This Saturday I’ll be on a panel at Left Forum titled “Racism and Resistance in the Immigration Debate,” with former FAIR communications director Isabel Macdonald, Monica Novoa of Drop the I-Word, Sonia Guinansaca of the New York State Youth Leadership Council and Esther Kaplan of the Nation Institute, moderated by my former Paper Tiger colleague Denisse Andrade.
Below is the description. I’ll be talking about my recent article, “Time to ‘Drop and Leave’ Loaded Language,” among other things. If you’re in the New York area, stop by for what should be a very interesting conversation.
Racist, dehumanizing terms such as “illegal” play a crucial role in generating and reinforcing racial animus toward immigrants. This harmful and colonizing language, which is too often granted an unchallenged platform in the media, underpins policies that violate human rights, and hurt immigrants and all communities of color. On this panel, media activists, organizers and journalists discuss strategies of resistance and reflect on the lessons of their own work at the front-lines of the immigration debate. From the movement of “Dreamers”–the immigrant youth who have “come out as undocumented, unafraid and unapologetic” in the media, especially during the Dream Act campaign; to the Nation‘s expose of immigrant-bashing former CNN host Lou Dobbsâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢s reliance on undocumented labor; to a new campaign calling on journalists to “drop the I-word” (illegal) in their coverage of immigrants.
