Dreaming Beyond: Youth Organizer's School

Vital Stats

Ana C

Los Angeles, CA

  • people helped500
  • People Doing It300

The Problem

The current immigration system is broken. Each year 65,000 undocumented students graduate from high schools in the United States and are left with little options in regards to their future. A handful of them manage to enroll and make it through college, paying their tuition completely out of pocket and without the assistance of federal financial aid. Once those few manage to complete their college education, they are stuck in a limbo: educated workers with lack of “proper” documentation. Their degrees go to waste because they cannot be hired. If they were to be granted citizenship, they could also be contributing to the American workforce. For the California Dream Network, passing a just and humane immigration reform is urgent because it would not only help students but parents as well.. We are not asking for amnesty; we are asking for a system to be reformed because this problem is causing too many problems for humanity. Students are not the only ones being affected. Families are being torn apart each day. Recently, Senate Bill 1070 in Arizona was signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer. The lack of government reaction to this problem is leading states to take into their own hands—in the most improper way possible of course. This bill is promoting the use of racial profiling to deal with the situation of immigration. Undocumented parents are being taken away from their citizen children. How are children supposed to be raised properly when they are not under the nurturing care of their parents? It is ridiculous that the government cannot see the dire importance of an immigration reform. A way in which students can take an active role in finding a solution for this problem is by becoming extraordinary leaders.

Plan of Action

Our current campaign is called: Students for Just and Humane Immigration Reform (SJHIR). We also work closely with a national campaign called Reform Immigration for America. What we need to do now is to better train the leadership of the network. We want to create an “Organizer’s School” which would better prepare our leaders on how to continue organizing at their respective campuses and across the state. While we are able to attend others’ trainings, we’d like to put together a curriculum which better serves the youth community. We want our leaders to be fully aware of every aspect of this movement. It has been difficult being able to provide all the information to every single member because there is only one main organizer and fourteen steering members whose term only lasts six months. We would like to host an Organizer’s school for a weekend per each region that the California Dream Network has: which is three regions and three “schools”. These trainings would touch upon an immigration timeline, laws that have been made about immigration issues, public speaking, and other concepts that are important for creating solid leaders. The participants of these schools would then receive a certificate acknowledging their completion of the course. The goal of these trainings is to create fully prepared leaders. We would then have them go back to their respective campuses and provide these trainings to their members.
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