rssBREAKING: Undocumented youth start protests in Atlanta
- 5 Comments
Eight undocumented youth from around the country — including one from Michigan — have moved to shut down a major thoroughfare in Atlanta to protest state laws that ban enrollment in state universities by undocumented youth.
“We feel that the time for us to stand up has come. I am not only doing this for my friends who are in the same situation, but also for my mom who did everything she could to give me a better life,” said Dayanna Rebolledo, 21, one of the undocumented youth who was brought here from Mexico, at the age of 9 and was raised in Detroit. She is a leader of Detroit based organization, One Michigan for Immigrant Rights.
“I feel scared not knowing what might happen to me today, but I also know that if I do not take action then my future will remain uncertain for much longer,” Rebolledo said.
If the eight protesters are arrested they will likely face detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and then deportation proceedings, as happened in a protest last year at Arizona Sen. John McCain’s Tucson offices. After they were arraigned on charges of trespassing in Arizona, ICE officials promptly arrested them and began deportation proceedings.
Since last spring, undocumented youth have been staging a variety of civil disobedience actions across the country in a drive to force Congress and the President to pass comprehensive immigration reform. A significant goal of activists is passage of the DREAM Act. The Act would create a path to citizenship for youth brought to the country illegally at a young age, requiring the young people to serve two years in the U.S. military, or two years of university or college education. Once the two year requirement is completed, the youth would then be allowed to pursue full citizenship as any other immigrant to the U.S. would.
“We intend to hold our politicians at the national level accountable to the promises they make,” said Jose Franco, One Michigan lead organizer from Detroit. “Our situation demands a clear, practical solution. We won’t wait for political opportunity — we will create political opportunity. This is just the beginning.”
“Young people have always been at the forefront of the civil rights movement,” said Rebolledo, “and we intend to continue in that tradition by fighting for a path to legalization and access to education for all.”
To watch the protest live check out the One Michigan live stream.
5 Comments
Comment posted April 6, 2011 @ 2:54 am
Come here legally and it’s not a problem. Break the the laws and get arrested. It’s pretty much a no brainer.
Comment posted April 6, 2011 @ 3:15 am
Please tell me someone arrested this nasty parasite and her friends… if she’s been here since she was nine, why has she not bothered to become a LEGAL citizen instead of organizing for civil disobedience? She’s part of the problem, NOT the solution.
Comment posted April 6, 2011 @ 12:24 pm
you IDIOT, she had no chance to try and become one!! READ THE LAWS MORON!
Comment posted June 25, 2011 @ 3:12 pm
Georgia’s HB 87 is more of the same racist discriminatory actions White Georgia politicians in the majority have always touted. Only, today, they hide
behind thin curtains of law, and spew their hate filled vitriol in the Latin immigrant direction.
I live here, in Georgia, a long time resident; and, I know for an unequivocal fact: Georgia is home to many of the most hateful racists in the world. And
with no doubt in any Georgian’s mind, only slightly hidden racism is rampant in our state politics. Here, HB 87 is proof positive the old time racists are at it again.
Old time favorite racists like Joe Wilson, Georgia’s counterpart to “you lie” Joe Wilson (all these racists look alike), old buddy of Gov. Deal and the rest of those fellow travelers, shows off Georgia political racism in full unbridled pride in Miller V. Johnson (515 U.S. 900, 115 S. CT. 2475, U.S.Ga, 1995).
In the opinion, our Great Nation’s SCOTUS shows you how racists Georgia politicians pulled every string in the book to keep Georgia’s Black population out of the voting booths. The Court quotes Joe Wilson, the racist Georgia legislator: “I don’t want to draw nig_ger districts.”
These Court decisions and congressional directions significantly reduced voting discrimination against minorities. In the 1972 election, Georgia gained its first black Member of Congress since Reconstruction, and the 1981 apportionment created the State’s first majority-minority district.FN1 This voting district, however, was not gained easily. Georgia created it only after the United States District Court for the District of Columbia refused to preclear a predecessor apportionment plan that included no such district-an omission due in part to the influence of Joe Mack Wilson, then Chairman of the Georgia House Reapportionment Committee.**2502 As Wilson put it only 14 years ago, “ ‘I don’t want to draw nig_ger districts.’ ” Busbee v. Smith, 549 F.Supp. 494, 501 (DC 1982).
So…, you see Georgia is a racist state politically controlled today by the very same “Joe Wilson” racist mentality of only a few years past.
Let’s be real clear here: This Gov. Deal lead attack on the Latin community is exactly the same attack he and his ilk always perpetrate in their racists’ zeal to keep the “Lilly White” agenda in absolute control.
No doubt it is true, a number of our Great Nation’s citizenry are correctly interested in controlling undocumented people from a perspective sans racism and hateful rhetoric. Here, I agree. However, the people who are livid to the point of madness expressed on these pages look like closeted cases of the standard issue racists I see in Georgia on a regular basis.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
