With a single well-crafted column, Jordan Manalastas (“Foolish DREAM Act strikers hungering for a spectacle,” Aug. 9) managed to bring immigrant youths down from their self-righteous pedestal and really humble them.
In Martin Luther King’s famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, he wrote that he was most disappointed in the moderate citizen, the one who told civil rights activists, “I agree with your cause, I just don’t agree with your tactics.”
Manalastas joined that group of people when he wrote a column belittling the DREAM Act hunger strike outside of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office, calling it “guilt-mongering,” “moral blackmail” and a foolish “spectacle.”
He did everybody the favor of bringing the hunger strikers down a couple of notches, which, clearly, they needed, after voluntarily starving for their human rights for 14 days.
He trivialized their actions, stating that they needed to have a “good old-fashioned protest” instead, and by doing so, trivialized the severity of the situation of immigrant youth. The tactics are a reflection of the community’s desperation.
He dares to dismiss the years of sacrifices, of working odd jobs, of going to college with no access to financial aid, of living in libraries and showering in gyms, of missing out on normal college activities, of being reminded every day by the television, by the radio and by society in general that they, immigrant youth, are criminals.
He dares to infantilize the immigrant rights movement, when every day they have to live with the fear that armed men will show up in the middle of the night and separate mothers from their sons, fathers from their daughters and brothers from their sisters.
We are not talking about a protest against raising taxes.
Before mocking those who would starve themselves for freedom, Manalastas should read some Gandhi, some King, some Thoreau. When the stakes are huge, so are the tactics.
In one sense, he’s absolutely right. It is a spectacle. We hope it caught the attention of everybody and stoked their compassion.
We are running out of time. If the DREAM Act doesn’t pass, immigrant youths will keep living the way they are ““ college-educated and working for scraps somewhere where they don’t ask for a Social Security number, or they will be deported after trying to pay a parking ticket.
It’s happened before.
Flavia de la Fuente
Editor of DREAMActivist.org
UCLA Class of 2010