Si Se Puede 2.0
President Obama pledged to tackle immigration reform during his first year in office—even borrowing the immigrant rights slogan “Si Se Puede”—and has reaffirmed his campaign promise as President. Now, with immigration reform on the horizon and more urgent than ever, progressives are engaging new audiences with creative and interactive strategies and content on immigration. In this session, we’ll discuss online and offline strategies to motivate diverse communities to take action on this key issue. Learn how to leverage mobile and blog strategies, 3D games, video documentaries, creative online actions, and viral videos to create change.
Nicola Wells is an Organizer for FIRM, the Fair Immigration Reform Movement a national coalition of grassroots immigrant rights groups. Nicola focuses her work on the fight for federal immigration reform and on helping organizers integrate social media into community organizing. She is author of FIRM’s Online <--> Offline Organizing Cookbook, a resource tool on social media organizing. She is also the founder of the blog Standing FIRM!. Nicola began working for immigrant rights in Tijuana, Mexico in 2002 and has since researched and organized on immigrants rights in Chicago, D.C., New York, Philadelphia and Paris, France.
As Director of Online Communications for America’s Voice, Jackie incubates online strategy to rally support for real immigration reform in the blogosphere and beyond. Jackie works with bloggers and advocates to build support for immigration reform as a key progressive priority. Prior to joining America’s Voice, Jackie was the Online Manager for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR). During her time at ICIRR, Jackie overhauled the organization’s Web presence, managed online campaigns, and forged partnerships with both local and national bloggers to bring a humane, pro-immigrant voice to the immigration debate. Jackie received her BA from Brown University.
Crissy has worked as the Program Coordinator producing web content and managing web outreach at Breakthrough for over three years. In addition, her online reach includes being a freelance writer for many websites during off hours. Prior to working on the web, offline Crissy worked in documentary production at Court TV. Crissy has her Masters in Television, Radio, and Film from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and a Bachelor of Arts in English with a minor in Journalism from the University of Rochester.
Joaquin Guerra is a New Media Campaign Manger for Service Employees International Union where he leads SEIU’s online campaign for immigration reform and member to member political engagement. He previously served as the Deputy New Media Director for the Richardson for President Campaign and Director of New Media for Governor Richardson's successful 2006 re-election. He has over 11 years of field and political experience at the local, state and national levels, as well as working in the Texas Legislature and doing community organizing.
