The Federal
Dream Act, introduced in 2001, has been an instructive subject,
as youth organizers, politicians, and, not surprisingly, the military,
have demonstrated an interest in seeing the Federal Dream Act become
law. Undocumented students throughout the U.S. have found spaces
in colleges and universities to organize in favor of the Dream Act;
the hard lessons learned by these student groups include an awareness
of the political and economic forces that shape policy and policy-makers
and the limits of organizing in and through existing political institutional
structures.
Two options
remain for these youth. Either they continue to move through instutionally
defined avenues, such as negotiating with policy-makers, calling
and pressuring their local, state, and national representatives,
OR they find ways to organize and work outside political apparatuses
structured to serve communities and interests that are largely indifferent
to the plight of undocumented youth, except insofar as they are
introduced in the caluculus of cost-benefit economic "returns."
Undocumented
youth, parents, and the working class Latino community are learning
from these dissapointments. the California Dream Act emerges within
a state defined political-economic apparatus. To effect real change,
other avenues beyond lobbying in Sacramento need to take form. Through
organization, communities hold the conditions of their own history
in their hands, and with these hands that people will struggle,
march, protest, and fight for their human rights. |
| The
California Dream Act, a bill that promises to open state financial
aid to students who meet AB 540 qualifications, has been vetoed
by Governor Schwarzenegger two years in a row. "While I do
not believe that undocumented children should be penalized for the
acts of their parents, this bill would penalize students here legally
by reducing the financial aid they rely on to allow them to go to
college and pursue their dreams." - Governor Schwarzenegger.
Click here to access his September
30, 2006 veto letter. |
