Marta Moreno is the Executive Director of El Comite de Longmont located in Longmont, Colorado.

Longmont is in Boulder County, 30 miles north of Denver. Our organization has been here since 1980 after two Hispanics were shot by police officers. Our demographics changed a lot in the 1990s, we’re now about 20% Latino, where before we were about 10%. (Pop. Longmont: 70-80k)

Despite a slight majority among Democrats in the legislature, in July the Governor called a special session and Colorado passed 4-5 anti-immigrant bills. They refer to undocumented people as an unauthorized presence. The bills are targeting services provided to the undocumented. One bill requires that police report anyone who they hear speaking Spanish to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). One woman went to buy orange juice and they asked her for her license and photo ID. The same thing happened to a man who went to buy gas. No other states in the U.S. have passed laws like that this year.

We carpooled to the Denver marches and had a local march in Boulder where about 2,000 to 5,000 people showed up. The national images had an impact, people were aware, more excited, more willing to participate.

We have no local ethnic media, but in Denver they played an active role. There was quite a bit of coverage all over all the papers. Nationally things were happening; people were asking around to find out what has happening. We did a spot on Univision and got a lot of calls after that.

There are many things happening now and we’re having to advocate and keep watch. Our allies include the Boulder County Immigrant Collaborative, Centro Amistad, Intercambio de Comunidades. We’re trying to get congregations involved and we will go to the Bridging the Immigration Divide forum in September.

I feel like some of the momentum has been lost, there was a lot going on in the Spring. Now with election time coming up again I would say it’s picking up again. Although even among democrats it doesn’t seem like the majority are sympathetic.

We try to invite all clients to register to vote, we hold forums. We’ve had about 125 registered; have just started working with students to see if they can help with the drives. I think it’s going a little slower than we thought. We’ve been a lot more successful in encouraging citizenship to our office because a lot of people are there.