S1E1: Neidi Dominguez on “not listening to DC” & embracing disagreement in the fight to win DACA

11/15/22 • 59 min

In this episode, you'll hear an inside account of the campaign to win Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which today protects nearly a million immigrants from deportation and gives them the right to be legally employed, beginning with the fight to win undocumented student protections in California that came before the Dream Act and DACA (11:04), the decision to separate the campaign to win protections for immigrants brought as children from a broader legislative campaign that caused "all hell to break loose" inside the immigrant rights movement (23:37), using "inside" and "outside" strategies to force the Obama Administration's hand (33:26), and how leaning into disagreement ultimately helped organizers stay focused and win their campaign (28:28).
Neidi Dominguez is the Executive Director of Unemployed Workers United (UWU), a movement project to organize precarious and jobless workers. Neidi is a national immigrant and worker's rights activist, and organizer. Most recently she was the National States Deputy Director of the U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign, and previously worked for multiple labor unions, and in Los Angeles, was co-director of the CLEAN Carwash campaign that successfully unionized hundreds of workers in the country. Formerly undocumented herself, Neidi was a central leader in the campaign to win Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

Check out a writeup on this campaign at our website and at The Forge: https://forgeorganizing.org/article/lessons-campaign-win-daca.

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Visit www.trainingforchange.org for workshops and training tools, or to make a donation. Follow us on social media @tfctrains. The Craft of Campaigns podcast is made possible by grassroots donors. We welcome your feedback; if you like these episodes, please consider donating, to keep the show running. This podcast is hosted by Andrew Willis Garcés and produced by Ali Roseberry-Polier.

Check out a writeup on this campaign at our website and at The Forge: https://forgeorganizing.org/article/lessons-campaign-win-daca.

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Welcome to the Craft of Campaigns, a new podcast from Training for Change. In this podcast, we go behind the headlines and hashtags, inviting movement storytellers to share lessons from social justice campaigns. In each episode, we'll explore one campaign, through firsthand interviews, for key lessons, principles, and practices for organizers today. Subscribe today so you don't miss our first episode, coming November 15, 2022.

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S1E2: Tara Raghuveer on hijacking Kansas City’s elections by being “ruthless” about basebuilding

On Election Day two weeks ago, Missouri was not on the list of states progressives were paying attention to – but it should have been, because it was the site of an unprecedented ballot initiative victory won by a working class tenant union. In this episode, we'll hear about how KC Tenants went from ten people sitting around a borrowed conference room in February 2019, to an organization of 4,300 dues-paying members who have won at least five citywide campaigns that have radically transformed conditions for hundreds of thousands of the city’s renters. We’ll hear about their first campaign to radically reshape the city’s municipal election, without spending a dime on partisan electoral engagement (13:35); the debate inside the organization (42:12) that led to the disruption of 919 eviction hearings in a single month (47:15); how they built a culture of nurturing reflection during the pandemic (52:30); and how “ruthlessness about basebuilding” has helped them succeed.

Check out a writeup on this campaign at our website and at The Forge.

Tara Raghuveer is the Housing Campaign Director at People’s Action. She is also the Founder/Director of KC Tenants, where she organizes poor and working class tenants in Kansas City, and the Kansas City Eviction Project, a multi-year research project on evictions in the Kansas City metro area.

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Craft of Campaigns - S1E1: Neidi Dominguez on “not listening to DC” & embracing disagreement in the fight to win DACA

Transcript

Andrew Willis Garcés: In this episode, we'll hear an inside account by Neidi Dominguez of the campaign to win Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which today protects nearly a million people from deportation. From 2000 to 2010, the national focus was on winning comprehensive immigration legislation. But after a national legislative push in 2010 failed, yet again, Neidi and other youth organizers, asked how they could pivot their strategy. Neidi was a leader in the Los Ang