What I've been doing...

So today when I got this great email from Caroline reminding us all to post on the intern blog about what we've been doing, I realized I've spent so much time developing the NEW IMMIGRATION BLOG that I have failed to post here! Sorry friends.

But the new immigration blog: It's Our Community is my new pet project. I'm trying to create both a resource and a forum for our network to engage with immigration issues in a humane manner.

Over the last few years, immigration debate has been defined by rhetoric which pits "us"--US citizens--against "them"--immigrants--as if we were at war with one another. But this rhetoric perpetuates racism, xenophobia, racial profiling, human rights abuses, and hate crimes in a way that we here at FCNL find extremely damaging to our communities.

And as the title of the new blog indicates, we believe that when talking about immigration issues we are fundamentally talking about our communities. What are our hopes for our communities? What is our vision? How do immigrants contribute to the cultural wealth and diversity of our communities? To our economies? How does hate rhetoric tear us apart? All of these and more are questions we are trying to discuss on the blog.

On It's Our Community, you will find blog posts discussing key issues of current legislation, enforcement, and the economy, as well as weekly annotated news updates on immigration issues. My hope is that eventually I'll also be able to develop an interactive map in the section "Community Stories," so that when you scroll across each state you can find stories written by communities there. But for now, I'll just post these stories individually in this section as they come along.

So that's what I'm doing...and I invite you all to come check it out and share comments. Cheers!

Email the Author | Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook