Inspiring Leadership in Immigrant Communities - ILRC

Inspiring Leadership in Immigrant CommunitiesJanuary 2003Exercise: Community MeetingFacts for Community Members’ RolesInstructionsRead these facts. Each participant will be assigned a role in this exercise. You will be given 30minutes to prepare for a meeting with the director of the Border Patrol in your sector. Number ofstudent participants: There is a maximum of seven roles but you do not need to use them all ifyou do not have enough student participants.1. Come up with an overall strategy of what you want out of this meeting.2. Make a plan for who will cover which issues in the meeting.3. Each of you will be permitted to make a two-minute (very short) statement at themeeting, so think about what you want to say.BackgroundThe INS has been stopping and questioning children on street corners near schools in San Jose,Calif., for the last four weeks. Several undocumented children have been arrested in this way onthe way home from school. The Border Patrol asked some children to take them home with them,which they did. Frightened parents have kept their children out of school because they do notwant the INS to pick them or their children up on their way to or from school.School officials are outraged because attendance has decreased. Tomorrow evening at 5 p.m. agroup of you will be meeting with the head of the Border Patrol, John Beastley, to talk to himabout it. You need to plan for the meeting. Each of you needs to speak for at least two minutesduring the meeting. Your group must decide what order each member will speak and what eachwill emphasize during the meeting.Roles(NOTE TO TRAINERS: Cut out these role descriptions and give one to each participant. Do notlet the students see each other’s roles. If the ethnic make-up of your participants is different fromthe names given below, feel free to change the names to fit the reality of the names of the groupof leaders with whom you are working.)• Perry Legal, a paralegal with San Jose Legal Aid. You have spoken with many of themembers of the immigrant community who are upset about this.• L. Gonzalez, a community advocate who works with a group called Raza Unida. Yourgroup has told you that they feel like someone should go to the press about this problem.• M. Delacour, principal of the Rose Hills Elementary School, the school closest to thepoint where children were being questioned. You are very protective of the rights of yourchildren not to have to fear deportation when going to school. You are also concernedbecause the low attendance means less state support money to your school.12-41