The big story on this weekend’s Washington Post Outlook is a 2000-word piece by our Executive Director, Frank Sharry, on how our side built an immigrant rights movement. What’s the secret? We learned from gay rights advocates–and went LGBT on their a–. That meant mobilizing voters, challenging our friends as well as our enemies, and giving our cause a human face. Here’s an excerpt on the article–you can read the full post here.
There is something about being under attack that makes a movement stronger.
I’ve been an advocate for immigrants for 30 years, working with Central Americans in Boston and policymakers in Washington. And for a long time, my colleagues and I assumed that if we developed strong reform ideas and clever lobbying strategies, we’d help create a road map to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living and working in America.
But in 2005, with the rise of the Minutemen and fresh attention from Capitol Hill, many in the Republican Party started to turn immigration into a wedge issue. They demonized hardworking immigrants as criminals and moochers. They blocked national reform and passed harsh state laws aimed at purging immigrants. Their goal: to make life so miserable for undocumented immigrants that they would be forced to leave the country. Democrats were divided, our opponents were on the march, and we in the immigrants’ rights movement were on the defensive. Fortunately, we had a community we could learn from, look up to, emulate. And that was the LGBT movement.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community might have been even more marginalized than ours. In fact, I used to joke with a friend who works for an LGBT activist group about who was lower on the totem pole, gays or immigrants. But the LGBT movement bounced back from significant setbacks a decade ago to win multiple state referenda on marriage equality, turn the Obama administration around on the federal Defense of Marriage Act and repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
This coming week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in challenges to California’s Proposition 8, which restricts marriage to opposite-sex couples, and to DOMA, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in places where they are legal. The historic cases could produce a huge victory for the LGBT community and its quest for marriage equality.
We’re making progress, too. Next month, a bipartisan “Gang of Eight” senators is expected to introduce a proposal that we think will lead Congress to approve a strong immigration reform package this year — a triumph for immigrant workers and families who want a shot at citizenship.
To get to this point, we learned three crucial lessons from LGBT activists: We had to build a movement. We couldn’t be afraid to challenge our friends in power. And we had to give our cause a human face…
