Subject: [big campaign] New Huff Post from Creamer-Why Anti-Immigrant Dog Didn't Bark in Illinois
From: [email-masked]
To: [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:33:31 -0500 (EST)
List-Id: <bigcampaign.googlegroups.com>

Why the Anti-immigrant Dog Did Not Bark in  Illinois 

In the Sherlock Holmes short story “Silver Blaze” the famous detective  
focuses his analytic prowess on the “curious incident” of the dog that did 
not  bark in the nighttime.  
In the recent mid-term elections there was a similar “curious incident”  
in Illinois  that is important nationally. No major candidate in Illinois 
from either the  Republican or Democratic Party demagogued the immigration 
issue.  Neither the ultra-conservative Republican  candidate for Governor, Bill 
Brady, nor the supposedly “moderate” candidate for  Senate, Mark Kirk, ran 
ads, did mailers, or used talking points about the  supposed scourge of 
illegal immigrants taking jobs or sponging up our tax  money.  Nor did any major 
candidate  for Congress. 
It is definitely true that a number of the Republican candidates that  were 
elected to Congressional seats hold anti-immigrant positions.  But they did 
not choose to use those  positions as wedge issues in the recent election.  
Why not? 
A possible explanation is that Republicans in Illinois are a kinder,  more 
reasonable group than Republicans elsewhere. That, I’m afraid, does not  
pass the laugh test.  
You could argue that it’s because Illinois has a large immigrant population 
in  general and a large Latino population in particular.  But so do 
Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and  California where Republican Party candidates tried 
to use “illegal immigration”  and “amnesty” as wedge issues to galvanize 
their base.  
It is true that Illinois has a more immigrant-friendly  tradition than some 
of the states in the Southwest.  Much of the Caucasian population in  
Illinois comes from recent immigrant stock themselves – from Ireland, Poland,  
Lithuania, Italy, Germany, Croatia and Serbia.  
But there is also a more old-fashioned reason.   Demagogues and bullies 
tend to  prey upon those whom they consider too weak to strike back.  It turned 
out that in Nevada, California, and  Colorado they  made the wrong call, 
since their demagoguery galvanized turnout among Latino  voters that defeated 
right-wing candidates for the  Senate. 
In fact, the Latino vote saved the Senate for the Democrats.   
But in Illinois the right didn’t even try their  demagogic tactics.  That’
s largely  because the immigrant communities in Illinois have worked hard 
over five election  cycles to build a muscular political organizing vehicle 
that gets out the  immigrant vote -- and can bite back fiercely at 
anti-immigrant demagogues.  
In 2008, Jim Oberweis ran for Congress against Democrat Bill Foster on a  
heavily anti-immigrant platform and was flattened by the Illinois Coalition 
for  Immigrant and Refugee Rights.  That  experience sent a lesson through 
Illinois’ right-wing political class.  Nothing like watching one of their own  
get scalded to teach others not to touch the stove.  
The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) no leads  
The New Americans’ Democracy Project. This year, 13 electoral organizers 
worked  for months in both the City of Chicago and the Suburbs. They targeted 
133,128  infrequent immigrant voters for a multi-contact phone and door 
operation, and  before the election was done the volunteers they recruited did a 
total of  549,000 live phone calls to their universe of Latino, Asian and 
Muslim  voters. 
This work has been growing in scale and bite since 2002 when it began  with 
no funding and in only nine precincts. At this point the immigrant vote can 
 no longer be ignored by either party. Here are several key lessons from 
the  Illinois  immigrant organizing experience: 
1)    Consistency Counts: ICIRR has had between 10 and 20 full-time 
immigrant election  campaign organizers every election since 2004. They begin their 
work in July and  work through November, building a “recent immigrant” 
field operation. In every  single cycle they add new skills to their electoral 
organizing.   
2)   Numbers Count: The immigrant  voter program has registered over 90,000 
new immigrant voters. They door-knock  between 35,000 and 60,000 doors 
every election cycle.   
3)   Diversity is Strength: The  Democracy Project works with leaders and 
organizations in Latino community, but  also the Asian, Arab, and Polish 
immigrant communities.   
4)   Mine the “Base” and work the  “Swings”: The electoral work is done 
in the immigrant “base” Chicago port of entry  neighborhoods to generate 
numbers, but also in swing suburban political  districts where multi-ethnic 
immigrant organizing multiplies the voting power of  Latinos. The activation of 
new immigrant voters in suburban “swing” communities  forces Republican 
attention to immigrant  issues. 
5)   Reward Friends, Punish  Enemies:  ICIRR keeps track of who  engages in 
immigrant bashing – and strikes back.  When Republican anti-immigrant 
candidate  Jim Oberweis polarized voters against “illegal immigrants”, ICIRR 
released to  the media a film of undocumented immigrants cleaning his business 
while being  paid only $3.23 an hour. When old-school Democratic Mayor of 
Waukegan, IL  attacked “illegals” with local law enforcement of immigration 
laws, he went down  to defeat in the next election because Latinos in 
Waukegan mobilized to support his  opponent.   
6)   Naturalize, Naturalize,  Naturalize:  ICIRR has one of the  most 
aggressive citizenship programs in the nation. All told, an additional  170,000 
immigrants were naturalized in Illinois over the last five years. The  
coalition itself directly assisted over 48,000 of those legal immigrants to  
become citizens, and thus voters.  
ICIRR is not a partisan organization.  In fact, their most recent 
fundraiser  was headlined by the popular former Republican Governor Jim Edgar. But 
because  of the track record of Republicans across the country, its organizing 
definitely  benefits Democrats.  In fact,  Democratic Governor Pat Quinn – 
who won by fewer than 20,000 votes -- would not  likely have been re-elected 
had it not been for their work.  
On the policy side, ICIRR works for immigrant-friendly policies, and by  
any definition they have succeeded in winning some of the most  
immigrant-friendly policies in the nation at the state level in Illinois.  
The state of Illinois leans Blue, but it has wide swatches  of Red. In the 
recent elections the Democrats barely lost the Senate race and  took some 
terrible losses in the Congressional delegation.  But in addition to electing 
a Democratic  Governor, both the State House and Senate remained in 
Democratic hands.  The immigrant vote was critical to these  Democratic victories, 
but it is also a force that Republicans ignore or abuse at  their peril.  In 
this election, at  least, Illinois Republicans generally had the good sense 
not to bait the  immigrant community.  
In the current environment of racialized fear and polarization against  
immigrants across the U.S.,  the hard work of immigrant advocates in Illinois 
provides two key lessons:   
*  Demagogues go after the weak, not the strong. You don’t stop 
anti-immigrant  demagoguery through accommodation, you stop it with strength.   
* Nuts and Bolts  Organizing works.   
Robert Creamer is  a long-time political organizer and strategist, and 
author of the  book: Stand Up Straight: How  Progressives Can Win, available on 
_Amazon.com._ 
(http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Your-Mother-Straight-Progressives/dp/0979585295/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213241439&sr=8-1)  

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