Hoping someone On Here might still have the video of John Lewis at an immigrants’ rights rally in Atlanta sometime between 2011-12 where he’s telling undocumented organizers and allies that if police are going to them, they’ll have to arrest him, and the jails can’t hold us all.
I remember live-streaming that rally in my office as a young attorney and just breaking down crying at how beautiful it was to have someone so important in the civil rights movement embrace the immigrants’ rights movement in a time when our Friends were deporting record numbers.
Last night I posted video of his interview prior to being arrested at a protest in DC to call for comprehensive immigration reform. Lewis took the maximalist position: None of the 11 million people who live here without papers should be deported. No family torn apart. #Not1More
Remember that when you see establishment Obama officials lionize him. At the height of the terror that far surpassed the current regime’s numbers, Obama’s lead immigration policy advisor Cecilia Muñoz chided us: “Not One More is not an enforcement strategy” before slinking away.
She didn’t want to defend the Obama administration’s brand new for-profit prisons for refugee families to those who knew what was happening inside.
Lionizing Lewis while ignoring the fact that they enforced policies he got arrested to help stop relies on our collective amnesia.
Lionizing Lewis while ignoring the fact that they enforced policies he got arrested to help stop relies on our collective amnesia.
Going to *arrest them
