Bob Sabonjian will be New York Times tomorrow

[frankiegirl]

Just talked to Bob on his way to be on WTTW channel 11 at 7 tonight.

Told him about being in Huffington Post today, which he didn't know about.
I am emailing article to him...

He told me that he was going to be in New York Times tomorrow.

Waukegan is really getting noticed....with good news!!!

[verenablock]

Here is a link to the Huffington Post op-ed piece:

Kapow! Two More Bite the Dust as Immigrants Celebrate on Election Night

[fintan1010]

i have heard some people feel this is being spun as only a latino victory. please remember that that is the way the media is selling it. EVERYONE involved in the campaign knows how hard EVERYONE worked. it could not have happened without everyones effort. the 6th ward came together, seniors who had voted for hyde in the past changed to bob, city employees jumped ship and so on and so on. but none of that makes for an interesting news. come may 4th we will all celebrate together.

[Blackdiamond]

Drinks on finfan :o Ooooops! I meant Fintan!

[fedupinwaukegan]

Immigration at Issue in Suburban Chicago Race



Article Tools Sponsored By
By LORI ROTENBERK
Published: April 8, 2009

CHICAGO — The mayor-elect of a North Shore suburb said Wednesday that he would drop many restrictions against illegal immigrants imposed by his predecessor.

“The current mayor was not open to listening to what the community really needed,” said Robert Sabonjian, who on Tuesday defeated the incumbent mayor of Waukegan, Richard H. Hyde, a Democrat. “The community was put in fear by the ordinances put in place.”

Among the regulations Mr. Hyde, 81, imposed in his two terms in office was one that allowed the police to arrest people exclusively on immigration charges, most often charges of being in the United States illegally.

Before the election, a grass-roots Hispanic organization in Waukegan, a blue-collar community of about 91,000 residents, canvassed the town, urging Hispanic residents to support Mr. Sabonjian, an independent who won 52 percent of the vote to Mr. Hyde’s 43 percent.

The group, the New Waukegan, estimated that 31 percent of the roughly 7,000 votes cast were by Hispanic voters. The population is about 50 percent Hispanic.

A restaurant owner, Jose Zavala, said he formed the group to help make the city more welcoming to immigrants. Its main goal, Mr. Zavala said, is the eventual election of a Hispanic mayor.

Mr. Hyde said on Wednesday that he was “upset for 30 seconds” over his loss to Mr. Sabonjian, whose father was also once mayor of Waukegan. “The people spoke, and I listened,” Mr. Hyde said, adding that many voters questioned whether, at 81, he was up to the job. “They also claimed that I am anti-Hispanic and that I imposed rules to send immigrants back to their homes,” he said, “and that is incorrect.”

The executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights in Chicago, Joshua Hoyt, said the election “changed a political dynamic of the City of Waukegan for generations to come.”

“Mayor Hyde was a national symbol of a strategy to scapegoat immigrants and harass them, using the local police,” Mr. Hoyt said, “and that is why he lost.”

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[goodintentions]

If Mayor Elect Sabonjian cares about the future of Waukegan he realizes that we cannot continue the way we are. No community can survive if more than half its residents are illegal (Illegal, or unlawful, is used to describe something that is prohibited or not authorized by law or, more generally, by rules specific to a particular); bear in mind that "illegal" residents can not legally work in this country. Many of them do not speak our language, so dealing with them.. teaching them, treating them for health issues, dealing with just day to day issues... all of this creates problems. Add to that that many of them want to drive cars... and will require a license and insurance... (or just drive unlicensed & uninsured). And then factor in the gang problems we're dealing with....
All of this needs to be resolved in order for Waukegan to move forward... to attract businesses... to attact working class, law abiding, God fearing people.... Waukegan has to have something to offer other than being a safe place in order to be a community to be proud of!

[Blackdiamond]

WHEW! You should have addressed that at a Council Meeting.

[fedupinwaukegan]

i have heard some people feel this is being spun as only a latino victory. please remember that that is the way the media is selling it. EVERYONE involved in the campaign knows how hard EVERYONE worked.

I have seen the same. Many outside sources have been claiming this as exactly that -a Latino victory and statement against anti-immigrant programs. I'm getting them in my 'Waukegan google alert.' I'm going to start depositing them here so we can keep record about what they say about us.

There was a caller on WKRS that said it well. Kate. They are trying to divide us, make it an us and them victory.

So stay tuned to hear what others have said about us. But soon they'll go away and we can get down to business.

The South Chicagoan
From Guanajuato and Jalisco to Chicago and beyond

Friday, April 10, 2009
Illinois town could be a sign of the future

For decades, the town of Waukegan, Ill., liked to boast that it was the birthplace of the famed comedian Jack Benny.

While the town isn’t ashamed of being the home of the radio and television comedian, there is evidence that it has a new reason to boast – the fact that its residents showed an ability this week to look toward the future, rather than dwell on the past.

IN ELECTIONS HELD Tuesday, Waukegan residents voted for a new mayor. Now the fact that they voted out of office the incumbent is not, in and of itself, unusual. Every election sees some government officials who fail to hang onto their offices because they don’t grasp the conditions of their surroundings.

But in the case of Waukegan, it was the fact that the soon-to-be-former mayor was insistent on pandering to those people in his town near the Illinois/Wisconsin border on the issue of immigration that wound up coming back to bite him in the nalgas.

Richard Hyde always took pride in implementing regulations in his town that solidly put him on the side of the nativists when it came to the immigration issue. One policy of his that particularly offended the growing Latino population in that area was the granting to local police the ability to arrest people solely on suspicion of immigration law violations.

Those are federal laws, and the federal government has a special agency (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) whose duty is to enforce them. Local cops who might very well be capable of handling the radar gun to determine whether someone is exceeding the speed limit or figuring out if that teenage kid is trying to hide a baggie of marijuana are not going to know the nuances of immigration.

I ALSO AM aware that had federal authorities tried to come into Waukegan and enforce local laws, Hyde and his political allies would have been the first people to scream about a government gone mad – overstepping its bounds into an area that ought to be none of its concern.

That same logic applies to any local government that thinks it ought to be playing “immigration officer” with its local cops.

This was all about creating the image for the Anglos that the police would protect “them” from this growing foreign hoard. And if it served to put people whose sense of their immigrant self (even if born in the U.S., some people have a strong sense of where their families come from) in an uneasy state of mind that they might leave the area, that was a side benefit – as far as the old mayor was concerned.

Hyde told the New York Times this week that all he did during his time as mayor was “listened” to what his local residents (or at least the residents who were inclined to agree with him) said.

BUT HYDE WILL soon be gone, replaced by a new mayor who says he plans to drop a lot of the restrictions whose purpose was to make the growing Latino population (which in Waukegan is what comprises much of the immigrant element) feel unwelcome.

It could be that the growing Latino population finally built itself up into a large enough element to start voting for its interests. If so, then this is going to be the pattern that will be seen over and over in communities across the United States.

Places are going to find these newcomers are strong enough to stand up for themselves, and that it would be best to work with them – rather than try to postpone what is truly the inevitable.

But in the case of Waukegan, there also was a sense that a sizable number of non-Latino people saw the absurdity of such ordinances and how they did nothing more than give their hometown a black eye. Getting rid of such ridiculous attempts to keep the community dwelling in the past is the way to move forward into the 21st Century.

ACTIVISTS WHO WERE organizing people to oppose the hostile immigrant measures estimate that about 31 percent of the people who voted earlier this week in Waukegan were Latino. By comparison, about half of Waukegan’s 91,000 residents have their ethnic roots in a Latin American nation.

It means Waukegan isn’t at the point yet where the Latino population can elect “one of its own,” although activists in the community say that is their long-term goal.

And when the day comes that Waukegan gets its Latino mayor, there’s a good chance that Jack Benny will still be thought of fondly in the town. Not everything from the past was bad, not even his perpetual jokes about being a mere “39 year old.”

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[fedupinwaukegan]

REJECT ANTI-IMMIGRANT POLICIES

WAUKEGAN RESIDENTS UPSET MAYOR HYDE; REJECT ANTI-IMMIGRANT POLICIES



Chicago, Illinois (NED).– The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) would like to congratulate Mayor Elect Bob Sabonjian, who upset controversial Waukegan Mayor Hyde this evening.

Mayor Hyde was renowned for his anti-immigrant harassment practices, making Waukegan the first city in Illinois to apply for the controversial 287g authority; permission for local police to enforce federal immigration laws. Waukegan became known for the racial profiling of its Latino citizens and harassment through measures such as towing immigrants’ cars. This caused many immigrants to leave the area, businesses to close, and homes to go into foreclosure. It also caused criminal activity to go unreported because immigrants were afraid to call the police when they were victims or witnesses of crimes.

For the last three years, immigrant activists worked to assist eligible immigrants to become citizens through the New Americans Initiative (NAI) and to register them to vote through the New Americans Democracy Project (NADP,) both administered by ICIRR. Today, the Latino voters turned out in force and threw Mayor Hyde out of office in a shocking upset.

"The defeat of Mayor Hyde shows that the politics of anti-immigrant hate is rejected by both Latinos and by all Illinoisans. The people of Waukegan, Illinois, and the United States want solutions to fix our broken immigration system, not cheap scapegoating of immigrants," said Joshua Hoyt, ICIRR Executive Director.



The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights is a state wide coalition of over 100 organizations dedicated to promoting the rights of immigrants and refugees to full and equal participation in the civic, cultural, social, and political life of our diverse society.

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[fedupinwaukegan]

Lessons Learned In Waukegan

by Adam Doster on April 08, 2009 - 5:00pm

In an op-ed published today, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) executive director Joshua Hoyt writes that, while the defeat of Republican and anti-immigrant activist Rosanna Pulido in yesterday's 5th Congressional District special election was "no surprise," it was encouraging to see her exposed as a "vile hater" over the course of her brief general election campaign. Hoyt goes on to write that Bob Sabonjian's unseating yesterday of Waukegan Mayor Richard Hyde (right) was "more telling of what the future of Illinois politics holds for those who seek cheap electoral advantage by targeting immigrants."

Two years ago, Hyde pushed the Waukegan city council to approve 287(g), a Department of Homeland Security program that gave Waukegan Police the authority to begin deportation proceedings for immigrants convicted of violent crimes. This practice has been long criticized by immigrant rights advocates as leading to racial profiling and police abuse. Moreover, a recent Government Accountability Office report questioned its effectiveness, finding that the government has failed to determine how many of the thousands of deportees were the kind of violent felons 287(g) was devised to root out.

More from Hoyt's analysis:

Mayor-elect Sabonjian ran a spirited multi-ethnic campaign based on inclusion. He won with 54% of the vote, walking away with a 700 vote margin of the 7,500 votes cast. Challenger Sabonjian won every single one of the nine heavily Latino precincts targeted by the anti-Hyde activists, with margins as high as 69% to 31% (precinct 395) and 57% to 39% (precinct 392), with many around 56% to 41%.

Other Illinois elected officials who have advanced anti-immigrant rhetoric or policies should take note. One such figure, GOP Rep. Mark Kirk, will catch an earful when he addresses the City Club of Chicago one week from today. ICIRR plans to protest outside the event, spotlighting the North Shore Republican's dismal record on immigrant rights is anything but "moderate."


Comments

Meme7 (not verified) on Fri, 04/10/2009 - 09:08

I was part of the campaign for Sabonjian with the immigrant community. A lesson that this election has shown those of us involved is that long-term organizing and hard work pays off!!!!!!!

Organizing the immigrant community to vote, isn't easy; there are many barriers for them (they don't know where they can register often, don't have information on local races, little faith in the electoral system, etc.) , but the fact that we've been working on this issue for a couple years in Waukegan, is what allowed us this win.

We had a core community of grassroots volunteers, who speak more Spanish than English, are very passionate and were already well-practiced canvassers and phone-callers, as most had also volunteered for GOTV type efforts leading up to Nov.

Through the Illinois Coalition for Immigrants and Refugees Rights we registered to vote and mobilized the immigrant community to vote in 2008 and 2006 and have a citizenship program, so that immigrants can become citizens and be eligible to vote.

So, to other organizers who read this I just want to say, keep going. The win is glamorous, but it took us three years to get here. On weekends this past summer, I stood outside the Super Fresh Market all day to get about 12 immigrant/citizen voters registered, 20 if I had a volunteer with me. So don't get frustrated, if this stuff were easy it would've been done already!!! It takes time, but it's worth it, we're now a national story (see NYT article)!

And Victory is really really sweet.

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