Brainstorm Week 7 - Clarissa Lunday

This week, we have read how undocuqueer artivists have used social media to discuss being undocumented, as well as queer, but also to further the immigrant rights movement, which, according to Sasha Costanza-Chock, undocuqueer activists have really furthered the movement. This links back to the theory of Chicanafuturism through their work with disrupting racism by using social media. For example, in Hinda Seif's interview with Julio Salgado, Salgado talks about his work with DREAMers Adrift, an organization he help found, which is "an artists' and writers' collective by and for young undocumented people inspired by the activism of immigrant youth for the DREAM act" (p. 301). Salgado creates posters and a YouTube video series called "Undocumented and Awkward", which discusses how it can be awkward coming out as undocumented with other immigrants. Salgado tells Seif, "I think social media has been a blessing and a curse; a blessing for communities like ours where we might not be able to travel, but a lot of us met through these networks" (p. 307).

Cacho's theory of social death is how race becomes a crime. In our society, especially currently, Chicana/os and Latina/os are all criminals because of their status. However, undocumented activists have pointed out that just because they are undocumented, they should not be labeled criminals. Are you a criminal because you were brought here as a child? The idea of the DREAM act was to stop this criminalization of children and through transmedia organizing, which Costanza-Chock writes is "the strategic practice of cross-platform, participatory media-making for social movement ends", activists were able to organize sit-ins, hunger strikes, and marches (p. 130). On June 15, 2012, Obama announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA), which provided 1.6 million DREAMers a two-year grace period from getting deported or detained, as well as giving them legal permission to work (Costanza-Chock). This was in response to sit-ins at Obama campaign offices in Denver, organized by the National Immigrant Youth Alliance (Costanza-Chock). 

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