Source: seattletimes.nwsource.com
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, August 2010: Pramila Jayapal locks arms with other protesters in a Seattle skyscraper to block access to federal immigration courts. Jayapal is a strong voice, says U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, in the national immigration debate — a long way from her days as a Wall Street investment banker.
Now Jayapal is leading the state’s largest immigrant-advocacy group, OneAmerica, which she built from scratch. Jayapal’s standing is all the more notable because she’s a south Asian woman leading a largely Latino movement in a state not particularly relevant to the national argument.
But she’s more clear-eyed, several people say, than most activists, mixing soaring ideals with business-school pragmatism. “She would love to embrace everyone from every culture and status into the U.S. pretty much unfettered,” says Yakima County Sheriff Ken Irwin, a Republican. “However, it’s not realistic, and she recognizes there has to be some give-and-take.”
We face a moral crisis, she argues, akin to the African-American struggle for civil rights. “An unjust law is no law,” she says, invoking Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous words from a jail in Alabama.