Original Post at The Sanctuary.

I'm here in San Diego where Barack Obama just spoke at the annual National Council of La Raza (NCLR) conference.  NCLR flew out me here and provided with me accommodations at the luxurious San Diego Marriot Hotel & Marina.  I was given the opportunity after I helped publicize NCLR's latest We Can Stop the Hate video using Digg and StumbleUpon, among other new media tools. 

Originally posted on Citizen Orange.

"I think Obama would be a disaster, and there's a lot of
reasons," said [Leroy] Pollard, explaining the rumors he had heard about the candidate from friends he goes camping with. "I understand he's from Africa, and that the first thing he's going to do if he gets into office is bring his family over here, illegally. He's got that racist [pastor] who practically raised him, and then there's the Muslim thing. He's just not presidential material, if you ask me."

Eli Saslow - Washington Post (30 June 2008)

This post was originally written for MTV's Choose Or Lose Street Team '08.

Katherine Patrick, the daughter of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, is a courageous youth.  In the last year she has come out as a lesbian to her friends and family, and last week she came out to the whole world.  18-year-old Katherine Patrick did a sit down interview with Bay Windows, "New England's largest GLBT newspaper", to make the announcement, and the news has since been written about by the Boston Herald, the Boston Globe, the Associated Press, and countless other news outlets that reach across the globe.

Originally posted on Citizen Orange

Picture from the Boston Herald.

What a sad day.  Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who was elected with a wave of hope, has turned his back on migrants. 

Governor Deval Patrick has decided against taking action to allow
illegal immigrants to pay resident tuition and fees at state colleges
and universities this fall, an administration official said yesterday,
crushing advocates who were counting on the governor to deliver on a
pledge to support the students.
<div align="right">Maria Sacchetti - Boston Globe (22 May 2008)
</div>

This is a sad day for hundreds of migrant youth, whose only hope to go to college this year was just crushed.

This was originally posted on Citizen Orange.

It may not be politically viable, I may be attacking allies in this post, but someone needs to say it.  In the wake of shocking exposes in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and 60 Minutes, it looks like there's actually some movement from the U.S. government to enact some pro-migrant, or better said, less anti-migrant federal legislation.   Nina Bernstein and Julia Preston of the New York Times report in "Better Health Care Sought for Detained Immigrants".

I'm going to be updating live on the pro-migrant marches here in Boston using my cell phone.  Today is not a day to be on your computer.  It's a day to get out and show your support for immigrant communities that have been beaten down by anti-migrant advocates and the federal government over the last two years.  

I can't paste the widget here, but it will be on top of Citizen Orange all day today.  

This was originally posted on Citizen Orange.

With the launch of the A Dream Deferred blog, the world can no longer feign blindness to the suffering of migrants.  While most bloggers in what we have dubbed the pro-migrant sanctuarysphere struggle to get hundreds of online viewers, this month tens of thousands have already collided head on with the migrant voice.  These "voiceless others" that nativists have beat on for centuries now have a megaphone and they are speaking out loud and clear:

Originally posted on Citizen Orange

Image: Nepean District Historical Society

The mainstream progressive blogosphere has been frighteningly silent lately, as a major migration battle looms over the U.S. Capitol.  Grassroots migrant rights organizations across the nation are mobilizing in opposition to the Secure America through Verification and Enforcement (SAVE) Act:

Originally Posted on Citizen Orange

I was excited to find out over the weekend that David Neiwart, through his own blog and a cross-post on Firedoglake linked to me and others in the pro-migrant blogosphere in the last post of his three-part series on immigration:

Originally posted on Citizen Orange.

One of the last anti-migrant politicians that had a chance at winning the presidency will suspend his campaign, according to CNN.  I hope I don't need to remind people of Mitt Romney's contradictory deportation-only approach to undocumented migration that he made a centerpiece of his campaign.

This was originally posted on my MTV Think profile for the Street Team.

All bloggers have their issues.  Each and every one of us has a special something that we add to the digital universe.  It results in a diversity that is beautiful at the same time that it is ugly and contentious.  Even with all of our differing views there is one thing all bloggers can unite against: traditional media attacks on our new mediums of communication. 

As someone who was interviewed for, and saw first-hand how Jenn Abelson of the Boston Globe went about writing her piece "MTV wants digital army to bring back the buzz", I can say that Abelson not only wrote an unfair new media attack piece, but she also went about gathering her information with what seemed to be the explicit purpose of undercutting the legitimacy of new media.

Originally posted on Citizen Orange

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Changeseeker's post reminded me of this the other day.

For Christmas my mother gave me this book compiled by Steve Coffman entitled Founders v. Bush: a Comparison in Quotations of the Policies and Politics of the Founding Fathers and George W. Bush.  In all honesty, the book isn't very good (sorry mom!).  It strings together quotations that I think are unrelated and unfair.  Just to give people the quotations I'm going to cite are contrasted with two of Bush's quotes under the header "Importance of Union" (p. 3):

Originally posted on Citizen Orange.

I admire people that work to build unity where there is division.  Building unity leads humanity in the direction of ideals.  Building consensus is admirable, but compromising with hate is not.

In her Washington Post op-ed, "The Right Road to America?", Yale Law Professor Amy Chua compromises with hate.  In an attempt to forge a middle ground between tolerance and toughness, she makes deals with the devil.  The net result is an argument that rests on nativism. 

Originally posted at Citizen Orange.

It was a lot of fun watching Kieth Olbermann lay the smackdown on Lou Dobbs for his complicity in hiring the same migrants that he rails against nightly.  Yave wrote a brilliant post on this, and Duke writes that the blogosphere was way ahead of Olbermann on this one.  Still, there was one part of Olbermann's monologue, quoted below, that bothered me a bit.

Originally posted on Citizen Orange

The "Don Hutto Family Residential Facility", was the first prison designed specifically for immigrant families.  It is run by the Corrections Corporation of America, the U.S.'s largest for-profit corrections company.   If the thought of profiting from one of the largest prison populations in the world isn't sickening enough, check out the information the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has on the Hutto Detention Center.  The letter I've pasted here, from a detained child identified as Kevin to the Canadian Prime Minister, has haunted my dreams.

Originally posted on Citizen Orange

When it comes to race baiting, Lou Dobbs is a hypocrite.  Check out this new video that I've put together where Lou Dobbs gives a pass to a staunch racist at forum in Illinois.  Then, just a day later, he accuses Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) of race baiting on his show.  This and Gutierrez didn't even mention race once!  I can't help but see hypocrisy when Dobbs gives a pass to an anti-migrant racist in his forum at the same time that he constantly calls out pro-migrant advocates for race-baiting on his show. 

Originally Posted on Citizen Orange

(Picture of severe wearing of the teeth, or attrition, from smile-dr.com)

Anti-migrant advocates have been tremendously successful at labeling everything amnesty and then pushing an anti-amnesty agenda.  It's always easier to organize against something than it is to organize in favor of something.  With that in mind I've decided it's time pro-migrant advocates come up with their own anti-agenda: anti-attrition.

Originally Posted on Citizen Orange

The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) recently partnered with Blue America in order to hold Rahm Emanuel accountable for his anti-migrant posturing as the representative of one of the most diverse congressional districts in the nation .

ICIRR began this fight with a rubber chicken campaign at YearlyKos (see left) in an effort to get Emmanuel to stand for migrant rights.  

The exact opposite happened.  After a close electoral fight in Massachusetts, Emmanuel assumed the role of Tom Tancredo of the Democrats, and issued this comment to the Washington Post: