LOCAL IMMIGRANTS JOIN NATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM

This is not change we can believe in

Immigrant rights, labor, faith, and legal advocates speak with the press at a February 25 news conference deploring the Bellingham ICE raid on February 24.

Yesterday, at approximately 9 AM, more than 70 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents dressed in riot gear raided the Yamato Engine Specialists in Bellingham, Wash. ICE agents entered the facility with buckets of handcuffs and ankle chains.  28 employees were arrested, processed, handcuffed and questioned; 3 women were later released on humanitarian grounds.  The remaining 25 employees—all immigrants from Latin America—were put (still handcuffed) on buses and taken to an undisclosed location.  According to Rosalinda Guillen of Community to Community Development in Bellingham, attorneys who tried to communicate with ICE to provide legal assistance to arrested workers were not able to receive any information from ICE.

Yamato has a workforce of approximately 125 employees. 

Yesterday, the lives of 28 families were devastated, sending a community reeling.  Attacking workers, taking away the primary breadwinner, destroying a local business and leaving families torn apart is simply un-American and unjust.

And expensive. In previous raids such as the one in Postville, Iowa ICE spent $5.2 million or about $14,000 per immigrant. Yesterday, no immigrant worker resisted arrest. They filed peacefully onto the bus, their hands and ankles chained. There was a 3:1 ratio of ICE to workers. In this economy, it cannot be a government priority to spend $14,000 per person on a military raid. We ask that the government use its dollars in ways that build up our communities, businesses, and families, not in ways that tears them down.

Hauling off hardworking men and women in chains is not the way to solve our immigration crisis and is not going to help with our economic crisis. In this time of economic hardship, OneAmerica believes it is completely unacceptable for the Obama Administration to be executing raids on our workforce, businesses, and communities.

This was the first workplace raid under the Obama Administration and is a far cry from President Obama’s promise to declare a moratorium on raids.  As the President said last night, ‘Living our values doesn't make us weaker. It makes us safer, and it makes us stronger.’ We urge President Obama to act on our values. We need reform, not raids.”

Our immigration system is broken. We are calling on President Obama and our 111th Congress to first have the courage to enact a moratorium on raids and then to fix the system fully—in a way that considers the clear contributions immigrants make to the U.S. economy and society in all sectors. We need comprehensive reform that recognizes the crucial contributions immigrants make to our nation, considers the demand for labor, and enables employers to legally hire needed immigrant workers. We need reform that gives a path to legalization, sets a minimum wage for all workers, and provides all workers with rights. We need reform that keeps families together. No child deserves to wave goodbye from the school bus and not know whether their mom or dad will make it home that night—or whether their parent will end up on a school bus of their own in chains, unable to support their family. No one wants to live in the shadows.

Media Questions & Pramila’s Answers after the News Conference at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Seattle, WA February 25, 2009

Q: There are some who are going to say, “What do you want us to do, open up the borders?” These people violated employment laws by using counterfeit social security numbers. What should our government do?

A: We believe in sensible solutions. We’re not asking for this situation to continue forever. Nobody wants this to continue forever. Workers don’t want it. Employers don’t want it. And certainly it’s not the face of America.

Q: Are you saying that until we fix the system, we should not enforce our immigration laws?

A: We know that 65% of Americans support comprehensive immigration reform (CIR). We’re not just talking about immigrant rights advocates; we are talking about a lot of people across this country who want CIR. There has to be enforcement after reform, because enforcement before reform doesn’t do anything. We’re just going to continue these military raids and mandates that do not fix the problem, which is that our supply and demand for workers do not equal each other. They have to do it in a way that respect human rights and constitutional rights and keep American families together. This is a country of family values. We want CIR this year. 12% of this country is foreign born. This country voted for change. We believe this is something that is possible this year. And yes, until this happens we believe that enforcement policies are expensive, they are inhumane, and they don’t work. That’s the problem, and we want solutions.

Q: You said that President Obama promised a moratorium on the raids. When did this happen?

A: This was before he was elected. He was at a forum at the Center for Community Change, and he has stated that he would like to see a moratorium on raids until all of the practices can be reviewed and looked at thoroughly. He’s also committed to immigration reform.

Q: Is this the first immigration raid/action nationwide since Obama’s inauguration?

A: Yes, and we think it’s ironic that it happened on the same night as Obama’s address to the union, and we really do believe that there are many people across the country, Democrats and Republicans alike, who are very hopeful about the change that this administration can bring. Immigrants turned out to vote in record numbers in WA state. OneAmerica registered 23,000 immigrant citizens to vote, and we will continue to push for smart policy. It’s not about just what we would like to have in a theoretical world. This is smart policy, and it’s in line with our values.

Democrats and Republicans on Immigration

The Immigration Policy Center has a great guide for candidates on immigration. Check it out: it explains clearly many aspects of immigration, including what fair immigration reform looks like, the benefits of immigrant integration and the truth about issues like immigrants and crime. Recently, IPC also put together an analysis of the platforms released by both Presidential candidates leading up to the conventions. Here is their summary of the overall tone of the two platforms:

OK, so let’s talk about this whole framing of immigration policy as a national security issue. Just last week, I was invited to speak to a class on National Security Law by former U.S. Attorney for Western Washington, John McKay. Remember him? He was one of the (Republican) US Attorneys fired by the Justice Department for not toeing the party line.

In McKay’s class, I addressed the topic of the intertwining of national security and immigration. I talked about how James Ziglar, who was appointed INS Commissioner by President Bush before INS became merged into DHS and later left the Administration, raised many concerns about immigration-related enforcement and the connection to National security.

In talking about the Special Registration program which required Arab and Muslim men from 25 countries to register and be fingerprinted, he said that the program was a huge waste of resources and that all it got the department was "a lot of bad publicity, litigation and disruption in our relationships with immigrant communities and countries that we needed help from in the war on terror."

Ziglar also expressed concerns shortly after 9/11 about linking immigration law with national security, saying "We’re not talking about immigration…we’re talking about evil."

But Ziglar didn’t prevail. In the interim years between 2001 and 2005, anti-immigrants in Congress and the Administration started brushing off a number of policies that they had hoped to pass but had never been able to. The new intertwining of the war on terror with the war on immigrants was a perfect opportunity to do so.

In response to the final report and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission in 2004, Congress drafted legislation to implement the recommendations. During the debates on the legislation, the now infamous Representative James Sensenbrenner, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, argued for the inclusion of a number of contentious immigration enforcement measures that expanded the government’s ability to arrest, detain and deport immigrants; restrict judicial review and oversight; and reduce the number of documents immigrants may use to establish their identity. Sensenbrenner lost that battle to include those provisions but went on to pass his horrendous Sensenbrenner bill (HR 4337) in January 2007 that criminalized undocumented immigrants and anyone who helped them—ultimately sparking the huge immigrant rights rallies that brought millions into the streets.

It’s always easier to pass extreme laws if you connect them to national security—who doesn’t want to be safe? But we have to see this one for what it is. Ziglar was right—national security and terrorism are totally different from immigration. The first two are about protecting America from attacks and from evil.

Immigration IS America, our history, our values and our future.

Remembering 9/11

Eight years ago today, America witnessed the loss of lives of men, women and children and the loss of the belief that America was secure against such attacks. September 11 created a chasm in the consciousness of Americans, who struggled to understand in the midst of fear, loss, grief and anger how to cope. While in parts of New York City and across the country, tremendous generosity emerged in millions of small acts of kindness, so too did hatred emerge. In Mesa, Arizona, a Sikh gas station owner was shot by a man who claimed to have "done it for America." In Seattle, Washington, a Muslim man came out of the mosque to find someone pouring gasoline over his car. And in Washington, DC, the Bush Administration began unveiling a series of policies that directly targeted Arab, Muslim and South Asian communities, in particular. Secret detentions, "disappearances", mandatory interviews and fingerprinting of men from particular countries wracked communities across the country. Some compared what was happening to the internment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry in 1942. Some remembered McCarthyism. And some just watched.

Stronger Unions this Labor Day (That's Truly ALL-AMERICAN)

Kudos to union reps who fought for Muslim workers at Tyson’s Plant in Shelbyville so workers there have the option to have Idul Fitri as one of their paid holidays. 

When first announced, this arrangement created a ridiculous uproar with conservatives such as Michelle Malkin who was trying to make this about replacing the all-American holiday of Labor Day with the all-Muslim holiday of Idul Fitri. 

Ok. First of all, the contract was not about replacing one with the other, but about recognizing the rights of Muslims to celebrate a holiday that is of key importance to them. 

This is a lot about religious accommodations and that is NOT an unpatriotic stance. The ultimate solution is the right one: keep Labor Day AND allow employees to replace one of their other holidays with Idul Fitri. 

We’re proud of the union representatives who fought for workers to have the right to practice their religion freely and without discrimination.  That's All-American.

Somalis in Postville

What moved me most about this particular moment is that the new wave of Somali immigrants understand that something has to change—that immigrants, regardless of whether they are from Guatemala, Mexico or from Somalia, are all looking to be treated humanely and to earn a decent living.  As it turns out, Agriprocessors hasn’t learned much from the raids about how to treat their workers.

Will they ever?  Read about one Somali in particular who moved from Minnesota and is left with nothing.

DON'T READ THIS if you have a weak stomach

(See Jayapal's op-ed "Waiting for Leadership" on the Women's Media Center website.)

No More Charity = Deportation
(wha?)

The New York Times continues its excellent coverage of immigration in a three-page article last Sunday. In Immigrants facing deportation by hospitals, Deborah Sontag reports how hospitals, simply deport immigrant patients without any authority from immigration officials when they want to cease providing charity treatment.

For readers who think this is just about undocumented immigrants, the reporter points out that even legal permanent residents who've been here less than five years are not eligible for certain medical treatments. She tells the story of an immigrant injured by a drunk driver in an auto accident. He suffered severe brain damage and doctors didn't think he'd survive. Though he began to make a miraculous recovery, the hospital decided it couldn't afford the care anymore and he was flown to his former home in Mexico where he has steadily suffered a devastating decline in his condition.

First, we had vigilantes along the border, now we have hospital administrators enforcing immigration law?

I do understand hospitals are under huge burdens but let's be clear, these are the burdens of a broken immigration system. Congress needs to take responsibility as our leaders and fix it.

Did you know that eleven million undocumenteds plus legal permanent residents are paying mightily into our tax system? In 2006, the Commissioner of our Internal Revenue Service estimated undocumented immigrants alone paid $90 billion in federal taxes between 1996 and 2003. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has said that our social security system would collapse without the contributions of immigrants.

Imagine a system where undocumented immigrants could become legalized, earn better wages (because they wouldn't be manipulated by unscrupulous employers), and they would even pay more in taxes.

Imagine those taxes growing revenues at the Federal, state and local levels. Also imagine all levels of our economy feeling the boost of the purchases immigrants are now able to make since they're earning at least minimum wage.

There are many ways to address the immigration debate. Having hospitals "send them back" when their health care gets too expensive isn't one of them.

Do you ever wonder why our immigration system is backlogged and delivers harsh verdicts that don't express our American values of fairness and justice? Tune in to this blog tomorrow. I'll give you some solid clues.

Balance that'll tip us ALL over the CLIFF

The Center for New Community has a great new tool that helps journalists, elected officials and community and labor leaders understand the operational structures and relationships among the organizations that work against justice for immigrants--the anti-immigrant network. Take a look.  

It seems "The Federation for American Immigration Reform" or "FAIR" (yea, right) isn't at all what its acronym suggests. It is actually the linchpin--yes, central hub in the anti-immigrant "war room" movement in America. It's urgent they be exposed for exactly what they are. If we are to secure civil, human and just immigrant rights, they need to be called out and named--soon and frequently.

Notice on the chart found HERE, that a John Tanton figures prominently among these groups. Interesting. Those of you who follow the immigration debate know it raged a few years ago when these groups ran their slate of candidates in the Sierra Club board of directors elections. You might also remember Tanton's central role among them. I published an article in Yes! Magazine that talked about that debate back then... here's what I said:

In a 1986 memo, Tanton argued that anti-immigrant issues “must be broached by liberals. ... The conservatives simply cannot do it without tainting the whole subject."

In 1988, an internal memo by Tanton to his colleagues at FAIR was released that voiced his fears that falling white birth rates and growing Hispanic birth rates asked “as Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? ... Perhaps this is the first instance in which those with their pants up are going to get caught by those with their pants down!”

The recent slate of anti-immigrant candidates for the Sierra Club board included former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm, chair of the board of FAIR.  In a speech called “How to Destroy America,” Lamm argued that if he wanted to destroy America, he would “turn America into a bilingual or multi-lingual and bicultural country.” Lamm said: “I would make our fastest growing demographic group the least educated.  I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, under-educated and antagonistic to our population. ... I would get all minorities to think their lack of success was the fault of the majority. ... History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict, and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures.”

Tanton and his friends claim their campaign is about how many people the United States can hold. But simply talking about limiting access to the juicy pie we have here in the U.S. without looking at how we came by that pie, or at the effects of our over-consumption on the world's resources, is disingenuous and dismissive. Although Americans constitute less than 5 percent of the world's population, we use more than 30 percent of the world's resources, and an American baby drains as many resources from the Earth as 35 Indian kids."  (You can read the whole article here.)

Just this year the Southern Poverty Law Center has classified the Federation for Immigration Reform (I refuse to call it FAIR-- it's anything but!) as a HATE GROUP.  They issued a detailed report in December 2007 that documented why.

So, when journalists insist they have to interview someone from the Federation to get "the other side" and to be "objective" and "balanced," I wonder...what's balanced about that? Here's my proposition: let's go to common sense for balance. And let's go to the Constitution for balance--that's what our our nation's level-headed founders intended.

CAUGHT! and we are SHOCKED!

A report from the Justice Department's Inspector General Glenn Fine slams senior aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for stacking DOJ hires with those who had a conservative leaning. Oh, and by the way, some of the positions they tried to stack with these lesser qualified but politically appropriate hires were...yup, IMMIGRATION JUDGES.

Employer abuses are only part of the broken system

Since the Postville, Iowa raid, labor investigators have found numerous violations of labor standards by the company raided (read New York Times article HERE).

Kondabolu will be a Household Name

Check out these fabulous and funny clips of comedian Hari Kondabolu on Comedy Central - Live at Gotham.

It's tough to be funny and smart about issues like immigration, but Hari does it with ease and skill.

Of course, I am biased—Hari used to work for OneAmerica as an organizer!

Crossing Divides Every Day

In the slight chill of a Seattle July evening, on the patio of the home of our OneAmerica Board President, each of our board members talked about themselves. It was a regular meeting, but we wanted to get to know one another better. We did.

It was remarkable.  I’ll share with you who we are without the names. The names are less important than our stories.

We are an Iranian-American, born in Iran, who came to the United States for college.  His father was a Supreme Court Justice in Iran who helped write the Iranian Constitution after the revolution.

We are a Somali refugee, born in Somalia with little money and a big family, and who left when the Somali government collapsed. 

We are a Sudanese-American, born in Sudan and who lived in Darfur.  He started an organization there to try and reconcile the differences that were already apparent over two decades ago in Darfur. 

We are an American of Mexican immigrant parents, who grew up poor and worked in the fields picking asparagus.  She was regularly sprayed by pesticide, and she earned her first paycheck when she was ten years old. Today she makes more each month than her mother makes in a year.

We are a Japanese-American who came here when she was five and whose parents required only Japanese at home though the kids quickly became fluent in English.

We are an American of Indian immigrant parents, still struggling with not being perceived as “American” because of the way she looks.

We are a Caucasian American single mother, an attorney committed to immigration issues and change.

We are a Sikh-American who, as a child, couldn’t go to public schools because of excessive and mean bullying by kids who called him a girl because of his long hair (a tenet of Sikhism).

We are an American of Japanese descent committed to telling the stories of people of color in a Northwest magazine with a significant audience.

As we sat together and listened until the late hours of the night to each other’s stories, I was moved by the realization that we are all, together, an exemplification of the vision of our work at OneAmerica, a vision we’re trying to achieve for our nation.

Reaching out across our childhoods, our differences, looking into each other’s eyes and listening hard, we find we have so much in common, it seems alarmingly normal.

We are living OneAmerica, with Justice for All…everyday.

New Yorker Cover No Joke

The widely-discussed cover of the New Yorker, depicting a gun-toting Michelle Obama and a turban-clad Barack Obama, has—unexpectedly—been bothering me. (I'm Blogging @ 10:00 a.m.)

Why unexpectedly?  Because I like the New Yorker. Many of their covers are creative and important characterizations of issues I care about. And anyway, a cartoon really shouldn’t mean that much.  But this one does.  

Last night, I fumbled around trying to explain why to some good friends, saying it only served to further—and even make the ludicrous point that some are honestly trying to make. They’re asserting that somehow the Obamas aren’t American enough (!!).  They say the Obamas have other sympathies and give each other “terrorist fist jabs” (!!!) This morning, I found a much better expressed article in the New York Times that captured the reasons for my discomfort.

Author Lee Seigel says it ain’t satire if takes a “mad or contemptible partisan sentiment” and presents it as a “mainstream one, by accurately reproducing it and neglecting to position the target of a slur—the Obamas—in relation to the producers of the slur.” Read the article. I couldn’t have said it better.

Fellow Americans be Warned

(Blogging @ noon) Last week, a federal appeals court handed the Bush Administration a disturbing victory in ruling that Ali al-Marri, who has been held for more than five years as an enemy combatant, could continue to be detained.  This decision overturned a previous one made last year by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.  At that time, the Appeal Court panel said—rightly, we think—that the government could not simply hold someone on president’s orders.  The government would have to prosecute that person in the civilian court system.

What Americans may not know—especially those who think this doesn’t affect them—is that the new Court decision means that ANYONE, including U.S. citizens, can now be classified as “enemy combatants.”  That used to be a term just for people caught on the battlefield.  Not anymore.  

Here’s what Judge Gribbon Motz wrote:  “Our colleagues hold that the president can order the military to seize from his home and indefinitely detain anyone in this country—including an American citizen—even though he has never affiliated with an enemy nation, fought alongside any nation’s armed forces or borne arms against the United States anywhere in the world.”

Oh yes…and to make matters worse, the ruling essentially says that Congress’ authorization of force following September 11 gave the President essentially unlimited powers. 

So, fellow Americans, be warned.  If the President wants to pick up someone on any set of random charges and hold that person indefinitely, he can (and probably will).  

Now, What’s really the DANGER here…?

(Blogging 3 p.m.) An article in the New York Times on Sunday reported on how—because of 287G agreements between local cops and immigration officials—we now have cops losing their focus on public safety.  The article profiles a woman who was pulled over for some “careless driving”, a relatively routine stop, by local cops.  She said she didn’t have a driver’s license and the cop arrested her (NOT usual—apparently for something like this, people usually get a citation) and took her down to the local jail.  Because of the 287G agreement, the local cops ran her fingerprints through a database, found she was undocumented and turned her over to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

The woman was nine months pregnant, taken to a hospital in handcuffs to deliver her baby.  The cuffs chaining her feet to the hospital bed were only opened at the very end when she reached the final stages of labor.

Immigration law is complex.  Having local cops turn their attention away from those crimes that really do make our communities unsafe is dangerous—for all of us. 

NO WORK OF FICTION

Our report continues to generate attention from the press across the country.  On the Dave Ross Show yesterday on 710 KIRO NewsRadio, Dave caught on to the fact that it is mighty hard to defend citizenship for anyone questioned by Homeland Security’s ICE enforcement.  ICE spokesperson, Lori Dankers, tested Dave by asking where his mother was born. HE DIDN’T KNOW. During a break, he called his mom—GOT A MESSAGE MACHINE. He started to sweat. He called his sister. OUT TOO. Dave was getting very worried. Dankers said, “Yes, mistakes can be made.”  Dave wondered how long would he have to wait in the detention center before the mess was cleared up. She wouldn’t comment.

Dankers continues to insist that our report, Voices from Detention, is a “work of fiction.” I am frankly disappointed ICE is not asserting they’ll investigate the claims in this report. They will, I assume, right?

One caller on the Dave Ross show seemed to not care one iota about the shackling of pregnant women.  I couldn’t help thinking, aren’t we better than this?  I wondered if that caller would feel the same way if the pregnant woman had been his sister or his mother or his daughter… 

I believe fear makes us small and swallows our hearts and sometimes even our conceptions of what is right and wrong.  International human rights standards should apply to everyone—not just to those with certain papers in their hands. Even at its worst, a person who is undocumented and awaiting deportation deserves to be treated humanely.  And certainly, the great thing about America is that our Constitution protects us all, regardless of how we come to be here.

YOU WOULD TOO

We released our report today. Voices From Detention: A Report on Human Rights Violations in the Northwest Detention Center details the many abuses of international human rights law and Constitutional protections at the detention center in Tacoma.

I have been doing this work enough that I didn’t expect to be emotional—and certainly I never have been when at the podium at a press conference.

But as I listened to the young woman who had to speak by speaker phone because she was so afraid of deportation; as I read excerpts from the report describing how immigrants are treated like animals; as I spoke of the abuses, such as a hood put over the head of a mentally ill detainee; or of pregnant women being denied medical care; or detainees refused use of the bathroom so they were forced to defecate in their seats on an airplane, I could not help the emotion that came.

I believe America is so much better than this. And I believe that most Americans, if they knew what was happening in their name at our detention centers across the country, they would stop this injustice. Most Americans want people to be treated fairly and humanely.

Join the growing chorus of our voices calling for change. Please read our report here.

Wedges, Surges and SENSE

Conservatives, hoping to make immigration a wedge issue this election will be disappointed.  New polls here and here show fewer and fewer Americans favor cutting back on immigration.  Maybe this is, in part, a reaction to the extreme immigration enforcement measures that take aim at hard working immigrants without adherence to due process protections and without any efforts to fix our broken immigration system.

Immigration enforcement officials today reported huge surges in deportation, touting this as an important public safety measure.They've missed the point: real public safety happens when we ensure we live up to our great American ideals of justice, providing due process to all those in our country. Many of the deportations and detentions are happening without regard to our Constitution. If you believe this does NOT keep us safe and want accountability, please join our campaign to hold Homeland Security accountable by clicking here.

Also today, Presidential candidate Barack Obama articulated again the need for immigrants to learn English AND for Americans to learn to speak Spanish and other foreign languages. We couldn't agree more that successful immigrant integration goes both ways. Read our editorial on this subject.

3 X = Truth?

July 3, 2008
A landmark ruling from a federal appeals court panel rules against the government in the first case to review the government’s secret evidence for holding a Muslim detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.The detainee, a Muslim from Western China was held for more than six years. Absurdly, the government contended that its accusations against the detainee should be accepted as true because they had been repeated in at least three separate documents.

Justice for All

Wow, great response to our new name! 

We officially unveiled our new name yesterday. We’re now OneAmerica. Thank you to all of those who called or emailed.  We’re so pleased to have such a positive response!

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to meet one of OneAmerica’s newly registered voters, Clint Gomez.  Clint is a new America who got his citizenship last fall and will be voting in his first Presidential campaign this year.  (Listen to Clint on the Dave Ross Show on KIRO 710 radio.)  When Dave asked him how he felt about coming to the United States in retrospect, he said he thought it was the greatest thing his mother could have done for him—to give him the opportunities that exist in the United States.  This is what all immigrants want:  to be able to work hard and succeed, to have a chance to provide for their children, to have happy and healthy lives.  Clint is going to be working with OneAmerica, volunteering with us to get new immigrants out to vote.  Will you do that with us too?

Read about the Presidential hopefuls, Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, speaking to the National Association of Latino Elected Officials this past weekend.

In reading the article on Muslim voters feeling snubbed by the Obama campaign, I was struck by the last statement from Ms. Ghori from the Muslim Public Advocacy Council:  “The joke within the national Muslim organizations,” Ms. Ghori said, “is that we should endorse the person we don’t want to win.”  The statement made me think about the situation we are currently in this post-September 11, 2001 environment, where public pressure appears to be dictating that a candidate represent only those voters who are not of a certain religion...Not our vision of Justice for ALL.

Welcome

Welcome to our new OneAmerica website!  I hope you are as excited as I am about our new name.  Even with our new name, our mission stays the same:  to advance the fundamental principles of democracy and justice at the local, state and national levels through building power in immigrant communities, in collaboration with key allies.  

After almost seven years as Hate Free Zone, we see our new name as a reflection both of where we have come and our vision for the future.  OneAmerica reflects our vision of a nation shaped and upheld by the many different hands of diverse communities that are committed to building a country that lifts up all people.  

Our new tagline, with Justice for All, taken from America’s Pledge of Allegiance, reminds us that we must always work to preserve, protect and advance our rights and due process procedures that make America a great nation.  

Over a year ago, we started the serious conversation about a name change with our staff, board, community members, partners, donors and allies.  Many people we interviewed in the process had an attachment to our old name because of the tremendous work we have done together and because it was unique. They also reflected back with us on the challenges we had with a name that started with the word “hate”.  

We have felt it ourselves. We’re an organization with a profound belief that change is possible and that our American ideals of justice, liberty and democracy are worth standing up for. We believe our new name reflects that positive vision of working together to create a cohesive, unified, fair and just OneAmerica for all.

I’m looking forward to sharing with you our work of advancing our vision for OneAmerica on this new blog.  I invite you in this first posting to continually return to our new website and join us in this growing movement.   If you believe there is a place for immigrants and non-immigrants alike, if you believe we can build a country where every person has the opportunity to contribute their full selves to our democracy, then please…join us as we create lasting change!  

Become a volunteer and help get out the vote this summer and fall; launch a conversation as part of our Summer of 1,000 Conversations project; become a member of OneAmerica or donate money to help drive our campaigns.  Every effort matters, every dollar counts.  

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about “the urgency of now.”  I paraphrase from the great words of Audre Lord:  “Dare to be powerful.” Use your strength in the service of a vision of OneAmerica, with Justice for All!