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Organized by: National Immigrant Solidarity Network

The 3-day (July 28-30, 2006) Washington DC National Grassroots Immigrant Strategy Conference at American University has been without doubt a success and a milestone for the immigrant rights movement. Organized by National Immigrant Solidarity Network, one of the leading coalitions involved in the March 25 Los Angeles "Gran Marcha" and the May 1st "A Day Without Immigrants" General Strike/Boycott, there were approximately 180 people from over 80 organizations across the country in attendance.

The conference represented diverse groups, including Latin@s, APIs, African Americans, African immigrants, European immigrants, LGBTQ, women, youth/students, interfaith, peace/global justice activists, white allies, labor, immigrant day laborers and community organizers from two dozen states. Community/grassroots immigrant activists from across the country met face-to-face for the first time to discuss how to collectively build a new national, broad-based, immigrant rights/civil rights movement.


During the strategy section on Sunday (7/30), we re-affirmed our "Ten Points of Unity" for the immigrant movement, and adopted the national immigrant strategy/action plans for the next 3-6 months with more than a dozen working groups [includes: Student/Youth, Labor, Direct Action, Day Labors, Border, Events, Multi-Ethnic, Community Work, Legislation, LGBT, Women, Deportation, Education & Outreach and Interfaith], and point persons to coordinate each working group. We also began the discussion of creating a concept of the immigrant solidarity movement: grassroots, volunteer-based, direct action-oriented with strong emphases of community outreach and popular education.


Some of the highlights included:

- Multi-ethnic, multi-issue and multi-constituent based immigrant movement, inviting groups that traditionally have been marginalized from the struggle, such as LGBTQ, women and student/youth, African immigrants, African American, to be part of the coalition.

- Linking our struggles to the anti-war and global justice movements, and mutually supporting each other's cause.

- Institutionalizing the May 1st boycott "A Day Without Immigrants" and beginning planning for May 1st 2007.

- Supporting nationwide immigrant marches/actions during the Labor Day Weekend, and the September 7th Camp Democracy's Immigrant Rights Day in Washington DC, called by antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan.

- Direct actions as an important part of the immigrant movement.

- Grassroots organizing strategy and education programs.

- 'La gran marcha fronteriza flor y canto' - Conduct a Border Walk during Spring Break 2007, from San Diego, CA to Brownsville, TX.

- Working towards the creation of model legislation that resonates with the movement's principles and values.

- Legislative campaigns, such as immigrant voter registration, and supporting bills such as the Legal Immigration and Family Equity Act (LIFE) and the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA).

- National support hotline for immigrants who need legal referral, detention support, or help with other urgent needs.

- Developing a vocabulary to replace "amnesty" and "legalization."


There's no doubt that this conference has been the beginning of an historical turning point for the immigrant solidarity movement. With other immigrant conferences in Chicago, IL organized by the March 10th Movement and in Oakland, CA organized by NNIRR, we show that we have the will and strength to continue our momentum, and that we have the passion and energy to fight for our justice and dignity in the years to come.



Please visit our photo album showcasing the conference

Full Report of the Conference

Lists of the Working Groups and Point Persons


http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/





National Grassroots Immigrant Strategy Conference
Friday - Sunday July 28-30, 2006
American University
Washington, DC



About the National Immigrant Solidarity Network
No Immigrant Bashing! Support Immigrant Rights!

http://www.ImmigrantSolidarity.org

Los Angeles: (213)403-0131
New York: (212)330-8172
Washington DC: (202)595-8990


The National Immigrant Solidarity Network (NISN) is a coalition of immigrant rights, labor, human rights, religious, and student activist organizations from across the country. We are volunteer-based organization working with immigrant rights, students, global justice, anti-war and progressive labor groups. In solidarity with their campaigns, and organize community immigrant education programs.

We believes: Think Locally, Act Globally! We believes activists and organizers have a particular responsibility to point out the links between Katrina's impact, immigrant rights, civil liberties, labor rights and the U.S. war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We need to make the connections between: wars in Africa, south America, Asia, Iraq, Palestine and Korea, and sweatshops in Asia as well as in Los Angeles and in New York; international arms sales and the WTO, FTAA, NAFTA & CAFTA with AIDS, hunger, our reproductive rights, child labor and child soldiers; multinational corporations and economic exploitation with racism, homophobia and poverty at home--then we can win the struggle.


Away from Militarization and Towards Human Mobility: Civil Disobedience and Direct Action-Militarization/Diverse Tactics to Achieve Goals
Area of Topic: Diverse Tactics
This workshop will provide an overview of the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico divide and talk about the impacts of low-intensity conflict. The workshop will also talk about what the militarization of the border seeks to prevent; human mobility. The final part of the workshop will focus on ideas of civil disobedience and direct action that could be used to counter the militarization of the border and put forth a human rights agenda.

Human mobility is a concept which pre-dates the United States of America. For thousands of years human beings have been migrating from one area to the next with little impediment from Governments. The more recent phenomenom is the militarization of border areas which seeks to prohibit human mobility. Using a human rights framework, this workshop will show how the militarization of the border is resulting in numerous deaths, separation of families, racial profiling, and human rights violations.

The workshop will also talk about the concept of 'human mobility.' While militarization aims to keep people out and control those within, the concept of human mobility forces people to analyze the impacts of militarization in terms of human rights. When fundamental human rights collide with the rights of a nation-state, who wins?

If the laws of the nation-state are fundamentally illegitimate, immoral, and contradict human rights, then the plan of action must include civil disobedience and direct action. Thousands of migrants engage in civil disobedience annually and this workshop will talk about how those with privilege can also engage in civil disobedience and give an overview of civil disobedience and direct action tactics used historically in social movements

Ray Ybarra
Ira Glasser Racial Justice Fellow
American Civil Liberties Union of Texas
Latest Updates on the Immigrant Legislation - An Introduction
Area of Topic: Legistrative
by: National Immigrant Solidarity network


More Information: Coming Soon
Panel: Immigrant Student Organizing
Area of Topic: Student, Youth Organizing
by: National Council of La Raza, National Asian American Student Confernce


More Information: Coming Soon
The Minutemen: From the Beginning
Area of the Topic: Border
Description:
This workshop will serve to enlighten, enhance, and equip immigrant rights activists with the necessary background, tools, and experiences that have been employed in the struggle to demoralize, defuse, and debunk these hatemongers, their actions and their clandestine message of white superiority.

WS Agenda:
Presentation
Q and A
Reports from different regions
Discuss on whether to confront or not
Wrap up
discussion


What to Achieve?
Inform the group on how the Minutemen were organized, and the efforts that preceded them. It is important that we understand who they are and their timeline to see how the developments in DC are correlated.

This is a vital opportunity for those myths, miscommunications, and inaccuracies around the origins of and organizing around the may 1st mobilization to be outlined and clarified by those who were inherently involved and organizing the event nationwide.

The workshop speak of it in terms of a national gone international action, and how it brought the international working class together like never before.

Facilitator: Jesse Diaz
Org: March 25th Coalition
Countering Military Recruitment in our Immigrant Communities
Area of the Topic: Community Support
Description:
The U.S. military has been on an intense drive to recruit youth in the service of military interventions in Iraq and other countries. Communities of immigrants as well as other working class communities have been targeted. Participants can hear about the experience in a largely Latin American community in Chelsea, MA and from the experience of any other community that would like to participate.

WS Agenda:
A) Presentation from Chelsea Uniéndose en Contra de la Guerra and from any other group with this type of experience.
B) Discussion


Facilitator: John Harris
Org: Chelsea Uniéndose en Contra de la Guerra
How To Do Your Congressional Lobbying
Area of Topic: Legistrative

by: Sue Udry
Legislative Action Coordinator
United for Peace and Justice


More Information: Coming Soon
Immigration Reform: its impact on women and children

Topic: Over ½ of the undocumented in the United States are women and children. This workshop will explore the impact of lack of documentation and the need for a path to residency and citizenship for undocumented immigrants to raise the standard of living, wages, federal and state benefits, and to bring families out of poverty with specific emphasis of women. Also, we will discuss ways in which immigrant women can be protected against sexual and domestic abuse.

Workshop Agenda: Panel of at least three people, leaders of the women’s movement in the United States and experts in the area of civil rights, joined by at least one expert in immigration law will discuss the current immigration legislation before Congress, the reforms that are really needed to better the lives of immigrant women, family reunification, and the steps participants can take to bring these issues to the general public.

Facilitator: Zenaida Mendez, Director of Racial Diversity Programs
National Organization for Women
Detention and Deportation: Overview and Organizing
Area of the Topic: Legislative
Description:
Will discuss current organizing efforts against efforts to increase detention and deportation practices and will provide education materials about its relationship to overall immigration reform. Panelists include members of Detention Watch Network, the Detention Project/Asylum Project of Capital Area Immigrants' Rights Coalition, the National Immigration Project, Rights Working Group, and Families for Freedom (invited).

WS Agenda:
This panel will provide an overview of detention, current legislative proposals that create more detention and deportation, how groups are attempting to push these marginalized topics into the overall discussion around immigration reform and its relationship with the criminal justice system. We will also discuss how these issues resonate (or not) within different immigrant communities and why and how community organizers can begin to integrate these issues into their organization around immigration.


What to Achieve?
Participants will have a general knowledge of current detention and deportation issues and proposed legislative changes.
Participants will identify how these issues do/do not resonate within their communities and will begin a discussion about how to incorporate detention and deportation issues into their organizing.


Facilitator: Paromita Shah/Andrea Black
National Immigration Project/Detention Watch Network