If our latest video doesn’t have you amped up enough about next year, check out this short (but fabulous) interview that United We Dream’s Cristina Jimenez did on Al Punto last Sunday, in which she explains to Jorge Ramos how and why UWD has resolved to push for citizenship for all 11 million undocumented immigrants in 2013.
For those of you who don’t speak Spanish, here are some highlights:
“We’re going for toda la enchilada. Dreamers from around the country met in Kansas City — hundreds of representatives from 47 affiliates in 25 states — and we agreed by consensus that our organization, our affiliates and our leaders are going to push for full reform that provides a pathway to citizenship for DREAMers, but also for our families and the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country.”
“We’re in a new year. We’re not talking about 2007, or 2011, or 2010 anymore. It’s the year 2012, and we’ve just won a major victory after organizing for almost 10 years. We organized for the Administration to give us deferred action, and we won — and now we have a mandate from the election.”
“We’re going to engage in a lot of actions starting in January. We’re going to start a lot of conversations in the community, so that we can start telling the stories of our parents. You know we’ve done a lot of actions to share our stories as DREAMers who are undocumented in this country, and we’ve done it very effectively. Now we’re working, as a community, to start to tell the stories of our parents and our families as well — of great sacrifice and great suffering, because of deportations and the separation of families — because we need to bring to Congress’ and the country’s attention that taking action on immigration is a moral imperative.”
“We’ll be holding actions before and after the inauguration in January; we’ll be doing a lot of visits with members of Congress, and mobilizations both national and local — because there are a lot of leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, who will be taking a leadership role in the conversation.”
At the end of the interview, Ramos asks Jimenez how old she is — which typically isn’t the most polite thing to do, but makes sense in this case. Jimenez at 28 is about five times more poised than either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney was when interviewed by Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas during the presidential campaign. Ball’s in your court, English-language networks: when are we going to start seeing DREAMers on your Sunday politics shows?
