BRIDGE:
Building a Race and Immigration Dialogue in the Global Economy:
A Popular Education Resource for Immigrant and Refugee Community Organizers

By Eunice Hyunhye Cho, Francisco Arguelles Paz y Puente, Miriam Ching Yoon Louie, and Sasha Khokha
320 pages, 2004, ISBN: 0-9752973-0-9

Winner of the 2004 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award!

Read the introduction and more about what’s in BRIDGE.
Read praise for BRIDGE
Order a copy of BRIDGE now!

"In all of my years since the 1960's as an activist for peace and justice, I have never come across such an important and exciting book that offers us the tools essential for effective organizing on the issues of immigrant rights and building viable social movement coalitions. It is written in language that activists on campus, in the grass roots community, in the church, and in the union hall can all understand."
--Dr. Carlos Munoz, Jr.,
Award winning author and Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley

BRIDGE is a popular education resource of exercise and tools for immigrant and refugee community organizations, and other allies of immigrants and refugees. It features eight workshop modules that include activities, discussion questions, fact sheets, and other resources to help build dialogue, engagement, and shared action within and between communities. BRIDGE also includes educational material on NNIRR’s award-winning video, Uprooted: Refugees of the Global Economy!

Topics covered in BRIDGE include:

• The History of Immigration 101
• Migration, Globalization, and Workers’ Rights
• Introduction to Race, Migration, and Multiple Oppression
• Migrant Rights are Human Rights
• LGBT Rights and Immigrant Rights
• Immigrant Women’s Leadership
• Building Common Ground with Other Communities: Migration, Race and Demographic Change
• Conflict Transformation Within Community Organizing

Read the introduction to BRIDGE and more about what’s in BRIDGE.

For more information, or to be placed on an email list-serve for updates on the BRIDGE Project, the curriculum, and future train-the-trainers sessions in your area, please email Eunice Cho, BRIDGE Project Coordinator at: echo@nnirr.org or call 510-465-1984 x 303.

Praise for BRIDGE

“BRIDGE reflects a wonderful combination of commitment and practicality that will help meet a need that is greater than ever in today's society. We have seen how changing demographics, increasing global poverty, a declining U.S. economy with ever shrinking human rights make it vital to find new approaches for defending and advancing immigrant rights. The entire BRIDGE project and this workbook in particular are rooted in the creativity and dedication of people with long experience in different immigrant communities and building understanding between them. The workbook's modules are realistic, imaginative and even fun to utilize. They can be used to make a serious difference in overcoming the difficulties and hardship faced by so many immigrants today. Try them and see!”
--Elizabeth (Betita) Martinez
Director, Institute for MultiRacial Justice

"BRIDGE is an important and exciting collection of educational tools that any organizer can use to build the connections between immigration, worker and civil rights, and justice. This book will help us all on our way to building relationships and organizing for action. The BRIDGE Project exercises were a great hit on the bus rides for the Immigrant Worker Freedom Rides!"
--Maria Elena Durazo
National Chair, Immigrant Worker Freedom Rides and
Vice-President, Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union

"As labor educators we are always excited to find new and engaging ways to teach about hard issues in the workplace. The BRIDGE curriculum courageously and creatively takes on issues that are both emotionally and intellectually challenging, including racism, sexism, homophobia, immigration issues, and globalization. We recommend this great set of training tools whether you are organizing new unions or other worker organizations or educating your membership for more effective action."
--Katie Quan and Lea Grundy
Center for Labor Research and Education, UC Berkeley

“This curriculum is a thorough and carefully crafted community-centered popular education model for building bridges between all our people who are enduring human rights abuses. By keeping people's needs at the center of its manual, NNIRR provides ready-to-use guidance for all social justice activists and the people we serve. Thank you!”
--Loretta Ross
Executive Director, National Center for Human Rights Education

“BRIDGE is a must-read for educators and activists looking for practical approaches to discussing immigrant rights and building strong movements for social change."
--Nadine Naber
Assistant Professor of Arab American Studies and Gender Studies
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

"BRIDGE ROCKS! It could not have come at a more opportune time when immigrant lives are being trampled in the name of advancement, security, and patriotism, here in the U.S. and around the world. I CAN'T WAIT to start using the workshops with youth through our organization because BRIDGE gives me tools to use the workshops in various settings with various communities (like on the BUS! My favorite!) BRIDGE provides me the historical context to explore immigrant struggles of today, the clear links to militarism and immigration, and the sometimes two-faced beast of organizing in the movement. "
--Liz Suk
Executive Director, Just Act: Youth For Global Justice

"BRIDGE is inspiring, it's challenging, and it's wise, and everyone interested in social justice will find it a critical resource for making change. The book's authors foreground the complex dynamics at work in the wider world, they see how contemporary processes relate to longer histories, and they remain committed to undoing multiple and intersecting forms of oppression which bedevil aggrieved communities. What they've produced is far more than a guide for working with diverse groups on troubling problems, they've in fact crafted a visionary handbook for the new millennium."
--Stephen Pitti
Associate Professor of American Studies, Yale University

"Our undying thanks to NNIRR for contributing this incredible workbook to the struggle for immigrant rights and human dignity. We're already putting it to good use!"
--Tarso Ramos
Western States Center, Portland, OR

“The BRIDGE Project is a workbook that truly “connects” at so many levels.
Educators, organizers, or political activists will find in this workbook a bridge that links together the various issues we confront, as each of us criss-cross through discussions of labor and immigrant rights, shifting demographics, and corporate globalization. With its popular education approach, the workbook helps bridge different experiences and perspectives into shared analysis, through the use of tools that foster respectful and active dialogue. It bridges analysis and action, using creative exercises and a variety of activity formats. It uses “immigration issues” as a connecting bridge that, properly understood, brings together our analysis of labor, race, class, gender, and sexual orientation into a coherent framework. But most of all, this workbook acts as a wonderful bridge in building community. As our paths cross in our work of policy advocacy, coalition building, education, and political action, we want our efforts to converge into one inclusive movement, where labor, immigrant and refugee communities, and other social justice groups find common ground. The BRIDGE Project should serve as our common tool.”
--Jojo Geronimo
SEIU Eastern Region
Co-author, “Education for Changing Unions”

"Based on their many years of experience, working in the immigrant community as activist practitioners, the authors raise issues so rarely discussed within the immigrant community and among immigrant advocate organizations and activists. The detailed, systematic, hands-on approach assembled in this workbook explores the complexity that is the immigrant community. The exercises found within, along with the teaching points, can be applied in community workshops, academic classrooms and workplace seminars. This book must be shared with colleagues, fellow activists and friends and will surely serve as a valuable resource for community-based organizations and classrooms!"
--Marta Lopez-Garza
Associate Professor, Women’s and Chicano/a Studies
California State University, Northridge

"This workbook will find a home in the hands of educators, organizers
and activists looking for practical, and proven tools in the work of
building the power of immigrant workers and communities. These flexible,
fun exercises can be done anywhere-in union halls, church basements,
university classrooms, and community forums-even on a moving bus! I
wholeheartedly recommend BRIDGE."
--Dave Glaser
National Director, Immigrant Worker Freedom Rides

Order a copy of BRIDGE!