries of the federal DREAM Act are anything but alien—from their slight to unaccented discourses, their spirit to fight their own battles, survival in the face of great opposition and obstacles, these students are American in every way besides a piece of paper: a piece of paper, a green card, that would confer the arbitrary privilege of ‘citizenship’ on these students, a social construct that students are organizing and fighting to achieve by all means. As the Oscar Wilde quote goes “we live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.” In effect, these students are fighting to inherit a large tax burden, serve and die for a country that refuses to acknowledge them, pay hefty loans and mortgages, and to be the force of change and innovation in an eroding Pax Americana. ‘Freedom’ does come with its burden of ironies. When and how did this happen? Roberto Gonzales traces the emergence of undocumented youth organizing to the immigration marches in 2006. This is not to say that undocumented youth organizing did not exist prior to that movement, but that they cemented a place and social category for themselves. Gonzales writes, “Civic activity has been on the rise among undocumented youth on college campuses and in communities. New generations of activists are being born out of the very struggle to become ‘American’ and in the process, they are rewriting their own stories.” Branching out across the United States and the web, undocumented students are now using emerging media technologies to organize for the DREAM Act. And the subaltern is not monolithic but it is united in its goals — Take a look at SIM from Massachusetts, New York Student Youth Leadership Council, the UCLA-based Underground Undergrads, BAMN on the DREAM Act, A DREAM Deferred, DreamACTivist, One DREAM 2009 and the main online social network–DAP. This small list is just scratching the surface of the many student groups that exist. These are youth based movements—online and offline—led and charged primarily by undocumented students. The subaltern is speaking, telling her/his stories and logically putting forth arguments for change. |
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