Posts by Dave Bennion
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DREAM Act Not Controversial After All
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From Mali to Philly: "Mrs. Goundo's Daughter" Spans Borders
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My Name is Ashley and I am Undocumented
Change
Published September 08, 2009 @ 03:49AM PT
Thank you for visiting the site, for your comments and other contributions, and for the time you have invested in this website and this community. I will no longer be blogging at change.org. Going forward, you can find me at Citizen Orange or the Sanctuary.
Be well,
Dave
Take Three Steps to Stop Alonso's Deportation
Published August 26, 2009 @ 04:56AM PT
[Ed. In my inbox recently from Dreamer Alonso Chehade:]
I was brought to the United States from Peru when I was 14 years old. Eight years later, I am being deported for reasons I cannot comprehend. On March 14, 2009, I and a friend went to visit some friends at Western Washington University and rather than driving back home late at night we decided to stay at our friends ' place. The next morning, not being familiar with the area we took a wrong turn on the highway and ended up near the Canadian Border. I was stopped by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities and when it was discovered that I was undocumented, I was arrested and jailed for 2 weeks. I am set to be deported on September 25th with a flight ticket scheduled for September 17th to a country I barely know.I have lived in the United States for 8 years. I have never had any problems with the law. All I ever wanted to do was to go to school and have a successful career, but our broken immigration system prevented me from continuing my career path after I graduated from the University of Washington.
Unless you step up and help there is little hope that I won't be deported on September 25th. I humbly urge you to immediately take action to stop my deportation.
EZ Act Now
SIGN | CALL | FORWARD
Help Me in 3 Steps & 3 Minutes!
1) Sign my online petition. (1 min.)
NOTE: Physical Petition Form available upon request.
2) CALL & Leave a Message (2 Mins.)
@DHS Public Comment Line 202.282.8495
NOTE: This is a voicemail line. You will not have to speak to anyone but only leave a message. This is a direct line, which means you will not have to go through many line transfers to get to the right place.
"Use the *CALL SCRIPT / Pre-read before calling"
*CALL SCRIPT: My name is (your full name) and I am calling regarding Jorge-Alonso Chehade's Deportation. File Number A88-738-410. Alonso qualifies for the DREAM Act and has a clean criminal record. I would like to humbly request that you take action to immediately halt his deportation. Thank you for considering my request.
PD: If mailbox is full, PLEASE try again the next day.
3) FORWARD This message to 5 More contacts (cut and paste into an email, or send the link to this blog post by email or Twitter)
Ted Kennedy, Champion of Immigrant Rights
Published August 26, 2009 @ 04:44AM PT
For decades, Senator Ted Kennedy fought in the halls of Congress on behalf of immigrants and their families. You can see the history of his involvement with leaders like Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez in the photos at the website of the United Farmworkers, which today mourns his passing.
Some Congress watchers may wonder how immigration reform can succeed without Kennedy working to push it through the legislative process. I think he would find fault with that sentiment and encourage us to continue to fight.
Update: Many of my change.org co-bloggers were also inspired by the work of Senator Kennedy. Here are the results by topic:
Animal Rights
Gay Rights
Genocide
Global Health
Global Warming
Health Care
Homelessness
Humanitarian Relief
Social Entrepreneurship
US Poverty
Women's Rights
Institutional Support for Torture Undermines Government's Legitimacy
Published August 25, 2009 @ 08:05PM PT
In case my last post was a little too patriotic for some jaded, worldwise visitors to the blog, I received something upsetting in my inbox today. It was a description from Amnesty International of the ways the U.S. government tortured many innocent men over the past several years, and sometimes children.
I studied human rights in law school. I felt upset and outraged reading Andrew Sullivan's consistent writing on torture back in 2004-05 (I'm sure he wasn't the first). I have represented asylum-seekers, some of whom had experienced unimaginable misery, in the U.S. asylum system for the past three or four years.
But after all this, I only recently came to understand in a deep, personal way the true destructive, dehumanizing impact of torture. Torture takes a person and erases that person. I don't know that I believe in good and evil, but seeing the effects of torture up close is the closest glimpse of evil that I have ever had. I did not until recently understand what torture "meant" in a moral or practical sense.
Reaching that realization and then remembering that the government to which I send part of my income every year to spend on "national defense" has used some of that money to torture human beings is a disturbing place for anyone to arrive. I had thought before that I was distrustful of my government, I had even felt betrayed as I watched events unfold over the last several years. Now thinking about that government and the national community which gives it its raison d'etre, I feel only deadness. I don't know how to reconcile that with the inspiration I have felt watching the nascent Dream movement coalesce.
Read about Mohammed Jawad, a teenager we locked up at Guantánamo and beat, tortured, and denied access to the legal system. We told him his family would be killed if he did not confess. After his case went up to the Supreme Court, he was finally released and went home.
It looks like the system worked after all!
Ask President Obama and members of Congress to take action to ensure this doesn't happen again and that those responsible for torturing in the name of the greater good are held accountable.
</call to righteous action>
<meditative diversion>
I've had a song stuck in my head lately: Bad Religion's "Sorrow." Here's a low-key acoustic version with some horrific imagery that you should not show your children and maybe not yourself.
This is how systems work. These are the results of a well-functioning system:
Below the fold, do you take Bad Religion's song "Sorrow" at face value or not?
Netroots Nation: The Promigrant Blogosphere
Published August 24, 2009 @ 09:26PM PT
Speaking from one of the panels at Netroots Nation week before last, Prerna and XicanoPwr say what needs to be said about Democratic weaseliness on immigration reform and the inhumanity of locking up entire families for civil immigration violations.
Also I recognized someone else up on the stage there :) I'm getting a couple last emoticons in (not that I've ever used them before) before our style guide comes into force and Strunk and White rule the day ;)
Also I truly did appreciate the opportunity to participate in the panel and the invitation to Netroots Nation. The whole four-day experience opened my eyes in many ways and I am very grateful I was able to attend.
Immigrants Need Protection ... From Their Lawyers
Published August 22, 2009 @ 08:59PM PT
Check out my guest post today over at Nezua's place about notarios, scamming of immigrant families, and long overdue regulation of immigration attorneys.
Herta Thanks Her Supporters, But Not Out of the Woods Yet
Published August 21, 2009 @ 12:01AM PT
ICE has granted Herta an order of supervision until November 9, 2009, but she still may be deported or detained on that day.
DHS and ICE need to grant Herta deferred action on her deportation.
Help SEIU and Herta reach their goal of 5,000 letters by the end of the week!
