BAIRC Summit Summary and Next Steps

BAIRC recently celebrated another successful annual Summit on Friday, September
28th. Thank you to everyone who helped to plan the day long gathering and to those
who came and participated.

Nearly 70 people attended and had an opportunity to see the work our coalition has
accomplished over the past year, to hear an analysis on our challenges and the
coming year, to help prioritize activities, to identify leadership and in an
unconventional way, to provide input on BAIRC's strategic planning process.

Ideas that surfaced at the Summit:



Research and develop campaigns with a greater focus on local work to raise
visibility for BAIRC and facilitate the participation of grassroots members. Example
of issues:

* Municipal ID's

* Civic engagement

* Health care reform

* Youth criminalization

* Raids and deportations

* Housing

* Workplace rights

Build relationships among BAIRC members and allies to strengthen unity and build
long term strength. For example:

* Identify and/or create opportunities for physical solidarity. Seek out
events for members to attend and participate and schedule gatherings to learn about
our histories, what brings us together and challenges.



Connect the immigrant rights movement with a broader progressive agenda by
incorporating certain communications strategies, such as:

* Adopt a human rights lens to our talking points to build solidarity across
social justice sectors

* Frame immigration within a displacement framework to find common ground
among communities

* Use an economic framework focused on worker justice to identify
collaborative opportunities

We are very excited to begin working with our members and allies to incorporate
these and other ideas expressed at the Summit. Staff is debriefing with our Summit
planning committee, and incorporating the comments and evaluations we received at
the end of the Summit to map out our next steps. Stay tuned - especially if you
signed up for a committee at the Summit!

If you nominated yourself or were nominated to be on the Leadership Council, you
will be hearing from our chair, Atashi Chakravarty soon. We hope to have new
Leadership Council members to introduce to the membership at the end of the year.

In the meantime, join us for these upcoming events!


1. BAIRC at the "Moving Forward: Building a Shared Vision for California's
Immigrant
Communities"
statewide conference; Tuesday, October 30th in Los Angeles

BAIRC has participated in the planning and organization of this great conference. It
will be a wonderful opportunity for our coalition to network and explore
collaborative opportunities with organization throughout the state



2. November Coalition meeting: BAIRC Community
Toolkit on ICE Raids - How to use it
in your Community; Tuesday, November 14th in San Francisco

This will be a training session on the new toolkit created by BAIRC members to
educate our community on how to avoid being entangled with ICE and what to do in the
case of detention.



3. December BAIRC End-of-the-Year Bash: Bring on 2008!

An opportunity for some "physical solidarity". No program but plenty of food, music,
and FUN!

We hope that you and your organization will join us to plan, organize, and
participate in all of these activities and help to make them as successful as our
Summit!


-------------------------
Larisa Casillas
Director
Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition (BAIRC)
310 - 8th Street #303
Oakland, CA 94607

510.839.7598 (phone)
510.465.1885 (fax)
http://www.immigrantrights.org