We all remember when a million people marched in Los Angeles against the punitive anti-immigration legislation HR4437 in 2006. Well, before there was the march, there was the CitizenSpeak campaign.

In late 2005, Ken Montengro, a part time technology staff person at The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) realized that this now infamous legislation was scheduled to be fast-tracked for a floor vote. This legislation sought to criminalize over 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the US and punish US citizens and permanent residents who came in contact with them.

At this point HR4437 had not caught the attention of larger organizations and had not in any way become the rallying cry that it later became. Realizing the punitive nature of the bill, Ken got the green light to launch a CitizenSpeak campaign to try and nip the legislation in the bud.

In addition to being a part time CHIRLA staffer, Ken was also a law student. During a particularly boring contract class, Ken created his CitizenSpeak campaign. (Go campus wireless network!) The next night during an equally boring legal writing class he posted the URL on the CHIRLA website. Then, he kind of forgot about it. (Can we say finals?)

However, a couple of young CHIRLA staffers posted a link to the campaign on their MySpace sites. Traffic started pouring in. Because of CitizenSpeak’s reporting functionality, the campaign turned out to be a great way to identify and educate a younger constituency about their organization.