A Message From Co-President Lorella Praeli:
Today’s immigration debate is defined by a crisis of imagination. Too many people are stuck in old frameworks – recycling the same ideas, the same fights, and the same fears. Across the country, there is vital and inspiring work happening on harm reduction and crisis response. I’m moved by how many people are showing up to protect their neighbors, co-workers, and their cities in the face of cruelty and chaos.
And yet, even with that courage – and the energy we saw in this month’s elections – much of the policy conversation, political leadership, and media remains trapped in the past. The moral clarity and organizing in our communities haven’t yet translated into a new vision for the future of U.S. immigration, let alone a politics capable of carrying it forward.
This moment offers a rare opportunity to reimagine and build the future of U.S. immigration – to chart a new path with clarity, conviction, and power. This month I launched a Substack to share lessons learned in the last 15 years and help spark a new politics and vision. In the months ahead, we’ll not only seed that vision, but also begin to map how we build the power to make it real.
Subscribe to Lorella’s Substack for insights on immigration, opportunity, and the future of the American Dream, and check out her interview with journalist Jorge Ramos on Así Veo Las Cosas.
Program Pulse
Coloradans Show Up for Students and Working Families
On Election Day, Coloradans secured a victory for students, low-income families, farmers, and local communities. As we wrote last month, Community Change Action went all-in to support the coalition of grassroots groups behind the Healthy School Meals for All Campaign, which won two measures that ensure every child in Colorado — regardless of income or immigration status — can get free, healthy school meals. The measures also protect access to food benefits for families who rely on SNAP and enact a statewide tax-based program that ensures the wealthy pay their fair share for the program. This is a huge win — and we’re not stopping there. We’re already organizing more community meetings and working with partners like Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition and Center for Health Progress on state-level Medicaid defense, medical debt, and non-profit hospital accountability campaigns. Stay tuned for future updates on our work to reduce the harm of the Big Ugly Bill and build community power in Colorado and other states.
No Shortcuts to Winning Elections
This month, voters across the country rejected the MAGA agenda by wide margins, showing that when people have something meaningful to vote for — not just against — they turn out. It wasn’t a typical off-year election. What is typical is that pundits and political practitioners are engaging in the usual bickering over data and tactics while overlooking the obvious: We need both data and the long-term trust and insight that comes from year-round organizing. In Data’s Important, But Humans are Too , Community Change Action’s Director of Electoral Powerbuilding Franco Caliz-Aguilar says, “When we rely only on what’s measurable, like cost-per-vote calculations and click-through rates, we miss what’s meaningful: the long-term trust built through year-round engagement with voters, the cultural shifts that happen when people see themselves as part of a movement, and the compound interest of relationships built over multiple election cycles.” Read his full piece for more on why data is necessary but not sufficient to win elections and create lasting change.
Before You Go
- In Forging a Path to Democracy With Labor and Solidarity at the Center, in Nonprofit Quarterly, co-authors Dorian Warren and Darrick Hamilton make the point that, “Real solidarity means linking arms across lines of difference to fight shared systems of oppression, even when our immediate interests don’t perfectly align.”
- ChangeWire Fellow Emily Withnall reflects on the stigma and barriers people who rely on SNAP face in Taking the Shame Out of Healthy Eating.
- In Kids Belong in Classrooms: How Fighting Trump’s Violent Deportation Machine Starts With You, ChangeWire Fellow Val Weisler reminds us that, when fighting injustice, “an imperfect presence will always be more powerful than the fear-driven idea that someone else will do it better.”
- Reductions in federal childcare funding are forcing providers in Indiana to make cuts that will hit their most vulnerable families hardest. In The 74, Community Change Director of Care Jennifer Wells says, “We know it’s going to snowball across the country.”
