Thread: DREAM Act protesters close Obama campaign office

DREAM Act protesters close Obama campaign office

Jun 7, 2012 3:25pm

DENVER (AP) — A Colorado campaign office for President Barack Obama is closed to the public after two activists went on a hunger strike inside.

The activists camped out at the Denver office Thursday are part of a five-person group of illegal immigrant students walking across the country to demand the president sign an executive order enacting the DREAM Act.

They said they began the strike Tuesday evening. Campaign staffers are using a back door in an alley to get into the office.

The DREAM Act would allow the children of illegal immigrants to enroll in college or the military and eventually establish citizenship or permanent residency in the U.S.

The Obama campaign says it supports the cause but that the only permanent solution is to have Congress pass the DREAM Act.

DREAM Act protesters close Obama campaign office

Oh please, this pubication must be desparate for news. They could probably report on a Mumbly Peg game and people would find it more interesting than five illegal aliens having a little hissy fit and claiming they won't eat until they get their way. Oh, the drama of martyrdom. JMO.

"The Obama campaign says it supports the cause but that the only permanent solution is to have Congress pass the DREAM Act."

We're not looking for a permanent solution to keep them here, we're looking for a permanent way for them not to continue replacing legal citizens. We are looking for a permanent solution to discourage illegal parents and their kids from coming here illgally and looking for an easy way out.

The activists camped out at the Denver office Thursday are part of a five-person group of illegal immigrant students walking across the country to demand the president sign an executive order enacting the DREAM Act.

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The AP will take a story like this where there were FIVE law-breaking amnesty advocates and try and make the country believe there were 50,000.

Five. And the Denver cops could have them in ONE paddy wagon in less than FIVE minutes.

This is political attention whoredom for amnesty if anyone ever saw it. Straight out of Jessie Jackson's picket book.

DREAMers in Denver protest deportations, private prisons for immigrants

by: Saadia Behar
June 8 2012

DENVER - Undocumented youths from CAD, the Campaign for the American Dream, arrived here just a few days ago, and are already changing things.

Almost three months previously these DREAM Walkers began their 3,000 mile journey across the United States, from the Golden Gate Bridge in California on their way to the White House, to demand the Obama administration stop massive deportations and issue an executive order to bar deportations of DREAM Act-eligible youth.

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors or DREAM Act, sponsored by Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, would provide a path to legalization and citizenship for young people, brought here as children without any legal documents, if they have "demonstrated good moral character" and are either working toward completing a college degree or are serving in the armed forces.

Immediately after setting foot in Colorado in the last few days of May, these six courageous young people kept on walking-in the 3,000-person march on Wells Fargo bank's Colorado headquarters, led by the Service Employees International Union during its quadrennial international convention here.

They joined the many other undocumented marchers in the union's action to bring public attention to Wells Fargo's involvement in payday lending, fraudulent foreclosure, and ridiculously low tax payments, as well as the bank's private-prison profits from the incarceration of undocumented people.

On June 4, the DREAM team joined over 100 Coloradans in the spirited monthly march and rally against Immigration and Customs Enforcement's immigrant detention center in Aurora, just east of Denver.

Though technically under the control of ICE, a part of Homeland Security, the notorious facility is actually run by the GEO Group, an international private-prison corporation. Friends and family members of undocumented people trapped inside recount the reports of humiliation, extortion, physical and sexual abuse within the prison walls at the protest each month.

The next day, the DREAM Walkers visited the Obama for America Denver campaign office-and stayed. Two of the group entered the office and soon began a sit-in and hunger strike. They repeated their call to President Barack Obama to put portions of the American DREAM Act into force by executive order.

Noting that the current administration has deported over one million people, more than any previous administration, they called on Obama to end massive deportations at once and to take action on the DREAM Act without further delay.

The two carrying out the current hunger strike are Veronica Gómez, 24, of California, and Javier Hernández, 23, of Denver. Gómez was brought to the U.S. when she was a little girl of three, Hernández when he was a six-month-old baby. Neither has ever visited Mexico since.

"With deportations on the rise and "Secure Communities" recently imposed throughout the state of Colorado, we cannot just sit back and wait!" said Gómez.

In the final week of May, "Secure Communities" was suddenly imposed on all 64 Colorado counties, and local law enforcement officials are now obligated to assist ICE in rounding up and detaining undocumented people.

Some of the six walkers are fighting their own deportation. At the next day's rally and press conference in front of the now-closed OFA office where Gómez and Hernández were still sitting in, others in the CAD team officially "came out" as undocumented.

Spontaneously, many Coloradans in the crowd immediately followed suit. A number of young participants took advantage of the liberating spirit of the event: Many who had not previously acknowledged their status as undocumented-even to close friends and fellow students-announced their status, putting them at risk. Yet, chants like, "undocumented, unafraid, unashamed," arose as the rally gathered steam.

The two young people inside the building, at that time just 24 hours into their sit-in and hunger strike, smiled broadly and waved as they watched the enthusiasm of their colleagues and supporters just a few feet away outside the office's large windows.

Local progressive, labor, and faith-based groups in Colorado are voicing support for the hunger strikers and the other DREAM Walkers, and offering donations of supplies for the continuing march to Washington, D.C. Yet the campaign is being led by the Walkers and in Colorado assisted by local organizations of undocumented people.

Nico González, one of the Walkers, told peoplesworld.org that "we want this to be undocumented-led."

By June 7, with the hunger strikers nearing 48 hours inside the building, authorities finally allowed a nurse to enter to assess their physical condition.

DREAMers in Denver protest deportations, private prisons for immigrants » peoplesworld

Looks like they are headed to Burger King. Obama's treatment should be a lesson - they were ignored.

DREAM Act Protesters Who Staged Sit-In At Obama's Denver Campaign Office, Call Off Hunger Strike, Vow More Actions To Come

Posted: 06/13/2012 1:39 pm Updated: 06/13/2012 1:39 pm


Last week, two undocumented immigrant students occupied President Barack Obama's Denver campaign office and began a hunger strike, effectively closing his office to visitors and volunteers. The Obama administration did not respond to to the protest action and on Monday, the pair called off the sit-in and finally stepped out of the office.


But, this is not the end it seems. The National Immigrant Youth Alliance (NIYA) said on Monday via a press statement that the actions of the two protesters in Denver triggered NIYA to call on its network to carry out acts of civil disobedience in Democratic campaign offices across the country from now until the November elections -- announcing that similar demonstrations will begin this week.


"We’ve been ignored in this state but we will be heard across the country, along with many undocumented youth, we will demand an action!” said Veronica Gomez, one of the undocumented students who staged the sit-in. “The immigrant community nationally needs to know that we have a voice in this country, that we are not criminals, and we deserve a pathway to legalization.”


Rodrigo Hijonosa, a member of NIYA from New Mexico had strong words for Obama in a NIYA press statement, "Obama has to prove that he’s different from Romney.

He’s not as long as we’re getting deported. Undocumented youth are self-deporting and their families are getting torn apart by ICE. We need an executive order now.”


According to Campaign For An American Dream (CAD), the protesters inside Obama's campaign office are 24-year-old Veronica Gomez and 23-year-old Javier Hernandez. Both Gomez and Hernandez were born in Mexico, but have lived the vast majority of their lives in the United States. Westword reports that Hernandez's family moved to California on a visa when he was four years old. Gomez's family did the same just three days before she turned four.


Gomez and Hernandez risked arrest and deportation for their actions.


“If they want the Latino vote in Colorado, they must show the community what they are doing for us. We are asking them to stop the deportation of all DREAM eligible youth!” said Hernandez on Monday.


“The immigrant community in Colorado needs to know that we have a voice in this country, that we are not criminals, and we deserve a pathway to legalization," Gomez said to CAD.


The Associated Press reports that the Obama campaign supported the cause of the protesters, but that the only permanent solution is to have Congress pass the DREAM Act.


Gomez and Hernandez are part of a larger group of undocumented protesters that are walking across the country to demand that President Obama sign an executive order enacting the DREAM Act. In 2010, The DREAM Act passed the House, but failed in the Senate.


If passed, the DREAM Act would allow the children of undocumented immigrants to enroll in college or the military and over time establish citizenship or permanent residency in the United States, if they desired to.

DREAM Act Protesters Who Staged Sit-In At Obama's Denver Campaign Office, Call Off Hunger Strike, Vow More Actions To Come



These articles always stop short of the rest of the story and that would be that the DREAM Act would give them permanent residency along with the rest of their relatives, including the parents that broke the law in the first place. The thought that the DREAM Act may pass may account for the thousands of unaccompanied minors that are now surging across the border. After all the DREAMERS are stamping their little feet and having a hunger strike, until they get hungry, and demanding an Executive Order.