Defining America
Tonight, Drake University is once again hosting a gathering of all the Democratic presidential candidates — the last before the Iowa caucuses begins on February 1st. This CNN Iowa Democratic Town Hall/Forum is going to be, I think, uneventful. Considering where we left off after the fourth Democratic presidential debate, this town hall will only be a rehashing of the views of these candidates and it’s doubtful there will be much room for jabbing at each other. A sincere effort was made by CNN and the Iowa Democratic Party to field substantive questions from students and Iowans in general, so here’s hoping that those who are still undecided receive what they need from the candidates’ responses to make a final decision. I, myself, am still officially undecided, but I will be announcing a concrete choice on who I will caucus for very soon. Rather than discuss what we may see come out of tonight’s town hall, I want to shed light on something different.
This weekend, I attended the inaugural Define American Film Festival hosted in the Des Moines Art Center. The film festival is the brainchild of renowned journalist, Jose Antonio Vargas. Mr. Vargas is an undocumented immigrant and his nonprofit organization, Define American, seeks to elevate the national conversation around U.S. immigration policy. Of course, the Define American team very purposely chose to host the first DAFF in Des Moines before the Iowa caucuses in an effort to siphon some of the national spotlight and help provide authentic and vastly different perspectives on immigrants and immigration to the media and Iowans who would go on to, as first-in-the-nation, choose who may very likely be the next President of the United States.
There were six films preceded by six shorts, all exploring different immigrant experiences. After each showing, there were panel discussions made up of immigration experts, journalists, filmmakers and cast members and also brief Q&A sessions with the audience. You can check out the full line up of films screened here. I chose to watch The Muslims Are Coming! and Documented. I’m not writing to review these films. Although I thought they were both incredible and they certainly jolted my emotions around quite a bit, I can’t say that I learned anything new as someone who is already neck deep in the issues discussed at this event. At times, I found myself wondering what sort of people were present in the room. Oftentimes, it seems that those of similar political and ideological affiliations congregate amongst themselves, pat each other on the back and nod in agreement with views they already know all too well. In The Muslims Are Coming!, I admired that the Muslim comedians planned their tour through southern states where views on Islam were particularly skewed. So, too, should such substantive and contentious discussions be taken to the less agreeable segments of the country. And Define American may do just that as some of the next film festival locations being considered are in the Bible Belt.
Besides the films, the next best thing about the Define American Film Festival were the panel discussions. There were so many great quotes and many of them are shown in the Twitter conversation #DAFF. One of the most compelling sayings of the evening came at the end of the festival from Jose Antonio Vargas himself. Vargas said that he was once asked by an immigration activist of whether he had considered that the U.S.’s broken immigration system was not an accident; that an ineffective path to citizenship resulting in millions of undocumented migrants might be a deliberate effect by a government addicted to cheap labor. This is an important point and a damning indictment of our country. Iowans who care about the future of this country should be concerned with the nature of our immigration policy and look to the candidate who is sincerely interested in changing how things work today to something better that provides more dignity, access and a clear process to citizenship for immigrants, documented or otherwise.
