American Friends Service Committee

Thoughts on Black/Brown unity: A poem

by Ericson Amaya and Pablo Paredes of AFSC’s 67 Sueños Program, originally written for the unveiling of the Black/Brown Unity Mural in Oakland, Califormia. 

I’m thinking of how we all know the name of that great big ship

that took the lives of

and yet immortalized 1500 Brits

in a body of water we call the Atlantic

Yes, the Titanic

I’m thinking of how it makes’ me sick!!!

Yes! Sick!

that below the surface

never to be unearthed is

a scathing commentary

on our humanity

See those British bodies landed in a

a crowded cemetery

Black corpses that didn’t go on cruises

they were ripped

from their mother land’s hip

And a hundred and fifty years since

Who among us knows the name of a single slave ship

But we all got emotional when Rose let Jack’s finger tips slip.

See WHITE life and love matter so much we memorize scripts

and easily access Hollywood clips

so that the words slide so smooth from our lips

that we don’t notice OUR histories…. are eclipsed

I’m trying to forget images of brown people with bongs

of cheach and chong

Of hard Taco shells from Taco Bell disguised as my culture

I’m tired of Gang bangers being the only representation of ME on TV

I’m wondering why there had to be a Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 AND 3

I’m wondering why Narcos is the only Spanish word some people know

Why Cancun and Acapulco are the only places in Mexico that most people go

I’m thinking of El Chapo Guzman

and Pablo Escobar

And how familiar they are

I’m not just a picky media consumer complaining

I’m talking about my people hunted on National Geographic for pure entertainment

Border Wars took Crocodile Hunter’s place when Steve Irwin passed

And the sad reality is you know his name, but brown people are buried in mass

Mass graves, mass suffering mass PAIN

500 migrantes die each year crossing the Sonora desert and we don’t know a single name?

See, we mourn white death as national tragedies from Columbine, Sandy Hook

But the media silence around every life that La Bestia, el desierto y la migra took

is so loud it drowns out our screams, our dreams

11 million migrants, 90,000 children and all the suffering in between

I’m thinking of how the Media labels my brown brothers

Illegal

While my darker tone kinfolk get branded

Criminal

I’m thinking of Sheriff Bull Connor and Joe Arpaio

I think they shared the same bio

I’m thinking of the killing of Ruben Salazar and Brother Martin

I’m thinking of Jose Elena Rodriguez and Trayvon Martin

I’m thinking of Anastacio Rojas and Oscar Grant

I wanna say the things to their daughters that Anstacio and Oscar can’t

The struggle is real, and what we feel

has gone on for centuries

from the plantations to the penetentiaries

from Braceros to Jornaleros

Enslaved and encaged

in the service of gueros

4 block cells designed to maintain us …Separate

Ching Ching

4 Block cells designed to turn pain …into profit

Ching Ching

Caught up in brand names that brand us

Bling Bling

This Gouchie, This Louie, this Fendi

And while we keep spending

Ching Ching

Our people are fitted in Ankle Bracelets and Hand cuffs

Bling Bling

Once you locked up, you LEARN who makes all this stuff

Ching ching

I’m thinking of In Lak ‘Ech  - Mayan Precept

I’m feeling Ubuntu -  South African Concept

Tu Eres Mi otro Yo - “I am because we are

You are my other me -  we are because I am.”

Black Brown Community

Let’s Build Unity

Vamos Mi gente Sumense

Unete

Black Brown Comunity

Let’s Build Unity

Vamos Mi gente Sumense

Unete

I’m thinking of peoples who built pyramids

And developed hieroglyphs

I’m thinking of Capoeira and Bomba Dancers,

I’m thinking of brown berets along side Black Panthers

I’m thinking of Emory Douglas the minister of culture

And malaquias montoya and the power of a Poster

I’m thinking of the Freedom riders and the Undocu-Bus.

I’m thinking the system can’t handle us

I’m thinking of how to stop SB 1070 and Stop and frisk

I’m thinking Of 67 Sueños and SNCC

I’m thinking that Harriet Tubman was the first Coyote

I’m thinking of Candied Yams and Camote

Of Blues and Corridos

Break dancing y Quebradita

I’m thinking of Scarab Beatles and Monarchitas

I’m thinking of In Lak ‘Ech  - Mayan Precept

I’m feeling Ubuntu -  South African Concept

Tu wres mi otro yo - “I am because we are

You are my other me -  we are because I am.

Black Brown Community

Let’s Build Unity

Vamos Mi gente Sumense

Unete

Black Brown Comunity

Let’s Build Unity

Vamos Mi gente Sumense

Unete

Family immigrant detention centers: The new internment camps

Three weeks ago I ate my dinner under the stars in Austin, Texas and I felt nauseated. I smiled and tried to enjoy the conversation and the view of the sunset over Lake Travis, but I just felt heavy and sick to my stomach. It was day one of my week volunteering for the Karnes Pro Bono project with RAICES, a non-profit organization in San Antonio, Texas. The project helps the immigrant families detained in the Karnes County Residential Center.

For the last 18 months, I have worked almost exclusively with men and women who are detained solely due to their immigration status. I knew well in advance that Karnes was different, in that the US government was also detaining children in this facility. Despite my experience and knowledge, I was naïve. Nothing could have prepared me for the reality of seeing mothers and their babies in jail.

I am an attorney at the American Friends Service Committee’s Immigrant Rights Program in Newark, New Jersey, where I counsel immigrants and represent them in their deportation hearings. I spend three to four days out of my workweek inside of the immigration detention centers in New Jersey.

Federal law allows non-citizens to be detained to ensure they attend all of their hearings or because they are deemed a danger to the community. Immigration detention is not supposed to be punitive. Yet nearly all of the over 350 detention facilities are built and run on a corrections model. They are jails. Billion-dollar companies like the Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group run many of these immigration jails.

The GEO Group runs the Karnes family jail. One of the bleakest moments during my week as a volunteer attorney was when I had to explain to one of the women that the logo on all of the staff polo shirts belonged to a company and not to the federal government. When I told her that this company receives a certain amount of money per day for every bed they fill, including that of her 3 year-old daughter, she shook her head in disgust and cried.

During the week I spoke with eight women and their children. I cannot recount every story I heard that week in detail, nor would I want to, but there were many threads of commonality.

All of the women were from Central America and none had made the decision to leave their homes and flee their countries lightly. They feared for their lives or for the well-being of their children. The majority suffered severe violence or witnessed acts of torture.

One of the women was a schoolteacher in Honduras. She lived with her husband and three children who were all approaching adolescence. She enjoyed her home, and she loved teaching children. When gang members tried to forcibly recruit her pre-teen sons, she refused, and their lives were all threatened. She and her husband sold everything they owned in order to pay for their safe passage to the United States. When she and her children arrived at the border, they walked right up to the border patrol agents. She explained that they needed help. She told me she regretted this decision now, but she never knew she and her family would be treated like animals in this country.

Another of the women suffered such severe domestic violence that she had visible scars on her arms and legs. Before she spoke to me about it, she asked her 7 year-old son to please wait just outside the interview room. I gave him some sheets of paper and a pen to draw on. She did not want him to hear her recount the abuse she had suffered at the hands of his father.

All of the children I met that week were sick with a visible sinus cold or flu. None had eaten well in the last two weeks since being in the US government custody.  None had been given medicine, despite requests. Some of the toddlers were still nursing and others were so exhausted that they slept in their mother’s arms throughout my one to two hour interview. All of the women complained that the rooms were too cold at night. They sleep four bunk beds (eight beds) to a single room. They are issued only one sheet per bed. Instead of having their children sleep in a separate bed, they sleep together in the bottom bunk. They explained how they use the sheet from the top bunk to create a shield around the bottom bunk from the cold air blowing through the vents. They all asked guards and officers repeatedly to please adjust the air and were refused.

One of the little girls did not want to enter the interview room with me. It was the first time in my life that a child looked at me with fear and distrust in her eyes. This interview took the longest because for the first half-hour she cried that she just wanted to go home. I won her over by playfully joking that we should exchange shoes. I said I liked hers better because they lit up. She finally laughed because she knew there was no way my feet could ever fit into her tiny pink sneakers.

All of the women told me about the time they spent in the so-called hieleras (ice boxes) after being apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security. Each one recounted in detail how gruff border patrol agents initially detained them in a steel-like room with no beds and no windows. They all spent two days and one night in the first hielera that was so cold that no one could sleep, and the children cried day and night. They were all given a small sandwich they each described as barely edible for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Each recounted how their children refused to eat. Then they were all moved from the first hielera to a second hielera where they spent three days and two nights. This one, they explained, at least had mattresses strewn on the floor, but was still freezing cold and the food remained unchanged.

The weekend before I started at Karnes, two AFSC co-workers and I participated in a rally at the other Texas family immigration jail located in Dilley. There were over 800 of us from all walks of life chanted, sang and shouted as we marched down Highway 85 with our signs, banners and large paper puppets. I met people of varying ethnicities, nationalities and immigration status. Many were US citizens that had family, friends and community members touched by immigration detention policies. Many had travelled from other states – like us – to participate in the march. The organizers, activists and participants included children, the elderly and disabled. A few walked with canes and on crutches and others rolled down the highway in their wheelchairs in the blazing hot sun. Some looked proud and empowered, others justifiably sad and angry.

After the march, formerly detained men, women and children shared their stories. The man I had seen marching on crutches explained how he lost his arm and leg while traveling on a train through Mexico to get to the United States. He spoke about the humiliation he suffered in immigration detention when the officials did not know how to hand or ankle cuff him due to his disability; instead they wrapped a chain around his waist. He said that he never cried more in his life than during the months he spent in immigration jail and that he would rather march a hundred miles on his crutches in pain as a free man than let others endure such degradation.

One of the women spoke about her solidarity with the mother’s hunger strike that the women in the Karnes facility organized and urged us to join. It felt like a victory that day seeing hundreds of people gathered together and hearing people speak out about their experiences. The Dilley facility - run by Corrections Corporation of America - alone has 2,400 beds contracted for immigrants. It is a huge complex that can only be described as a modern day internment camp. The mass for-profit jailing of immigrant women and children who are seeking safety demands all of our attention.

It is scary to think we are all complacent to what is happening. But the truth is I was nauseated after day one and even after day two during my week working out of Karnes. But by day three I was able to eat my dinner without a stomachache. Everyday as I walked into the facility, there were kind, everyday people working there. Many were mothers themselves. But they were willfully ignorant or they had bought into the story being sold to them. They had come to view this immigration jail as acceptable. As a “family residential center.”

We cannot allow this practice to continue or to become normalized. We cannot sit idly by and watch as these gross human rights violations continue to be justified. We must all stand up and shut these facilities down.

About the Author

Mich Gonzalez

Mich Gonzalez joined the Immigrant Rights Program in Newark in February 2015 to provide legal services to immigrants in detention and facing deportation.  Ms. Gonzalez is working with AFSC’s new initiative representing indigent immigrants in a public defender model.  The program is the first of its kind in New Jersey and only the second in the country. Since March, the initiative has helped over 80 immigrants in their deportation defense.

Ms. Gonzalez obtained her JD from Cardozo Law School and is a licensed attorney in New York.  Prior to joining AFSC, she worked with Immigration Equality representing LGBT immigrants seeking asylum and other immigration protections.  She has testified before the NY City Council Committee on Immigration regarding the use of solitary confinement in detention.  

Collective power for migrant justice: An interview with Saul Aleman

(originally posted on AFSC’s blog: http://afsc.org/friends/interview-afsc-intern-saul-aleman)

Greg Elliott (GE): Share a little bit about your background and what you bring to your social justice work.

Saul Aleman (SA): I was born in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. I came to the U.S. at the age of 3, and part of the reason my parents took the big step and decided to come to the United States was that we had very few resources, like we didn’t have enough food for me or my Mom.

I decided to join the immigrant rights movement after I graduated from high school. It really shook me that there was no opportunity for me to go to college. My dad was always the person to tell me that as long as you have good grades, everything will go swell, don’t worry about the rest. In our situation, being undocumented was something we knew about but didn’t really understand, or I didn’t really comprehend what that would really mean for me, and so I couldn’t go to college.

Luckily, I met a brave warrior. His name is Diego Sanchez, and he recruited me into the movement and helped me go to school, and since then I’ve been involved with the movement. I co-founded Homestead Equal Rights for All (Homestead ERA), and it’s a youth-led immigrant rights group here in Homestead. It’s the largest immigrant youth-led organization in Florida.

And at this point after four years of organizing, I really get to take a step back and be able to mentor a lot of the new leaders. You see a pattern of different struggles and challenges that these activists have, and so I play a really key role in helping them build their leadership, as well as helping people develop actions, campaigns, DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) forums, and all of that good stuff.

GE: Could you tell us a little bit about your work with American Friends Immigrant Services (AFIS)?

My work with American Friends Immigrant Services (AFIS) here in Miami has been as an intern, and my role as an intern is to empower undocumented youth in South Florida. I work closely with organizations like Homestead ERA , We Count has several young key, amazing leaders, Florida’s Farmworkers Association , the Florida Immigrant Coalition, and we do a lot of movement building together. I train a lot of the leaders that are coming up in the leadership, and we developed a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) forum to educate people on the eligibility of DACA and now on the eligibility of DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents Accountability).

At the local level, we are working to end the collaboration between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the local police. There’s been a lot of check points and raids. A lot of people who are eligible for DAPA—as well as people who are eligible for DACA, people who have no criminal convictions and are good members of our community—have been caught up in these raids, arrested, detained, and in some cases, deported.

So we went to this Council meeting and we told them this was happening, and three or four of them are going to have a meeting with us now, one-on-one, to talk about the collaboration between ICE and the local police because they were unaware it was going on.

Immediately after that council meeting, there was a tense conversation with the local police department, us, and the chief. We had a conversation on ICE and the collaboration. They were a little uneducated and tried to educate us. They told us that most of the people that they are helping ICE arrest are people with criminal convictions, and we’re like, “Well, statistics say that 70 percent of the people being deported have no criminal convictions.” They were a little in awe and surprised, so we’re going to be having a meeting with all of them soon.

On narrative change, changes in the movement, and collective power

GE: I’ve noticed that the narrative of immigrant justice is changing toward migrant justice, migrant youth, etc. Why is that language shift happening, and why is it important?

SA: So the reason why we’re now calling everyone the “undocumented community,” “undocumented youth,” and “undocumented parents” is to put a face to, and to bring to light, a lot of the people who were left out of the conversation originally. A lot of people like my parents, and even parents who may not have had legal, permanent resident children—bringing them into the conversation to give them some sort of identity and restore dignity to our community. That’s one of the reasons that we want to reshape or rename the narrative to include more people.

In 2008 and 2009, the DREAMer narrative began—this whole idea that young people were being brought to this country through no fault of their own, and that these kids have grown up in schools here, they are the top-notch kids in our schools, have never been arrested, are valedictorians, and all of that good stuff, and that it wasn’t their fault they were brought here. It was through the actions of their parents, right?

The immigrant justice narrative, a lot of people associate that, especially in these last 10 years, to DREAMers advocating for higher education. But the migrant justice narrative is a little more inclusive of parents, of farm workers, of people who don’t fit that valedictorian narrative. I think stressing that is very important. They are also part of the migrant community and the undocumented community. It is key if we want to be able to pass bills in the Senate or House that include a lot more of our family members and our community members, if not all of them.

These last two years have been really inspirational for me seeing organizations like the DREAMers’ Moms come about, as well as United Families, and other organizations that are parent-led to bring the voice of parents who came here as well, and to put a face to the issue, to start humanizing people who were left out of the conversation in the past years, and to include them into this fight. I’ve been really in awe of that, and I’ve been noticing that that continues to develop throughout the years.

GE: As an activist, what inspires you and motivates you to continue doing the work that you’re doing?

SA: One of the reasons that I’m consistently inspired to continue to do the work that I’m doing is seeing people who don’t necessarily have to be part of the struggle, be part of the struggle. A lot of black and brown folks and even white people who are joining the movement and becoming powerful allies of it and raising the voice of the migrant community and undocumented community. And I really encourage that. I’ve seen a lot of Quakers take initiative, and that’s truly been a humbling experience. Also, for me, it’s seeing a lot of undocumented youth who are struggling through high school, and not fitting that valedictorian narrative. I really enjoy seeing them be part of organizations and to educate themselves on the struggle, educate themselves on their history, and educate themselves on why they belong. That entire process of empowering and inspiring themselves is very, very amazing to me.

Also the power that we have as a collective never ceases to impress me and to inspire me. Recently, at the action we had at Marco Rubio’s [presidential bid] announcement, I saw people take initiative in ways that they hadn’t done, in ways I haven’t seen in a while.  Marco Rubio was having a screening outside of the Freedom Tower for his supporters who couldn’t be inside of the building, so we decided to go into that supporters’ rally, while they were watching it, stand in front of the screen, and drop a big banner saying, “Rubio’s dream is our nightmare.”

When media came in, people in that rally got very, very mad, to the point they were calling us all of these disgusting words that really dehumanized us and divided us, to the point where I saw mothers who are part of the struggle almost cry.

At one point, there was a supporter who came into our rally just because he was inspired. He didn’t understand nonviolence and peace work. At one point he was about to fight with one of the Rubio supporters, but myself and another leader from Colorado got in between both of them, locked our arms, and started chanting. When we started chanting, the supporter of Rubio backed off and really felt that what he was doing maybe was not right. At the same time, our supporter calmed down and realized that we are an organization that does not support that and we would not stand by that but that we were here to build each other up.

Being able to go to lots of protests and help bring awareness that we’re a peaceful organization, that we’re a peaceful movement, and that we’re nonviolent is very powerful for me.

On how to get involved in the movement

GE: For allies who are looking to get involved in Florida and beyond, would you recommend that people really clue in to what is going on in their specific state?

SA: In Florida, I’m part of a team who’s developing the Florida Immigrant Youth Network. This coalition of organizations was done a while ago to bring undocumented youth and allies to a space to inspire and encourage leaders across the state of Florida, so if they just want to get involved at the local level, folks can definitely talk to me, and I can connect them to these amazing leaders across the state. I feel that everything starts at the local level, real change can be brought at the local level, and that’s how we build national power. I definitely encourage people to get involved in an organization at a local level.

If they want to get involved in another state, I also encourage people to reach out to me. I have a database of organizations in this country, who I think are in 26 or 27 states, so we can definitely connect them to a local organization in order to join the fight and be part of the struggle.

GE: It sounds like you have the resources for if anyone wants to get involved, you can let them know about organization in their state. Certainly anyone in Florida who’s a Quaker can get involved by contacting you directly. You mentioned seeing allies from the Quaker community has been helpful to the movement. Do you want to say anything else about your experience working with Friends?

SA: I had the opportunity to be part of Southeastern Yearly Meeting (SEYM) with Quakers in central Florida. And they were able to give us space to talk about migrant justice work and the undocumented community and the movement that we have and how it is. We were able to reconnect with a lot of these Quakers who I guess for a while had not been connected, at least in the Southeast, to the undocumented community and the immigrant rights movement. We inspired a lot of people who wanted to be part of the struggle who said, if you have an action in my area, I need to be there; if you’re in Tallahassee getting involved in pressuring for change, I can house you. That was very humbling and knowing that they have our backs and knowing that they want to be allies of the struggle was very inspiring. Being able to reestablish the relationship that existed with Quakers is always awesome.