Yeah, I know, it’s hilarious to speak of “voices” in a “fight” when we are at this moment witnessing the kabuki kongress and the other bozo-bloated branches of government.

Yesterday, as rossl recounts in this excellent essay, we find there were around, oh, 1,500-2,000 teabaggers and up to 10,000 antiwar demonstrators.

Well it is good that folks are yelling louder.

But today, yes, it is delicious irony that on a day where we’ve never felt more like failures as Americans, hundreds of thousands of our fellow human beings marched in Washington just for the chance to make it so that they (or their mother, or their father, or their children or their friends or their … ) could have the rights and privileges of citizenship.

Here’s a recent report from their website:

raylab:

Ok, that’s it from us here. It’s been an amazing, beautiful and historic day here in Washington, DC. But, I want to remind everybody, this is just the beginning. Now the real work to pass immigration reform starts. We were 500,000 strong for the cause today and we should carry that strength and power with us as we move forward. Tomorrow, call your Senator at 866-877-5552 and tell them you want immigration reform now. We can win this, but we need every voice in the fight.

What I have learned from the HCR national debate is that my own supposed allies, Democrats, are willing to throw out human rights and human dignity as negotiating tools without even fucking using them.  That steams me.

The liberal white blogosphere, I have also come to learn, is not going to consistently cover this aspect of the upcoming immigration debate.

Buhdy spoke the other day about negotiation.

Fool me once.

I’m not watching C-SPAN or following live blogs of corrupted government officials voting for legislation that utterly devalues our most precious American values, the values that the demonstrators today feel strongly enough about to want to be citizens, even with all the problems in our country.

I’m watching folks 500,000 strong.  The media may not pay any attention to them and the white liberal blogs may see them only as a political calculation instead of as brothers and sisters.

I don’t have much of a voice tonight.  But I’m enough of a loudmouth to fake it when necessary.

Si Se Puede!

Turkana has a post up speaking to the many deficiencies of the soon-to-be-passed (or not) health insurance legislation.

In comments, a poster, GN1927 speaks to something that hit a chord of memory in me:

Blessings to your family

But with all due respect, can we please celebrate what’s on the table for two seconds; everyone knows that this legislation is a start, not a finish.

God bless your cousin and sending healing energy that way.

The memory was of Obama’s election and Proposition 8’s passing in California, all at the same time.

We lost on HCR.  Plain and simple.  The only mistake is to think the bill couldn’t have been worse.  We could have co-ops and triggers, you know.

But I don’t really care.  Political loss is no stranger to the left here in the US of A.

This weekend, I will witness what we won, only one of the jewel treasures won for ALL Americans from the left.

People whose only wish is to become citizens of the United States of America will be gathering in Washington D.C. on March 21.

And their idea of the spirit of being American is not of Thomas Jefferson or George Washington, not of Anita Bryant or John Wayne or the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Mr. Roberts.

Their inspiration is Harvey Milk and gay liberation.

It is now a fact that Harvey Milk was a great gay American, and the American story of the continuing fight for liberation by GLBT citizens is so firmly planted in our culture that immigration groups can use this American struggle as an inspiration that embodies the best and highest values of our society.

To me, that is a win.

From the Dream Act Portal:

March 15 marks the beginning of the United We Dream Network’s “National Coming Out of the Shadows Week.” This campaign draws inspiration from the struggle for equal rights by the gay and lesbian community. On the homepage of dreamactivist.org, the online hub for the United we Dream Network, the following quote from famed activist Harvey Milk is prominently displayed to encourage undocumented students to disclosure their status to advocate for equal rights and the passage of the Dream Act:

Brothers and Sisters, you must come out! come out to your parents, come out to your friends, if indeed they are your friends, come out to your neighbors, come out to your fellow workers. Once and for all, let’s break down the myth and destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake, for their sake. For the sake of all the youngsters who’ve been scared by the votes from Dade to Eugene. On the Statue of Liberty it says “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free.” In the Declaration of Independence it is written, “All men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights.” For Mr. Briggs and Mrs. Bryant and all the bigots out there, no matter how hard you try, you can never erase those words from the Declaration of Independence! No matter how hard you try you can never chip those words from the base of the Statue of Liberty! That is where America is!

Approximately 3.2 million undocumented immigrant children and young adults live in the shadows. It has been almost ten years since Congress promised them the American Dream. The wait has become increasingly insufferable.

So we lost, didn’t we.

Sure, there’s no HCR bill signed yet, but we know the game has been fixed and we’ve been sucker punched.

Bad enough to get screwed by the Republicans for so many years.  It’s irritating, very irritating to get screwed by who we thought were our fellow Democrats.

So this is being a US citizen in the year Twenty-Ten.

Huh.

Even trying to be informed seems an impossible task, much less changing everything.

And to make it even more surreal, the very institutions, the members of which are riding a  high tide of obscene wealth and power, are also crumbling as I type this.

It’s chaotic!

So I look at these kids, these four kids who have wallked what they call the “Trail of Dreams.”

These are four undocumented kids who are demonstrating how they are coming out of the shadows (you know, those shadows that 12 million of our brothers and sisters live in, over 2 million of them children).

These are their names and a little P.R. information about them for the Trail of Dreams website.  First a joint statement by the four:

We are four students from Florida – Felipe Matos, Gaby Pacheco, Carlos Roa, and Juan Rodriguez – who were brought to the United States by our families when we were young. This is the only country we have known as home. We have the same hopes and dreams as other young people, and have worked hard to excel in school and contribute to our communities. But because of our immigration status, we’ve spent our childhoods in fear and hiding, unable to achieve our full potential. We walk in order to share our stories and to call on our leaders to fix the system that forces people like us into the shadows, stripping us of the opportunity to participate meaningfully in society.

I don’t have the wherewithal to report the crucial information I think all American citizens should know.

So I have to limit myself.

I think about the endless politics of the health care so-called “debate.”  What American citizens are being asked to settle for by both our representatives, the Democratic Party, and all the party activists thereof.

Compared to the uphill battle to pass the Dream Act, wow, we’re being offered pure HCR paradise.

One of the most ubiquitous arguments made on the issue of immigration is that before we can do anything of a progressive nature we need to “secure our borders.”

If we don’t “secure our borders,” heaven alone knows what will happen!  The terrists will get in, that’s for sure.  And millions of Mexicans and others from Latin America will descend upon our fair nation like a hail of locusts and we shall all be destroyed in the horror.

Over at Migra Matters, Duke Reed has a post entitled The down-payment’s been paid, when will the goods be delivered?.

To those who are convinced enforcement-only policies are paramount, the question all progressives should ask is:  How much enforcement is enough?

I wrote yesterday about a meeting Obama had scheduled with Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham to talk about immigration reform.

Well the meeting was postponed.  According to RollCall:

A meeting between President Barack Obama and Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) scheduled for Monday afternoon on immigration reform has been postponed and will be rescheduled later this week, thanks to flight cancellations in South Carolina.

At a 2008 speech to the  League of United Latin American Citizens, then-Senator Obama said:

“We need a president who isn’t going to walk away from something as important as comprehensive immigration reform when it becomes politically unpopular,” he told the group. “That’s the commitment I’m making to you. I fought with you in the Senate for comprehensive immigration reform. And I will make it a top priority in my first year as president.”

That was in 2008.

Now we have had a taste of how Obama governs and how he promotes legislation.  There is no excuse, therefore, to think that somehow the dynamic of immigration reform legislation will be any different than it was for healthcare, even if Republicans have a more “bipartisan” role.