Hi, everyone, welcome to The Florida Progressives Dot Com Podcast, Episode Five, for May 23rd, 2014. I'm Mike Eidson.
This show delivers news and updates via interviews with activists around the state on the issues that you, the people of Florida, care about. This episode is about immigration and, later in the show, the ways that progressives can collaborate through the use of Facebook.
As usual, listeners, stick around for the end of the show to hear the list of actions, groups, and resources discussed on the show that can help you effect positive change.
Edwin Enciso specializes in grassroots movement building. In 2010, as Florida Director of Democracia, he coordinated engagement of: 2,000 Latino small business owners on a clean energy support pledge, around 10,000 undocumented workers on census participation, 52,000+ Latinos on voter registration, and tens of thousands of Latinos on voting itself.
After the 2010 elections he helped coordinate conferences to draw community organizers from throughout the state to organize legislative engagement and to set policy priorities. In 2011 and 2012 he served as the State Community Organizer for the Florida AFL-CIO where he helped develop and support ten county-level community organizer networks in the model of the state network to share concerns, to identify opportunities to collaborate.
After leaving that role his focus has been on national comprehensive immigration reform. He serves as the coordinator for the CIR NOW campaign which supports organizing of several district teams working on reform.
Edwin, thanks for joining me today.
EE:
Thanks so much, Mike. Really appreciate being on the show.
ME:
Let’s start with the way that the Republican stance on immigration has changed. If you recall, it was roughly four years ago that the “Papers, Please” legislation came out of Arizona, [and] that was what was driving the conversation. They believed that, y’know, the federal government wasn’t acting enough on immigration, so Arizona had to “take things into their own hands,” and the rest of the country, at least from where I was sitting, it seemed like it was a negative reaction to what Arizona and Alabama did. But I remember, Governor Rick Scott, right when he became governor, he was endorsing the “Papers, Please” idea.
Nowadays, in this year, he is supporting the Florida tuition bill, to try to get undocumented immigrants, people that are not documented, [the ability] to go to college. People that came here through no fault of their own. So, throughout four years, the stance of the Republican Party has changed a lot.
What do you think about that turn, with Republicans, and are you finding any common ground with Republicans lately, through your work?
EE:
Thank you. Really great question. The challenge with how the landscape of immigration reform has changed has really come about because of, not only the movement that the immigrant-rights community has developed nationally, but also because of the political engagement of our community, over the course of the last presidential cycles especially. But over years we’ve gone from a smaller percentage of the voting population to now 10%. And also, something that’s changed is how we vote. I’ll get specific.
ME:
Sure.
EE:
Back in 2004, here in Florida, the Latino population voted only 41% for Candidate Kerry, and the rest voted for his opponent. So that’s a particular stance, on politics, here in Florida.
By 2008, that had shifted over to where, 57% voted for Candidate Obama, and the rest voted for his opponent. And in 2012 that trend strengthened nationally. So the pressure that that created is what really got the change from 2010 to 2012 established. In 2010, Latinos didn’t go out to vote in very strong numbers, especially as compared to 2008. In Florida, we had an especially disastrous year because, even though Rick Scott started his campaign blog by saying, “I support Arizona [Senate Bill] 1070...”
ME:
ME:
Yes.
EE:
...Latinos ended up voting for him by 51%.
ME:
Oh.
EE:
So that shift, and similar trends throughout the country, were disastrous for us. And that was the year of Arizona[-style] bills.
It’s an important lesson to be drawn. Because what happened before that is: there was an immigration reform effort in 2009 and 2010 that isn’t very well known. But the biggest effort centered around The DREAM Act. There was an effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform…
ME:
Yes. I remember that one.
EE:
Yes. But it only received 104 co-sponsorships. So what ended up happening after that was that, as a result of the frustration and the thought that there wasn’t going to be comprehensive immigration reform, there was a push by the youth movement for The DREAM Act, and they succeeded, beyond many people’s expectations, certainly my own, in obtaining 54 co-sponsorships in the Senate, for The DREAM Act.
ME:
Mm-hmm.
EE:
The trouble is, after the failure of The DREAM Act, we didn’t really hold the people who voted against it, or for it, into account. So, for example, here in Florida, there was widespread condemnation of both parties, although one party voted for The DREAM Act by 90% and the other party voted against it by 90%.
ME:
Yes. People can look at the system itself, and get cynical at everybody, instead of actually think about who was responsible. I mean, 54 votes in the Senate, most people would consider that a majority, but because of the way the Senate works, it failed in late 2010, like you said.
EE:
That’s exactly right. The trouble is, here in Florida, in 2011, there were several White House symposiums on Latinos and education. And one of the things that I did to help illustrate the problem that we had with holding people accountable, and then supporting the people who were friendly to us, in the room, I’d ask everyone, in a polite way, so as not to offend people directly, but I would say, “Look, whoever you respect the most, when it comes to Latino politics…”
ME:
Mm-hmm.
EE:
-- And now, consider that, at these White House meetings, the people gathered were among the most politically astute people we have in the community, the leaders of the Latino community -- and I would ask that person, “Who were the co-sponsors in Florida for the leading comprehensive immigration reform bill?” We had five. Really what I was saying was, “Do you know who the co-sponsors were, in Florida?”
And then what I told them, was “And consider. If people don’t respond, if they don’t tell you, that means that they weren’t a part of trying to obtain those co-sponsorships.”
ME:
Yes.
EE:
And I said, “Worse, for our cause, we lost supporters in 2010, because we didn’t know who were the people in Congress who were supporting us, and we didn’t support them, and we lost them.”
The consequences of this are disastrous for the community. We not only aren’t participating and leveraging democracy, but literally, the signal we’re sending out into the political mainstream is, “If you stand with us, we won’t stand with you.”
ME:
Yeah.
EE:
Which is the very worst thing that you can do in politics, because politics is a sort of agreement among everyone that we won’t use physical violence to settle our differences. We’ll use the political system to settle our differences. But it is just as tenacious as outright open conflict. And people expect that if you’re going to be an ally within this environment, if people stick their neck out for you, and you’re not willing to fight for yourself, you put yourself and your cause in a lot of trouble. So that’s where we were in 2010.
ME:
Yep. And I think it was a trend, not just with the Latino community, but all communities. What happened, with obviously the Tea Party movement taking hold starting in the year 2011, electorally, I would think there are a lot of regrets now. That [the progressive movement] didn’t do more when they had a better opportunity. So now it’s about restabilizing and building it back again. But who knows how long that’s going to take? Because of the way that Congress works. It may take a while. I just hope people don’t give up, y’know?
EE:
Well, this is where a lot of my work centers.
ME:
Mm-hmm.
EE:
Within not only the immigration-rights movement, but the progressive movement. And it is centered around helping build political acumen.
There is a duty that the Constitution puts on us, in Article I, Section I, which describes legislative powers. When it says that all of those powers are in the Congress, what it means is, one, as a Citizen of this Republic, or even as a resident of this nation, if there is an unjust law, you have a duty to demand that Congress change it.
ME:
Mm-hmm.
EE:
Now if Congress fails to do that, then you have a second duty, which is to take note of people who were supportive of reform, of just change, and to stand with them. And then, two, for those people who oppose just reform, you have a duty to remove them, and replace them with people who are willing to change things. And if you’re not paying attention, if your movement isn’t guided by that principle, then you undermine democracy, because I will tell you, the people that are advancing… Then, you are basically abdicating that space to the people that do. And that’s a huge problem, as you said, not just with people in the immigrant-rights movement, but with all movements.
We have a lot to learn from the Obama campaign. They were very successful in drawing minority communities out. And that really made a huge difference, because when we didn’t show up, in 2010, we ended up disrespected. We had to deal with all of these terrible Arizona-style laws that popped up throughout the nation.
But when we participated in 2012, the reverse happened. Not only did the breaks get put on that agenda, but we started to move things in the opposite direction towards reform. We succeeded, within six months after the election of passing the most comprehensive immigration reform bill in decades, through the Senate. And a year later, we were successful in going from that 104 co-sponsors back in 2010 to now having 200 co-sponsors for the leading immigration reform effort, which is HR15.
ME:
Mm-hmm. And that’s in the House of Representatives, right?
EE:
That’s in the House of Representatives, exactly.
ME:
Right, yeah. When Ray Seaman was on the show, in episode two, he and I spoke briefly about how Rick Scott slashed education down, bigtime. Y’know, not just him, obviously, but the Legislature. And now, this year, because it’s an election year, they’re restoring education funding slightly.
I would say the same thing is happening with immigration issues. The Florida tuition bill, great news, right? Are you happy to hear about the Florida tuition bill? Because it sounds like --
EE:
Of course.
ME:
Yeah. But then, is it going to fool voters? [laughs] Is the trick going to work? Or are they going to remember the full four-year term of Rick Scott?
EE:
Well, this is why electoral engagement is so important, because you really need to… It’s sort of like fighting. If you don’t practice boxing, and you just jump into a ring, or if you end up in a fight, and you’ve never exercised in that way, you’re at a serious disadvantage. The reality of American politics is that people get ready for this. They know that power is going to get granted to decision-makers, and they invest in training and prepping for that fight. And our opposition is very effective. Very effective.
So the trouble with what our opposition is doing right now, throughout many legislatures, where they are helping a lot of immigrant-community advocates pass these sorts of bills, even though, not even four years ago, they were pushing the extreme opposite…
ME:
Mm-hmm.
EE:
...In my opinion, has very little to do with actual care for our community, because if they wanted to support our community, they could publicly advocate for comprehensive immigration reform, with a pathway to citizenship.
ME:
Yes.
EE:
The realpolitik, and by “realpolitik” I mean the…
ME:
Kind of the “behind the scenes” stuff that really…
[Editor’s note: not my best definition…
EE:
The “behind the scenes,” exactly. The, sort of, hard analysis of what’s happening is that the opposition has the political position where they’ve agreed already on The DREAM Act, at the national level. They’ve agreed on granting all sorts of rights, shy of citizenship.
So this effort to basically push through the federal version of their reform program is not a great concession on their part. This is what they’ve already agreed to do as a result of the federal fight that we’ve been in since 2013.
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be very happy and proud of our movement for securing what they can for our students, and in some cases, driver’s licenses for others, and other benefits and rights. The thing is that we have to be politically astute and understand that they’re not really giving us more. In fact, in most cases they’re giving us much less than what the national fight has already agreed on. And so, we still, during this cycle, need to make sure that we hold them accountable.
If you really care about immigrant communities, then agree to support a resolution, through the state -- and there was one, in Florida, so they have an opportunity to explain why they did or did not support that -- but explain why you did or did not support a resolution in support of federal comprehensive immigration reform, like many other states have passed.
And it’s the same in Congress. Why wouldn’t you co-sponsor HR15? And if you haven’t co-sponsored HR15, then you’re the reason why reform hasn’t passed. And we need to hold them accountable. That’s the missing element of, not only the immigration-rights movement, but as we mentioned before, this is one of the chief challenges of a lot of movements. That’s why this work is so important.
And the Congressional District fight in the special election of District 13, really is a warning to us all. Because the results of that election was very scary, from our perspective.
ME:
This was David Jolly vs. Alex Sink, right?
EE:
That’s exactly right. And Lucas Overby, the libertarian, who was also a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform.
But when you look at the numbers, the returns, you see that -- there’s always a drop during the non-presidential years. When you take a look at the highest performing turnout in 2012, you have 74% of the white vote [that] turned out, 72% of the black vote, 64% of the Latino vote, and 64% of what the Supervisors of Elections call “Other.”
When you go to 2010, there’s a drop down to 54% of the white vote, 42% for the black vote, 32% for the Latino vote, and 31% for “Other.”
But in this special election, at a time when Latinos should have been focused nationally, not just in the state or at that county, but nationally, on leveraging this as an example to the country, of what is going to happen to Latinos, I mean, to anyone, who says that they’re going to keep this new Jim Crow system over our communities?
Instead, what happened is the reverse, so 42% of the white vote came out. There was a radical drop, down to 24% of the black vote. There was also a drop, but not as bad, for the “Other” category. But, worst of all, the worst-performing group was 19.7%, which was the Latino community. And that’s disastrous for us.
ME:
Mm-hmm.
EE:
Because the signal that we send is, “You can hurt our families. We can plead with you to stop. And like a crazy bully, you’ve told us that you’re not going to.” And what do we do? We undervote.
ME:
Yeah.
EE:
So we’ve got to turn this around. It’s part of what we’re doing with the CIR NOW campaign. This is a grassroots campaign. It’s extraordinary in its accomplishments as a grassroots campaign. And one of the things that the delegates from all the different district teams did by agreement, on our statewide conference call, was to denounce the present strategy, which was to focus on the White House, focus on an executive order, and to state that this is a red herring, that so many leaders that are pushing the movement in that direction are mistaken about the extent of executive discretion that exists.
And especially the idea the the president, the executive branch of government, is to blame for two million deportations, is not only wrong, it’s a lie.
ME:
Oh, because I had read, y’know, that there is a level of discretion with the executive branch, in terms of how many deportations they choose to do. From what I read, Obama was even higher than Bush, at one point.
EE:
So that’s a really -- I’m really glad that we have the chance to talk, because that’s a problem that exists within the political consciousness, nationally. And we have a position paper on the CIR NOW website that really goes into this in detail. But I’ll give you the overview of some of the problems that exist.
ME:
Okay. And I’ll link to the report at the end of the show, too.
EE:
Thank you so much. I appreciate that, Mike.
ME:
Yep.
EE:
But the title of the report, if you go to the CIR NOW Facebook page, which is facebook.com/cirnow, there’s a navigation bar below the banner, and one of the options is “Notes.” And the top note says, “NotOneMoreDeportation.com By Executive Order is Wrong.” https://www.facebook.com/notes/cir-now/notonemoredeportationcom-by-executive-order-is-wrong/655597937828692
And basically, one of the things we alert the movement to are the judicial statements that have been made, regarding executive discretion. So we don’t want you to take our opinion for it. We want you to take a look at what judges have said about this.
And if you look, there was recently a suit by the unions that represent the Border Patrol and ICE agents, against [the now former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet] Napolitano, who was responsible for immigration enforcement.
And within that ruling, what the judge says is: “In its previous order, the court found that Congress’ use of the word ‘shall,’ in Section 125B2A, in The Immigration and Nationality Act, imposes a mandatory obligation on immigration officers, to initiate a removal of proceedings against aliens they encounter who are not,” quote, “clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to be admitted.”
The judge quotes the law here. And he goes on to say, “See also the application of U.S. A for historical site data,” and he quotes the case, “finding that the word ‘shall” of the Sword Communications Act, supposes a mandatory duty on courts to issue an order for disclosure when certain prerequisites are satisfied.
“Therefore, the court concluded the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their claim, and that The Department of Homeland Security has implemented a program contrary to Congressional mandate.”
This is a judge talking about the deferred action program of the president to help protect DREAMers from deportation. And what the judge has specifically said is that this program is running contrary to Congressional mandate. The only reason why this suit did not succeed, according to this judge, is because Congress took away the right of these unions to sue.
But if they had had this right, what this judge has said is that he thinks they would have prevailed. In other words, he would have declared that that executive order was unconstitutional. So that’s the limits of executive discretion. It’s not a dictatorship.
ME:
Okay. Final question on immigration is: When you encounter people that are hurt by these policies, and, y’know, their families are being broken apart, or they’re denied proper employment, or they’re denied access to college, what do you think is the biggest misconception about who they are, when it comes to the American electorate, overall?
EE:
I think that the biggest misconception is how much the nation benefits from it. I mean, a lot of people talk about how much the undocumented population pays in taxes, how basically they’ve been paying for Social Security and helping make sure the program remains solvent.
But even larger than that contribution, there was a study in 2008 by The Perryman Group, that was a study of the nine-million population, at that time.
And what they found is that, in extended revenues -- so not only in what these undocumented workers produced, but as you know, things that are produced then go into the warehousing cycle, so there’s that cycle. Then there’s the distribution cycle. There’s the retail cycle, there’s an aftermarket, there are related industries to all of these, from software to trucking to electricity. I mean, there are all sorts of industries that help manage what is produced by this undocumented population.
So in extended revenues, we benefit to the tune of $550 billion from this population, and of that time, $9 billion. So it’s much more now. And this was confirmed by a more recent California study of what amounts to half of the total undocumented population in California, so when you double that out you get confirmation of this.
So what people don’t understand is that there are people profiting, very, very greatly, from this. And the punishment against the white -- mostly white, I should say -- corporate owners, is a slap on the hand. For them, a cost of doing business.
ME:
Oh, you mean like, if they employ undocumented workers?
EE:
Exactly.
ME:
Okay.
EE:
And against this population it’s the extreme separation of families and the destruction of everything that they’ve been working for. And many of these families have been left destitute.
And what’s sick about this new indentured servitude is that, once upon a time, at least Americans, felt shame when they knew that there were corporations and people within our nation that were exploiting foreigners, taking advantage of them, and we were so outraged that we made it illegal to allow people to sell themselves into bondage.
But now, we’ve reached the point of what I would say is ethical degeneration, as a result of this radical-right agenda, where we blame the indentured servants for our system of indentured servitude, the one that we as a nation benefit from, to the tune of billions.
ME:
Yeah.
EE:
And so that’s the problem. It’s almost as if, we as a nation, there’s a sickness in our politics where we are blaming slaves for a system of slavery.
ME:
Yeah. All right. Let’s switch gears entirely and talk about some of the work that you’ve been doing online.
I wanted to specifically ask you about the use of Facebook and the use of conference calls. A lot of people just think of Facebook as a way to catch up with old friends and stuff.
But how can you use a social media platform like Facebook, and conference calls, to, kind of, go over what is called “Best Practices,” so that you don’t waste time doing ineffective work, but you do the best method to try to get some real political change happening?
EE:
Well, I really appreciate the question. I think one of the important things to do is to talk about the problem that you have between meetings. So, one, especially over a geography like Florida, it’s incredibly difficult to meet in person.
ME:
ME:
Mm-hmm.
EE:
So you need conference calls. But during your conference call, it’s really hard to share information, and then to make sure that you’re organizing information between conference calls and doing work.
So you need conference calls. But during your conference call, it’s really hard to share information, and then to make sure that you’re organizing information between conference calls and doing work.
I actually, before I entered non-profit management, I worked at a bank. I worked in a small division of a very large bank. And we had access to an intranet, which not only let us organize information and set appointments, but also had a lot of great functionality that you need to work as teams across national spaces.
Well, we as grassroots organizers, we compete many times against organizations that have access to these tools that help them multiply their people power. So we can’t afford to pass up [technology], especially free technology.
Technology makes a huge difference. Y’know, in our ancient Mesoamerican history, the advantage of technology that the conquistadors had, in weapons and so many other things, allowed a small group to have a massive influence on our history.
And the same thing happens in today’s environment. So the importance of Facebook is that it gives you one of the most incredible toolsets, for free. Tools that ten years ago you’d have to pay a staff, y’know, very expensive, of IT professionals, you’d have to pay tens of thousands in technology infrastructure; now it’s available for free.
You can not only organize events, you can have private group communication. And you can also set up your own private wikis, which is a document that can be edited by all the members of your group. You can then take what you do in the group and share it publicly with a different platform called a Facebook Page, and when you use both in conjunction with the telephone conference service, you can get a lot of work done.
ME:
I think it’s called freeconferencecalls.com? Isn’t that the one you guys usually use?
EE:
The one that we use is freeconferencecalling.com .
ME:
Oh, there you go.
EE:
We don’t get any money from them…
ME:
Right.
EE:
...but we’re very grateful for their service. It also allows you to boot people off…
ME:
[laughs]
EE:
...of the call. You can mute the whole call. You can record it. And those services are also free. So I strongly encourage organizers to leverage that.
In terms of the CIR NOW campaign, this campaign that has helped in-district organizers put together over 200 events across 14 congressional districts, without these tools, we wouldn’t have been able to support one another, organize information, and organize activity the way we have, if not for this.
Also don’t get money from Facebook…
ME:
[laughs]
EE:
...but really glad to share Best Practices.
ME:
All right. Well, Edwin, thanks so much for all the organizing that you do on behalf of Florida, and thanks for joining me today.
EE:
Great program, glad to have been a part of it. Thanks, Mike.
The Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform is at http://www.cirnow.org/ and you can find more information about CIR NOW at https://www.facebook.com/CIRNOW
Edwin Enciso is on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/edwin.enciso
---
You can read up on some of the topics discussed on the show via links on FloridaProgressives.Com, including:
- The DREAM Act attempt in 2009 and 2010, and what it would have done
- the exact vote count in the Senate for that
- a summary of the election results from this year’s Congressional District 13 race
- an article from The Miami Herald about the Hispanic voting population in Florida, through the lense of the current race for governor
[To read up on the DREAM Act attempt in 2009 and 2010, what it would have done, go to:
If you want to see the exact vote count in the U.S. Senate, go to: http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/111/senate/2/278
A summary of the election results from this year’s Congressional District 13 race can be found at http://ballotpedia.org/Florida's_13th_Congressional_District_special_election,_2014
I recommend this article about the Hispanic voting population in Florida, through the lense of the current race for governor:
---
You can use the free conference call service at
That’s with an “-ing” at the end. And there are other similar services out there, for free, that are a great tool for any organizer to use.
Some of the document-sharing through Facebook wikis and functionality like that, that Edwin spoke of, is used by the Florida Progressives collective on Facebook. Despite similar names, The Florida Progressives Dot Com Podcast has no affiliation with this group, but I am in solidarity with the goals of the collective. Check them out on The Florida Progressives Page at https://www.facebook.com/FLPros .
---
Edwin cited a report to support the claim that deportations are out of the executive branch’s hands. https://www.facebook.com/notes/cir-now/notonemoredeportationcom-by-executive-order-is-wrong/655597937828692
My point wasn’t about one judge’s ruling on deferred action. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_Action_for_Childhood_Arrivals .
It was the entire presidency, including before that executive order. There are a lot of articles, if you do a “Bush Obama Deportations” search, describing how the executive branch determines how much to enforce the deportation policy. I include two articles, one from Mother Jones and one from The Nation, in the links section.
So, having responded to that, Edwin, if you want to respond to this, I’ll print your comments in one of these closing segments and let you have the final word, unless you felt you said all you wanted on the subject. Okay, back to the resources.
Another report Edwin cited was by The Perryman Group in 2008.
The report, in pdf form, is linked to on the website.
---
FloridaProgressives.com is the home to this podcast. It started one month ago today, and to promote the first month, I have a 7-minute-long show featuring clips from the first five episodes and some of the key points my guests made. Check it out.
Episode Six will be out Wednesday, May 28th. This music is by Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com . It is licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Look for the Facebook Fan Page by searching for The FloridaProgressives.Com Podcast. You can also find me on Twitter at mikeeidson , last name spelled e, i, d, s, o, n, and you can send me an email at michael.c.eidson@gmail.com . Thanks for listening.
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