Cambridge, MA - Last Friday, over 25 protestors representing several Boston area immigrant, labor and community organizations held a picket outside Gov. Deval Patrick's signing of his new memoir "Reason to Believe" at the First Church in Harvard Square. The demonstrators said they were there to criticize Patrick's support for Massachusetts' participation onto the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Secure Communities plan - which will share databases between local police departments and U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice in an effort to more easily identify undocumented immigrants.

BOSTON/State House - Advocates for immigrant rights and many other social justice causes gathered in the cold in front of the Massachusetts State House yesterday to speak out against what they called "racism" and "racial profiling" in the Secure Communities Program.

BOSTON/Government Center – Members of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Alliance Coalition (MIRA) and the Student Immigrant Movement (SIM) today urged MA Senator Scott Brown to vote yes in support of the DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) legislation when it comes up for a vote this week in the Senate. Brown has indicated he would oppose the legislation which provides a way to citizenship for young immigrants who agree to attend college or join the U.S. military.

BOSTON/Downtown Crossing - Over 300 immigrant students and allies held a rally at St. Paul's Cathedral today in support of the DREAM Act - a federal bill that would provide some undocumented immigrant students a path to legal residency in the US. Organizers from the Student Immigrant Movement hoped that the show of force would help convince Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) to join the rest of the Mass. Congressional delegation in backing the bill. SIM invited Brown to the rally, but he did not attend.

BOSTON/State House - Over 100 immigrant students and allies held a rally at the State House on Monday to push Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) to back Sen. Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) recent inclusion of the DREAM Act into the National Defense Authorization Act as an amendment, and vote in favor of the NDAA with the DREAM Act language intact.

BOSTON/Chinatown - Student Immigrant Movement organizers and supporters held a press conference at the encuentro 5 movement space last Wednesday to announce their participation in a national campaign to push for passage of the DREAM Act - a bipartisan bill that would grant some undocumented immigrant students conditional legal status and a path to citizenship. Currently, students of undocumented immigrant parents in many states - including Massachusetts - are not eligible for government financial aid or in-state tuition rates at state colleges. Even if they excelled in public K-12 schools.

BOSTON/Back Bay - Hundreds of immigrant advocates and supporters held a rally in Copley Square on Saturday to protest the controversial Arizona anti-immigrant law SB 1070 and a local appearance by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer at the annual meeting of the National Governors Association. Following speeches by several activists, the attendees marched in sometimes driving rain to the Sheraton Boston where they picketed outside the governors' meeting for a short time - surrounded by heavy security.

BOSTON/State House - A jubilant group of over 50 activists from the Student Immigrant Movement and allied organizations held a press conference on Friday to announce a victory in their campaign to get the Mass. legislature to overturn several provisions of an amendment to the Senate budget proposal for FY 2011 that they believe was an assault on immigrant rights.

The event was called on short notice after the Conference Committee - made up on an equal number of state representatives and senators - released its budget proposal on Thursday. Immigrant advocates quickly discovered that some of the contested provisions of Senate budget amendment 172.1 - including the proposed language that would have made it illegal for the children of undocumented immigrants that had grown up in the Commonwealth to ever qualify to attend Mass. public colleges at the in-state resident tuition rate - had been removed from the Conference Committee budget proposal.

BOSTON/State House - Over 11 days ago, activists from the Student Immigrant Movement began a vigil outside the State House to protest a budget amendment recently passed by the Mass. Senate that would - among other things - bar them from attending public colleges in the Commonwealth at the same in-state tuition rate as other area students.

SIM is led by children of undocumented immigrants who have attended public K-12 schools in Massachusetts, and has been organizing to win in-state tuition reform for the last few years. Many of its members were at the top of their classes in high school but have been denied state scholarships and financial aid solely because of their families' immigration status - and ultimately thanks to what they view as a broken federal immigration system.

BOSTON/Fenway - About 100 immigrant, labor, community and religious advocates held a picket outside the Boston Red Sox-Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game at Fenway Park on Tuesday in opposition to an Arizona law that they believe is discriminatory to immigrants. Organizers said that they were calling on Major League Baseball to reschedule the 2011 All-Star game to a city outside of Arizona - which is the target of growing international boycott since the April 23rd passage of the controversial legislation SB 1070.