Join us at the Capitol for the Latino Vote Fiesta.
There are only a few days left of voter registration, and we are not stopping until we have the power to make lasting change in Arizona! This means registering the people in our community to vote.
Arizona State Capitol
Tuesday, October 9th
8:00 AM to 11:00 PM
Paperwork and lawyer talk is not the usual way to bring us together, but Promise Arizona and the NO DREAM DEFERRED Coalition teamed up with Neighborhood Miniseries to put on a Deferred Action Information session for over 1,300 people on Saturday, August 18, 2012. Gathered at Neighborhood Ministries, lawyers presented and answered questions concerning Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Accommodating 200 for each of five separate sessions, the waiting room filling up as quickly as the auditorium with entire families, friends and people interested in improving their community.
Watching twin projectors that displayed Spanish and English at the same time, attendants took notes, asked questions and talked to the presenters one-on-one afterwards. Thanks to Promise Arizona and the No DREAM Deferred Coalition, hundreds have come closer to living without the fear of being taken away from the only home they’ve ever known and being separated from their families.
Hundreds of undocumented immigrants turned out at each of five sessions Saturday to get advice from immigration lawyers on how to properly complete the application for the deferred-action program.
The six-page application could pave the way to allowing undocumented immigrants to stay and work in the U.S. for two years without fear of deportation. Attendees asked a range of questions, from what will happen to the program if President Barack Obama is not re-elected to whether it will lead to citizenship.
Neighborhood Ministries hosted the daylong “No Dream Deferred” event in Phoenix that was sponsored by the Phoenix School of Law, Promise Arizona and others.
Lourdes Esquibel of Phoenix came to find out if misspellings of her 19-year-old son’s name on various forms would cause problems.
“If he could be here without having issues, it would be a huge opportunity for us,” she said.
Today, the vigil to stop Arizona’s racial profiling law SB 1070 will draw to a close, on the 103rd day spent on the steps of the Arizona State Capitol.
Now, the dedication and commitment it takes to keep a vigil going for 103 days is remarkable under any circumstances. It takes a remarkable amount of coordination and time to keep people engaged.
But in Arizona’s unforgiving heat, it is nothing short of miraculous. It takes a powerful cause to inspire this type of devotion. But that is the case in Arizona. People who are seeing the anguish caused by SB 1070 firsthand, who are seeing their neighbors pull their kids out of school and leave the state, felt compelled to spend their days and night surrounded by other community members who felt their pain.
The organization leading the effort is a new group, Promise Arizona. This was their first major event.
My organization, the Center for Community Change, is providing PAZ with a lot of direct support in its first year, and so I’ve known of the vigil from its inception and have always been impressed by it.
But until I spent several afternoons fighting off heat stroke, looking for the scant shady spots, it was impossible for me to grasp the magnitude or the spirit of the vigil.
Everyone always talks about the unbearable heat in Phoenix, but it’s always qualified by mention of it being “dry heat.” Now, I’m from South Texas, so I’ve survived summers in searing heat and stifling humidity. But, for me, the Phoenix dry heat was worse. I can deal with high temperatures; it’s not rare when the temperature soars above 100 degrees and stays there for weeks at a time in South Texas.
But 117 degrees feels very different.
Those 17 additional degrees feel like a ton of bricks. It’s hard to move. Everything seems sluggish, too still. The palm trees even seem reluctant to sway. And it doesn’t exactly cool off at night either. When the sun sits low on the horizon as the clock nears 9 p.m., the thermometer still registers 101.
But at the Capitol, it seems no one feels the heat but me. The adults sit and talk with a familiarity born of seeing each other nearly every day for more than 3 months. The children run around playing. There’s food, homemade and restaurant-bought brought to the capitol by the participants. An elderly man sells cold, fruity paletas from a cart. And as the sunlight fades, a group of mostly women kneel on the grass around an elaborate, mobile altar and pray the rosary.
Yesterday, it filled my heart to see pictures of these women in tears, so joyful at the announcement of the court’s decision to enjoin the most hideous, harmful components of SB 1070.
Now that the worst of SB 1070 has been staved off, Promise Arizona is ending the vigil, but their work is just beginning. Now they’ll shift their focus to developing new leaders and funneling the frustrations and passions stirred by SB 1070 into lasting, positive civic engagement. Instead of praying outside of the capitol, they will recruit a legion of volunteers to go door to door signing people up to vote.
So while the work changes, the remarkable dedication and commitment remain steadfast, even in the wilting heat.