By NiallO’Dowd

I was seated in Eileen’s Country Kitchen on McLean Avenue last Friday night when the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform (ILIR) volunteers swept in.

I am chairman of the organization, but I did not recognize many of them. The public meeting with Senator Chuck Schumer was to begin in an hour or so and the volunteers were out doing the rounds.

They swept through the restaurants like a gale force wind. Every person eating there was handed a leaflet, told about the meeting and asked to come. Most were going anyway, but I saw the visit had clinched a few maybes.

All along McLean and all over Woodlawn, volunteers were going into packed Friday night bars and restaurants and urging those present to come to St. Barnabas. A minibus was waiting to ferry those who were late.

The forecast was for inclement weather, so plenty of minibuses were on standby. A special bus from Queens had picked up volunteers earlier that evening and was ferrying them to the meeting site.

As chairman of the ILIR I knew very little about all this. Indeed, had I not happened to be in Eileen’s having a pre-meeting snack I doubt if I would ever have even heard about it.

Perhaps the Irish have a particular political gene implanted in them upon birth. What this mixture of bartenders, construction workers, nannies and waitresses was doing was pure grassroots political campaigning of a very high quality.

They were doing it spontaneously, without any heavy handed directions from the top. They knew their neighborhood inside out, they knew exactly where the community was gathered. The day before they had stood at the subway stop in Woodlawn and ensured that every Irish immigrant coming home from work was handed a leaflet about the meeting.

Meanwhile at the meeting hall at St. Barnabas, the Irish Americans for Schumer placards had mysteriously appeared, as had banners for ILIR and balloons and all the trappings of a great political event.

The upshot was a packed hall with over 1,100 present and the type of political rally that politicians kill for. In an enthusiastic text message right after the event to ILIR organizers, the Schumer people made it clear that their boss had been highly flattered and impressed by the turnout and enthusiasm.

In an era when most political speeches take place before small crowds and participatory democracy is a fading memory, the energy and enthusiasm of the ILIR grassroots has impacted everyone who has spoken to them.

A year ago this week ILIR was founded at the Affinia Hotel in Manhattan. I would wager that none of the young people who make up its core now had ever worked on a political campaign.

Now less than a year later they are displaying the organizational skills of party veterans. They speak knowledgeably of the new Congress and which senator or representative is likely to be on their side.

They have stunned the political establishment in Washington by showing up in their thousands in D.C. for rallies attended by, among others, Senators Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy and John McCain.

It is the best example of self-help in political terms imaginable. While other communities such as the Polish, Italians and Asians, all with far greater undocumented numbers, have sat back and waited for their green cards to be delivered, the young Irish have grabbed the initiative to the point where they have become a major factor in the debate.

At the meeting on Friday night was a member of The New York Times editorial board whose responsibility is immigration. I’m sure he got an education like the rest of us.

In a new book entitled Searching for Jimmy due out in March, distinguished writer Peter Quinn discusses this very phenomenon of how the Irish, fresh off the boat in terrible Famine times, within a generation were able to rule New York politics and provide for their own through Tammany Hall.

He puts it down to their natural flair for politics and their inability to take an injustice lying down. As he points out they invented modern American politics, especially through their influence on President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a former New York governor, who used what he saw created by the Irish Tammany machine such as massive public works, and basic job opportunities for everyone, as his model for bringing America out of the Great Depression.

A few generations later a new group of Irish are fighting for their slice of the American dream. Anyone who saw them in action last Friday night in the Bronx can hardly doubt that they too will succeed.