tags: , , , , AVEF, Blog

Julia Preston: Alliance for Citizenship Builds on Mobilization that Won Obama Second Term

Share This:

julia prestonYesterday we blogged about the Alliance for Citizenship and its launch of a new campaign to win citizenship for 11 million aspiring Americans.  Julia Preston covered the press conference, and wrote this piece about how the coalition that won the 2012 election–and made it clear that what those voters want is immigration reform–is now the coalition using that electoral power to push for reform legislation.  Read Julia’s full piece, “Coalition to Apply Election Strength to Immigration Debate”  here; below is an excerpt:

In a new nationwide campaign, groups that favor a path to citizenship for most of the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants will seek to mobilize the same coalition that helped to carry President Obama into his second term, while treading lightly enough to avoid disrupting the delicate immigration overhaul negotiations in the Senate…

The coalition is building on a record of mobilization from the elections in November. The labor unions and the Latino and Asian immigrant groups led efforts that turned out many thousands of voters in states like Colorado, Florida and Nevada, which were crucial to Mr. Obama’s re-election.

The groups said they would hold a series of street rallies in coming weeks, especially in states of the eight senators in the bipartisan group, leading up to a major rally in Washington on April 10. On Feb. 25, the groups will begin a national bus tour that will travel to 19 states. The service employees union will run a $250,000 Spanish-language radio ad this weekend in major markets in 25 states.