It’s not looking good for immigration reform. And yet we are all watching, breathing, living, and participating in the political theater.

As a movement, we have made a strong effort to eliminate the word “illegal” from our vocabulary. (Sorry, yo, but who was in charge of sending Schumer the memo?) This was a good adaptation from a long-heralded motto of the movement in its defensive times of HR4437: No Human Being is Illegal.

In the current defensive times of SB1070, we are seeing students lead the efforts calling for Governor Brewer to veto the bill. And we all think back to the first time we saw a bunch of undocumented young warriors put on their multi-colored caps and gowns to fight for justice.

For me, it was the first time I ever set foot in the UCLA campus, during my senior year of high school. There I was, undocumented and so afraid, tagging alongside my friend Lucia, a U.S. citizen member of my youth group who was a student at UCI and needed to go to the UCLA library. I marveled at the architecture, the fountains, the people relaxing in the sun with a soccer ball or frisbees. As I walked around the campus, I found a school newspaper and in the front page I saw an article about the 2004 DREAM graduation.

Wait, what? Not only were there students without papers at UCLA, but they were also organizing?!

When I saw that picture of immigrant students speaking up, I felt I could be a part of that campus, even if it meant I had to work 35 hours a week while going to class.

I remember Tam, Dan-el, and Marie when they went to Congress to represent an entire generation. I think of Julieta from Texas, who was Dreamie of the Week last year after she represented us at the RI4A kickoff rally. She is a warrior in this cycle. I think of Carlos, who is representing the dreamers in Arizona, and who was the first responder when we were trying to keep families together in New Bedford. At 23, he is a man of a thousand stories.

I remember the first time I entered a chat room with Mohammad, Prerna, Juan, Kemi, Mark, and Maria. I was fascinated by the possibilities.

Most importantly, I think of all the ones who never spoke up because they told us, “we only need a dream kid”- but did not recognize that we also had dream economists, dream political strategists, dream labor leaders, dream religious leaders, dream LGBT leaders, dream artists, and dream comedians.

Many times we told the kids to just be “the kids”. I know, because I did it.

I don’t know how we are going to do this time around. Maybe we will get to stop all the deportations of dreamers. Maybe we will pass CIR. Maybe we won’t get legal status. If we don’t, it will officially mark the beginning of the Great Latino Depression. I got sick to my stomach watching Fox News today, and seeing the complex anti-immigrant narrative being built. Kidnappings in Mexico, trouble at airport security screenings, live coverage from a burning house in Phoenix, AZ. There is a political campaign already well underway in the right-wing network.

It’s not about the dream kids. Kids no more: the things we have done and the things we have seen turn girls into women and boys into men. It’s about getting these young women and men of the dream generation to the forefront of the movement. That’s how we are going to change the way Americans analyze the question of our lifetimes: immigration.

If you get it, you get it.