The Refugee Problem under USA's Rug in a Future Without Poverty

I have been too busy in the day-to-day to write anything much these days, but I did want to post my talk at the recent two-day conference presented by Future Without Poverty and dedicated to Reducing Global Poverty Through Grassroots Sustainable Actions. 

My husband Andrés L. Pacheco and I have been working with refugee populations at our southern border for the past few years, and we presented some of our findings during one of these excellent sessions. I am hoping to be able to post more in the future, but at least — for now — I can present my own, “The Chronic 'Refugee Problem' Under USA's Rug: Migration Along Our Southern Border." Andrés informally spoke about our process — what it is we do from beginning to end with the people we come into contact with — while I had a more formal, even if short, talk prepared. 

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We began to work with refugees when we went to the border to help out in McAllen, Texas, along with people from the entire city and beyond in the state and country, as well as interdenominational organizations who put aside their politics because what we were suffering at the border was a humanitarian crisis.

Your Vote, Your Voice!

As I cast my ballot early today in the voting booth, I decided to stop dawdling and write something about the importance of voting. I have wanted to post my daughter's words, because — as a millenial — she has something important to say about voting in a way I could never replicate. 

So an article right before Super Tuesday I thought would fit the bill. 

Sandra Karina Tovar, center, main speaker at the LASSO Conference (Latin American Student Success Organization)
Tarrant County College, South Campus in Dallas, Texas

Camila Pacheco-Fores is young, yet she is old enough to vote, and she has the privilege to do so, as many students and young professionals do. A surprising percentage, however, choose not to use that right. I am glad she has been thinking long and hard about the vote, however, and she is talking about it, discussing it with friends, and writing about what moves her. 

Are Refugee Children Lesser than Other Children?

I have recently been posting a myriad amount of articles on the atrocities of what is going on with detention centers nationally. With the help of activists, lawyers, and too many to be named, we were able to stop the government from continuing to license Berks County Residential Center in Berks, Pennsylvania, 

Texas has decided to turn up the heat, however, to make up for this "loss." It will now allow not only these notorious for profit centers to continue, but also it will allow them to become daycare facilities as well. 

Though no one is allowed to take photographs in Dilley, ICE certainly does.
How is that playing by the rules?

Virginia Raymond, immigrant lawyer, human rights activist -- ex adjunct professor -- writes to us the next steps we can take in this battle of David against Goliath, and she shows us her own example, so that we might emulate.

I urge all of us who care about our future as a free society -- comprised of diverse human beings -- to join in her call and write to any and all who will listen. 

Ana M. Fores Tamayo, Adjunct Justice

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To all of you who spoke or wrote in opposition to the Texas Department of Family & Protective (sic) Services (DFPS) proposed rule 40 TAC 748.7, which allows ICE and ICE-contract facilities to apply for licensing as "residential child care." 

Thank you. 

Happy New Year: You're DEPORTED!

I met Paul Zoltan, immigration lawyer and human being extraordinaire, when I wanted to work a little closer to home helping refugees. Although going to South Texas to help the mothers and children crossing the border is extremely rewarding — and I know it helped both refugees and Sacred Heart Respite Center, which continues to do great work — I needed a place where I could volunteer my time and services closer to home. 

© Lalo Alcaraz 2014

Paul Zoltan has mounted an incredible operation, together with Catholic Charities of Dallas. 

But as all operations go, he needs much help. 

If you are a lawyer, a writer, a translator, a teacher, a good samaritan — and you can offer your assistance — please contact me to help out at the next pro se asylum clinic in February at Catholic Charities of Dallas. We hold these immigration clinics every two months now, so we are in constant need of volunteers! 

STUFF: Independent Filmmakers' Delight!

When adjunct faculty, grad students, and others are looking for venues to expose their creativity and art — especially when it comes to film — they should look no further than STUFF, the South Texas Underground Film Festival, located by the beautiful southern beaches of Corpus Christi, Texas.

Robert and Mariella Perez, the masterminds behind STUFF, worked harder than ever to present their fourth dazzling weeklong festival, and it showed in the unique, varied, and intriguing choice of films presented throughout the week of November 30th through December 6th, 2015, all free of charge. These films came from all over the world, and while some were personally presented by its directors or creators, others were shown with as much fanfare, though directors from Australia, Finland, or places in South America could not attend. 

THE MENUDO STORY

Great friends form friendships for different reasons, and these are prolonged because there is a spark that, once connected, cannot be broken. Julio César Guerrero and Lupe Rivera were activists together, and through all the years — the raza, the causa, the struggle — they shared their friendship always.

Though I did not know Mr. Rivera, I have come to appreciate him through Julio César's fond memories of him, and of the materials he’s sent me. In all this I kept seeing references to Lupe's love of food and making people happy with food.

His niece Marge Rivera Bermann captures that essence well when she ties wisdom with food: “...he seemed to never age. His experience brought him great wisdom and I loved to listen to him. I'll never forget the smell of barbacuo wafting through the house in the wee hours of Sunday morning as well as his empanadas de calabaza - the biggest and the best!"

So what better way to remember his friend than through a story of one of Lupe's favorite pastimes? Thank you, Julio César. I am sure Lupe is smiling where ever he may be. 

I was notified this summer of the passing of Lupe Rivera, a dear friend I met in the Quad-Cities area in the late sixties. QC is a cluster of cities located three hours west of Chicago and divided by the Mississippi River, which forms a natural border between Iowa and Illinois.

Guadalupe M. Rivera, 06/11/1933 - 5/5/2015

This is the largest metropolitan area in Illinois next to Chicago with Rock Island on one side — home base to the famous Rock Island Line — turned into a popular folk song by singer Johnny Cash, and Silvis, home of Hero Street, USA, subject of books and documentaries about a group of Mexican American soldiers on the other: these men lost their lives during WWII and the Korean War. On the Iowa side, too, there is Davenport, the city where Chicano rocker Ritchie Valens played his last concert before his plane crashed in the winter of 1959.

This entire area was a hub for large farm equipment manufacturers such as John Deere, International Harvester and CASE, which supported most of the local economy through good UAW Union salaries, benefits, and pensions. Despite the racism and discrimination in the railroad yard and foundries of the times (which still persist today), people of color could enjoy a basic middle class income that contrasted with the low wages and lousy working conditions of families employed in the agricultural fields of surrounding areas.

INTERNATIONAL COORDINATION OF THE CARAVANA43: An Anecdotal Journal by Julio César Guerrero, MSW, MA

When Julio César Guerrero wrote a guest post a while back, I promised you the back story of the months of planning for the Caravana43. I know that many of you have already read much about Ayotzinapa. But now  — as we near the anniversary of the disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa on September 26  — we have much planned, including presentations of a documentary film with English subtitles that concern the atrocious acts of cowardice enacted in Mexico. The film is called Ayotzinapa, Chronicle of a Crime of State. Please write me if you are interested in knowing how to show this film near you. 

As promised, however, here is Julio César's account of the weeks of preparation and activity from beginning to end, as well as his recollections of the actual process of planning this monumental task. Although this is a condensed version of the original Spanish, he wanted to give you the highlights.

Julio César Guerrero doing what he does best, a presentation in NYC
to a community of activists with Dan LaBotz at his right. 
© Fanzine Detektor

So if you are an activist, if you believe in justice and freedom, if you want peace within our nations and real solidarity to exist, then I strongly encourage you to read Julio César's comprehensive testimony of his weeks with the caravana. 

You will learn a lot! 

And if you still feel the need to do something more, join one of the many social justice groups that may have developed from our presence throughout the country, since we know that Caravana43 was only the beginning and catalyst of our fundamental work. 

I am sure you can seek these groups out, because Caravana43 laid out the seeds.

But it is now our turn to nurture these seeds and make them grow. 

¡Todos Somos Ayotzinapa!

INTERNATIONAL COORDINATION OF THE CARAVANA43: 
An Anecdotal Journal

by Julio César Guerrero, MSW, MA

Checking my email, I found a message I sent out on November 11, 2014, proposing the idea of an international solidarity project for the parents of the 43 forcibly disappeared students from Ayotzinapa on September 26, 2014 in Iguala, Guerrero. The idea came about after my visit to Mexico City in October 2014, when I participated in a couple of marches to El Zocalo (Mexico’s Central Plaza), supporting the parents of the forcibly disappeared normalistas (students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College).

Thousands march into the Zócalo during the Global Day of Action for Ayotzinapa
Wednesday, October 23, 2014
Brett Gundlock/Boreal Collective/Mashable

The display of popular unity the parents of these student teachers generated everywhere they went gave me the idea of extending such support to the United States, something that has become a tradition for the human rights and trade union groups, especially after the enactment of the free trade agreement (NAFTA) in the mid-nineties. The previous year I had coordinated a support caravana for a group of Braceros traveling from Texas through the Midwest that culminated in Washington, DC and New York. I took this idea and adapted it, proposing the same support plan for the Ayotzinapa group.

Chaos in a Fragmented World: Understanding it?

The more we try to shape our social justice, the more we see that there is no shape to it at all, that it encompasses everything, from inequality to advocacy. 

Mural in the streets of Memphis, Tennessee
© Ana M. Fores Tamayo

Vanessa Vaile from Precarious Faculty and I were discussing this the other day, and she sent me a list of all possible intersections. It is amazing -- when we think about this -- how all topics tie in together:

poverty, public education, workplace, immigration, refugees, globalization, austerity, discrimination, race, gender, religion, neo-colonialism, neo-liberal economics, consumption and consumerism ~ even sustainability and environmental issues because those too are driven by economic inequality and consumption.

So I am sharing with you here — as Vanessa shared with me — two lists of articles on social justice, poverty, and basic income.