Dream Defenders

Mass Protest For DREAM Act on Capitol Hill

November 9, 2017 Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! DREAM Act, Dream Defenders, Immigration

By Kevin Zeese for Popular Resistance. A large crowd of protesters came to Washington, DC and gathered on Capitol Hill on Thursday taking over the Hart Senate Office Building in a mass protest as well as at events around the country. They are urging lawmakers to pass legislation to help "Dreamers" with a permanent fix for the status of young immigrants who came to the country as children without documents. These youth have been able to remain in the U.S. as part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program which President Trump promises to halt. We Are Here To Stay called for the November 9th protest writing that they have one month to resolve the issue in Congress: DACA provided a pathway for undocumented immigrant youth to achieve their dreams. Those dreams are now on the line. If you’re outraged at Trump for killing DACA, for fulfilling a sick white supremacist scheme to terrorize immigrant youth and their families, join us on November 9th and be a dream defender where hundreds of Immigrant youth, allies, business leaders, and people of faith are descending on the Capitol to resist Trump’s attacks on immigrants and to demand a clean Dream Act.

Dreams Become Nightmares

September 10, 2017 Christopher Brauchli, www.humanraceandothersports.com Educate! Donald Trump, Dream Defenders, Immigration

By Christopher Brauchli for the Human Raceand Other Sports. DJT sent a surly surrogate, Jeff Sessions, (a poor substitute for a tweet), to announce that DJT was ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program known as “DACA, “that had been created by President Obama. It was created because Congress refused to enact legislation to address the plight of immigrant children brought into this country as youngsters by their parents. Those children had no contact with the countries from which they were brought and, in many cases, do not even know the language in their home countries. Eliminating the program, even though postponing the effective date for six months, introduces a plague of uncertainty into the lives of those who have been beneficiaries of the program. Many of them work in medicine, law and other occupations, or are in college or secondary school hoping to complete their educations. They are now confronted with the terrible uncertainty of not knowing what the future holds for them. The lives of 787,000 people (as of March 2017) will be affected when the program is ended. They are the people who are now protected by its provisions. They may recall, ruefully, that before ending the program, DJT had repeatedly said that: “We love the dreamers. We love everybody” and, “I think the dreamers are terrific.” The Dreamers might have taken comfort from those words . . . .

Meet One Of The New Civil Rights Leaders

March 9, 2015 Phillip Agnew and Michelle Chen, www.inthesetimes.com Resist! Civil Rights, Dream Defenders, History, Racial Justice, Youth

I’m excited because it seems people are waking up—people from low- and middle-income communities, people who have typically been in the margins, who weren’t part of organizations. When we first started mobilizing in 2012, I could have never imagined things would have happened this quickly. On the other hand, this really is something that, if you look back at history, was easy to predict. You have police who do not come from the community and have a culture of contempt for black and brown people, especially when they’re young and poor. You have communities with no say in the way their lives are lived, no educational opportunities, no jobs that will make ends meet. And you have rampant and growing explosions between police and the people that they’re supposed to protect. This is a recipe for disaster. This is 1967. This is 1968, when cities around the country, including Chicago, Newark, Detroit, Oakland and Watts, began to explode.

Daily movement news and resources