Organization
1Love Movement
1Love Movement is a Cambodian and Southeast Asian organization in Philadelphia that works to end deportation and reunite refugee families.[1][2] It formed in the fall of 2010, when a deportation crisis struck Cambodian Americans in Philadelphia who had past criminal convictions.[3] Its founder is Mia-lia Boua Kiernan.[4]
History
The group came together after four Cambodian American refugees were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for crimes they had committed in their youth.[5] What began as a campaign to free loved ones from the prison and deportation systems grew into a grassroots organization that builds a movement.[3] It marked its first year in 2011, and in 2013 it built local Asian American leadership and expanded nationally.[3] Its organizing targets the 1996 immigration laws and local criminal justice and immigration policy, and it later took up global organizing and foreign policy.[3] It names U.S. militarism and foreign policy, poverty, intergenerational trauma, the school-to-prison pipeline and deportation policy as root causes it works on.[3][6]
In Philadelphia, 1Love was one of the groups that led the Philadelphia Family Unity Network, a coalition of immigrant rights organizations.[5] It pushed the coalition to seek an end to all "ICE holds," the requests that police detain immigrants for federal custody, whatever a person's criminal history.[5] Naroen Chhin of 1Love testified to City Council that Cambodian Americans were punished a second time through deportation after serving prison sentences.[5] On April 16, 2014, Mayor Michael Nutter signed an executive order ending ICE holds, after years of organizing by the coalition. 1Love said it remained cautious that the policy still drew lines between who deserved protection and who did not based on criminal background.[5] In November 2015 it opposed the mayor's plans to undo the order.[1]
In 2015, 1Love and other members of the Southeast Asian Freedom Network launched a national campaign to end deportation in the Southeast Asian refugee community. It asked Congress for more protections for Laotian and Vietnamese refugees and for an amendment to the 2002 repatriation agreement between Cambodia and the United States.[4] The campaign released a series of six videos, from a launch video on October 24, 2015, to April 2016, on the community's history, resettlement, deportation and future.[1] Within a month, almost 200 groups in the United States and Southeast Asia had endorsed its solidarity letter, and it raised funds for a trip to Southeast Asia to build ties with the deported community.[1] Kiernan said that "the impact is not just on the individuals that are deported but on the whole community."[4]
One of its partners was 1Love Cambodia, a group of Khmer American deportees living in Cambodia. On April 21, 2016, 1Love Cambodia issued an open letter from Phnom Penh to the Khmer American community and released a video, Sincerely Yours, on deportation as families live it.[1] 1Love advocates also appealed to the United Nations and traveled to Cambodia to meet representatives of the Cambodian government.[2] The organization received an Asian Mosaic Fund grant in 2016.[6]
At its sixth-anniversary celebration, 1Love honored grassroots partners that included Cambodia Town Philadelphia, the Family Unity Network of Lowell, the Release Minnesota 8 Campaign, 1Love National, 1Love Cambodia, the Philadelphia Family Unity Network, the Southeast Asian Freedom Network, the Grassroots Crim-Imm Collective and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Beyond Bars, and it introduced new board members.[1] In 2017 its board and local partners filed an urgent appeal to the United Nations to end U.S. deportations and reunite Cambodian refugee families, following a Human Rights Tribunal held in Philadelphia.[1] The volunteer collective then stepped back to reflect, and its board held a leadership retreat. In November 2017 the board announced that 1Love would continue in a supporting role, through advocacy and fund development for partner campaigns.[1]
In film
Advocates and organizers of 1Love appear in the first part of Deported, a five-part documentary series created by Sahra V. Nguyen for NBC Asian America Presents.[2]
See also
References
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 1Love Movement, home page
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 1Love Movement, About us
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 NBC News, Forty years after resettlement, thousands of Southeast Asian refugees face deportation
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 WHYY, How community organizers fought deportation in Philadelphia and won (May 2014)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Asian Mosaic Fund, Grants