Thomas MacMillan Photo
Freedom Riders and DREAM Act-ivists shared Co-op High’s stage.
Their elders told them to stay in the shadows. Their supposed friend in the White House dragged his feet. Young people had to take the risks, and change America in the process.
That’s how two “Freedom Riders” from 1961 described their movement during a forum at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School Tuesday night.
That’s also how two modern-day DREAM Act immigration reformers described their movement at the forum.
That was the point of the forum: To explore similarities between two student-led social justice movements a half-century apart.
The event, sponsored by the Center for American Progress (CAP), featured four panelists who spoke on stage at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School at Crown and College Tuesday night. Two were veterans of the 1961 Freedom Rides to desegregate interstate bus travel, retired New Haven schoolteacher Ruby White and Lenora Taitt-Magubane of New York City and South Africa. Two were New Haven children of undocumented immigrants active in the immigration reform and DREAM Act movement to offer in-state tuition rates to students like themselves: Lucas Codognolla and Lorella Praeli (at center in top photo).
A separate live-blogging panel featuring New Haven Independent and Register reporters and readers and activists took place during the panel as well, offering a play-by-play as well as analysis. Click on the “Cover-It Live” box below to read that discussion. And post any new comments at the end of this article to keep the conversation going.
Fernandez (left) and Codognolla.
Moderator Henry Fernandez from CAP steered the conversation toward the similarities and differences between the movements — for instance, in the way student leaders conflicted with the older generation on their own side.
The panel became a conversation between two generations, with a twist: The older generation of Freedom Riders offered advice to young DREAM Act activists, while also channeling their own memories as the younger generation breaking barriers back in the day.
White (right).
White and Taitt-Magubane recalled how Martin Luther King refused to join the Freedom Riders at a crucial point in their rides, when a mob surrounded them in a church in Alabama and there was a real possibility of arrest or even death if the rides continued. The students continued the rides, and prevailed.
They also spoke of how their parents didn’t want them to go on the rides. They feared for their children’s safety. And they feared the actions would jeopardize gains their families had made — sending their children to college, for instance.
“There’s a natural tension between generations,” Lula White says. “Younger people are more independent. They’re less vested in the system.” So they take the risks that can make change — the way Freedom Riders (like her) did by continuing to risk their lives and riding the buses, when MLK wouldn’t.
White’s father didn’t want her to join the rides. She left without telling him. She sent him a note: “If you don’t hear from me in the next couple of months, it’s because I’m in jail in Mississippi.” She indeed ended up in the notorious Parchman “Farm” penitentiary.
The DREAM Acters told similar stories. Their parents took risks to come to this country without permission in search of a better life for them and their children. By going public as children of undocumented parents, the young activists jeopardized their family’s jobs, education, permission to remain here.
Codognolla, a University of New Haven student, recalled bringing home a copy of La Voz Hispana with his name on it in an article about him going public as an undocumented immigrant.
“I have something to show you,” he told them. “At first they opposed me getting involved because they were scared of the harm that I could potentially be causing to our family. Now they’re supportive.”
Praeli spoke of how older activists in the movement didn’t want to push as hard as the younger activists for votes on passing the DREAM Act.
“When people are young,” Lula White said, “they’re willing to dream.”
At another point in the evening, Praeli described how reading up on Black Power activism of the 1960s and 1970s helped ease some of the fear she felt going public in the DREAM Act movement.
Fernandez brought out another similarity: The two movements’ relationships with putative allies in the White House.
Lula White recalled how she didn’t vote for President Kennedy because of how he catered to his white, segregationist Southern Democratic base — “who now, by the way, are Tea Party people” leading the call against comprehensive immigration reform that would provide a pathway to citizenship.
“President Obama has not delivered … on comprehensive immigration reform,” Praeli noted. “When we had more political capital in Washington, the Democratic Party did not even get DREAM through.”
When talk turned to tactics, another commonality emerged between the two movements: The need to define themselves as “American” movements, as well as multiracial. The Freedom Riders were dismissed as “Communists” or “niggers” and “nigger-lovers.” DREAM Act activists, despite living much or all of their lives in this country and pursuing college educations, are dismissed as “illegals” or foreign freeloaders.
“This is really an interesting panel. Four very smart, very strong and very brave people Americans ‚” local activist Kevin Ewing commented on the live-blog discussion. “I love the young movers learning at the feet of elders of struggle. Good people to learn from. Especially since their movement was largely successful.”