Our community has been fighting for so long for some sort of
relief and now we have it, that it is still difficult to have a reaction. This is undeniably such a HUGE victory, but
yet so many people have been left out of the celebration. I’ve read posts this morning saying that we “should
be happy with what we get” that we should be grateful to Obama for “giving us
something.” These words alone “what we
are getting” remind me that this is not something we are getting from
ANYONE.
This is something our community
has achieved, a huge milestone given the context in which our families live on
the day to day. We have exposed the
ugliness and complex nature of immigration.
We have exposed the racism that still penetrates, breathes, and lives in
the fabric of our society. We have
brought to light the injustices for people of color in Arizona and
nationwide. We have RESISTED and learned
to resist from the people who live the reality of living in the label of illegality
on a daily basis, despite an entire system designed to oppress them and keep
them in a status of illegitimacy and trauma.
We have witnessed our families resist this very system that targets and harasses
and hurts and kills through the construction of shifting borders that exclude
and divide.
We have resisted and learned to resist from
the leadership of organizations who through various tactics have moved the
movement for human rights forward. We
have resisted and learned to resist from our youth, from students and dreamers who
questioned the status quo, who risked arrest, and continue to experiment with
ways to demand more from this process that continues to deny our families the
human rights we continue to exercise and know we have. This is a HUGE victory for ourselves, we have
exposed this problem and forced the United States to recognize its need to
address the mess they know they have but a mess that our community has loudly
and passionately been screaming is NOT okay and it is something we are TAKING
NO MORE OF.
While the administration
thinks this is enough, we all know in our hearts that it’s not. But should we be happy, YES! We have came
this far in pushing for the recognition of our human rights and while this is
not the answer nor the cure for this sick society that profits and sustains itself
from the exploitation of people of color, it is a step in the right direction,
a step to reenergize our movement and continue fighting till brown and illegal
cease to be synonymous, to continue fighting till the stigma of criminality is
shifted away from the sweat of immigrant workers, till every single mother no
longer has to worry about abandoning their children when and if they are
kidnapped by our government through detention and deportation, till every
student is able to focus on living his or her dreams and their education
instead of on trying to protect the status of their families, till we are
finished teaching fear to our children by having to have conversations about la
migra, till speaking Espanol is something we value rather than denigrate, till
ethnic studies is recognized as a necessary component of our history and education,
the fight will continue till these and
so many other important issues are resolved in our community, the fight continues.
We know from Ferguson and various other communities that despite their legality, being a person of color continues to be a
problem in the United States, we have scratched the surface of a much deeply rooted
historical element of America’s tradition.
But in this tradition, the struggle continues and I know our community
is far from done, we will continue moving forward.
