By Lidieth A. Arevalo Hernandez ~ CMSC Staff ~ January 25, 2018
Last week, hundreds of undocumented youth, allies and activists from across the country, including some of our California-Mexico Dreamers Study Abroad Program participants, traveled to Washington D.C. to pressure congress to include and pass a clean Dream Act as part of the short-term spending bill by Friday, January 19th.
Even though the Dream Act was not included in the short-term spending bill, these undocumented activists had an important role in challenging house representatives and senators from both parties to stand up for immigrants and vote no on a spending bill that did not include a clean Dream Act.
These young undocumented immigrants took a week off from work, school, and from their everyday responsibilities to advocate for a lean Dream Act on behalf of immigrants across the country. For Lidieth Arevalo, a DACA recipient from El Salvador and the CMSC’s multimedia & communications director, it was her first time going to Washington D.C. and the first time joining a national movement for immigrant rights.
This is her testimony about her experience:
If there is something I learned after spending a week advocating and mobilizing in Washington D.C., is that we have people power, that there is power in the people united. When we come together as one, as one voice, as one community; we have a lot of power, and if we use that power strategically and diligently, we can create change.
It was powerful to witness how over 80 brothers and sisters from the Jewish community came together in love and defiance for, and with, the immigrant community. Hearing them sing so peacefully and seeing how they held each other strongly until each one of them was arrested for civil disobedience, was incredibly powerful! I felt their love; I felt their energy. It showed me that this movement is about ALL OF US. And that we are ONE, and that, we must rise up as one, in love and in good faith. We must support one another and to build one another for out of resistance comes strength!
I decided to come to Washington because activists before me, fought for and paved the way to make DACA happen, now is my turn, along a new generation of immigrant youth, to advocate for and pass a clean Dream Act Now. We can no longer sit and wait, if it is not us making the change, who will do it for us? This is not a time to wait for others to do it, it is a time for us to stand up and get moving! We have to be the change we want to see in the world.
I want to thank United We Dream and the Arizona Dream Act Coalition for giving me the opportunity to be part of history and of change.
Source: Lidieth Alejandra Arevalo Hernandez ~ CMSC Staff
Cover photo by: Fernando Hernández
