Does Clarence B. Jones “What Would Martin Say?” About “Illegal Immigration” Do a Disservice to the Immigrant Rights’ Movement and Civil Rights Movement?

Carrie Rosenbaum, immigration attorney and UC Davis School of Law alum, writes this about a new book that we previously previewed:

“I set out to read Clarence B. Jones “What Would Martin Say?” intending to get inspired by the past, and by what I expected would be Jones’ ideas of how Martin Luther King, Jr. would have embraced and addressed the immigrant rights movement. Reading about Jones and his participation and growth with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Civil Rights Movement was inspiring. But once I began reading the chapter with the revealing title of “…About Illegal Immigration,” I was sadly surprised. Even with such a title, I had naïve hope that Jones would offer insight to the struggle for immigrant rights. I am still wrestling with my emotional and intellectual responses to the book and undoubtedly will for some time. As a practitioner, I have needed more moral, intellectual, and pragmatic material to re-energize my work as an immigration attorney, sometimes in the trenches of raids response work. Sometimes it is hard to feel like my contribution as a practitioner has any impact, particularly when reading about the seemingly unstoppable recent horrifying mass raids in places like Mississippi where hundreds or thousands of undocumented, and documented workers and their families are being terrorized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents. Instead of being inspired by Jones’ chapter on immigration, I was angered. Because my reaction was so strong and emotion, I decided it deserved exploration. In that process I discovered that my anger was in part due to valid misrepresentations, but also because Jones occasionally raised questions in my own mind about my firmly held beliefs in fighting for immigrant rights’ and solutions to what is perceived as an immigration problem.”

Read on at Download carrie_rosenbaums_response_to_clarence_jones_what_would_m_say_4.doc

KJ