Operation Mass Pro DREAM/CIR commentary

I have an idea I hope many of you might be willing to commit to.

One of the things that is so striking to me about immigration reform as an issue is that the arguments of the nativist right seems to resonate so much in the American public. People comment about immigration with opinions that are oftentimes just factually wrong, but nobody makes any attempt to refute these arguments.

My idea was to get as many people as possible here to commit to leaving comments on immigration/DREAM articles that refute the nativists and try to reclaim some parity in the debate which seems so dominated by the far right. If you would be willing to volunteer to work on this project, I will try to come up with a word document of common fallacious far right arguments about immigration and short talking points to refute them when making our own comments. We could also post examples of nativist arguments we encounter as well as compelling arguments we have develop to counter them on this thread or others.

I thought it would be most fitting to focus first on DREAM articles, so if you find a lot of DREAM articles in the newsroom on a given day, everybody should probably commit to refuting nativist views on them first. We could do CIR articles when there is not a lot of stories being printed about DREAM.

I think this could be very important in the event that DREAM did get considered again in the lame duck session. If we allow the far right to control the debate, we will never have a hope of winning public consensus behind our cause. Witness an article that appeared on Foxnews.com today about DREAM issues, which has almost 50 comments, but completely misses the fact that kids who want in-state tuition are in this country illegally through no fault of their own. They make it sound like DREAMers are cynical lawbreakers who don't want to be Americans(!) and have no shame in asking for things American citizens themselves don't get. If we could flood comment sections like this with compelling refutations, it will allow us to get a more of a voice in the debate where we always seem to be marginalized and made to be silent.

I hope you will commit to this. If you will, you can post a "hell yeah!" or something like that here, or just send me a PM.

You've gotten my Hell Yeah!

I've made a google news alert for illegal immigration. I go through a lot of articles a day, and register to a lot of sites just to post comments.

I make sure my comments are not rude, offensive or anything that can be characterized negatively by nativists/anti-immigrants/conservatives.

I try to remain reasonable, rational and sensible even though it's tempting to spew hate right back.

I'd encourage you guys to do the same. It will influence the grassroots, the American public on the fence who read these articles.

Although we also need to bring this to the larger scale, keeping in mind that the focus of this effort should be on convincing legislators.

You guys also don't need to start from scratch. A lot of proimmigrant organizations have published refutations (that may be to your standards) to refute the lies of the right wing. A quick search on Google will do.

Its also worth mentioning that this has been done before and the results were not measurable. Don't expect to make converts out of right wing commenters and don't expect moderates to follow a flame war in the comment section of a random article.

Focus on the streets! That's where the real change happens.
Focus on Congress! That's where the real fight is.

There is nothing wrong with pursuing what you suggested, but joining or founding a local group will be a much more rewarding experience and will have a measurable impact.

Thanks for the feedback guys. Unfortunately for me I live in an area that is almost 99% white (Northern MN), and I hardly see any foreigners, let alone undocumented foreigners.

I'm too far away from the front lines to join in the battle, but I can do a lot via the internet.

In that case, keep the suggestions coming Invictus, I'm giving all ideas, like the wiki you suggested, serious consideration. One of my goals for DAP is to maximize the contribution of those who are in remote areas, such as yourself. Everything you see under "Advocacy" and all over the site is the direct result of my treading toward that goal.

We've proved the formula: for ex, the initial legislator research was done collective by our community and the work is very valuable to our movement. The volume of work, when we started, was overwhelming for any one person.

My aim now is to expand on this success and takle other tasks that can be broken into smaller pieces, worked on, and aggregated back together into something valuable. I need your input to do my best.

I'd love to help however I can. I don't know what stage you are at in the decisionmaking process regarding the wiki though.

A linked suggestion was one that used the wiki to compile media contact info.

We can pick certain news stories, or even make our own, and send the info in to targeted journalists. Some might not care for the story, others might pick it up and give us a boost.

eg. There is a youtube video out about a US citizen who was a target of racial profiling under the Arizona law. If the media picks this up, it might result in a firestorm.

We can use the wiki to compile statistics and research that supports the claims of DREAM Activists, as well as to craft rebuttal arguments. They might not help much online, but all the groups in the frontline, all the activists who are protesting can use them in one way or another.

Wiki would potentially prove to be a powerful tool. That being said, I still agree more with Nick's points about concentrating most of our efforts on taking this fight to the ring, instead of diverging our resources to try and convince the right wing nutjobs or people who are actually convinced by them (it's just not worth our time and effort but its something good to think about in the long run). In conclusion, while I like your ideas and enthusiasm, we can't afford to get distracted during this critical period where we need to be focusing on those guys in the congress instead of trying to convert the right-wing mainstream.

Well, I'm not trying to be pessimistic, but protesters don't keep legislators in office. Voters do.

So while we should continue the direct approach, shouldn't we do something to appeal to the voters, ie the public?

At least if faced with the choice between something and nothing.

My idea was not to convince right-wingers of anything. It was simply to try to reclaim public space for our point of view. Right now it is all crazy right-wing stuff. If we post like mad on anything related to DREAM or CIR, then it makes it clear not everybody favors the "deport everyone" plan.

Moreover, even conservatives are not as crazy when it comes to DREAM as when it comes to CIR, and I was asking to focus on DREAM first. Follow the link above, though, and you will find a lot of misinformation about DREAMers and what they want. If we don't challenge these lies, then people will just accept them. This is part of the reason why the politicians won't do anything, because everybody accepts lies about immigration and there is thus a large phalanx of people that are against doing anything except deporting.

In the end, what I was proposing is that people here do about as much as they are already doing on DAP. The only difference is that instead of posting here to a sympathetic audience, they post elsewhere too (a few comments a day) and challenge people that oppose us. If we have time to post responses here, why not on the comment section of immigration articles where we can challenge lies and reach a broader public? Why is that more wasted effort than what the majority of people already do on DAP?