Recently in Blogosphere Category

The founder of the Project Economic Refugee blog joins Citizen Orange as its newest writer.  Meet Refugio "Reg", a Mexican-American blogger from Los Angeles, California who fights for environmental justice by day and for immigrants' rights by night.

Change.org's Immigrant Rights page is a good source of information and a portal for taking action through targeted online petitions. (Disclosure: I used to blog there.) Petitions are no substitute for other types of offline action, but I have seen their effectiveness in leveraging other forms of support in deportation defense cases. Targeted petitions can bring visibility to individual cases that otherwise would be swept under the rug by the Obama administration. I speculate that they might also be a type of "gateway" activism, informing and engaging participants who are then more likely to pick up the phone to call legislators, attend rallies, and meet like-minded people offline.

With that in mind, here are three recent immigrant rights petitions on change.org. If you would like to add your voice to those who have already signed, jump on in:

Ask President Obama to save Florinda and halt ICE's "Secure Communities" program.
Florinda is the mother of U.S. citizen children, and is at risk of deportation because of the notorious "Secure Communities" program. "Secure Communities" puts local police at work enforcing immigration law - misusing local resources and undermining of community/police relations. U.S. citizens, babies and kids are separated from their parents and family members because of "Secure Communities."

PLEASE HELP US FREE INNOCENT 19YR OLD PEDRO JOEL ESPINOZA!!!!!!!!!!
My boyfriend was brought to the U.S at 3months old by his father, he is now 19yrs old and has been here all his life, his dad was going to help get his legal status but his dad passed away when he was 4years old and his grandma who had legal status had a petiton set up for him and other grand kids to get their legal status but during the process she died and they canceled everything. He was currently attending school to get his diploma, he was riding his bike home to get clothes to go camping with us and got stopped for riding without a light, now hes been in jail for almost 2 months on no charges, hes never been in trouble. In a second his life changed, he didnt ask to be brought here. Everyday he is calling us crying so scared that he will get deported to a country hes never been to and has no family or place to live.

Don't Hold Tucson's School District Hostage For Teaching Hispanic Heritage
The Tucson school board, student activists, Ethnic Studies teachers and educators agree -- the Ethnic Studies program is a great asset to students in Arizona. Tell the state's Superintendent of Public Instruction and the State Board of Education to overturn Horne's ruling and keep this valuable program running.

I continue to put a considerable amount of effort into updating Citizen Orange's pro-migrant blogroll, because I believe it is important that we all stay connected.  In an effort update and trim down the pro-migrant blogroll, it has only grown, showing just how strong the pro-migrant sanctuarysphere has become. 

The list of almost 130 pro-migrant blogs I've come up with are not a random assortment of obscure blogs.  I'm actively in touch with an author at each of these blogs, they have all been updated in the past year, and they meet a stringent set of requirements.  Please continue to contact me if I'm missing any.  I missed quite a few obvious ones in the beginning.

I will paste the updated list, again, below, and give it a rest for a time.

At the end of August, I ended eleven months of blogging for the change.org Immigrant Rights blog.  I learned a lot from the experience, which was for me a continuous education in blogging and activism.  Writing for the site was a great opportunity for me.

Eventually I learned what other bloggers on the site had realized long before, that a certain reactive style of blogging based around the news of the day or content provided by other sources was not the most effective use of time or blog space.  What I saw other editors doing there which I tried to mimic was to introduce new content and analysis into the blogosphere and use the site to promote offline campaigns.  

It is clear that management and the bloggers at change.org are committed to achieving impactful social change.  I only recently started to realize the truly revolutionary potential of the platform which the site's founders have put in place.  I sincerely hope that the site reaches its goal of becoming a hub for grassroots collaborative activism, and I am happy that the site plans to maintain its current commitment to promoting the rights of migrants both inside and outside the U.S. 

I want to thank Eric Baerren and Richard Hellinga of Michigan Liberal for front paging my post on Herta Llusho.  It seems to have shamed traditional media into giving a little bit of coverage to Herta's case.  Detroit Public Radio,the Detroit Free Press, the Detroit News have now covered Herta's story. 

I've got to say though, that the best coverage of Herta's story comes from Hoa Quach of Global Voices.  Quach seems to have grasped the nuances of this story better than most.  It's probably because she has covered the work of dreamactivist.org before.

I am continuously updating media outlets that have covered Herta's story here.

CONTINUOUSLY UPDATED

Following is a list of blogs media outlets that have covered Herta's story since it was first published by dreamactivist.org on August 11, 2009.

When I first saw Made in L.A. last year after it won an Emmy, it hit a soft spot in me to say the least. When my father first came to this country way back in the '90s to pave the way for the rest of the family to make it over, he worked in one of those garment factories. I remember those days because of where we lived, how we lived and my father telling us later on, in his drunken ramblings, how much he hated that work when he was doing it. Yet, he did it and put up with it because that was what he needed to do in order to get the job done, so to speak.

Dreams to be Heard, a club that helps undocumented college students at California State University Northridge has a new radio spot. But rather than me telling you, how about I let them tell you themselves. Tune in if you can, I know I will.     

I can't imagine leaving the only home I've ever known to some strange and foreign land that I've never been to. That's why when I started following blogs about husbands and wives with kids having to move to another country for legal reasons made me think if I could do the same. I have a lot of respect and admiration for them because they are making a tremendous sacrifice leaving their homes for their loved ones. So here's a few of the blog I've been following. Give'em a read when you have the chance.   

Some attentive readers might have noticed a recent change in the Citizen Orange blogger lineup.  Some guy named "yave begnet" was replaced by yours truly without much explanation.

So here's a bit of explanation.  When the website Change.org relaunched about a month ago, I joined the site as the immigrant rights blogger.  I also changed jobs and moved to a new city around the same time, and the time seemed right to stop using my pseudonym, "yave begnet."  So that is why you've been seeing less of yave, and more of me.  It's less schizophrenic this way and less confusing to me, at least. 

So check out the new site, if you get a chance.  I'll still be blogging here regularly, but not quite as frequently as I have been for the past year.