Youth training for immigration reform scheduled in Nashville for April

According to this press release and this web site, the Fair Immigration Reform Movement ("FIRM") and the Center for Community Change will hold youth training on immigration reform in Nashville, from April 21 to April 23.

Less than a year since national news coverage of a rare one year deferred deportation for one undocumented student and public spokesperson for the DREAM Act, young people from around the country are mobilizing to fight the anti-immigrant climate on Capitol Hill and in legislatures around the country. Hundreds of dynamic young people are strengthening their organizing and leadership skills through regional youth trainings beginning Saturday, February 25 in Chicago, Ill.

"The young people whose futures are at stake will no longer standby in the immigrant rights struggle. Passing the DREAM Act is a no brainer and shouldn't be caught up in the broader immigration debate," says Cristina Lopez, deputy executive director, Center for Community Change. "This bill is a positive first step to fixing our country's badly broken immigration system."

Every year some 65,000 undocumented students are adversely affected by the federal government's refusal to acknowledge their potential. Instead, the authorities are bent on seeking deportations and conducting border patrols as the only ways to address immigration. The DREAM Act would remove barriers to going to college for undocumented children who have lived in the US for at least five years and have graduated from American high schools, and would provide a path to obtaining legal status.

The two day trainings are coordinated by Center for Community Change and the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) and will galvanize young people from all walks of life. Students will lead a grassroots campaign to reach out to the public through press conferences, op-ed articles in the media and grassroots actions.

Additional trainings are taking place in Newark, Phoenix, Portland and Nashville on weekends through early May.

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The Center for Community Change is a nonprofit, nonpartisan low income advocacy group that promotes the development of community organizing as a national force for social and economic justice. FIRM (Fair Immigration Reform Movement) is a coalition of grassroots community organizations nationwide, working on behalf of comprehensive immigration reform and immigrant rights.

For nearly four decades, the Center for Community Change has helped thousands of urban and rural communities nationwide organize for positive change by uniting low income people across lines of race, ethnicity, geography and gender to equip them with the tools to change public policies and demand public attention for issues of social and economic justice.