La Lucha Continua

about immigration, that is. The Archdiocese has a big campaign on to encourage elected officials to find more just solutions than building a wall on the Mexican border. They are not explicitly supporting the Kennedy-McCain bill, but pro-immingration analysts pretty much agree that that is the best proposal out there right now, from what I hear. It creates a guest worker program and provides additional visas to reunite families separated by immigration status. Here's what Ted himself has to say about his bill:

http://www.tedkennedy.com/journal/724/fighting-for-real-immigration-reform

Anyway, yesterday there were big card campaigns going on at Holy Cross and St. Joe's. Unfortunately, they weren't the most highly organized. The college kids at Holy Cross are taking over this weekend to make sure people know who their US Congressman is, and not just to send them to Luis Gutierrez, who already is on their side of the issue. I think I'll have to do this for St. Joe's because more of us probably live in Dan Lipinski's district. Someone other than me had heard about Democrats voting for the nasty Sensenbrenner bill in the house, that would build a wall and criminalize anyone who helped an undocumented immigrant. The story was that some Dems who supported the bill (Lipinski and even Jan Schakowsky-ouch!!) did so knowing it would die in the Senate and getting some Republican votes on some project of theirs in return. The nuance I picked up last night was that this vote was supposed to insulate them from right-wing heat. Well, now they've pissed off at least some of their base instead. Oops!

There's a big march on Friday, which organizers hope will be at least as big as the one last summer (see July posts). So at least 40,000 or more.