Las Estrellas Dare to DREAM
If these young women are the future organizers of tomorrow, then The Resistance is in competent hands. The young women of Yuma High School’s Las Estrellas were expected to march in Yuma County’s fair parade. But they wanted to do more: they wanted to protest the current administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, show their support for DACA, and remind fairgoers that the agriculture and industry of eastern Colorado depends on immigrant labor.
Fearful that their Facebook Group may have been infiltrated by an informant who would prevent the protest, Las Estrellas eschewed social media and planned their action entirely by word of mouth. The progressive network of Resistance organizations that now spans Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District from Yuma to La Junta and from Longmont to Limon swung into action to support these brave and idealistic young people.
Representatives of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (CIRC) came from Longmont to honor the event. Because Las Estrellas could not solicit media attention openly, Craig Stevens and Chiu-Ki Chan of WTF Colorado were on hand to photograph and videograph the event.
“If there are no pictures, it didn’t happen” has become a mantra of the Resistance. Well, this event certainly DID happen, and we are so proud of these young stars for getting it done!
FEARLESS!
The demonstration of support for DACA was a carefully guarded secret that was weeks in the planning. The customary appearance of the high school group Las Estrellas in the parade amplified into a major event supported by activists from across the Eastern Plains.
It happened in MIA Senator Cory Gardner’s back yard. It happened in the District of Rep. Ken Buck, a man of such ideological purity that it precludes compassion. And the children, and their parents, and their teachers, were fearless.
All the organization was done by word of mouth because of a suspicion that an agent of Gardner’s was following Las Estrellas on Facebook. Think about it. A group of high school students in 2017 organized an event in secret, person to person to person, without social media, involving national and grassroots activists, recruiting underground media to document their passage because they knew they’d be stopped if they tried to alert the mainstream media.
Many of the Dreamers (documented or not) carried signs to remind the parade watchers how essential the labor of the Spanish-speaking, often migrant worker is to the economy of the Eastern Plains. “We milk the cows” one sign read. “The Agriculture of Colorado Depends on Immigrants.” “The Industry of Colorado Depends on Immigrants.”
Those brave youths stood next to their Democratic Senator, Michael Bennet, on the podium and spoke from their hearts. Their Republican Senator drove a tractor with a closed cab in the parade. They didn’t get to stand next to him.
We can’t know the stories of the people who marched. We can’t know who has documents and who doesn’t. We can’t know why the undocumented are here. Did they come deliberately, to earn more than they could at home, to send money back to family in Mexico? Surely some did. Did they come legally on a temporary work permit, and stay? Were they trapped by a love, by a pregnancy, by an illness? We cannot know and we should not dare to judge.
What we can know is that they are people. That they are workers. That they are here. In America. Fearless. As Americans of conscience, we should all dare to say the same. To stand every day against encroaching tyranny, and say it: I am an American. And I am Fearless.
Originally published in The Weathervane No 12 on August 10, 2017. [Subscribe]
