Our wings are stronger than their hate...

Lots of schools, universities, and communities are fighting for DACA students -- and alongside them too -- but these endeavors do not take away DREAMers' hurt, their fear, their mistrust in a system that supposedly was going to protect them.

What happens to all the information the government now has of DREAMers? 

Will it use it to not only come after them, but also their families? And who will help their families now? After all, a huge part of DACA, for these students and dreamers, was being able to help in the day-to-day struggles their families go through, as they try to adjust to immigrant lives no one wants to acknowledge.

Photograph © Alberto Gutierrez. Courtesy of the author. 

Sombras brillantes en un mundo de obscuridad / Brilliant Shadows In A World Of Darkness

In today's world of American politics, what are we doing to our future? Are we stomping on the many varied voices of tomorrow, on future Masters students, PhDs, scientists, lawyers, doctors, educators? Are conservative politicians afraid of losing their majority? In Texas, at least, this Latino majority is an impending reality, as it already is in California. Thus politicians repress people and pass reactionary laws that only promote racial profiling. No matter what the trump administration says about security, we know they are afraid of losing their rule. 

They offer bleakness instead of light & unity...

La Madre Patria /Motherland
Courtesy © of En Pie de Lucha Performance

Teacher & DREAMer Tries to Explain Inexplicable to Children...

I can not imagine the pain of being a teacher today, especially in a multilingual school.

Having to speak with the refugees I help is quite difficult. Talking to young angels who do not understand the madness of the past few weeks seems to me impossible.... Worst, needing to reassure these same angels, when I find myself in the exact precarious limbo they fear is insufferable.

Yet Rosalía Salazar — graduate from the University of Texas, kindergarten teacher, and DREAMer — has to do just that.

DREAMer Rosalía Salazar with her kindergarten class

It has taken me a while to translate Rosi's message, since I have been busy with many projects and translations especially relevant to the wake-up call we've gotten, but her words are just as important today as they were the day she wrote them after the Trump election. 

IMMIGRANT...

With the presidential race and all it stirs up in our collective pasts as immigrants — because we are all immigrants, even if some of us go as far back as the Mayflower — we will realize that we are all living on borrowed land, and if we learn to live together, we can learn that we are all one, and no borders need divide us. 

Kristian (right) joined a number of other community activists of all ages in Las Vegas 

to street canvass for the Bernie Sanders campaign this past February.

Some of us came later too, not in the early migrations but in more recent relocations, and especially today, we are still arriving, because the forced exodus from other lands — due to politics, warfare, poverty, displacement, or what have you — are all legitimate. 

I Do Not Exist.... UNDOCUMENTED!

I went to see the play Deferred Action this past weekend, a wonderful production about the trials and tribulations of the DACA movement, and the real lives it touches.

I hope the play catches on and begins to make its rounds in other cities: it is defnitely worth seeing.

Erik during the 2011 "I am a DREAM Voter" Campaign 

In any case, this play depicts the ongoing conflict brought on by the onslaught of deportation, and how DACA and the DREAM Act are trying to counter deportation's horrible effects. Millions of young people who were brought to the United States as children are now finding themselves in limbo, or their parents are in the crosshairs. Although the US government wants to deny these young people the only home they have ever known — the United States — they cannot call their home country their own either, because in most cases, they do not even remember it.

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.