If Brown signs the California Dream Act… CELEBRATE OUR MOVEMENT’S VICTORY AND CONTINUE THE FIGHT TO:
- Pass the University of California Dream Act! Pass the Federal Dream Act! Full and Equal Rights for All Immigrants! Drivers Licenses for Undocumented Immigrants Now! Stop the Raids and Deportations! Make All Campuses into Sanctuary Campuses, Make All Cities into Sanctuary Cities!
- End the University of California’s Discriminatory Admissions Policies Now — Increase Latina/o, Black, and Native American Student Enrollment in the University of California! Overturn Proposition 209, Restore Affirmative Action!
- Defend Public Education! Stop the Planned Multi-year Fee Increase for U.C.! No Privatization! Tax the Corporations, Banks, and Billionaires!
- Build the New, Independent, Integrated Mass Student and Youth-Led Movement!
If Brown vetoes the California Dream Act… TAKE MASS ACTION TO REVERSE THE VETO!
Within Reach of a Victory for the Immigrant Rights Movement
The student and youth leaders and activists of the young but powerful civil rights and immigrant rights movements are poised to win an important victory during the next few weeks. The California Dream Act, also know as AB 131, that would open public state-funded scholarships to undocumented students, is sitting on Governor Brown’s desk and only needs his signature to become law.
Governor Brown has repeatedly promised to sign the Dream Act. If he does, which seems likely, the immigrant rights movement born in the streets of California in 2006 and the student-led new civil rights movement that is the only force acting to defend public education and stop the ascension of the new Jim Crow, will have won a momentous victory.
The movement will owe a great debt to the scores of undocumented students who refused to be invisible and marched, rallied, walked out and spoke out in the face of continuous police and ICE harassment and threats. The first task of BAMN and the youth leaders of the movement will be to make clear that independent mass action won the battle.
Our second task will be to make clear that we intend to build on this victory to secure full equality and dignity for the Latina/o and immigrant communities and end the second-class treatment we chafe under everyday. Victory marches, rallies, walkouts and other mass actions must be the order of the day when the Dream Act is signed. We must see our victory as the moment to build rather than shut-down our new movements.
If we win the California Dream Act… Continuing the movement
We must press forward our longstanding demands for equality:
- the passage of a California Driver’s license bill that would extend the right to get driver’s licenses to undocumented people;
- bringing an end to the vicious new ” secure communities” federal policies while restoring our struggle to make every campus and community into sanctuary zones;
- bringing an end to stepped-up ICE raids and deportations;
- ending the University of California’s discriminatory admissions policies and increasing Latina/o, black, and Native American student enrollment,
- restoring affirmative action, and
- overturning Proposition 209; and
- defeating all the anti-public education privatization schemes from charter schools, to severe cuts at every level of education, including the proposed outrageous and stupid UC multi-year fee increase, that threaten our right to receive a decent education and to strive for a better more hopeful future.
Our communities and campuses will be alive with rising expectations, which every authority figure from politicians to priest to principals to university presidents will be looking to dampen down. We must reject and ignore any leadership that claims that we won because of our close/subordinate relationship to the Democrats, when exactly the opposite is true.
If Gov. Brown vetoes the Dream Act, he will irreparably weaken his own and his parties’ authority and credibility with Latina/o and immigrant communities while casting the Democratic Party, in the eyes of the youth, as a deeply cynical and racist party, which deserves neither support nor forgiveness anytime soon.
However, it seems highly unlikely the Democratic Party dominated California State Legislature would have sent the Dream Act to Gov. Brown if he intends to veto it. If Brown vetoes the bill, then our movement must respond by asserting its mass power to reverse the veto.
Stay updated on BAMN’s work on Immigrant Rights:
