Netroots Nation: Day 1

by Dave Bennion

categories: DREAM Act, History of Migration, Immigration Reform

Published August 14, 2009 @ 12:01AM PT

My first day at my first Netroots Nation was pretty amazing.  Not too surprisingly, the most productive interactions took place outside of the scheduled panels.  Here's my typically disgruntled take on the proceedings (though I was told tonight that I am an optimist, and I agreed):

9:00 - The Global Netroots: My hope is that the day will come when a "global netroots" panel includes bloggers from countries that are not the U.S., and no, I don't mean American ex-pats blogging from Prague.  I respect what these panelists are doing to raise awareness in the U.S. of social media activism in places like Iran or how they are engaging ex-pats in domestic U.S. politics.  I support their work, but please next time change the title to "The Ex-pat Netroots" or "Promoting Imperial Narratives Through the Persian Lens."  There's very little that's global about it as currently constituted.

10:30: Leveraging Strength: Effective Collaboration Between Online and Offline Organizations and Activists: I noted with interest James Rucker's account of the Jena 6 movement, which very effectively combined online and offline activism in the effort to push back against the prosecution of six black teenagers in Louisiana.  Rucker made the point that I know is true from my work representing immigrants in court: money gets you justice in this country.  Without money, you can't count on justice.  I would love to see something comparable to Jena 6 develop around the Dream Act, but I'm afraid of what horrible thing might have to take place for that to happen.

Robert Greenwald urged attendees to take the long view and focus valuable time on issues that will change the way people think about things, not just reacting reflexively to the hot topic of the day.  I agree.

I don't remember what sparked this thought during the panel, but I decided that online communities are imagined communities just as national communities are.  You often never meet the people you interact with online, but you are connected to them in sometimes powerful ways.  I continue to wonder how online communities can be pushed out beyond national borders, and what those communities would look like.  This is the future of online organizing, and perhaps later the future of social interactions and one day political organization.

3:00 - How to Work with Unions in Your District: Elana Levin, who works for Workers United (whose members make Obama's suits), made a good point, which I agreed with in part and disagreed with in part.  She said that her union supports immigrants because it is made up of immigrants, and it has always been made up of immigrants.  She said tensions between unions and immigrants are exaggerated.  I agree that unions have been how immigrants organized since the unions' inception, but the historical tension between native and immigrant labor is well documented in Zolberg's A Nation by Design.  And it still exists today.  I applaud the unions for working to move forward with common purpose in spite of those tensions.

Then there was Bill Clinton's speech. 

What can I say.  The man mentioned immigration only once, to say that George W. Bush had a fairly progressive position on immigration in 2000.  Well, ok.  That's not very informative.

What did Bill Clinton think about the fatally-flawed enforcement-only immigration bill (IIRIRA) that he signed into law in 1996?  What does he think about the thousands of families living apart because of that bill, or all the U.S. citizens living in exile with their loved ones abroad?

What does Bill Clinton think about immigration reform today?  What do mainstream Congressional Democrats think about it?  It seems clear they would rather not think about it, and wish it would just disappear so they could focus on other issues.

I agree that health care reform and a climate change bill are vitally important.  I fully support both those efforts, even as I wish those bills were better than they are.

But don't gear us up just to be let down.  Don't throw immigrants under the bus again, as they were in 1996 (IIRIRA), 2003 (NSEERS), 2005 (REAL ID), 2006 (CIR Fail), and 2007 (CIR double-Fail).  If you screw this up, if you don't get this right, then I believe this movement will change the status quo in ways you never imagined and can't possibly predict.  But maybe that's the optimist in me talking again.

(Back to health care, I realized tonight that we as pro-migrant bloggers will serve the interests of the immigrant community better by supporting health care reform now while our efforts can do the most good.  By informing and educating the gatekeepers and the public that the bullshit the insurance industry is peddling about immigrants and health care is factually incorrect and morally repugnant.  And by supporting coalitions that can lend their support during the bruising immigration debate.)