The threat of a shut down of the federal government put a crimp in protests planned for DC, but it didn’t shut them down. On Tuesday, October 8, 10,000 people came to demand immigration reform. Backed by major unions, the rally and march had been in the works long before anyone thought a small group of Republican House Members would force the federal government to close in order to compel a delay in the start of the Affordable Care Act.

As the clock ticked on passing a continuing resolution to pay federal bills, permits were in place and everything was set to go. Several hundred people had signed up to be arrested at the foot of Capitol Hill in order to demand that the bill passed by the Senate in June be voted on in the House. Plans were thrown into turmoil when the deadline passed and numerous federal employees were told not to report to work on October 1. Parks all over the country were closed, including the Mall. There is no fence to actually keep people off the Mall, but the shutdown did affect uses requiring a permit, such as the erection of a sound stage. Rally permits were revoked at the last minute.

The organizing committee didn’t cancel the rally; instead it negotiated with the National Park Service and the US Capitol Police, whose personnel were among those furloughed. At the last minute, it was agreed that events could go on, including the planned civil disobedience at the foot of Capitol Hill, with some adjustments.

For many years civil disobedience in the nation’s capitol has been negotiated and choreographed somewhat like a stage play. Fifty years ago, when large protest resumed in DC after a hiatus of several decades, such actions were spontaneous. Police cracked down to discourage future disruptions. This did not work. It just made the cops look bad. The resulting court cases, both criminal and civil, were expensive.

Over time police and protestors learned to work things out in advance. The cops knew how many personnel and paddy wagons to have available, and the protestors knew that they would have a chance to do their thing before sorting out who did and did not want to be arrested. With occasional exceptions, behavior on both sides became far more civil.

These changes happened throughout the nation, though not evenly or everywhere. Essentially, sitting in to get arrested, whether it was blocking the sidewalk or filling a room, became institutionalized, as had the unruly practices of picketing, striking and leafleting before it. Rules emerged to govern behavior, which were mostly followed by police and protestors. The goal was to get maximum messaging at minimum cost.

Following post-shutdown negotiations, the permit to have a sound stage was restored, though the sound stage had to be assembled the day before the rally in a heavy rain. After a welcome by the DC Mayor, numerous Members of Congress, members of the clergy and union leaders spoke from this stage. Ordinary immigrants got mike time to tell their stories.

A rousing address by Rep. Leon Guierrez (D IL), leader of immigration reform efforts in the House, sent thousands of people down Jefferson Drive to the street between the reflecting pool and the west lawn of the Capitol. The list of those to be arrested had been reduced to 211 to accommodate the U.S. Capitol Police, who had to report for work every day even though they were not being paid.

It was an “A” list, with eight Members of Congress and 90 union leaders as well as some ordinary folk. Most of the union members wore identifying t-shirts, especially UNITE HERE and LiUNA local 78. The 211 lined up on the east side of the street, facing west, so the photos could show the Capitol dome in the background. Observers crowded across the street, cheering and calling out to each one arrested. In between were several lines of police, one for crowd control and the others to handcuff each person arrested and escort her or him to a paddy wagon. The cops did not interfere with the organizers who gave selected protestors letters to spell out the message:

CONGRESS GET TO WORK –AMERICA NEEDS IMMIGRATION REFORM

Twelve hours later everyone had gone in and out of custody. Each had paid a fine of $50 so they did not have to return to court or face trial. This was also negotiated; the usual fine for one of these actions in DC is $100. Most of those arrested paid their own fines, but arrangements were made for those with insufficient funds.

And now that the government shutdown is over, immigration reform is again on the top of the public agenda.

On June 15, 2012, President Barack Obama stunned even the most optimistic of a generation of young immigrants with his words, “it makes no sense to expel talented young people who, for all intents and purposes, are Americans.” Just about this time, a near audible cacophony of “Si, Se Puede!”s echoed from east to west coast.

Much reaction to this announcement of a two-year reprieve of deportation proceedings for children of undocumented parents has–perhaps cynically–centered on the political strategizing behind the president’s decision. But the back story is about the DREAMers. The name derives from the proposed legislation, the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which has been introduced in Congress for more than a decade, but never passed. How were these young activists able to move a campaign over a single issue (the right for those who were brought into the country without official papers as children to regularize their status) to become the linchpin of a larger debate, that of immigration reform, in a presidential election year?

When I ran across these activists while conducting research with immigrant women over the past several years, they were not yet on the radar of national media or politics, but were already taking dramatic actions on behalf of their cause: marching, picketing, petitioning, video-documenting their stories. If the late sociologist Charles Tilly were still with us, he would most certainly recognize strategies that he had documented across effective social movements. For example, such movements use credible displays of worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment. How much more worthy than the image of an activist in a graduation mortar board? Than petition signatures from hundreds of respected professors? Than endorsement by leaders of conservative religious denominations? Than echoes of our own American rhetoric: “dreaming”? And how much more commitment than hunger strikes and coming-out parties, at the risk of deportation? Across the past two years, these activists gradually became bolder, staging acts of civic disobedience and public events nationwide.

Immediately after the president’s announcement, their dream went global. As I was sitting in the offices of the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants in Brussels, Belgium on June 27, staff leaders beamed over their Time magazine copy with the “We are Americans” cover story about the DREAMers–which they planned to frame. In the U.K., an activist announced to a House of Lords delegation, “We need our own DREAM Act,” sparking visible curiosity in the room: (“What is the DREAM Act?”). An estimated 120,000 young people in the U.K. face the same problem.

History was made once again in September of 2012, when DREAMer Benita Veliz, from San Antonio, addressed the Democratic National Convention in a short speech to introduce an Obama endorser, becoming the first undocumented immigrant ever to address a national political party convention. When Latinos voiced their preference in the polls for Barack Obama and the Democrats in November, the most cynical virtually accused the president of buying their votes with his announcement.

Although DREAMers celebrate the hurdle that they have now overcome, the battle for full rights continues. An estimated 1.8 million individuals are now eligible for “deferred action,” which means that, under several conditions, young people who arrived in the United States before age 16 and under age 31 are not targets for removal proceedings for 2 years. The DREAM Act still has yet to pass, and nothing in the current situation opens any legal doors to other demands of the DREAMers, including access to in-state tuition in colleges and universities in their home states. There is talk of incorporating the activist proposals into a comprehensive immigration reform platform currently being crafted by Congress.

According to The Immigration Policy Center, most beneficiaries of the DREAM Act would be Mexican, and my current state of North Carolina is among the top 10 states that will benefit—given this state’s large higher education sector combined with the rapidly growing foreign-born population settling here. This past week, North Carolina agreed to issue driver licenses and identification cards to those who qualify for deferred action under this reprieve.

That a group of individuals without voting rights or political representation, across disparate nationalities, could demonstrate the power of American-style civic engagement calls for reflection, given much hand-wringing over the question of whether native-born Americans have become disengaged. Here’s where DREAMers may have something to teach us. While critics charge that the undocumented flout our legal system and thus are unworthy of becoming Americans, these youth respond that they sample the proudest of our own civil rights movement traditions: civil disobedience of unjust laws. Perhaps these DREAMers can finally get the DREAM Act through our Congress. Perhaps they can persuade our journalists to drop the label “illegal” from their stories. And perhaps they can even teach us to be Americans again.

By electing its first African American, bi-racial president, America redefined itself. Barack Obama’s singular achievement has been, and will be for the ages, his election, and his confirming re-election. The significance of this cannot be overestimated. It colors all aspects of Obama’s presidency, as it tends to be publicly ignored. Today, at Obama’s second inauguration, he will highlight his and our achievement, as he will take his oath of office on the bibles of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.

Of course, Obama is not just a pretty dark face. He has a moderate left of center political program. He is a principled centrist. He is trying to transform the American center, moving it to the left, informing commonsense, changing the story we tell ourselves about ourselves, re-inventing American political culture. This will clearly be on view in today’s speech.

Obama has changed how America is viewed in the larger world, as he has slowly but surely shifted American foreign policy, ending two wars, developing a more multilateral approach, reforming the American military in a way that is more directed to the challenges of the 21^st century. I should add: I am disappointed with some of this, particularly concerning drone warfare (more on this in a later piece). The President has finally established the principle of universal healthcare as a matter of American law, putting an end to a very unfortunate example of American exceptionalism. Another dark side of American life, the centrality of guns and gun violence in our daily lives, is now being forthrightly addressed by the President. His second term promises to address climate change in a way that has been foreclosed by the Republican opposition to this point. And he will almost certainly lead the country in a more tolerant and progressive approach to immigration and citizenship for undocumented Americans.

He has accomplished a big fuckin’ deal, as Vice President Biden declared in an unguarded moment following the passage of Obamacare (The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) and today has been underscored by one of Obama’s primary critics from the left, Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize winning economist and New York Times columnist.

But in my judgment it all exists in the context of the redefinition of what it means to be an American. He now represents the typical American. His is the face of America and many of those who felt excluded, and not only African Americans, now feel that they are full citizens.  Take a look at this open public letter from a gay family attending the ceremonies today.

Lincoln turned the “Declaration of Independence” into a sacred text, when he redefined it in the Gettysburg Address. “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”  He elevated the ideal of equality, reinterpreting the significance of the “Declaration,” turning equality into a central political value. In the same way, Obama has redefined the significance of the motto on the American seal E pluribus unum, “out of many one,” into a central commitment to the diversity of national origins, religious, commitments, racial and ethnic identities and sexual orientations, elevating diversity, a central empirical fact of American society, into a central normative commitment, to be celebrated and cultivated. I anticipate that the theme of equality and diversity will animate his speech.

Now I listen to the speech and respond:

Extraordinary. More than I could have hoped, though I expected a lot. Comprehensive, principled, visionary, clearly setting out a (left of center) path for the country, embedded within a history, distant and recently passed. There was a noteworthy opening, centered on equality and diversity in American history. He engaged the politics of the day – climate change (with striking prominence), Social Security and Medicare, immigration, and women and gay rights -along the way, but it was the central vision that I found most powerful.

The audience was large and enthusiastic, fervently waving the American flag, red, white and blue, with resulting purple waves of enthusiasm. And Obama worked with this, presenting his vision that would unite, the liberal blue and the conservative red, moving the country in a progressive and more inclusive direction. Obama’s words soared.

He concluded with a series of paragraphs repeating the phrase “we the people.”

“We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity…

“We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity…

“We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war…

“We will defend our people and uphold our values through strength of arms and rule of law…

“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.”

Obama addressed many policy issues, surprising instant pundits. But what was most noteworthy to me is that he did it by building upon and returning to his greatest accomplishment. It was a speech built upon the power of American diversity and outlined how this diversity will be used to address the pressing problems of the day, and as this happens, the United States stands as a city on a hill for others to observe and learn from. At least, this is the very ambitious promise of Obama’s second term.

Immediately after watching the second Obama – Romney debate, I, along with the majority of the viewers and commentators, concluded that Obama won. But as I collected my thoughts and wrote my initial response, I found that I had actually written a piece that was less about why Obama won, more about why Romney lost. I knew I had to write a follow up.

In the meanwhile, Roy Ben-Shai sent in a very different interpretation, which I thought was important to share. He thought that as the President won the battle of the moment, Barack Obama, the principled political leader who can make a difference, lost. While Romney didn’t win, the empty game of “politics as usual” did. I am not sure that I agree with his judgment, but I do see his point.

The quality of Obama’s rhetoric and argument is one of the four main reasons why I think that Obama has the potential to be a transformational president, which I analyzed fully in Reinventing Political Culture. Obama has actually battled against sound bite and cable news culture, and prevailed. But not last Thursday: Ben-Shai is right. Obama beat Romney not by playing the game of a strikingly different political leader, capable of making serious arguments in eloquent ways, establishing the fact that there is an alternative to the politics of slogans and empty rhetoric, but by beating Romney at his own game, dominating the stage, provoking with quick clipped attacks and defenses. The idealist in me is disappointed, but I must admit only a little.

Tough practical political struggle is necessary and not so evil. Democratic political persuasion can’t replicate the argument in a seminar room or a scientific journal. The rule of the people is not the rule of the professoriate and advanced graduate students, and it’s a good thing, keeping in mind the extreme foolishness of distinguished intellectuals cut off from the daily concerns of most people. Popular common sense helps avoid intellectual betrayals, untied to everyday concerns. The challenge is to somehow be tough in the day-to-day political struggle, including the world of televised debates, responding to immediate concerns, and still contribute to serious public deliberation about fundamental principles. I believe this happened in both debates, with Romney winning the first popularity contest and Obama the second, and in my judgment, Obama actually winning the implicit serious debate that is embedded within the political spectacle.

In both debates, two starkly different visions of America and two strikingly different programs for America were presented. In both debates, Romney was fundamentally dishonest, proposing a five-point program that has no substance, promising a great deal that is quite contradictory and unworkable: cutting taxes, increasing defense spending, balancing the budget, through closing unspecified loopholes and reducing deductions of the rich, and growing the economy (purportedly by cutting taxes on the job creators, i.e. the rich). It just doesn’t add up and makes little sense as a way to actually addressing the economic challenges. And as we will hear tonight, I suspect, he also promises to make America great again by “never apologizing,” demonizing China and pretending that the problems associated with the world historic civilizational transformation occurring in the Muslim and Arab worlds are all the fault of Barack Obama.

I should add, as I declare Obama wins the serious debate, I am also aware that Romney is now mounting a serious challenge. I am not as sure as I have been about my prognostications.

The commentators agree that Romney, despite the contradictions and thinness of his program, has the momentum, and the President has to tell people how the next four years are going to be different. I was struck by an exchange on The Chris Mathews Show on Sunday morning. The panel, Andrea Mitchel, Chris Mathews, Michael Duffy, Jonathan Martin and Kathleen Parker, a moderate to liberal bunch, agreed that there is a problem. Obama has to make a case for four more years. They wondered together “why has he not laid out what he is going to do?” They viewed it as “the central mystery of the last part of this campaign”: why hasn’t he laid out what he is going to do? Is entitlement reform? Is it military reform? Is it tax reform? Is it all three?” Or is it more industrial policy, auto industry? Why wait until after he is elected? Martin told the cynical purported truth: it wouldn’t be popular: cutting a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff, including cutting entitlements. The auto industry bailout is popular in some key states, but not in the rest of the country. They also agreed closure on Libya is pressing. This is the mindset of the mainstream pundits. It is also the campaign line of the Romney campaign: Obama has run out of steam.

Yet, I don’t understand this slogan and this analysis. Obama promises to stay true to his principles and implement them, moving “FORWARD” (his campaign slogan). A budget deal that includes tax increases and spending cuts. This makes sense and is popular, and it is projected to reduce the deficit by 3.8 trillion dollars in a decade. He will also work to sustain a robust recovery, by investing in infrastructure and pushing education reforms. From elementary schools to universities to green industry, he sees an active role of government as a key to economic recovery. In this regard, he will work to consolidate the advances of his first term, by implementing health care reform and regulations of the financial abuses that caused the financial crisis, i.e. the Affordable Health Care for America Act and Dodd-Frank. Obama is steady. He will follow through. And of all of Obama’s announced plans comprehensive immigration reform is a new initiative that is likely to be implemented. His victory would be thanks to the Latino vote and my guess is that enough Republicans will take notice to support significant reform.

While it is quite unclear who Romney is, whether he will be the servant of the Tea Party or the Massachusetts moderate, and how his proposals add up, Obama promises a steadfast political persona, a centrist moving the center to the left, a second term that enacts this position. This choice was apparent in the two debates. If the choice is clarified, Obama wins. More tomorrow, after tonight’s debate.