Remember Sharry? The man who thought the immigration proposals of McCain, Flake and Kolbe was "huge"?
Jeff Flake participated in a conference for one of the many organizations linked to Sharry.
Let's look at who Frank Sharry is and the role he has played in the Comprehensive Immigration issue. This is video of him speaking in Budapest on US immigration issues in October 2010.
"We've been very clear that our campaign was not about helping Barack Obama, per se, it was about passing immigration reform and when he was the biggest obstacle to move it forward, having promoted to move it, we hit him hard. We were not hoping for a 21 point drop in the polls. We were surprised. But what happened is, we were so pissed off as an NGO (non-governmental organization) community that Obama didn't fight for us and we were hammering him pretty hard. Then people who were doing the electoral mobilization going into the November elections said, 'you guys are basically going to keep Latino voters from turning out! Call it off!'
The Republicans are going to get elected because we're pissed off? So, we stopped criticizing the President because we're facing a bigger threat.
But, after the election, if he goes forward and fights for us, we will be his best friend. And if he doesn't, we will be a pain in his @$$. At the end of the day, our commitment is not to 'let's hope a leader delivers us'. It's 'let's build a movement large enough to dictate the terms.'
We're not there....it may be 10, 20 years away. But, on a racially charged issue....to give citizenship to a bunch of 'brown people who broke the law' in a scared, elderly, white America? That's a tough challenge!
So, we're gonna need a lot of power....it's not about anger. It's about strategy.
We spend most of our time criticizing Republicans....and it's pretty easy.
....It's not a matter of 'if', it's a matter of 'when'."
Question asked on funding for the activities:
"We have a small group of foundations that are very committed to this issue and we used to have that relationship with them where we told them what we thought they wanted to hear and they would tell us what they thought they wanted us to do....we wouldn't do it.
Somewhere along the line, it got serious so we decided to have a different relationship where we would be very honest and blunt with each other. Not all of the NGOs, but a small group of us.
They became partners in trying to figure out the 'how do we refine our strategy and how do we reorganize ourselves' and when we came to them with this idea of the 4 pillars and we needed an independent, yet linked, communications agency, they said, 'yes'.
So, they put up 2 million dollars to start the organization. We have a budget now- we're about 5 million for the campaign that didn't win and now we'll be back down to 3 million. But, they also invested in the communications capacity of other NGOs. If it was just 1 organization, it wouldn't be enough.
So, there's now mostly national organizations and most big, critical local organizations have full time communications people....so now we can flood the zone with our take on a particular development and break through as a media as an NGO communication in a way that 2 years ago, we couldn't."
Who is our local "communications leader"?
Todd Landfried
Todd Landfried Revisited
THE 4 PILLARS:
1. More effective policy approach
2. More effective work in the media
3. Stronger grassroots effort better linked to the nationwide effort
4. Successful efforts to promote citizenship and encourage civic participation.
It is pretty clear they have been successful with implementing the 4 pillars.
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and on, and on.....
