People scattered monopoly money on their way out of the New York Public Library after laughing at monopolist Carlos Slim. (WNV/Casper)

Last Thursday night’s event at the New York Public Library got a whole lot funnier when about 50 people staged a laugh-in against Mexican businessman Carlos Slim.

Famous (but not infamous enough) for being the world’s richest man, Slim was at the library to speak about his interest and recent investment in the free online courses of the Kahn Academy, yet his voice was drowned out by waves of laughter for the first 30 minutes of the event. Finally, a man rose and explained the joke to the befuddled audience.

“Carlos Slim, your charity is laughable,” activist Stan Williams declared. “But your monopolies are no laughing matter. You’re price-gouging your consumers and exploiting the Mexican people!”

Slim was attempting to recast himself as a philanthropist while stealing billions through his nearly complete control of Mexico’s telecommunications system. With the punchline delivered, the group then began marching around the room playing the Imperial Death March on plastic kazoos.

The action was organized by the coalition Two Countries One Voice and a cohort of New York City activists, including the Yes Men and, for full disclosure, me.

The idea for a laugh-in was inspired by an action in India in which hundreds gathered for a multi-day occupation outside of a then-governor’s office. The crowd had one goal: to laugh away the governor’s power to scare and control them. Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men explained that even uttering the governor’s name sparked uproarious laughter across the encampment.

“He didn’t immediately leave office,” Bichlbaum said. But when the next round of elections came, the governor was voted out.

The laugh-in against Carlos Slim deployed a similar atmosphere of levity to tackle serious issues: the fact that one man could be worth more than $70 billion dollars (more than half the GDP of his entire country), and a system in which charity is presented as the solution for mass poverty and systemic inequality.

Slim’s apparent generosity follows in a long tradition; charity has long been the way that the world’s top monopolists have cleansed their image, and it’s often used as the justification for why we should permit staggering wealth accumulation. In fact, the very location of the protest — the New York Public Library — is a monument to the robber-baron economic system of an earlier era. In the early 1900s, the Carnegie family provided millions in donations — today the equivalent of about a zillion dollars — for the creation of public libraries across New York. Sounds great, but it’s perhaps worth remembering that the Carnegies amassed their inconceivable wealth by crushing unions and exploiting workers as they expanded their steel and railroad empires. In one particularly flattering instance, known as the Homestead Strike of 1892, Carnegie quashed a workers’ protest by calling in thousands of men from the mercenary army Pinkerton first to fill the workers’ jobs and then to kill them. In order to shed themselves of these reputations, they funneled millions in dirty money into building libraries and public spaces — named, unsurprisingly, in their honor.

By investing in online free educational initiatives, Carlos Slim is playing a similar game, simply with less marble. With the increasing privatization of natural resources, educational systems and government operations (Slim’s telecommunications monopoly was sold to him by the Mexican government), the idea of public space is increasingly moving into the virtual plane. Hence Slim’s interest in free online education, and his desire to speak at an iconic educational institution alongside Salman Khan, the founder of the Khan Academy.

While online learning initiatives have their own murky implications for the future of public education, the laugh-in wasn’t a protest against Khan Academy. Rather, it was exposing the absurdity of Carlos Slim’s attempt to cleanse his image through charitable donations. According to Two Countries One Voice, the monopolist has effectively amassed his wealth by ratcheting up the prices for cell phone communications across Mexico, overcharging to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

We think the all-too-common idea that people like Slim are a force for good in the world is pretty funny — and we bet more people will catch on to the joke soon enough.

Happy Mother’s Day to all our New York City friends. As you celebrate all the powerful women and mothers in your life, take a minute to become a supporter of Waging Nonviolence — and receive a free ticket to an early preview screening of Robin Blotnick and Rachel Lears’ documentary The Hand That Feeds.

This 20-minute selection of scenes from their film about the Laundry Workers Center’s Hot and Crusty restaurant campaign dramatizes the possibilities that result when labor organizing combines with grassroots, direct-action movements. They’re hosting a special screening on May 17 at the Workers Unite! Film Festival, and we’ve got tickets for the first 10 people who become members of Waging Nonviolence–starting at as little as $2 a month!

Preview Screening:

The Hand that Feeds

May 17 at the Brecht Forum

Your tickets will provide you access to the 10 films showing at the Workers Unite Film Festival on May 17, so check out the full schedule for details. We’re looking forward to seeing you at the screening — get your free tickets today!

Watch a video trailer of The Hand that Feeds:

Palm trees along Euphprates river in Najaf, Iraq. (WNV/Cathy Breen)

My travel plans were not widely broadcast this time around. After an overnight flight from New York City, and a long layover in Istanbul, the plane set off for Iraq at about 3:30 in the morning. As the aircraft began the descent into Najaf, a sense of wonder rose in me as thousands of palm trees came into view. I felt like I was coming home.

Despite the early hour, three Iraqi friends were at the airport to welcome me. They insisted on stopping to buy kabab to celebrate my return. Such hospitality is commonplace here, and it puts me to shame.

Upon hearing about my intention to revisit Iraq, more than a couple of people close to me in the States asked “Why is it you are going to Iraq? What do you hope to accomplish?” I want to try and give answer to that question, if for no other reason than I have asked it of myself more than once.

In October and November of 2012, I had the opportunity (as part of Voices for Creative Nonviolence) to visit central and southern Iraq. This was the first time in nine years that I had been back. The six-week trip took me to Najaf, Karbala, Bashra, Baghdad, Fallujah and Ramadi. My purpose then, as it is now, was to reconnect with friends and get a sense of what Iraqis are living and feeling after so many years of war.

We get so little news from Iraq. According to the media coverage in the United States, or the lack thereof, the war against Iraq ended with the U.S. troop withdrawal at the end of 2011. But nothing could be further from the truth.

April 15 was a momentous day for us in the United States. On that day two bombs exploded at the Boston marathon, killing three people. This atrocity was covered around the clock for weeks on end, and will no doubt be memorialized for years to come. The New York Times front page headlines read: “War Zone at Mile 26: ‘So Many People Without Legs.’” I received emails from different friends in Iraq expressing their condolences and sadness.

April 15 was also a momentous day in Iraq. I cannot help wondering how many people in the United States heard about the 18 bombs that went off throughout Iraq that same day. At least 32 people were killed. And on April 23 protest clashes and random attacks left 111 Iraqis dead. On April 24 at least 86 were killed. On April 25 another 96 were killed. On April 26 at least 38 were killed as the unrest continued unabated. I wonder if condolences were extended to the families of those loved ones who were killed? And this has been the daily reality for over 10 years now.

Since the onset of “Operation Iraqi Freedom” until the end of 2011, we lost 4,486 U.S. troops. This is a figure we might be familiar with as it is commonly cited in the U.S. media. A figure we might not have heard is the following: 4,471 Iraqi civilians died as a result of ongoing violence in 2012. This is only 15 less than the total loss of U.S. troops over an 8 year period. Should this be of any concern to us here in the United States? How can this fact not be newsworthy?

More than one Iraqi told me during my trip last year “Your country brought the war on terror to our country. Your war on terror is being fought here!”

I fear that our country has never been able to acknowledge this tragic fact because it is so painful. But it is true. Suicide bombs were unheard of in Iraq before the U.S. led war and occupation, as was al-Qaida, except for pockets in the northern region of Kurdistan. With no border controls, with their army and police forces disbanded, everyone descended on Iraq from every direction, to pick as it were the carcass of a fallen animal.

Having been in Iraq for some months prior to the invasion, through “Shock andAwe,” and again in the fall of 2003, I am reminded of Iraqi friends who had received us like family into their hearts and homes. “Welcome” they said. “Peace be with you.” Each one uniquely individual, with a name — just like my nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters and family.

Not long ago I heard Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest, being interviewed on the radio. Although the context was quite different, as he was speaking about gang youth, his words hold a universal message. “It is all about kinship. Everybody is so exhausted by the tenor of polarity in our country … We need to inch our way closer to a circle of compassion … so no one is standing on the outside.” He also spoke of standing in awe of what people have to carry, rather than standing in judgement. For years I have drawn inspiration from our Iraqi brothers and sisters, especially in light of the unspeakable burdens they have shouldered for so many years. I guess this is one of the reasons I have come to Iraq. Because of kinship. “It is all about kinship.”

In the national Catholic magazine America I’ve just published a short review of an important new book with a long title: The Scandal of White Complicity in U.S. Hyper-Incarceration: A White Spirituality of Resistance. It’s an effort by three Catholic thinkers to articulate the depth of white complicity in this country’s massive, highly racialized prison system and to outline an approach to resistance grounded in Catholic social thought.

What would a movement against mass incarceration be able to accomplish with the support of the country’s largest religious denomination?

Upon recognizing the depth of the problem that mass incarceration poses, it may be tempting for many whites, especially those used to positions of influence and authority, to leap into devising solutions. Reading Michelle Alexander’s book certainly brings to mind a litany of anathemas—for instance, discriminatory policing, the senseless drug war, wildly excessive sentencing laws, the broad discretion afforded to prosecutors, the perverse incentives of the private prison industry and chronic underinvestment in communities of color. But the authors of The Scandal of White Complicity do not venture far into policy proposals or political strategizing. Nor do they allude to the many biblical passages about freeing captives that might tempt one to play the liberator.

What they offer instead is a call to humility, to accountability to people of color, to solidarity. The task they set for white Americans is to organize themselves and each other as allies, and to follow the lead of their neighbors of color who are already fighting the battle against the new Jim Crow every day.

Read the rest at America.

On Monday, President Obama renewed his commitment to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where there are currently over 130 men on hunger strike to protest their conditions and indefinite detention. That same day, Col. Morris Davis – former chief prosecutor at Guantánamo – released a Change.org petition urging President Obama to follow through on his promise to shut down Guantánamo. In less than 24 hours, according to the New York Daily News, there were more than 75,000 signatures.

In his remarks, President Obama said that he does not want anyone to die and that “the idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried is contrary to who we are, contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop.”

Conditions at the prison continue to deteriorate with most of the prisoners now in solitary confinement and the number of prisoners being force-fed has jumped to as many as 21, according to military spokepersons. Also on Monday, the Navy sent 40 medics to Guantánamo to deal with the hunger strikers who are, as of today, on day 84 of their protest.

Click here to sign the petition.

(OccuPrint/Paul Morgan)

Enjoy the archives!

WNV contributor Jens Erik Gould was on Sarasota’s WSLR Florida Caribe program last week to talk about his work reporting on stories of ordinary Mexicans who are peacefully resisting the violence of the drug war. Read Gould’s WNV story “Looking for Gandhis in Mexico” published earlier this month, and then hear more about his work at the 21:40 mark in the above audio player.

After publishing her feature “The struggle to reclaim paradise” on Waging Nonviolence, author Imani Althemus-Williams took to the airwaves to elaborate on the growing fight to stop genetically modified food production and testing from destroying Hawaii.

To hear more from Althemus-Williams, listen to her speak with John Batchelor on WABC-AM, with Scott Harris on Counterpoint Radio or with Truthdig Radio.

Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem” was performed Monday night at Carnegie Hall by the Oratorio Society of New York. (WNV/Nathan Schneider)

Where you are, and in what company, affects how you hear. I don’t think I really understood the reason people love opera until I heard it sung by half-drunk Juilliard students in a late-night bar. How one responds to a loud clack nearby depends on what neighborhood one is in, at what hour, and whether one is alone.

Thus it is significant that Benjamin Britten wrote his War Requiem to be performed for the consecration of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral, the historic British church that was destroyed by Germans bombs during WWII. The composer, a pacifist and conscientious objector during that war, intermixed the traditional Latin verses of the requiem liturgy — dies irae, dies illa, solvet saeclum in favilla teste David cum Sibylla — with those of Wilfred Owen, a poet who seemed to be writing his own eulogy up until the Great War actually killed him in its final week.

Near the end of the libretto:

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

And the question at the start:

What passing bells for these who die as cattle?

Britten’s score does indeed provide bells, and much more. The complexity of the piece — requiring a full orchestra, a chamber orchestra, a large chorus, soloists and a children’s choir high aloft — means that performances of War Requiem, such as the one at Carnegie Hall Monday night, are rare. Any chance to hear this magnificent groan over the 20th century’s wars is surely a pilgrimage on the way to peace. Yet the setting of Carnegie Hall also presented a few contradictions — the robber-baron name, for instance; the obligatory splendor; the American flag standing alone on the far corner, stage right, despite Owen’s complaint:

The scribes on all the people shove
and bawl allegiance to the state

At the end, in the crowded lobby by the main doors, I heard one man say to another, “Why don’t they do a normal work, like the Mozart Coronation Mass?” A coronation in Carnegie Hall probably would be much more — to use words Owen elsewhere ridiculed — dulce et decorum. “Sweet and fitting.”

Where you are, and in what company.

By arrangement of the Oratorio Society of New York, members of Veterans for Peace attended the performance, wearing hats and shirts with the group’s logo. Some of them received compliments from others in the audience: “Nice shirt.” Afterward they gathered at a deli across the street for soup and sandwiches. They talked about what they’d heard, but lots of other things too.

They talked, for instance, about the trial that some of them are now facing for their arrest while trying to conduct an all-night vigil at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in New York City’s Financial District last October 7, the 10-year anniversary of the war in Afghanistan. The court date is set for May 14, and they’re determined to defend their right to assemble freely and peacefully at their own memorial. If they’re slapped with fines they won’t pay them; if they’re assigned to “community service,” they won’t do it. For these Veterans for Peace, the denial of their basic right of assembly adds insult to the injuries many of them suffered and inflicted during their service in the U.S. military.

One of the 25 arrestees, Paul Appel, wrote in a statement, “When the court-appointed attorney asked me how I wanted to plead, I said that I wanted to plead guilty to being a Viet Nam veteran and plead guilty to honoring my fellow soldiers who had died in war.”

Many people came to Carnegie Hall last night to hear a piece of music, but for these veterans, the subject of War Requiem was as real as the ruins of the Coventry Cathedral. On the title page of Britten’s original score, he quoted yet more words of Owen’s:

All a poet can do today is warn.

With polls showing public support for the Keystone XL pipeline — including 54 percent of Democrats — should climate activists start preparing for a loss? After all, it seems President Obama may have what one insider calls a “political environment that minimizes the cost to him politically of signing on to this.”

Well, not so fast. There’s actually another way to look at the situation that is far more promising for the future of climate activism. As I argue in an article published by Slate today: Win or lose, an important shift has taken place within the broader environmental movement as a result of this pipeline struggle.

It was never about just a pipeline. McKibben and a handful of others had another, less talked about goal—to remake the environmental movement into something far more active, creative, and formidable for years to come. The gap that once existed between mainstream environmental groups and grass-roots activists has now largely dissolved, resulting in widespread action that has not been seen in the United States for decades—perhaps even since the first Earth Day in April 1970.

The story of how this came to be is one we’ve been tracking on Waging Nonviolence since before the landmark White House sit-ins in August 2011. It’s also one that I spent the past year putting together in the form of a master’s thesis. But lucky for you, this Slate story is the abridged version.

The March on Washington for Gun Control in Washington D.C., on January 26. (Flickr/Elvert Barnes)

Yesterday, the United States Senate defeated efforts to modestly regulate the sale and purchase of guns. Often, those of us who support gun control cede that owning guns is consistent with freedom but argue that, like other freedoms, certain sensible limitations are necessary for our safety. However, I would submit that yesterday’s defeat was a defeat for freedom as the American Founders understood it. The history of the Second Amendment tells us that the framers of the Bill of Rights believed regulating firearms is not only consistent with freedom, but a critical aspect of preserving liberty.

Up until a month before the Bill of Rights was sent to the States in September of 1789, the Second Amendment contained an additional clause. When James Madison first proposed to Congress an amendment regarding the right to bear arms, it stated: “A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms.” In this original draft, the freedom to not bear arms was as important as the right to bear them.

The immediate subjects and beneficiaries of this “scruples clause,” as indicated by the debates in the House of Representatives, were pacifist communities. During the Revolutionary War, over 90 members of a neutral band of Moravian Delaware Indians were massacred by Pennsylvania militiamen and Quakers and Mennonites were sometimes harassed and intimidated. After the war, concern for the religious freedom to opt out of war and worries that those with weapons would impose upon those without was substantial. Ratification conventions in Maryland, New York, Virginia and North Carolina proposed separate amendments to the Bill of Rights, which broadly asserted that religion “can be directed only by Reason and Conviction, not by Force or Violence.”

All Americans had good reason to fear being forced to bear arms. European monarchs had long imposed conscription and raised war levies on the backs of ordinary citizens. Following the Whiskey Rebellion, Congress did in fact conscript all white male citizens into state militias and even required those citizens to arm themselves with specific weapons in the Second Militia Act of 1792. While Americans today understand gun ownership as a hallmark of freedom, for many early Americans carrying guns was at best a cumbersome duty or troublesome necessity and at worst a sign of subjugation.

It is not clear from the record of the debates in the House of Representatives why the scruples clause was dropped from the Second Amendment at the last minute. Elbridge Gerry raised concerns that the government could choose which religions would have a right to bear arms. Others worried that claims of religious conscience would allow people to shirk their militia duties.

We might surmise that the best reason for dropping the clause is that the other Amendments in the Bill of Rights are sufficient warning against the notion that bearing arms is the bedrock of freedom. The Third and Fourth Amendments secure our persons and property against the forcible incursions of soldiers and the government. The First Amendment guarantees of free speech, religion and peaceable assembly mean that we have the right to do these things without being threatened, intimidated or killed. Taken together, the three amendments in closest proximity to the Second Amendment suggest that freedom means being free from the violence of one’s government and fellow citizens.

Moreover, the spirit of the scruples clause remains in the first words of the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment is the only place in the Bill of Rights where Congress’s capacity to “regulate” appears in plain language. Our forebears clearly believed that freedom involved not only ensuring that the government would not have a monopoly on guns, but also that we would carefully regulate our weapons. The main purpose of the Bill of Rights was to protect against the dreaded tyranny of the majority, where some citizens might forcibly compromise the rights of each individual. The recent rash of mass shootings and the toll of gun deaths in the United States more generally demonstrates that our laws are wildly out of balance. We have long since passed the day when the freedom to bear arms outstripped our freedom to feel secure in our homes, offices, schools and places of worship.

The Constitution balances the right to own guns with the right of all citizens to feel free from fear and intimidation. The debate surrounding the very words to include in the Second Amendment demonstrates that the Founders understood the right to bear arms as both a guarantee of freedom and a potential threat to it. Adequate Congressional regulation of firearms is critical to freedom. Yesterday was a defeat for liberty.

WNV editor Nathan Schneider appeared on WBAI’s Occupy Wall Street Radio yesterday evening for a half-hour interview with Eve Silber. They discussed the early planning meetings for the Occupy movement, what Occupy means for families and Nathan’s forthcoming book, Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse.

Listen to the full show here:

Children watching the 2013 Boston Marathon from Newton’s Heartbreak Hill. (Flickr/Matt Stafford)

I grew up in Massachusetts — mere minutes away from where the Boston Marathon starts, depending on how fast you drive. Although I live in New York now, my parents are still there, and I called my mother yesterday to see how she was. I still hadn’t heard much about what had happened because I’d been out all afternoon, so she was filling me in on the few details that had emerged. She didn’t know anyone in the marathon this year, but nonetheless my mother broke into tears on the phone. She was talking about how this Patriots’ Day had started so well — as a public holiday in the city of Boston, many people had the day off from work, and many more had been watching the Marathon in person along the route, or in their homes on TV. For some reason my mother was focusing on the weather before the bombs went off, and although never one to lack an opinion, in this case all she kept saying was, “It was such a beautiful day…”

I understand how she feels. I understand how something like this can make someone struggle for words to explain — or even process — what’s happened. This is the closest anything like this has ever been to her front door.

I want to switch now and talk about another beautiful day, in a slightly different part of the world: Afghanistan’s rural Uruzgan province, about a hundred miles northeast of Kandahar. The sun came up there the way it did in Boston, except about eight and a half hours earlier. Instead of there being a marathon to run, there was a wedding to be held for two beautiful people, celebrating with their families the two becoming one. In the lives of these two people, there couldn’t have existed a more beautiful day. What happened next, however, makes me embarrassed, disgusted and ashamed to have to write: U.S. Air Force planes bombed the wedding party, killing 30 people and injuring over a hundred. In the words of one of the village residents speaking to the BBC, “There are no Taliban or al Qaeda or Arabs here. These people were all civilians, women, and children.” Apparently in the jubilation immediately following the wedding ceremony, some of the guests had been firing their weapons into the air. Potentially mistaking it for anti-aircraft artillery fire, the Pentagon has admitted, “At least one bomb was errant. We don’t know where it fell.”

Why am I juxtaposing these two incidents? Is it because they happened on the same day? Well, no. Actually they didn’t. The annihilation of this particular wedding happened back in July 2002. After the bombing in Boston yesterday an article from the UK’s Daily Mail about the wedding attack began circulating on social media, with people insinuating that it had happened on the same day. The byline of that article has since been amended to prominently feature a date, but by not mentioning one earlier I misled the reader, as I myself had been momentarily misled. The truth is, yes, this actually happened; it just happened 11 years ago.

Does that make it any more palatable? Given a moment where we feel wounded as a nation, the posting of an old story masquerading as something new has the requisite power to shock people into making the very connection that needs to be made: namely, between the violence we visit upon people in foreign lands, and the violence that comes back to visit us at home. Violence begets violence, as Martin Luther King began teaching in the 1950s. Or in the words of Isaac Newton: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In an era when important news stories so often get lost amid celebrity pregnancies and partisan inanities, I found it quite refreshing to fall victim to such a minor Internet hoax. It did cause a certain amount of disbelief, as I thought I recalled something similar happening back in the early days of the war, as well as again in 2008. But I couldn’t really be all that offended by a story that’s actually newsworthy miraculously getting a second life.

According to the latest from what happened in Boston, three people have died, and over a hundred were injured — some having had limbs blown off in the attack. Much like my mother, I don’t have words to express my sadness, nor how much my heart goes out to everyone who’s been touched by this. It’s still too early to know who’s responsible, but that will come out in time. It could have been the work of a politically motivated group, or it could have been some deranged maniac, of the sort that killed 27 people at Sandy Hook or 12 people in Aurora, Colorado. But what we do know for sure is who killed those 30 people in Afghanistan. And fully understanding my complicity in the actions of my government, my heart goes out to everyone who was touched by that no less.

The question for us now is whether or not we’ll fall into the same trap we fell into after 9/11. Will we continue the cycle of violence in a misguided quest for justice? Or will we be smart enough to say: Okay, we get it now. Living in a place where bombs go off in public is hell. We’re sorry, Kabul. We’re sorry, Karachi. We’re sorry, Baghdad (where 30-plus people actually were killed yesterday in cities across Iraq). What’s happening where you live is largely our fault, and we promise to do whatever we can to make things better. If you think it will help we’ll fund reconstruction efforts, strengthen civil society, and build up the social services that can cut off local support for terrorist organizations. Whatever we do, though, we’ll definitely stop bombing you, flying our drones overhead, terrorizing your people, and destabilizing your society. Not because it’s wrong, though it most certainly is. And not because it undermines our own supposed goals, though it most certainly does, making our country more — not less — likely to be attacked. But because after Boston, we now have some idea of what it’s like.

Women in Kabul, Afghanistan, extend sympathy to Boston as part of a photo series by Principle Pictures.

A large crowd gathered for a rally for immigration reform outside the U.S. Capitol on April 10. (WNV/Laurie Smolenski)

April 10, 2006 marked what were likely the largest immigrants rights mobilizations in the U.S. history, when immigrant communities turned out in mass numbers in over 70 cities to express dissent over the anti-immigrant “Sensenbrenner Bill.” Exactly seven years later, on Wednesday, advocates took to the streets again, this time to demand that Congress pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

Tens of thousands of individuals representing civil rights, labor, faith, business and LGBT groups from across the country came together in Washington, D.C., with echo events held in at least 20 states. We packed the offices of our congressional representatives and rallied in front of the U.S. Capitol. There, keynote speaker NAACP President Benjamin Jealous and Senator Robert Menendez (one of the bipartisan ‘Gang of Eight’ senators drafting a reform bill) shared the podium with immigrant families, domestic workers and undocumented teen activists known as Dreamers.

I took a bus of immigrants from New York City to D.C. to take part in the “Rally for Citizenship” that included families, children and seniors, many of whom are undocumented and have been living in the shadows, so to speak, for decades. They pay taxes — I’ve helped some of them file — and work 60 and 70-hour weeks while taking English class.

The day I announced the trip to the immigrant students where I work, a single mother named M. came to my office and asked if she could tell me her immigration story. She spoke of the violence she experienced in her country that propelled her to flee. She told of crossing the border and being separated from her child, and the threats she still faces here. M. feels shame, and she still fears for her safety. She struggles daily with the weight of supporting her child as an undocumented immigrant. Hers was a story she had told no one outside of her family, and yet it was one she was ready to share.

One month later, I accompanied M. to a meeting with Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, who leads the Gang of Eight. He listened to immigrants share how U.S. immigration policy has impacted them — from day laborers and farm workers denied basic labor rights, to individuals whose family members were deported or were detained for years, merely for being undocumented. The senator assured some that forthcoming reform would ameliorate their struggles; to others, he emphasized the need for compromise in order to make progress with Republican lawmakers.

Earlier that day, M. and a small group of young students met with staff from the offices of Senator Gillibrand and our congressional representative, Carolyn Maloney. Tired of being identified as statistics, they said, the students had traveled to D.C. to put faces on the 11 million undocumented living in this country. They made it clear that they represented their friends, families and classmates — namely, those who were unable to take even a day off of work to join us, or who feared traveling out of the city because of their status. The students spoke eloquently about their concerns over labor conditions, of the lack of due process for immigrants and of the rising number of deportations that rip families apart. They posed thoughtful questions, and they asked their congressional leaders not to forget them. We were told the Senate was slated to unveil a bill as early as the end of this week, which has passed without a bill being formally announced.

When the students and I joined our larger group outside later that afternoon, I was moved to find a sea of immigrant families that had flooded the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol. Amidst the cherry blossoms that had just begun to bloom, voices boomed from the podium in different languages, highlighting the diverse but unified people calling on Congress to act now. Dreamers, dressed in their caps and gowns, demanded opportunities to access higher education. Ben Jealous gave a moving historical narrative, drawing from slave rebellions and the civil rights movement to remind us that in America, there are no second-class families. Children marched with signs that said “Do not deport my parents.” The energy and conviction of the event was palpable, and it was clear to me that we were living an undeniably historic moment.

At one point, a television crew approached and I was asked to translate for a young female student from Ecuador. A reporter asked her why so many Americans do not support reform. She looked around and held out her arms to the crowd, and replied without pausing that there is mass support for reform.  The rally was a testament of that support, she affirmed. When the reporter opened his mouth to speak again, chants of sí, se puede! (yes, we can!) nearly drowned out his voice.

How did you first find Waging Nonviolence? For many of you, though you might not know it, the answer has something to do with the Institute for Public Accuracy. IPA is an organization that plays a vital role in the independent media community, raising up grassroots voices and helping the most important stories circulate in ways that the corporate media will never allow them to. Because of IPA, I and other WNV contributors have had opportunities to appear on radio and television media, enabling our stories to reach many, many thousands more people than those who come to our website on their own. IPA’s contribution has been so great that, when we set up our Board of Advisors this year, we made sure IPA’s Sam Husseini was on it.

As IPA celebrates its 15th year, we encourage you to consider making a donation to ensure that this important organization can continue helping the work of independent media outlets like Waging Nonviolence reach the audiences it deserves. Make a tax-deductible donation here.

While you’re at it, too, if you rely on WNV regularly, please consider becoming a member today.