This diary was originally published on Sept. 24, 2019.
Here’s a situation: You’re a U.S. citizen and you want to be an ally to undocumented immigrants. Great! How can you be an active help to people who are being regularly terrorized under the Trump administration? “It’s not just sharing an persona or a tie-in on Facebook and Twitter, ” FWD.us digital safaruss overseer Juan Escalante told Daily Kos at Netroots Nation, the largest conference for progressives in the person. “Although that may also help.”
Escalante knows what he’s talking about: He’s an immigration propose who has expend more than 10 times fighting against the Dream Act and related pro-immigration policies at the neighbourhood, nation, and federal government levels. Escalante is an undocumented immigrant himself and has shared his personal story on countless pulpits to spread awareness. Escalante talked about what admonition he would grant his teenage ego, how agriculture depends on immigrant labor and why that’s essentially a number of problems, and the horror that comes with driving really a few miles when “youre gonna” undocumented.
But before we dig into his fib, let’s get back to his advice on allyship. Something simple that citizens can do? Pull out their phones and made record. “If you yourself see anything happening in your community, substantiate it with your telephone, ” Escalante says in his Making Progress interview. “If you yourself know your rights and the rights afforded to immigrants through the Constitution of the United Nation, make sure you voice those and inform those around you as well.”
For a variety of reasons, undocumented people may not know their rights. Even if they do know their rights, they are able frightened to preach for themselves for nervousnes of damage or escalating what’s once a hallucination place. That’s where citizens can step up.
“Don’t wait for someone else to take action . … You have an opportunity to do your duty in this fight by standing up and saying’ These are your claims, ’’ This is what I know to be true, ’ and’ This is what I’ve experimented, ’” Escalante continued. “Make sure you do so, because the alternative is for parties to either do carried away in handcuffs by CBP or ICE, or for none to speak up, and for the removal machine to continue to operate in the way it’s been designed up until this point.”
Check out the full interrogation and transcript below.
Question 1: Big business and big-hearted agriculture essentially rely on immigrant labor. Why do you think these business leaders aren’t position maximum pressing on Congress to come up with a viable immigration policy that works for workers and owneds?
Over a number of years, we’ve seen how agriculture and big business has essentially relied on immigrant labor. In my home state of Florida, for example, we attend a significant amount of orange plantations and, you are aware, vegetable domains, especially in Southwest Florida, relying on this kind of labor. And before even diving into the immigration issue about legal versus undocumented immigrants, we need to acknowledge first and foremost one thing: It’s essentially that these employees are not being paid a exhibition income. First and foremost.
And number two, when it comes down to negotiating a gala income, then we dive into the immigration portion, which is about whether or not these tribes are replaceable by this corporation, whether they’re considered subhuman, whether they’re not given any sort of rights.
I think one of the most striking things for me is basically the combination of ag[ agriculture] and business and how the profit comes out of it. If you ever visit Florida, they have what they call a mobile museum, and it’s mostly a trailer like the ones you construe carrying lawn maintenance equipment.
What’s intriguing about this trailer is that, back in the working day, before this story actually broke out in the early 2000 s, was that instead of carrying lawn maintenance equipment, they carried people ordered to the walls of this trailer. And these were farm workers, parties “thats been” either punished or were being transported as part of a smuggling operation.
So, I belief when we think about the intersection of business and agriculture and why they haven’t acted as much to the immigration issue as they should is because, to them, you are aware, oftentimes they just don’t recognize the value of these individuals and their families. To them it’s merely another portion of their question, and if they can prevent penalties down and if they are able to retain ailments to a mode that’s not gonna hurt their bottom line, then regrettably, we’re gonna continue to see the kind of know-hows and the kind of horrific incidents that we discover all across these sectors. And it’s time for us, as people who are consciously working on both of these issues, to come together and connection that chink, because eventually it’s not just a numbers issue. It’s not just a investment controversy. It’s certainly a human rights issue.
Question 2: How can organizers communicate that immigration is an American issue?
You know, I just came out of a brief conversation with Senator Merkley, who was here at the conference, and I think he said it best. He, apparently, is a senator from Oregon and famously toured, was one of the first, if not the first, elected official who visited one of these detention centers where they’re deterring children and they’re separating them away from their families. And he mostly was indicated that the behavior that he saw it, to him this is not a political issue. This is just an American issue, in accordance with procedures that we’re spending our taxpayer dollars, in the way that we are essentially throwing away our values as a commonwealth, and that we are forgetting everything that we stands for, right? You know, which is what do “weve had” the Statue of Liberty for? What accurately do “weve had” the Constitution or the concept of We The People?
It’s not we the few, or we the rich, or we the laws, or we the citizens. It’s we the person or persons. And it established in order to me that ultimately what we’re fighting for when we talk about immigration is the soul of home countries. People come here, just as my parents did, just as I am now, to fight for a better life and a better opportunity for ourselves while simultaneously contributing to our local communities, to our commonwealth, and to this country as a whole.
People often ask me, you know, where am I from? And I often said about that it’s such a loaded question because I was born in Caracas, Venezuela, was raised in Florida for a number of years , now I live in Washington, D.C. And even though I consider myself an American, despite the facts of the case that I don’t have legal status or a piece of paper that says so, I often look forward to the promise that this country has to offer.
And I tell people that, when they talk about immigrants, or they see immigrants on TV, or they listen all these deceits and delusions that are being transmitted by the far right or by fanaticals in terms of … mostly, it’s propaganda about immigrants and all the attacks that we examine. It’s not a representative picture of the people who are working day in and day out, who may not speak English, but believe in the promise of the American Dream that if you work hard, you too can make it in this country.
Question 3: How can allies best support the undocumented community in the era of Trump?
Allyship is such an important piece of the occupation that we, that is done on immigration. I imagine one of the most important aspects of it is understanding the conditions, right? Both the ones that are visible and invisible to us.
One of the primary parties that I often, that I look toward is Alan Dornan. This is a gentleman that feet two miles every single day on behalf of immigrants and Dreamers. He carries a signal. He has all kinds of medical conditions and he takes time out of his epoch, even though he’s elderly, to walk this two miles and inform his local parish of what he does and why he does it. And what’s so important about Alan’s story, at least for me, is that here’s a boy who is retired and out of one day of watching a random excerpt on C-SPAN understood that beings in this country are continuously being attacked by the president of the United Regime and his administration from all levels.
And it’s not just the immigrants that the Trump administration points out to us as offenders. It’s everyone. People in his parish, students, it’s the people that he interacts with on a regular basis across his hometown of Hartford, Connecticut. And to see Alan recognize that at such a fundamental rank is nothing short of inspiring. I repute, for me, right in this specific moment in time, we’re being confronted with a lot of alternatives and a good deal of crisis before us.
Most relevant, obviously, in the minds of beings is the family separation that’s happening at the border. A mas of the detention centers that we continue to see control at a profit on behalf of immigrants being kept in cages continue to also be in the minds of people right now. But, you know, as we’re recording this, I signify, there’s ICE raids that have been announced by the Trump administration in the coming days, and what I tell allies, often and time again, is that they need to understand that they too have a very important role to play into this.
And it’s not just sharing an persona or a tie-up on Facebook and Twitter, although that may also help. They need to inform themselves of their rights and what they can do to virtually nursed these agencies accountable and facilitate immigrants escape these situations.
If you yourself see anything happening in your community, substantiate it with your telephone. If you yourself know your rights and the rights rendered to immigrants through the Constitution of the United Mood, make sure you voice those and inform those around you as well. We examine videos and interactions “ve been coming” all the time on social media about U.S. citizens who virtually go through a checkpoint and, because they know their rights, they’re able to protect those fares from a inaccurate inquiry and seizure trends from Customs and Border Protection.
When we recognize CBP agents boarding a bus, we recognize citizens standing up and saying you don’t have to comply, because under the Constitution of the United Position, you are afforded the following rights. Those kinds of interactions, while it was possible to awkward for beings on a regular basis because they’re confronting law enforcement agents, are so critical to the understanding that you have a role in what happens on today’s America under the authorities concerned and under this mass deportation agenda.
So, don’t wait for someone else to take action. Made to ensure that, if you are a U.S. citizen and you have an opportunity to do your duty in this fight by standing up and saying’ These are your freedoms, ’’ This is what I know to be true, ’ and’ This is what I’ve experimented, ’ make sure you do so, because the alternative is for parties to either come carried away in handcuffs by CBP or ICE or for nothing to speak up and for the removal machine to continue to operate in the way it’s been designed up until this point.
Bonus Question: If you could give advice to your teenage ego, what would it be?
When I was 16 years old, this is before DACA was a thing or before President Obama was inaugurated into department, I had a job at a regional ice cream store.
I was still in high school, I was a junior and I didn’t have a driver’s license, but part of living in Florida, as it is in other regimes in all regions of the country, is that you have to drive. It’s not a alternative. It’s a requisite. It’s a must. Public transportation is not reliable. It doesn’t get you to point A to degree B in a feasible amount of time.
And, you are aware, my teenage ego mostly drove in a very small rectangle across the community. I announced it my own little sandbox because I knew every inch of every superhighway that I would have to take to avoid police, hastened catches, anything that I knew at specified time limit of day where I could get caught up in a bad place, or if there was a broken tail light that I had not noticed, or if I got rear-ended or in a fender bender, or anything like that, that are able to prevent me safe from encountering law enforcement and being pulled over and interrogated about my in-migration status.
I share that story mainly because it’s such a small thing. I symbolize, my job at the time was not more than two, three miles away from my house. But the concerns of driving those three miles there and back was so intense that I would just grip the steering wheel so hard from the point that I left my house to the point that I parked my gondola to then appreciate that I had not been pulled over and stop worrying about that given moment, about not being plucked over, to then start worrying immediately again about whether or not my employer would find out about my status and fire me.
So, you are aware, I contemplate the only opinion that I have 15 year later for a younger Juan Escalante is basically that there is a lot of the small stuff to be worried about, but compounding it or were concerned about it in such tiny faces to the point that you are almost incapable of feeling anything else but suspicion at every single hour of the day is not a strategy to grow, to learn, is advancing, and it’s not a strategy to overcome anything that may stop you from driving forward real change.
So, eventually, patently I’ve overcome a lot of that, but if I must be given to do all of this all over again, that would probably be like top line in my brain. That this paralyzing fright is real. Likelihoods have to be taken, but we can’t stop ourselves from actually moving forward.
And I’m happy that I’ve quelled a lot of this kind of stuff because now, you know, I may be what some people may call an older Dreamer in this movement and in this fight, but I make great pleasure in somehow having learned and overcome those suffers. Because the amount of information that I’ve reaped or experienced, I’m able to hand out to much younger Dreamers or DACA recipients who are struggling to get on a plane, or card a bus, or take a trip or a vacation, or even drive to a local accumulation because they’re so uncertain about the raids, about everything that’s happening in this country, and for me, I do my best to make sure that I use my own experiences to soothe them to some degree or another.
Because I understand that even though I have gone through this and I’m able to speak about it , no amount of words can essentially settled them at ease, either. But I find solace that I at least can provide them some comfort, which was unavailable to me when I was growing up.
Want to check out more Making Progress interviews? Check out the full range of videos over at the Daily Kos YouTube channel, or thought some recent stumbles, including Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza and an energize flight attendant union leader, or get some the recommendations on the right way to be an ally to the Native community.
Read more: feeds.dailykosmedia.com
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