BY ERIN GOLDEN AND CHRISTINA MARIA PASCHYN, MEDILL NEWS SERVICES

The Sunday service had already begun when 23-year-old Thomas Lai slipped into a pew near the back doors of the Chinese Christian Union Church. At the front of the South Side congregation of nearly 200 mostly youthful--and mostly Chinese--faces, a young woman and three young men in matching khakis and white T-shirts turned to their guitars and drum set for a new song.
Behind the band, lyrics about devotion to God projected onto the wall. In front, the packed crowd raised their arms heavenward and sang along like a slightly sedated crowd at a rock concert. Just a block down the street, in a small storefront with a cluttered gift shop, a considerably smaller crowd of Buddhist men and women, some in black robes with their heads shaved, chanted together as the smoke and smell of incense filled the room and wafted onto the street outside.

BY FLORENT BLANC
Excerpted interview with Aireale Rodgers Volunteer at the New Americans Initiative of the Illinois Council of Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) Feb. 9, 2007

Q: How did you get involved in the New American Initiative?

Aireale Rodgers: I started in high school about three years ago. I'm from Chicago from the southeast side, but I went to high school on the southwest side. A lot of the people who attended this high school were first generation Americans. Their parents are from Mexico. Just hearing their stories, I felt the need to do something. Since I'm African-American, it would seem that immigration would be so far down on the list of my priorities. But since it was such a big priority for my friends, I felt like I needed to do something to help my friends more than just help immigrants. It touched me in a different way. Before I entered college, I was doing an internship with the Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP), that works on the Southwest side of Chicago for immigrants rights. We registered people, who had just gotten sworn in as citizens, to vote. Once I got to Northwestern University, as part of its Freshman Urban Program, we went to a youth hostel in downtown Chicago, and then went around to different parts of the city to volunteer in different community organizations. I loved it.

Q: Since you have been involved in immigrant rights before the movement surfaced publicly in December 2005, could you give us your perspective on what happened and what is going on?

Aireale Rodgers: The New American Initiative had been going on for a while but when the immigration reform proposal came up in Congress, we decided that now was the time to do something bigger. For us, this congressional election [of 2006] was the biggest thing. We knew that in order for the government to take us seriously, we had to get out the vote. We had to show that we are no longer playing games.