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Dear {{ user.first_name|default:”Friend” }},
This election season we’re standing up to teach Washington a lesson — Latino families are not to be toyed with.
When the President caved in to Senate Democrats’ request to delay — yet again — a decision on executive action, it was a slap in the face of Latino communities and our allies. It sent the message that it’s okay for politicians to think it’s more important to appease the xenophobes that oppose executive action than to keep immigrant families from being torn apart by deportations.
But we are making sure that politicians in Washington feel the consequences of continuing to throw our families under the bus. Last week, we launched a campaign exposing the “Dirty Four,” Senate Democrats — Kay Hagan, Mary Landrieu, Mark Pryor, and Jeanne Shaheen — who sided with Tea Partino Ted Cruz in an attempt to take away administrative relief from DREAMers.1
We have a series of actions planned in the lead up to the elections but we’d like to hear your opinion on how to make sure the President and Democrats get the message that our community will no longer tolerate being treated like pawns in a political chess game.
Will you take this quick survey to tell us what you think our next steps should be?
We’ll use the information to help us make decisions about our electoral campaign.
All summer, President Obama and other leading Democrats showed that playing cynical political games was more important than having our backs. When news broke that refugee children — afraid for their lives — were being detained at the border, Congress quickly moved to change the law to deport them faster. And while the President delayed executive action, thousands more of our loved ones continued to face the horrors of mass deportations.
But Presente members have stood strong, demanding dignity and respect for all of our communities.
- We fought back against the effort to dehumanize unaccompanied children arriving at the border that were fleeing gang violence in Central America. Thousands of Presente members signed a petition urging Congress to reject a proposal that would have denied protection for suffering children and instead would have sped up deportations. Along with our friends at United We Dream, we even crashed Vice President Biden’s speech at the Netroots Nation conference to urge the Obama Administration to grant the unaccompanied children asylum.2
- When we heard that the President was considering limiting an executive action to only benefit up to 5 of 11 million undocumented immigrants and even delay taking action, we quickly took to the media to demand that a stop to deportations for all 11 million undocumented immigrants, not less, be applied immediately.3
- And last week, when President Obama was giving a speech at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ annual awards gala and was confronted over his broken promises by Blanca Hernandez, an undocumented Latina in Washington, D.C., we were right outside with the National Laborer Organizing Network picketing and backing her up.4,5
We know that many Republicans have shown themselves to be vicious anti-immigrant enemies of our community. But tragically, leading members of the Democratic Party have turned their backs on us. We are at a crossroads, with big decisions to make as a community.
Will you take this quick survey and tell us what you think we should focus on next?
Thanks, and ¡Adelante!
Arturo, Refugio, Mariana, and the rest of the Presente.org Team
P.S. Can you donate $5 to support our work? We rely on contributions from people like you to see campaigns like this through.
Sources:
1. Latino advocacy group encouraging voters not to vote Democrat in key swing states, Fox News Latino, September 26, 2014
2. Joe Biden Interrupted by Anti-Deportation Protesters, U.S. News & World Report, July 17, 2014
3. Immigrant Rights Groups Push Obama for Bolder Executive Action, The Nation, August 21, 2014
4. Obama Tells Latinos Immigration Actions Are Coming, As Activists Protest Inside And Outside, Buzzfeed News, October 2, 2014
5. Obama harassed by heckler during Caucus as he promises angry Hispanics he ‘will not to give up’ on immigration reform, Mail Online, October 2, 2014