For decades fear, stigma and the deadly threat of immigration enforcement pushed millions of undocumented people into the shadows, unaware of the collective power they held to transform the political landscape. Undocumented people lived a life behind the scenes; a life of whispers and constantly looking over their shoulders, afraid that at any moment they or their loved ones could be harmed. But in the early 2000s, a monumental cultural shift took shape, spearheaded by the courage of us young, queer immigrants who refused to live in isolation any longer. It was this shift that symbolized the very first seeds of United We Dream’s youth-led power.
United We Dream (UWD) is the largest immigrant-youth-led organization in the country with over a million members nationwide. Our superpower has always been our ability to bring directly impacted people out of places of isolation and into places of deep connection, community and belonging. Out of this deep connection we build cultural power, and we use that to move towards political transformation.
Now our progressive movements are up against the clear and visceral rise of fascism and white supremacy in the United States that made Trump’s first term in office possible. Through an insidious network of legislative and judicial attacks, this rise in fascism seeks total control over the lives, bodies, and choices of our Black, brown, queer, and immigrant communities.
In the face of these threats, we as organizers carry a vital responsibility to bring people together, amass decision-making power, and point to the hopeful future we know we can win. We must be prepared with the infrastructure and resources as a progressive movement to not only sustain our communities, but to grow our collective political and decision-making power in ways that cement protections for us all in both policy and practice.
This requires us to not only water the seeds our movements have already planted, but to plant new liberation seeds that will enable us to grow sustainable and unbreakable infrastructures that can withstand the attacks bound to come our way, while also remaining forward-thinking in generating the independent economic and political power to deepen our interventions over the long haul. Ultimately, the new seeds we plant have the potential to equip generations of young movement organizers who will come after us with the skills and tools they need to defeat fascism and make permanent the futures our communities deserve, 10, 20, 30 years ahead and beyond.
At United We Dream, and our sister organization United We Dream Action, our intention is to nurture the sharp and active organizing of our membership of immigrant youth and allies to both block and build beyond this year alone; from blocking attempts to harm our people to building sustainable arenas of power in new, innovative ways.
Taking stock: our community, our power
In the early 2000s, inspired and supported at the time by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a group of queer immigrant youth who were determined to transform our people’s fear into power held meetings incognito after school in classrooms and on conference calls. There we began to share our stories with one another, unearthing a deep sense of connection, vulnerability, trust and courage. The more we met, the more we felt seen. We knew each other’s pains and fears. We knew what it felt like to worry that a simple trip to the grocery store could mean being targeted by immigration enforcement. We knew the pain of having loved ones detained or deported. And we knew what it was like to be targeted by a country that we called home.
But perhaps more importantly, we shared in the dreams we had for our collective futures. We dreamed of a future where we all had the opportunity to go to college like other students, feel at home in our cities, drive a car without the fear of being pulled over and deported, and travel freely to see our loved ones abroad. We craved a life where we could be our whole selves without the threat of being targeted, harmed, or even killed, and we began a movement led by a sense of hope for the future rather than fear.
Together, we led bold public actions in the very places undocumented people never dared to go before. Thousands of us came together, some traveling hundreds of miles, to march to the steps of the US Supreme Court in 2019 to defend DACA and our communities. We took action outside the very immigration enforcement agencies that have sought to harm us, including holding a “Communities Not Cages” National Day of Action in 2022 outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Headquarters in Washington, DC. We’ve been to the White House and met with Vice President Harris directly to make clear that our communities’ lives are on the line and demand permanent protections for millions nationwide. In each of these moments, we declared publicly to the world that we are “Undocumented and unafraid! Queer and unashamed!”
Cultural power can serve as a conduit for developing political transformation where it is not simply beliefs and attitudes that are changed, but the policies, laws and systems that govern our lives.
For the first time, our community of queer immigrant youth created spaces where we felt truly safe and could shed our fears without judgment. This sense of community has grown over the past 20 years into the powerful, innovative immigrant youth-led movement we lead today. The courage to use our voices and share our stories about living undocumented has transformed public consciousness, dispelled myths and stereotypes about our communities, and connected with people in honest and authentic ways. These very first seeds of cultural power have swayed tides in our favor, helping us to achieve major legislative victories, from access to drivers’ licenses, professional licenses, and in-state tuition at the state and local levels, to the monumental Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program at the federal level and our most recent victory this year, which included protections for nearly half a million undocumented spouses of US citizens; our largest win since DACA.
These victories show how cultural power can serve as a conduit for developing political transformation where it is not simply beliefs and attitudes that are changed, but the policies, laws and systems that govern our lives. Cultural power is a necessary and critical step towards making political transformation possible, and it is why we must continue to water this seed over the long term. But on its own, cultural power is not enough.
In order to transform the institutions that govern our society and cement indestructible protections for millions of directly impacted communities, we must couple cultural power with the intentional, strategic and thoughtful investment in the leadership growth of young organizers. Central to this is ensuring young people have a political home to be able to strategize, build and deepen cross-movement partnerships, and strengthen our community’s civic engagement and collective action.
Just this year, United We Dream and United We Dream Action launched our 10-year strategic vision, which serves as a roadmap and a promise to build a resilient and lasting political home for Black, brown, queer and undocumented leaders and allies to learn and grow into the next generation of sharp, creative organizers our movements, and our country, will need. Crafting our 10-year strategic plan was no small feat. It took honest, difficult conversations with one another to take stock of the moment we’re in, what we’re up against, where our power lies, and perhaps most importantly, where it must urgently grow.
Building new arenas of power
For decades, fascists have used immigrants as scapegoats and political pawns, creating a culture of anti-immigrant vitriol that has spurred political momentum behind violent policies that have harmed and killed those in our communities. It is exactly this decades-deep anti-immigrant culture that Donald Trump relied on during his 2016 campaign and that eventually led to the implementation of policies like Title 42, mass family separations at the border, and the expansion of the deadly enforcement, detention, and deportation apparatus. This year Trump and the far-right ecosystem continue to follow the exact same rubric of scapegoating immigrants, with promises to execute the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”
With or without Trump in office, we see the ways fascism has been entrenched in our systems of government and is growing rapidly. Right now, all across the country, in states like Texas, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Idaho, Missouri and more, some of the most alarming anti-immigrant legislation at the regional level is taking shape. These policies would effectively turn these places many of us call home into police states that would terrorize anyone simply suspected of being undocumented, subjecting Black, brown, queer and trans people in particular to extreme instances of racial profiling, detention, and bodily harm. All around us, our freedoms are being litigated and stripped back as we speak.
Without question, we take these threats seriously and are committed to doing everything in our power to protect our communities, including by organizing more people to join our movement, strengthening our cross-movement partnerships, and inoculating our community against rising disinformation and disillusionment. But we also cannot lose sight of the ways our enemy’s endgame seeks to create a vast governing and legislative network rooted in our permanent oppression that is intended to outlast Trump and requires our progressive movement strategies to look far beyond 2024 to build our arenas of power and position our people to be ready for what’s to come.
That is why, collectively, our progressive movements must prioritize planting and growing liberation seeds in four core arenas in 2024 and beyond:
- Growing and Transforming Mass Base Power into Governing Power: A healthy democracy requires an informed and active public that is ready to come together under a shared vision of a future that includes ALL of us. At United We Dream, we know that directly impacted people are closest to the solutions, and through organizing, we have the power to innovate and create breakthroughs that propel movements forward. All across the country, young people are increasingly aware of the ways their lives, freedoms and rights are being criminalized and attacked. An intentional part of our progressive movement’s strategy over the long term must be to bring more directly impacted young people into the fold to be able to grow and develop them as key strategists whose growing power, we know, is capable of tipping the scales and defining how a true democracy is practiced at all levels of government. What our sister organization United We Dream Action is building over the long term is a generation of battle-tested, grounded strategists who have a strong political home within our organization where they are nurtured to grow into the future decision-makers and leaders we need.
- Building Leadership Pathways: At United We Dream, we take responsibility for stewarding an organizing space where Black, brown, queer and immigrant youth are supported, given space to lead, space to fail and space to be trained up to answer the call to wage peace in our society. Through our Autumn of Dreams and Summer of Dreamsworkshop programs, members engage in a robust curriculum invested in growing their skills as leaders. These include everything from learning about what power is and how to build it, to understanding the fundamentals of community organizing, how to activate our communities through storytelling, how to yield the power of civic engagement, and how to combat anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ disinformation and more. As a progressive movement, we must formalize these leadership pathways for directly impacted young leaders to be nurtured and connected to their humanity and self-worth. As the current leaders of the progressive movement, we must coach the next generation to understand fully and humbly their responsibility and generational role in the long arc of our movement’s efforts to win.
- Building Intersectional Campaigns: As leaders of United We Dream, we embody a multitude of intersections through our lived experiences. We are queer and we are undocumented. We are people of color and we are immigrants. We are people who have been displaced due to challenges like severe climate change. We are young people inheriting systemic crises that threaten the well-being of our generation. We are workers. We are students. We are organizers. Our stories and our lives hold us accountable to developing deeply intersectional campaigns that bring together our communities and issues across the progressive movement.
Earlier this year, United We Dream Action launched our Youth Agenda in collaboration with March 4 Our Lives, Gen-Z for Change and Sunrise Movement to elevate the intersectional issues that matter most to young people, including urgent climate action, an end to gun violence, democracy protection and permanent protections for immigrant communities. However, much of the progressive movement has operated in silos, limiting the amount of space to practice leading with a united front that can strategize together and win together. By building intentional cross-movement partnerships, we can grow our progressive power and our influence in pushing key targets to deliver on our collective demands. It is when we move in lock-step with each other that we also strengthen a national political identity as a unified, unbreakable coalition whose support as a collective is only earned by those who represent all of us and who co-govern with us.
- Nurturing Spiritual Resilience: At United We Dream we believe that strategic charts are not the only way of building power – it’s a spiritual project we are also engaged in. Our best offense and strategic intervention must entail spiritual resilience at its core. Spiritual resilience is the practice of remaining grounded and firm despite the uncertain and unknown and continuously choosing one another and hope instead of despair. It is the place from which we bring out the fortitude and strength to see the light and the end of the tunnel and stay present despite the attacks, hateful rhetoric from the far right, and the losses. It is about knowing that the strength and courage that carries us through the hurdles and the difficult times has been passed down our ancestral lineages from people who resisted and overcame and lived, and the divine- the light and the hopes beyond ourselves.
We practice and embrace spiritual resilience through ritual and building community, not from our brokenness but from our discipline of hope passed down from our ancestors biologically and politically. Often this involves engaging with and teaching members the importance of pouring back into ourselves, prioritizing our health and understanding healing justice as a framework that has been shaped by the wisdom of Black, queer, Southern, feminist movement leaders and organizers. This framework helps our communities remain grounded and honest in knowing that loss and grief are inevitable under the current structures of power, but together we will remain hopeful and embrace the celebration of our victories. Any progress that gets us closer to the world we deserve is worth celebrating.
Beyond 2024
There is no question that many young people –especially directly impacted Black, brown, queer, and immigrant youth– are feeling maligned by an overwhelming sense of doom and catastrophe given all that our communities are facing. From rising gun violence to the climate crisis to attacks on reproductive freedoms, immigrant rights, and more, Gen-Z and millennials are facing compounding challenges that threaten our safety and futures.
This year especially, young people are assessing how to participate in democracy moving forward. Many are hungry to move decision-makers in new ways that truly invest in our collective futures and honor our rights and safety, yet they still lack a political home and community spaces where their leadership is invested in, nurtured, and grown, and where they can understand the way their voices and their power matter.
That is why our intention to develop stronger cross-movement partnerships where we can train together, strategize together, and build bridges that connect our liberation struggles, is so important. Ultimately, it is about ensuring our communities together have the tools and the resources to be able to effectively stay engaged for decades to come and continue to lead the way in creating the changes our lives and futures depend on.
Featured image courtesy of United We Dream.