Civil Disobedience Campaign Spreads Across the Country

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Activists protest in New York City on June 1.

For months, we’ve been fighting against the clock to get a just and humane immigration reform bill introduced into the U.S. Senate and passed this year. Millions of people from across the country – citizens and undocumented immigrants alike – have joined marches, planned rallies, and written, called, texted, and met with their elected representatives in an effort to create the political space for Congress and President Obama to do the right thing.

Here in Seattle, 8,000 people shook Pioneer Square with cries for reform on April 10. On May 1, we marched and rallied in towns across Washington State where community groups have been rising up and getting organized: Walla Walla, Wenatchee, Pasco, Vancouver, Mt. Vernon and others. On the same day, 10,000 people took to the streets in Seattle.

These are all tried and true methods for making change in a democracy. Yet while the campaign has moved immigration reform from the margins to the center of the national debate, there is still no bill in sight.

Do Senate Democrats think that immigrants, invigorated by their first foray into civic engagement, will quietly retreat back into the shadows? Do Republican Senators who were once champions of comprehensive immigration reform truly believe they can get away with a border-only approach to our broken immigration system? Does President Obama, who has overseen an increase in deportations since President Bush left office, hope that hard-working families who have been ripped apart will patiently wait for some other future chance to create reform and see their families again?

If that’s what they’re thinking, believing, and hoping, then they’re wrong.

And the proof is in a nationwide series of escalations and acts of civil disobedience over the last two weeks that will continue until we get comprehensive immigration reform and freedom for tens of millions across the country. 

As OneAmerica Executive Director Pramila Jayapal wrote in a call to action, change doesn’t come easy:

Every great movement and change that has occurred in the history of the world has required tremendous courage and sacrifice in the face of injustice. In Selma, it took people being confronted with firehoses, dogs and turmoil. It took Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat in the bus. In India, it took millions of people marching to the sea to harvest salt that the law said they couldn't do, and then being arrested and put in jail. In El Salvador, it took decades of struggle and sacrifice in the face of torture and brutality. 

With the clock ticking and Congress sputtering, people have chosen to put their bodies and freedom on the line for comprehensive immigration reform. On May 20, nearly forty members of the Washington Immigration Reform Coalition risked arrest by occupying the lobby of a 43-story skyscraper in downtown Seattle and then blocking traffic at three different intersections while hundreds of people cheered and sang in support. These faith leaders, veterans, union members, teachers, lawyers, and community leaders linked arms in solidarity with the millio

ns of immigrants who contribute to our communities and economy while being denied full access to them.

They weren’t alone:

• Four students dressed in caps and gowns – three of them undocumented – were arrested after occupying Sen. John McCain’s Tucson office
• A march in Chicago ended in the arrest of nearly three dozen people who were cheered on by hundreds of demonstrators who carried trash bags with dollar signs on them to symbolize money that will flow into our economy thanks to reform
• In Los Angeles, nine people were arrested for an action at the Federal Building that backed up traffic on a nearby freeway
• Over 100 New Yorkers have been arrested since mid-May in weekly actions taking place in front of the Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan. Those arrested include City Council members, labor and clergy leaders, and several South Korean, Chinese, Cambodian, and Irish-American leaders
• Last Saturday, tens of thousands of people joined the “National Day of Action against SB1070,” by far the largest demonstration since the anti-immigrant bill was signed into law in April, with over 40 solidarity rallies held nationwide
• Other civil disobedience has taken place in Detroit, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and other cities
• Yesterday, dozens of people in New York City – including local politicians, clergy, and young illegal immigrants – started a 3-day hunger strike, fed up with Sen. Charles Schumer’s lack of progress in introducing a bill

What’s next? Until a comprehensive immigration reform bill is passed, expect more civil disobedience, more intensity, more sacrifice - across the nation and in Seattle. Tens of millions of families cannot wait any longer.

Police arrest NYC immigration reform activists on June 1st.