Of Latinos, social media and talking about what matters

Dolores Huerta at the Latism 11 awards gala.

Thanks to Ana Roca Castro (@AnaRC), Elianne Ramos (@ergeekgoddess), Reina Valenzuela (@SOYLAMAR) and Elma Placeres Dieppa (@mzelma) I had the opportunity and privilege to attend the Latinos in Social Media (Latism) conference in Chicago this past Wednesday through Friday.

In addition to the obvious but somehow startling revelation that, yes, there are real people behind those twitter avatars with which I’ve become familiar by attending Latism twitter parties on Thursday nights (9 p.m., use #latism to participate) what was most interesting to note was breadth and range of this group of digitally engaged Latino professionals.

One of the interesting sessions I attended was a White House town hall on educational excellence for Hispanics. The brainstorming session brought together Latino bloggers and online journalists to voice their views on which existing educational initiatives are working, which challenges are being addressed and which aren’t, and the role social media has in meeting some of these challenges.

One of the strongest voices in this conversation was Vince Leung, whose MentorMob.com uses crowdsourcing to form an information portal and streamlines the process of accessing authoritative research online. Another was Carlos Macias (@PorColombia) who spoke of the need to ease social media and access restrictions in schools in order to incorporate social media in enrichment of curricula. “Mommy” bloggers from Miami and Los Angeles approached the questions posed by José Rico (@HispanicEd) at the town hall event from deeply personal perspectives about parental engagement. The level of engagement during the two-hour session was remarkable, and the ideas flying around were both incisive and wide-ranging.

But in this conversation I missed the voices of those facing the educational challenges of neighborhoods such as Kensington in Philadelphia or parts of Coatesville in Pennsylvania -- those for whom digital access isn’t at all certain or regular, and for whom traditional forms of parental engagement in education are circumscribed by the actualities of multiple jobs, work shifts that proscribe participation and inability to pay for what would allow their children equal educational advantages.

While all of us participating in the town hall were cognizant of this sort of challenge to educational attainment for Latinos, we were all speaking from privilege. We were at a social media summit, after all, and most of us are deeply engaged in digital discourse in ways that many of the working poor members of the extended Latino community cannot even imagine, much less experience. In my opinion those are the voices the White House most needs to hear at town halls of this sort.

By their nature conferences attract those who have the means and ability to incur the costs to attend -- and that’s just the reality even the most high-minded organizers have to contend with. The Latism organizers, strongly focused as they are on social media’s ability to do social good, organized a number of panel presentations to try and address some of the realities born of income disparity, including one on the digital divide within the Latino community, which I imagine dovetailed with some of the educational excellence summit’s concerns (I could not attend it, so I can’t speak authoritatively on whether it did).

Predictably, for a conference informed and formed by social media, the days were rife with workshops and panels on optimizing use of Facebook, Google+, Linked-in, Twitter, Wordpress, and building traffic to web sites and blogs. Tony Vargas (@TonyTorero and www.TonyTorero.com), a self-described technology evangelist, earned rave reviews for his presentation at the conference and spoke of sharing some of his tips and insights on his web site.

I enjoyed a workshop on the use of Spanglish in marketing and blogging, led by Juan Alanis (@juanofwords) and with the participation of Spanglish Baby blog’s Ana Flores, Pamela Diaz of General Mills, and Manuel Delgado, the CEO of the Agua marketing group. I engaged in some intriguing discussions about the challenges of multiracial Latino experience with Kiki Lightbourn (@kiki_liki); the healing power of writing with Ezzy Guerrero-Languzzi (@ezzylanguzzi); whether unfocused sensitivity to discrimination leads to victim mentality with Jean Manuel Jimenez (@jeanmanolo) and Berenice Arzate-Marsh (@BereMar3); and touched on a number of newspaper/journalism questions with Hernán Guaracao (@ALDIACEO) and Vanessa Smith (@ImpactoLN).

One of the surprises of the conference, and consequent abiding sadness, is two-fold. While people like Julio Varela (@julito77) and ImmigrantArchive Project founder Tony Hernandez (@TonyHTonyH) tweet regularly about issues of concern to those of us deeply involved in advocacy for immigrants (and both of them were at the conference) there was only one panel that addressed the ways social media can counteract the worsening immigration debate and its impact on all Latinos, regardless of documentation status.

That panel (“Social Media for Social Change”) was slated for Friday afternoon, when many participants were already headed to the airport to catch flights back home (including me) so regrettably I can’t tell you much about it. Except that the moderator Cheryl Aguilar (@cheryl_aguilar) is, at a good 20-years my junior, the person I want to be when I grow up. The two panelists I had heard about, Tony Hernandez, and Pennsylvania Dream Activist María Marroquin (@MGM1987, read my earlier interview with her here) are strong voices for good in the immigration debate. I hope attendance for this panel was stellar, I hope more Latino/a bloggers came away from it with the commitment to shine a light in this dark place of our nation’s psyche.

That is certainly what the keynote speaker at the awards gala on Thursday night urged. Dolores Huerta (www.doloreshuerta.org), already a hero to some of us through her historic advocacy for farm workers along with the legendary César Chávez, devoted a good portion of her keynote to highlighting the importance of the fight for justice for immigrants. 

 

The second part to the abiding sadness I mentioned is that I met precious few registrants from religious organizations whose work is tied to Latino communities. I was actually in the position to note this because I worked the registration desk almost all of the first day and a good bit of the second. I also realized in conversations with bloggers that though I’m aware of how involved churches are active both nationally and at the grassroots level in immigration advocacy, most people haven’t a clue about that heartfelt and sometimes heartbreaking commitment by people of faith.

Like any conference, much of the enjoyment comes from meeting and getting to know people you wouldn’t otherwise meet. For me, one of those people was María Castrejon. Like me she’s been involved in journalism for most of her adult life, though she was in broadcast rather than print journalism. She knows, from the inside, how lopsided media coverage of immigration issues and its depiction of immigrants has tended to be.

I -- uncharacterically enough -- took part in a “30-second pitch” event in which I spoke about immigration advocacy -- its urgency, its primacy in safeguarding human dignity -- and how it can permeate every aspect of our creative and intellectual lives. I spoke specifically in terms of my work with Catholic advocates, my blog and my novel, Ink, which Crossed Genres (www.crossedgenres.com) will be publishing and releasing Sept. 2012. Afterward María sought me out. She understood exactly what I was speaking of. She wants to begin to make documentaries about the lives of the undocumented immigrants she’s met over her many years as a journalist. She wants to tell the stories she never hears or sees in the mainstream media.

And she will, I’m sure of it. Because the one thing I can say with certainty about all the Latism 11 participants I met is that they are passionate. And devoted. And determined. Overall, a rather amazing bunch of people.

The other certainty? Boy, they can tweet fast and often and never once miss a beat.

Brave dreams: An interview with María Marroquín

Update: According to the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition, María and the six other undocumented students arrested in Georgia on April 5 have been released. "ICE agents interviewed the students, but ultimately declined to get involved," said the e-mail release PICC sent out April 8.

When María Marroquín first came to the United States at the age of 13, she thought she’d be seeing Mickey Mouse. She was excited and anticipating her first visit to Disneyworld.

That’s what she told the Transportation Security Officer at Miami International Airport who asked which tourist sites she and her family planned to visit during their visit from Lima, Peru. And, in fact, she stayed long enough in Miami to see palm trees for the first time, to swelter in the near tropical heat she had never experienced before and to notice “how clean and beautiful” the streets of this American city were.

Her family did eventually board a bus but it didn’t take them anywhere near the Orlando resort. Instead, it deposited them in New Jersey and into a life María didn’t expect.

That is — the life a regular American teenager. Except for one thing. They were undocumented.

María’s father had a job lined up already — doing laundry and cleaning at a hotel. It was very different than the work he had done in Lima. The family owned a restaurant there — a going venture for 10 years — and María’s father drove a taxicab at night to make ends meet. But he came to realize that without radically changing the family’s economic circumstances María and her two siblings wouldn’t graduate from high school.

The fact that work as a cabbie during the night shift was becoming increasingly dangerous helped to finalize the decision to come to the United States on visas — which the family overstayed. They moved to Pennsylvania not long after their initial foray north. María was enrolled in a high school in Cheltenham.

“I didn’t realize what being undocumented would mean,” María said. “None of my friends knew. I felt really isolated (and) like I couldn’t trust anyone. I thought they wouldn’t understand if I told them about my status. I felt embarrassed and ashamed.”

María’s parents took English as a Second Language classes, they paid taxes, they enrolled their three children in school, and took them with them to Spanish-language Masses — especially the ones at St. William Parish in Philadelphia, at which the community of Philadelphia-area Peruvian immigrants celebrate feast days together. María’s mother started working as a nanny, and the family settled into building their lives.

They consulted with lawyers early on to see if there was a way to legalize their status, but it proved a fruitless pursuit. After that, María and her siblings stopped talking to each other about their irregular status. They lived with it, in silence. Even so, she credits her family and her faith with getting her through .

She lived, María said, scared.

Her junior year in high school was marked by depression. She never knew what to answer when her friends asked her why she didn’t drive or have a driver’s license, or why she couldn’t participate in the many activities that seemed so normal to her peers. Nothing that required a social security number or government I.D. was open to her.

“It was so difficult,” she said. “And I knew I couldn’t build my life on lies. I don’t blame (my parents) for bringing me here. I don’t know what I’d be doing if I were in Peru. They wanted us to have a future.

"They are just regular people who work hard and want to take care of their children.”

In 2004 she graduated from high school and enrolled in Montgomery County Community College. She attended part-time, paying international student tuition rates — much higher than in-state or out-of-state ones — out of pocket. No financial aid was available to her. Then, like now, she earned money by babysitting and at odd jobs, and put it all toward her tuition.

It took María five years to get her associate’s degree while she worked and saved money and took what courses she could. She maintained a 3.98 GPA, and majored in social science. She’d like to continue on to get a four-year-degree — she’d be the first person in her family attain that — and to some day go to law school.

But no matter how hard she works and what she accomplishes academically, María knows the future she faces is limited by her undocumented status.

“I consider myself an American,” she said. “Everything I know — all my friends, my ideals — come from this country. I want to make my life here.”

María had hopes that the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act) — bipartisan legislation that would have made an estimated 65,000 young people eligible for permanent legal status upon completion of two years of college or two years of honorable service in the military — would pass in Congress. That dream was dashed in December of 2010, when the Senate rejected the bill.

The DREAM Act would have not only given María an eventual path to legalization, but would have made it possible for her to continue her education at an in-state tuition rate.

“My parents sacrificed everything for me to be able to continue with my education,” María said. “To know I couldn’t felt like I was letting them down.”

And, she had tired of hiding.

March 19th she and six other undocumented youths “came out of the shadows” and told their stories at a rally at of Philadelphia’s Independence Mall.

“We decided to share our stories,” she said. “All we want is to continue our education. We want to do the right thing, we want to contribute. This is the only country we know and we consider it home, and we wanted to put a face to the immigration issue.”

“I know that there were undocumented youth listening” in the crowd of 150 people that gathered, she said. “I wanted to talk to those (in the crowd) who feel as alone as I had.

"A state DREAM Act bill would be great — then (young people) could afford to go to college and not be dropping out of high school.”

The crowd at the rally, mostly high school and college age people, according to María, were receptive. “They give me hope,” she said.

Her advocacy for a pathway to legalization for immigrant youth (she is the co-founder of DreamActivist Pennsylvania and DreamActivist.org) has been supported by many people — the representatives from Catholic organizations who have stood by her at press conferences, her Filipino boyfriend (who is also undocumented) and her siblings.

María’s sister, 21, dreams of becoming a pediatrician; her brother, 20, a Navy SEAL. Both are experiencing the same frustrations María has, and the same thwarted desire to give back to the nation they love.

Her parents, though proud of their eldest daughter, are scared for her, she said.

And now they must be panicked.

Yesterday (April 5) María was one of seven young people who delivered a petition to the president of Georgia State University asking him to keep the institution's doors open to undocumented students — something GSU is slated to stop doing as of the fall semester.

The seven proceeded to engage in civil disobedience — including marching through the campus and disrupting traffic. An hour later, according to the Dream is Coming web site — which is tracking their tweets — all seven were arrested and placed in an Atlanta jail.

It is quite possible, maybe even likely given the jail's alleged working relationship with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they will be turned over to ICE.

“(Deportation) is always in the back of your mind,” María said during our interview March 24. “But this is something that is much bigger than myself. Our cause is just and it is right. That’s enough for me.”


A Philadelphia vigil for María Marroquín and the other six undocumented youths who participated in the civil disobedience at GSU will be held tomorrow (April 7) at 5 p.m. at Senator Toomey’s office at 1628 JFK Blvd. in Philadelphia.

Photos of the March 19th rally courtesy of María Marroquín.