Open Lettter To Mohammad Abdollahi

Dear Mohammad,

It’s difficult for me to see the pictures and images of what happened on Monday, May the 17^th , 2010.

I guess you all reached a point of no return. Hearing so many DREAM Act stories makes me understand the depth of your desperation.

Your life and of all the dreamers has been put on hold for so many years that I think you only saw this option available to you. You sat down in a peaceful protest with your friends in front of powerful Senator John McCain's office and you are willing to risk to be deported, all world to witness, because the government of the place you grew up does not let you live freely, when freedom seems to be all around you.

I suppose you all knew I will not approve of this action. We are afraid for your safety (the safety of all dreamers) and afraid that you actually are going to be deported to a place that can mean a death sentence for you. This after being arrested, handcuffed and possibly mistreated. If I do not approve of your action it is not because I’m not proud of you but because I really care about you.

Of all places you chose Arizona to shout your pain to the world. Maybe you did this because Arizona is a dry and often inhospitable place, where people call children, teenagers, and young adults in your situation “illegals” more often than not. Maybe you came to his place because you feel that more immigrants are being criminalized even when are role model human beings, just like you.

Maybe you chose to come here because many people in this place are incapable of imagining what is like to be brought to a country swaddled in desperation and grow up in the shadows of society and, in spite of all, grow up to be a remarkable human being and a leader, like so many of the dreamers. Maybe you chose Arizona because many hearts are hardened by hate and cannot see past their prejudices. Perhaps you came here because you think Arizona is the epicenter of hate, specially after the governor signed sb1070 and you are fighting for all of us.

I really do not know where this is going to take you and all the dreamers. I really hope that your actions will soften some hearts when confronted with the ugly realties of what we have all done to children and young lives like yours in this country.

I pray today for your safety and for the safety of all DREAMers.

Love and hugs,

Carmen Cornejo

From the Blog Chicas Divinas-Divine Girls

What grade do I give the Arizona State Legislature on the 2010 session?

When the editors of the Southeast Republic asked me to answer how do I grade Arizona's Legislature after the end of the 2010 session, this is what I answered. (They only gave me 80 words but more, many more would be necessary to express my outrage).

Failure. Republican Legislators passed a disastrous bill SB1070 (with rushed modifications at the last minute that makes it worse). Massive cuts to education and social services for the disabled and vulnerable.

Instead of concentrating in solving Arizona’s economic woes they wasted their time on legislation that divides us instead of appreciating the contributions of all to the economy. Expect boycotts, continue fall on revenues from sales tax and a cascade of foreclosures.

(printed on the Saturday, May the 8th edition)

What Part of Legal You Do Not Understand???

Even before Gov. Jan Brewer signed Bill SB1070, way before, sheriff officers and rogue police from different departments have been stopping brown people under the suspicion of being in the country undocumented and abusing their powers. They have been proving into the immigration's status of Hispanics in hopes to discover undocumented persons and play their power trips and their ethnic grievances. This is what it has been going on in Arizona.

For what I hear their targets are primarily 1.-working class fellows whose English proficiency is not absolute or speak Spanish and 2.-young people even when they are all American. Rogue police officers know they are not fully educated on what their rights are and it is easy to get away with the situation . Rogue police officers are looking to snatch them and sending them to immigration holding tanks.

Some months ago I found a 3^rd generation Hispanic college student who was asked to produce his social security card besides his driver’s license. He left the scene with a sense that the request for a SS# was not right but he was not sure and “consulted” with some friends.

I come across this stories without seeking them. It just comes naturally when I’m going around giving away CADENA’s “Know Your Rights Brochures”.

This week when the community got together to rally with Al Sharpton against prop SB1070, I saw the opportunity to give away 200-updated-version of the Know Your Rights Brochures, half of them in English, half of them in Spanish, printed thanks to a generous donor.

This events are always a great opportunity to speak to people that, under other circumstances, I would not be able to communicate with and opens my vision of what is really going on the streets.

I had the chance to talk to a lady who was stopped by police, questioned extensively, searched in all her possessions, handcuffed and put on the back of a patrol car EVEN WHEN SHE HAS A DRIVER’S LICENSE AND A SOCIAL SECURITY CARD !!!! The reason, the officer did not believe that she was legal in the country, and apparently, she has the name of a person police is looking for or that is what they told her. Police officers look over and over her documents, asked repeatedly if they were false and scratched them on with their fingernails.
What part of Legal do you do not understand???? The searched continued and went into her possessions, the car contents and her purse while she waited handcuffed on the back of the police car. Finally the police gave up and she was dismissed without an apology. The lady speaks broken English and was Hispanic which matches my own description.
She was fighting tears as she recounted her story.

Fortunately this lady talked to an immigrant rights organization and they took pictures of her bruised wrists.
I told her not to remain silent and tell others what it’s going on Arizona even before the implementation of SB1070. Know Your Rights and share the information with others.

Know Your Rights and speak up. This is all we can do.

We Saw SB1070 Coming

My family has been working for 2 electoral cycles to vote out Senator Russell Pierce of Mesa, Arizona. We helped candidates from both political parties and canvassed, called and urged people to vote against him. Few heard the message.

Especially during the 2006 election we could count with our fingers the number of volunteers helping a way better candidate: a couple of acorn community organizers, the candidate, 3 high school students and a couple of teachers. We wondered where everybody else was.

Russell Pearce is an ideologue of the worst kind. While Joe Arapio attracts the attention of many and it is picketed by protestors Mr. Pearce has been concocting laws helped by extremist like Kris Kobach and organizations like FAIR and Numbers USA. In October 2006, he forwarded an email from" National Alliance, a white separatist group, to a group of supporters. The email titled "Who Rules America" ^[8] criticized black and white intermixing and Jews in the media for promoting multiculturalism and racial equality, for depicting "any racially conscious White Person" as a bigot, and for presenting the Holocaust as fact.^[9]"

The first time I saw him in person was for the 2006 candidate’s debate for the House of Representatives. We went to support of Tammy Pursley, the Democratic Candidate at the time. When Mr. Pearce started to speak I was completely startled at his speech because I expected to hear him trashing immigrants, sprinkling his speech with false statistics that create hysteria among misinformed followers. To my surprise he did not spoke about “them” but said something that I considered even more dangerous. “This country needs to go back to it’s origins” he thundered…. Not a Democracy but a Republic”.

Who is this man that wants to limit the access of people to the political process? I wondered. Does that mean that he wants to limit the access to the political process just to individuals like him because they deem themselves somewhat superior? or part of "God's plan"?

That is when it hit me that Russell Pierce was not only and anti-immigrant but represented a deeper problem and danger to Democracy.

When this man introduced the Employer’s Sanctions Law I thought members of the Legislature will not vote for a bill that threatened the economic stability of the State. “He is a Republican, isn’t he? Republicans are pro-business, right???? Wrong. The Republican dominated Arizona legislature does not care about business or the well being of the State anymore.

The week of April 23rd 2010 was one of the saddest of my life…. We have been putting so much work and energy trying to convince people that this man should be voted out because he does not care about anything but his narrow and backward ideology and because we saw SB1070 coming in a slow motion for years.

I hope people wake up, register to vote and realize this man needs to be voted out.

Stand and Deliver!!!

Like all people who appreciates education, I'm mourning the passing of Jaime Escalante, a fellow immigrant who taught at the Garfield High School in CA, made headlines and Hollywood fame with his students' achievements.He taught the concept of "ganas' : to work hard with energetic determination to achieve high goals.In Arizona we have our own "Jaime Escalantes" who teach students to dream big for a better future based on their academic achievements, their content of their character even when they come from underprivileged neighborhoods.We too have the recipe of cinematic success.Now is time for the US Congress to Stand and Deliver the passage of the DREAM Act so the best students of the state fulfill the promise of the American Dream. We need the students to be role models for others and bring their professional talents to the country. The US Congress has the key to make our own Arizona movie's happy ending.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/2010/04/04/20100404sunlets044.html

The immigrant wife

I came to the USA as an immigrant wife. I walked into a church in Monterrey, Mexico in the morning. I presided a small cocktail party at noon all decked in an extravagant dress. I said my farewells to my parents, siblings and friends and by 3:00 pm my husband and I left for the Mariano Escobedo airport.

Still in heavy makeup I arrived to Phoenix, Arizona at 10:00 pm, ready to put my life in a different route and live new experiences. Suddenly it felt like a gamble.

This was the beginning of my life in the United States of America.

My knowledge of the language and customs was more theoretical that practical. Never before that day had I the money to travel beyond a couple of quick trips to shop at the border. At that time my plans were to polish my English and at the completion of my husband Master’s degree, go back to Mexico. I would never imagined that 18 years later I would be still living here and my husband and I would be American Citizens , or that my sons would be Mexican- American, Chicanos.

I would never imagined that I would be fighting to change immigration laws in my adopted country.

My plans at the beginning never involved in bring leadership or notoriety in my life. My plans were to lay low, convinced of my own inadequacies….but life is full of surprises.

For years I followed passively the drama that every day unfolds in the USA. The deaths of those who try to cross the desert, the working conditions of the undocumented, the abuses they have to endure.

Those immigrant stories upset my conscience but I did not see any possibility to do anything about it even it felt really unfair. What can one do to alleviate the negative effect of socio-economic forces, social phenomena??

In time my husband started entering other social realities outside our life. Everything started when he gave his time as a mentor and guidance to high school students in the West-Central Phoenix corridor. He wanted to give the students the message that there were Hispanic engineers working in nice companies and that they also could aspire to a professional life through education. He went to a High School were the majority of the student population is Hispanic and all low income. But then realized an awful truth: “No matter how dedicated, smart and industrious these students are, they are condemned to menial jobs in the underground economy because of their lack of legal status”.

Even more frightening, he realized this young people, having immigrated undocumented as children had no legal standing and were legally vulnerable.

Through his experiences I started to understand the reality of immigrants with less fortune than us. Those who needed to come to this country in desperation to seek a better life and in many cases brought their little ones with them.

These smuggled little human beings were now the High School kids that my husband was encountering.

Those kids crossed the border undocumented at more or less the same time we did and started a new life along with us. Our immigrant lives started to interconnect

The truth is that in previous years these young people would have been able to fix their immigration situation, but not anymore. The laws have been modified and the country have closed the doors to most sometime ago,

The implications of being undocumented are difficult to imagine to those who do not know them. Besides it is easier to believe this country is incapable of treating people, young lives, the way it does.

Without a Social Security Number they cannot work legally and now they cannot attain financial support to go into Higher Education, are exposed to mistreatment, detention, incarceration, deportation to a country many do not remember. Blackmail, Sexual exploitation, human rights abuses may be present at any moment. This young people are condemned to a life with limited aspirations and to live in the shadows of the society that educated them. It is a modernized, sanitized version of slavery.

In this negative environment only a legislative proposal known as the DREAM Act could only open the doors to legalize this youth.

The lack of persons who have the time to speak for them (with the exception of the wonderful mentors we have found along the way) took my husband and I to raise our voices, and in my case, dedicate most of my working time to advocate for the DREAM Act.

From the immigrant wife living on the suburbs I became an activist with goals, and priorities. My main interest is focused on the young immigrants without opportunities and legally vulnerable.

How can I found purpose in mundane –middle class activities if one of these bright students can be literally taken out of the streets, incarcerated mistreated for maybe weeks, months and later deported to a country they do not know if their immigration status is discovered? How the most powerful government on earth can thrown young lives into homelessness??

Now, almost 20 years after I came to this country I’m working to change the society where I live so these young beautiful lives are accepted for who they are, for the content of their character.

To me is ironic that I, an immigrant, am fighting for the soul of this country, for its reputation as the leader of human rights, when still feel so inadequate. However I assume the responsibility with humility and passion. This is a big challenge to anyone but especially for an immigrant wife.