Last night was the Gala for Campaign for America's Future's annual conference in DC, Take Back the American Dream.
On Monday I had been on a panel on education titled "Starving the Dream: The Attack on Public Education & How We Fight Back." I had heard most of the speeches to the conference as a whole, had had opportunities to catch up with people from around the country whom I know and/or admire.
I had chosen to attend the Gala to help support the efforts of CAF and to show my solidarity with the idea of taking back the American dream.
There were four awards given to Planned Parenthood, Drummond Pike of the Tides Foundation, The Dream Act Activists, and the Wisconsin Movement. The last two of those made it personal to me, and I want to explain why.
Let me start with the Wisconsin Movement, whose award was accepted by Peter Rickman of the Teaching Assistants Association at UW Madison. First, Wisconsin became ground zero for the attacks on teachers and public schools, and as a teacher in a public school that concerned me. Among those present and being honored was Mary Bell, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council and somewhat with whom I had talked this past summer at the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action.
That would have made it somewhat personal. My wife's baby sister made it more so.
She is a Ph. D. student and graduate assistant at UW.
She is not by nature an activist.
She went to the Capitol.
She spent much the summer living with us while she did an internship (paid) here in DC. When we talked about what had happened, she explained that her participation was because she understood how broadly the attacks in Wisconsin were aimed, what it would mean to education from K through graduate school. She was delighted when the TAs and teachers got the support of those not yet under attack such as the firemen (and their state president was also present and inspirational last night). For the first time in her life she understood the importance of a vibrant labor movement in this country.
Her experience had personalized what I had seen happening not just in Wisconsin, but as it spread in solidarity. I think it sufficient to say that the actions by the Republicans in Wisconsin lit a fire that is now, thanks to Occupy Wall Street - which I do NOT think would have happened without Wisconsin and which is itself now increasingly being supported by organized labor - spreading across the country, almost to the point of being a brush fire about to explode into a major conflagration.
That familial connection on top of my professional connection made that award last night personal.
So did the one to the Dream Act Activists, whose award was accepted by Gaby Pacheco, a 25 year old woman from Miami. Gaby arrive in the US as a 7 year old from Ecuador brought here by her parents. She was an outstanding athlete and student, has two associates degrees and managed to get a BA in Special Education, but because of her immigration status as undocumented cannot get a job providing musical therapy for autistic children.
Gaby was one of four who had previously walked from Miami to DC to publicize the need for the Dream Act.
This time getting to Washington was a more perilous trip. She cannot as an undocumented get a drivers' license, so she drove knowing she was subject to being arrested any time she was stopped for failing to have a license and thus then for her immigration status. On her way, as she explained, the nightmare almost came to pass - she was stopped by a policeman in NC. Somehow she was lucky and able to join us.
As she spoke I remembered that the only two rights which an undocumented alien has guaranteed is the right to attend public K-12 school and the right to medical treatment in an emergency room. The former is clearly under attack with the new draconian law in Alabama which has led to many Hispanic families now having withdrawn their children from public schools in an attempt to avoid coming under the scrutiny of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Having just come back from yet another free medical/dental event in Appalachia, I remembered as well that we did not ask the immigration status of anyone we served, and even in Grundy we had people for whom we needed translation - all that mattered is that they were in need.
I know that something over 10% of my 175 students were born outside the US. I am fairly positive that a few of those, probably 3-5, are not documented. Each year I see bright students who seem reluctant to apply to the state colleges and universities in Maryland and some gentle probing with those with whom I am somewhat close makes it pretty obvious that the inability to obtain in-state tuition is not just a cost issue - there is real fear that attending and paying the higher out of state tuition could bring them to the attention of ICE. That made it personal for me, for these are students I know, about whom I care, who have lived almost all of their lives in the US, worked hard, and are now being restricted as to their futures and their ability to give back to the US.
Gaby talked about how some could not step up and serve their country. It is their country, and that is one way they want to give back and cannot.
As Gaby spoke I looked around the hall and noted the number of our servers who were clearly Hispanic, and wondered if any of them might have false papers. I know that many of the chambermaids in DC area hotels fall into that category, as periodically ICE will do a raid and take some into custody. Somehow the hotels keep on operating, and do not seem to get fined.
I also thought about the scene in Food, Incorporated, where the community in which the undocumented workers for a large meatpacking plant lived was raided by ICE, when they could just as easily have raided the plant itself and put the employer at jeopardy of fines.
Too many of us are willing to benefit from the labor of others without caring sufficiently of how that labor is used and abused. Undocumented workers mow our lawns, do our small maintenance jobs, often for ridiculously low pay because they cannot complain. If they have false papers that allow them to hold a real job, they pay taxes that support things for which they can obtain no benefit - social security and medicare.
My mother's mother and 7 of her siblings came to this country as a small child because parents wanted better lives for them. They later had two more siblings born in this country. My father's father came on his own when he was 15 because he had a dream to be an American, and as an immigrant child was able to sent five of his six children to Cornell. Those represented by Gaby Pacheco are not that different than were those two grandparents. That also made it personal for me.
As a result of the Gala, any doubt I had about my remaining active and connected in Progressive causes disappeared. I have benefit from the activism in the past of people who fought for weekends off, 8 hour days, paid vacations, Social Security, medical insurance and so many other things from which I as the child of an upper middle class family benefit.
I teach because others taught me.
I do the advocacy and educational work that is most of my online writing because the previous advocacy of others has made the richness of my own life possible.
Last night I attended a Gala that honored progressive activists.
The food was good.
The companionship was better.
The purpose was supreme.
Once again I was able to remember that I am connected with my fellow man.
I remember the words of John Donne.
I do not have to send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for me.
This was, is and shall always be personal.