Shortly after the Trump administration’s anti-immigration strategy began to take effect last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) launched the Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative (SIFI). With four bare-bones offices in Georgia and Louisiana, SIFI is helping undocumented immigrants by getting them released from detention on bond. Once outside of detention, these people have a […] Read more
I went to Broward County at the invitation of our colleagues there. There was no speech to give. No press conference. No interviews. There was just disbelief and pain and the need to have a human heart hear of the hurt and hold each other. This hurt is now too familiar. Only weeks earlier our colleagues […] Read more
We heard a lot from the GOP President last night. He touted his billionaire tax handout and isolationist immigration policies. But you know what he didn’t discuss? He failed to lay out a plan how his education department, helmed by the extremely unqualified Betsy DeVos, would provide opportunities for all students to succeed. How students—one of our […] Read more
Upon taking office, President Trump signaled on more than one occasion that he’d look at DACA recipients—Dreamers, aspiring young Americans, neighbors, colleagues, and, yes, our students—with ‘great heart.’ Instead, today he cruelly abandoned his promise and decided to rescind DACA, disrupting their lives, and tearing apart our families and communities. By dismantling DACA, Trump has […] Read more
I’m an Army Brat and proud of it. My dad escaped the poverty of a sharecropper’s life in Mississippi at the age of 16, fudged on his age and joined the military. It meant a better life for him and being able to provide for his wife and six children. It was the door to opportunity back in […] Read more
Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on July 20th, introduced the Dream Act of 2017, legislation aimed at granting legal status and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. The bipartisan legislation would also provide a long-term legislative solution for Deferred Action for Childhood […] Read more
Students who are victims of sexual assault or harassment are often afraid they won’t be believed or taken seriously, and terrified they’ll be victimized in a different way by people who refuse to investigate their claims and even insinuate that they “asked for it” based on what they wore, said, or did. Rather than reassuring and […] Read more
A year ago, I had tears in my eyes to learn of one of our students, Wildin Acosta, was taken by ICE agents to be deported. He was in the country living with his family in North Carolina awaiting word on his request for asylum, fleeing the violence of his home country. When Wildin Acosta left […] Read more
To Vicente Rodríguez, activism comes as naturally as breathing. That’s why the University of California, Riverside DREAMer is studying to become a high school English and ethnic studies teacher; for him, teaching and activism are linked. That’s also why wherever he goes, he takes a supply of “Know Your Rights” cards that explain the constitutional […] Read more
Educators Alarmed at White House’s Dangerous Proposal to Arm Teachers
The White House repeated its dangerous proposal to arm teachers in the wake of another mass school shooting. The National Education Association represents 3 million educators who work in América’s public schools and on college campuses. Let us be crystal clear and reiterate that our students need fewer guns in schools — not more of […] Read more