The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) host a panel discussion, ‘Learning from Past Targets of the Politics of Hate,’ April 10 at its office, 55 E. Jackson.

Joshua Hoyt, executive director of ICIRR, introduced the panel by speaking about how ‘immigrants get used and abused for political purposes.’ He said that while fear has been used politically, it was important to ask what immigrants have done to push back. Robert Bray, director of strategic communications at the Four Freedoms Fund, spoke about what he called ‘social justice communications,’ the ways in which marginalized groups could evolve strategies to address the threats directed at them. Bray addressed the commonalities between the LGBTQ and immigrant communities. He noted that both are widely diverse constituencies, especially in terms of race, language and class, and that both are constantly scapegoated: ‘We are there at that point, in the wedge, to advance a broader agenda of the Right.’ For Bray, the biggest problem with misinformation is that it’s exploited to incite fear in U.S. residents and pave the way for hostile legislation.

Tania Unzueta, the producer of Homofrequencia and director of youth programming and community programming of CLIA (Chicago LGBTQ Immigrant Alliance), talked about the need for a broader understanding of the relevance of coming out as a political strategy, since many often have to come out twice—as immigrants and as queer. Unzueta praised what she called the strategy of constant education used by groups like GLAD (Gays and Lesbians Against Defamation) : targeting the funders of media figures who whipped up public animosity towards immigrants. Unzueta said that queer immigrants could be adversely affected by specific measures like no-match letters, which place an especially unfair burden on immigrant transgender people. (A ‘no-match’ letter states that certain employees’ names and corresponding Social Security numbers provided on W-2 forms do not match Social Security Administration’s records.) Both speakers, in response to questions about the flip side of media strategies, such as the extension of sentences due to hate-crimes legislation or the possibilities of censorship, acknowledged the issues but also expressed the need for immediate and forceful resistance to hate rhetoric.