DREAM Act Dreamers, Plan B

To think that the Dreamers have a viable option is to misunderstand their reality. Dreamers are the students and their supporters who organized themselves across the country in support of the DREAM Act. After Saturday’s vote in the US Senate that defeated the measure and tumbled the dreams of millions of undocumented students, many people believed that with their dream dashed a valuable momentum may have been lost.  It’s easy to point to a culture of fatalism and walk away.

But the DREAMERS aren’t walking, at least not walking away. They have no other choice but to stay their course.

In Los Angeles the Dreamers took to the streets in the rain, in San Antonio the hunger strikers planned a poignant first meal. Nowhere did the Dreamers resign themselves to the loss and quietly move into the shadows.

There is nothing else they can do. No hay de otra…but not in the sense that all hope is gone. On the contrary, they see no other option but success. That’s not fatalism, that’s hunkering down, that’s working on plan B.

The push for the DREAM Act served to build a nation-wide network of young Latinos with an inherent call to action. Plan B is about what they’ll do with it. With at least two years of GOP control of congress that plan will be part staying power and part building. I’m anxious to see what’s to come.

[Photo courtesy presente.org]