DREAM Act Finishes in Top 10 'Ideas for Change'

by Dave Bennion · 2009-01-18 20:38:00 UTC
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Congratulations to the DREAM community for mobilizing to make "Pass the DREAM Act" one of the winning Ideas for Change that were presented to the Obama transition team on Friday.

Prerna wrote at New American Media about how it was done.

"Could you send an email out to the list and get them to vote/submit their own ideas here?"

"Sure. We have about 80 people on our mailing list right now. We could probably get about 30 of them to vote."

"LOL."

And so it began. Ideas for Change is a nationwide competition to identify the best ideas for change in America. The top 10 will be presented to the Obama administration on January 16. The message went out on a small mailing list of undocumented students collected from the DREAM Act Portal -- an online community for undocumented students.

Juan Rodriguez receives the message on the mailing list and forwards it out the Students Working for Equal Rights in Florida. Other Facebook groups follow suit with Greisa from Texas mass-messaging 11,000 people on the Facebook DREAM Act cause.

Students from Philadelphia and Florida hit up every pro-migrant blogger on the Citizen Orange list with a personal narrative, getting alternative media exposure.

. . .

Welcome to Web 2.0 undocumented student activism. Youth in the usually-somber waiting rooms of history are bustling with renewed enthusiasm and energy. Trapped in marginal status, ignored by the mainstream media, with their backs to the wall and everything to loose, undocumented youth are emerging as leaders in their own movement for passage of the DREAM Act.

I will be watching to see what happens next as change.org works with nonprofit sponsors and DreamACTivist.org to push the issue forward in the early days of the Obama administration.  With the President-elect on record supporting the Act and a larger Democratic majority in Congress, DREAM's chances look good even in a down economy.

Dave Bennion
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