DREAM Act Portal Forum - How the Dreamers Learned to Play Politics

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Ten years ago, there was no movement. Today, it just might be strong enough to make Donald Trump change his mind.

Within hours after Attorney General Jeff Sessions broke the news on Sept. 5 that President Donald Trump was canceling the program known as DACA, protesters were blocking traffic in streets near the White House. In New York, at least 34 demonstrators were arrested for sitting down across Fifth Avenue in front of Trump Tower. Students walked out of high schools in Denver, Fort Worth, Phoenix and Albuquerque, among many places. The next day, two dozen protesters, properly dressed in business attire, paraded through the lobby of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, chanting, “Here to stay!”

The swift and widespread reaction surprised the White House, but not the Dreamers. Over the past decade, these young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children have built an intensely organized political movement—speaking out, staging demonstrations, building alliances and hounding lawmakers to expand their legal foothold in the United States. Emerging from the undocumented underground, in 2012 they wrested a victory from President Barack Obama, by protesting, lobbying and shaming him for his record of aggressive deportations until he used executive authority to create the DACA program, which now shields nearly 800,000 Dreamers from deportation. Since Trump’s election, Dreamers have been busy laying plans to rise up in resistance if he carried through on his campaign pledges to take the program away. Now their careful organization is paying off.

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In June 2012 after DACA was announced, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine, surrounded by dozens of Dreamers. Too old by four months to be eligible for DACA, Jose Antonio Vargas founded an organization, Define American, that makes sympathetic films and videos about Dreamers and today has local chapters at 48 colleges. The aim is to achieve broader acceptance and permanent status for all undocumented immigrants

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But his and other Dreamers’ diligent organizing has paid off nonetheless. Last week, when Trump cancelled DACA, he triggered more than the Dreamers’ wrath. Patiently cultivated allies decried the move, including hundreds of major business CEO’s, Roman Catholic prelates and evangelical Christian leaders, Democrats including Barack Obama and even some Republicans. New York and 13 other states sued to stop the cancellation, as did the University of California.

The message got through. By the end of the first day of protests and furious pushback, the president seemed to back down. If Congress didn’t pass legislation to “legalize DACA” within six months, Trump said in a tweet, he would “revisit” his decision to end the program.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...olitics-215588