VivirLatino

I spent Saturday afternoon at a briefing for LGBT bloggers, editors and reporters at the Desmond Tutu Center, organized by the LGBT Subcommittee of the Four Freedoms Fund. I should note that VivirLatino wasn’t originally invited to the event, but I attended upon hearing about it from Prerna Lal of DREAMActivist and Change.org. I went to the event having already paticipating in conversations about the intersections of the movements at the NOI Summit last summer and Netroots Nation. You all remember how well that went, right?

The LGBTCIR conversation wasn’t any different. First I should say that I missed the entire morning part of the session because I was mami’ing, working, and trying to get information on multiple families in Chile. I know that I missed a wonderful presentation from The Trail of DREAMs that inspired everyone. From Change.org:

The high point of the blogger summit was still the DREAM Act-eligible students who are walking the Trail of DREAMs from Florida to Washington, D.C. — a project of Florida Immigrant Rights Coalition, Students Working for Equal Rights, Presente, and DreamActivist. Two of the walkers who happen to be queer immigrants and in a relationship with each other — Juan Rodriguez (20) and Felipe Matos (23) — called in from Atlanta, Georgia, to discuss the ways in which the broken immigration system fails them.

Juan is documented while Felipe is undocumented. Their only legal recourse to stay together is either passage of the DREAM Act or the Uniting American Families Act, since immigration law will not recognize their partnership. Their bravery and willingness to not only speak out, but risk detention and their lives, by walking hundreds of miles through Klan-country was awe-inspiring.

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