The Harry Potter Alliance and Julian Gomez need your help with immigration reform
Love and a lightning bolt.
You might be asking yourself, what in the world is the Harry Potter Alliance? And if you’re a Harry Potter humungo-fan like me, you’re thinking that it’s only the best idea ever!
Their mission is simple: to fight “the Dark Arts in the real world by using parallels from Harry Potter. We work for human rights, equality, and a better world just as Harry and his friends did throughout the books,” as stated on The Harry Potter Alliance (HPA) website.
As we know, one of the darkest arts to plague us as of late is the lack of immigration reform, and HPA has not overlooked this. On July 31st – one of the most important days for Harry Potter fans (Harry and author JK Rowling’s birthdays) – HPA launched a powerful video about what it means to be an undocumented American.
Executive Director of HPA, Andrew Slack, has called the video “one of the most important things we’ve ever done.” On the HPA Facebook page, Slack posts that “the main agenda behind this video is to simply state that Julian is one of us and that he’s been affected profoundly by an issue that most of us have had the privilege to only consider in a way that is cursory and abstract. It’s time to rehumanize an issue that has been so dehumanized.”
The human chosen as the face for this campaign is a prominent HPA member and leader, Julian Gomez of Miami, FL. As Gomez tells us in the video titled “Why I Can’t Go To Leaky Con”: “I’m neither a resident nor a citizen of the United States; even though America has been my home for 18 years.”
Because of his undocumented status, he is unable to take out student loans for college, get a job, or get a license, so therefore he doesn’t have an ID that will let him fly or take a train – “and I don’t know anyone with a flying car,” he says – hence, why he can’t attend Leaky Con 2012 in Chicago.
As is the way with HPA, Gomez draws an excellent parallel from the Harry Potter stories to explain the problem with immigration: “If Voldemort had his way, those wizards born to muggle parents would be stripped of their right to work, education, and the practice of magic, of course. Harry Potter would support immigration reform.”
If you support immigration reform, Gomez, or are just an amazing Harry Potter fan, go here to sign the petition and stand by Julian for immigration reform – this is something even Slytherins and Gryffindors would agree on.
Use the hashtag #MuggleBornAmerican to get involved in the conversation on Twitter.
More to come on this story, including an interview with Julian himself — so keep checking back!
(Photo: Facebook, HPA, and video still)
