Feminista of the Week

Bad Ass Feminista of the Week

You may have heard of the second grade girl that confronted Michelle Obama about her husband’s immigration enforcement practices. I say she’s a feminist because she was fearless in confronting power, and she clearly knew that what is a personal and painful issue for her is also political. A deeply feminist insight. The Transcript:
“My mom said, I think, she says that Barack Obama’s taking everybody away that doesn’t has papers.” After Mrs. Obama replied, “Yeah, well, that’s something we have to work on, right, to make sure that people can be here with the right kind of papers, right?” the girl said “But my mom doesn’t have [papers].”

Michelle Obama’s response was insufficient, immigration enforcement is an executive issue, and President Obama has used the leeway that laws allow to increase detentions and deportations beyond the levels they reached during the Bush administration. Defenders may reply that toughness in immigration enforcement is required in order to avoid being labeled ‘soft’ on security when the time for the debate comes. However, I have trouble understanding why following the tactics of right-wing anti-immigrants groups is going to help us at all pass a more humane immigration reform… It rather looks like we are ceding ground before the debate even started. Given that even kids have this figured out, I wonder what part of it do Democrats don’t understand.