|  | Celebrating BRIDGE's 20th Anniversary  An early photo of the BRIDGE Advisory Group. Dear John, This year NNIRR celebrates the 20th anniversary of our innovative popular education curriculum, BRIDGE – Building a Race and Immigration Dialogue in the Global Economy. Thousands of hard copies and online PDF versions later, BRIDGE still stands as a landmark publication that expanded popular education to the immigrant rights movement and broke open discussions on the intersection of race, LGBTQ and women’s rights, migrant human rights, the impact of globalization, and more. The BRIDGE project began several years before its publication in 2004 – centered on NNIRR’s examination of racism and anti-immigrant hostility, and the global context that was fueling migration around the world. Before publication, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks further exacerbated xenophobic narratives about immigration, expanded anti-immigrant laws worldwide, and drove racist and sometimes fatal attacks on immigrants. BRIDGE became even more relevant. |
| Many community-based groups and activists contributed to BRIDGE’s development and hundreds more participated in the Immigrant and Refugee Rights Training Institute (IRRTI), to “train trainers” using the BRIDGE curriculum. These trainers went on to populate immigrant rights organizations, grow grassroots coalitions, as well as work in the media and in philanthropic communities. BRIDGE's core values remain critical, and are carried through the new BRIDGE Institutes for Human Rights Leadership (see article, below). NNIRR – along with many community partners -- still dream of an updated BRIDGE that addresses today's even more complex path of immigrants to the U.S. and elsewhere. The consequences of climate change and environmental degradation, the intersection of gender and migration, growing militarism, global migration policies, and more are just some potential topics. |
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| We are forever grateful to the authoring team of Eunice Cho, Miriam Ching Louie, Francisco (Pancho) Arguelles, and Sasha Khokha for their leadership in the BRIDGE project and the work of so many contributors along the way. We are also thankful to Lori Villarosa, then at the CS Mott Foundation, for her support and commitment in seeing the project through its twists and turns. Go to nnirr.com to order the BRIDGE curriculum. |
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| Human Rights Leadership Institutes  El Paso Human Rights Leadership Institutes, 2023. In 2023, NNIRR launched the BRIDGE Institutes for Human Rights Leadership, aimed at strengthening organizing and the movement-building infrastructure along the U.S.-Mexico borderlands -- “ground zero” for today's anti-immigrant policies and an epicenter of racial, political, and economic injustice. The Institutes, allied with organizations on the ground, offer new leaders (particularly women) and established practitioners from 13 cities along the Texas border the opportunity to engage on the theory and practice of human rights, and enhance their skills for rights-based organizing in their communities. Under escalating attacks from the far-right, human rights principles are valuable tools for building cross-sector solidarity between immigrant and non-immigrant communities, and with advocates working on healthcare, labor, migrant, climate, environmental, and electoral justice. |
| Human rights are a meeting point, where communities of different backgrounds come together to push back against racist policies like Texas' Operation Lone Star, and the harmful Senate Bill 4. Later this month (June 20 to 22), in San Antonio, we are hosting a Grassroots Summit of Texas border groups to further develop organizing and movement-building skills. |
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| | Please consider donating $20 or MORE to usher in the next 20 years of the BRIDGE popular education curriculum and accompanying Human Rights Leadership Institutes. |
| | We need your help to raise as much funds as possible to ensure another two decades of capacity building. |
| Your contributions support: - advocacy for immigration policy that centers human rights
- lifting up grassroots leadership, organizing and advocacy
- spotlight human rights organizing at the US-Mexico border
- advocacy for international migrant rights & human rights at borders
- organizing at the intersections, including gender, climate justice and migrant rights
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