In Solidarity With Immigrants Unrecognized

Mission Statement
As ISWI, we are a group of multinational students who are focusing our efforts on standing in solidarity with immigrants in the United States. There is currently a climate of extreme social and political xenophobia that places the blame of many of this country’s problems on immigrants. Increasingly, immigrants and their families face violence, legal obstacles to citizenship, police harassment, unfair characterization in the media as criminals or terrorists, and challenges to obtaining basic necessities or the means to do so. We hope to counter this trend. Our mission as members of ISWI is to raise awareness of these issues and circumstances and to work towards just treatment, support, and equitable representation for immigrants and their loved ones.

As a group we have three main goals. Firstly, we aim to dispel and combat this xenophobia through working on campus to provide information on anti-racism, language-learning resources, causes of immigration, and economic and social issues. We plan to accomplish this through hosting films, presenting lectures and holding teach-ins to our campus community and the wider Western Massachusetts area.

Secondly, we want to positively impact the political and social climate of our area by pushing for more discourse about immigration, citizenship and solidarity.

Last but not least, we are committed to standing up to support immigrants and their loved ones through engaging our local community and working to change policies that affect immigrants in the Pioneer Valley. We are working on multiple campaigns currently. One of the most exciting is the passage of an ordinance that will improve and preserve immigrant's rights in Northampton, particularly in relation to federal immigration enforcement policies enacted on the local level: municipal funds and resources would not be used to enforce federal immigration laws. We are working with the Pioneer Valley Project, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, the American Friends Service Committee, and other legal aid and immigrant solidarity groups to build a coalition of solidarity activism. THIS ORDINANCE HAS PASSED!! Springfield also opted out of Secure Communities so NOW WE ARE TAKING THIS TO AMHERST.

Feel free to friend our 5 College group on Facebook and join our online discussions! 

Meeting Updates!
We want to have as transparent and accessible meetings as possible. So we will be putting our notes from meetings up here and on a new facebook page (the one we have is a bit defunked...)

November 14, 2011

agenda Check-ins Food drive for the Pioneer Valley Project Toolkit for Disowning Columbus day conference Thank you cards for donors to the Disowning Columbus conference Nov 26 commemorating Julio Cano*** Dec 1 Right to Education week bring in the red in funding – $300

Luis Perez of the PVP is in the hospital, so this would be a good time to support. Look for flyers at circulation desk and help put them up! Food donations can be put outside Judith Carmona's office

Toolkit: we need some more people who were involved Next meeting we could focus on this. If you can't come to the next meeting, please send along your thoughts. Jaymes: email out emails to Brian to Andrew so that people can send feedback

Thank you cards: send them out! &lt;3

Commemoration of Julio Cano*** November 26th is a Saturday of thanksgiving break Can we “occupy” any ICE or detention centers? Awareness raising from Amherst sanctuary info blast day to bring nastiness of MA detention centers Casa Latina would know about language access to health care

Dec. 1st Right to Education panel, MLH. Roberto Garcia Ceballos may be presenting. waiting to hear more from him.

How are we down $300??? we need to ask CLA – Jules will ask Carolyn

Film Discussion Notes: on the filmFronteirs of Racism that we screened tonight Rights for Af. Americans are tied up with Immigrant rights anti-immigrant legislation does affect a lot of people film made white supremacy seem like there were leaders and concrete institutions, rather than an ongoing ideology. Alamo history is an important place to start Having a discussion afterwards is really important who was the target audience? Dissemination on youtube, use of found footage, especially the alamo as mythologizing what if in the credits there were further readings?

ISWI could have a facebook page further readings


 * Julio was the son of undocumented immigrants in California. In 1994, Governor Pete Wilson proposed Proposition 187, which would have denied undocumented people a range of public services, including access to Medicare and Medicaid. (These ended up being rescinded with the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996). However, though Prop 187 didn't pass, it struck such fear into the lives of undocumented people in California, that people avoided attempting to access life-saving medical services. Julio Cano's parents were so afraid of deportation that they avoided taking him directly to a public hospital.

"He had been denied non-emergency medical care when he entered a clinic. His father stated, 'We did not know that 187 was not the law. We went instead to a clinic, but they said there was no emergency. We waited until Friday, pay day, so we had $60 for an examination. They said there was something wrong and gave him antibiotics. Next morning, my Julio died.'

Though Prop 187 didn't pass, 16 years later, here we are facing a round of harsh anti-immigrant laws and policies that put the lives of millions in danger. In Alabama, children have to prove their immigration status to enroll in public schools. People are fleeing Alabama for need of medical care that they are to afraid to seek in the state they've lived in for years and in many cases, decades.

¡No Más Casos como el de Julio Cano! ¡No Más Muert@s! contacts for groups that came to Disowning Columbus Day