#undocunation

[memestreammedia]

Brain Warp

Not only is this double standard typical among MAGA Morons, the first part of it isn’t true. Any “illegal” working for a legitimate company has income taxes withheld from his paycheck, and even those who are paid off the books--by unscrupulous American business owners--pay sale taxes on everything they buy. So this is doubly untrue. Undocunmented workers do pay taxes, and Trump isn’t smart for figuring out how not to pay taxes, he’s just another unscrupulous, unpatriotic freeloader, but on a more massive scale than most immigrants could ever dream of.

[icouldbewrongbut]

Coming out of the Woodwork

I do not think it is a coincidence that bigots and haters are surfacing almost daily over the last month of so. Jewish semetaries being desecrated, foreign born legal residents being shot. As green card holders, and those with vetted visas are detained at airports, a clear message is being communicated: the foreign born are not welcome here anymore. Law abiding undocumented immigrants are being ripped from their families, which include children who are legal US citizens, and deported. That's new. Trump's message is clear: his America is made up white folks of European ancestry who have been in America for at least a couple of generations. I guess I'm lucky. I happen to be in his favored cohort. I'm a 5th, or 6th, generation white guy: Scotch, Irish, Swedish, German. Couldn't be much whiter. I'm in. That said, I'm not interested in living in an enclave of folks who all look like me. Or, all who are evangelical protestants (trust me, I not one of those). I live in a place that has a large Hispanic population - both documented and undocunented. We also have many Asian-Americans and Indian-Americans. That's right, I live not too far from Silicon Valley. It is a rich culture which has embraced these immigrants. Most are smart hard-working people. The stew is delicious. Yes, we have some bad dudes. But interestingly, the police blotter is mostly populated by, um, white folks. Druggies, unfortunately. So, the xenophobic White House is not my White House. It is a bad novel playing out in real time.

[jess552]

[foreverthesoniag]

How else do you follow up with an amazing weekend in #GA after #UndocuNation ?!?! Well you grab a copy of Time featuring @Lavernecox as you fly back to NY . #twoc #girlslikeus . Today and always celebrating Laverne for her cover in Time and @janetmock for cover in @ELIXHERMagazine !!!

[latinarebels]

Mija, haven't you learned by now that there are fields of soldados swimming through your veins. #undocunation

[culturestrike]

PARA PUBLICACION INMEDIATA

  Artistas Pro-Migrantes y Creativos se reúnen en Atlanta para UndocuNation

Músicos  ganadores y nominados del Grammy, artistas e intérpretes visuales inmigrantes se unen para celebrar la experiencia migrante y hablar en contra de las leyes injustas de inmigración .

  Atlanta, GA. El 30  y el 31 de mayo, músicos ganadores y nominados del Grammy, artistas visuales, actores y miembros de la comunidad serán los anfitriones de la quinta Undocunation, un festival de arte y música que eleva las historias de migrantes y habla en contra de las leyes injustas de inmigración que separan a las familias y discriminan contra las comunidades LGBT y personas de color.

  El evento multidisciplinario, gratuito está abierto a todos los miembros de la comunidad y contará con representaciones, instalaciones de arte y talleres compuesto de líderes y artistas que estan involucrados en la lucha para los derechos civiles, derechos para los inmigrantes y personas LGBT .

El viernes, 30 de mayo habrá una exposición de arte visual y concierto que contará con artistas visuales de todo el país. Destacados en Undocunation Atlanta están Shawn King de DeVotchKa, Raúl Pacheco de Ozomatli, y Ceci Bastida de Tijuana No! Expondrán obras por Yehimi Adriana Cambron, Carol Belisa, Rommy Torrico, Felipe Baeza, Julio Salgado y más! Artistas interdisciplinarios y organizadores culturales que están dando forma a los movimientos sociales de hoy también estarán presentes.

Sábado, el 31 de mayo, habrá talleres y mesas redondas que sitúan derechos de migrantes en el contexto de derechos civiles y humanos. Todos son invitados a pulir sus habilidades artísticas y políticas para desmantelar el racismo. Proveerán interpretación simultánea en español e inglés. Más información sobre los talleres, incluso una lista completa de talleres, presentadores, y patrocinadores, está la siguiente página.

El evento Undocunation tiene sus raíces en la convicción de que el arte, la música y la creatividad pueden transformar el debate en torno a la inmigración. UndocuNation busca elevar el activismo creativo y proporcionar a las comunidades las herramientas necesarias para hacer frente a las amenazas a las libertades civiles en la intersección de temas de justicia social más urgentes de nuestra nación. El arte y la cultura, junto con la organización de la comunidad, es un vehículo de gran alcance para promover los derechos de las personas marginadas y disminuir el impacto de la actividad discriminatoria en el nivel local. La historia muestra que cuando la cultura cambia, la política sigue.

CultureStrike y el Center for New Community, co-patrocinadores del evento, han coordinado UndocuNation en San Francisco, Charlotte, Berkeley y Denver, y estamos encantados de colaborar con los siguientes socios locales en traer el evento a Atlanta: Freedom University, Southerners on New Ground (SONG), Georgia Detention Watch, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, National Dreamers Alliance, SisterSong, Southeast Immigrant Rights Network (SEIRN), The Black Alliance for Just Immigration, y American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia

Todos los eventos UndocuNation son gratuitos. Por favor confirmar su asistencia a uno o más de los eventos aquí -  bit.ly/undocu-atl.

[youngist]

Fighting to Stay: “If 11 million people lost fear, everything would look different”

by Camila Ibanez | Youngist is proud to co-publish this in partnership with Waging Nonviolence.

Carla Garcia spray-painted butterflies surrounded by the words  "migration is beautiful.” — Photo via Shutterstock

Last month, Carla Garcia and I sat in the middle of a conference room of the Mexican Federation community center in Salt Lake City, Utah. Garcia, whose name has been changed to protect her immigration status, was cutting out a stencil in the shape of a monarch butterfly surrounded by the words “migration is natural.”

“I want to see these on every sidewalk,” she said, smiling as she looked up. “Wouldn’t that be so beautiful?”

By seven o’clock, more women filtered into the conference room for a meeting of the Salt Lake Dream Team, an organization that was created to pressure Congress to pass the Dream Act after Senator Orrin Hatch presented it in 2001. Since the legislation’s introduction, the Dream Act has gone to the Senate floor multiple times, although never with enough votes to pass. Ironically in 2007, the year it came closest to passing, Hatch missed the vote in order to attend his grandson’s graduation. With many Dreamers increasingly disillusioned about politics and legislation, the Salt Lake Dream Team transformed into a group of mostly undocumented women focusing on stopping deportations on their own.

Garcia finished her stencil as Ana Canenguez arrived. A mother originally from El Salvador, she’s currently the focus of the Dream Team’s campaign to force ICE to use prosecutorial discretion to keep families together in the United States. The plan is to demand lawmakers present a private bill to grant the family legal residency — a last-resort step that comes only after all other forms of relief have been exhausted. This reality is true for the Canenguez family, who has applied for every immigration solution, including Deferred Action and asylum. All of her applications were denied.

Rebecca Hall, a retired law professor at University of Utah, explained the ideological challenge migrants face when applying for legal residency.

“The U.S-legal system cannot contemplate the fact that there is worldwide economic injustice that we have created through our neoliberal system,” she said. “And that’s why people need to leave (their countries of origin) … The legal system doesn’t even think that way. That’s not even considered a truth.”

“Senator Hatch is our main target, “ said Angie Rodriguez, another member of the Salt Lake Dream Team. To win a private bill for the Canenguez family, the group must persuade a member of Congress to present it on the floor. He’s the only representative in Utah with an even mildly pro-immigration platform, and he’s known for having a soft spot for families.

“We are first asking the ‘proper way,’ setting up meetings and such,” Rodriguez continued. “But knowing politicians, it will take a little persuading before any decisions are made,” she added, as the rest of the group giggled.

According to Rodriguez, a person’s immigration status can be changed instantly, a success they’ve already experienced in previous cases. Take, for example, the deportation case of the Avelar sisters.

“Our targets were Hatch and the field officer from ICE in our region,” Rodriguez recalled.

After a large press conference in downtown Salt Lake City, the sisters received a phone call from their lawyer saying that their case had been dropped.

“Apparently ICE received a call from the Attorney General of Utah telling them to use prosecutorial discretion to drop the deportation case,” Rodriguez said. “Just like that their deportation case was dropped.”

It’s hard to leave your children

When President Obama took office in 2008, the Department of Homeland Security publicly began prioritizing the deportation of immigrants with criminal records — even as it began rapidly accelerating the rate of deportations overall. In August 2010, the same administration issued a detailed policy telling ICE agents to try to avoid deporting parents of children under the age of 18. But even with these two policies enacted to place “focus on sensible immigration” — as Obama frequently declares in speeches — many who don’t fit this description still end up trapped in the system.

Canenguez, who first came to the United States in 2003, is a clear example of this oversight.

“It’s very hard to leave your children,” she explained during the meeting. “But you know what’s worse? You get up, your children say they are hungry, and you don’t have anything to give them to eat.”

Eight years after Canenguez first moved to New York City in order to earn money to send back to her family, two of her sons, Job and Geovanny, were becoming young men in El Salvador. At 13 and 15 years old, they found the pressures of joining a gang slowly consuming their lives and the constant harassment distracting them from their studies. Canenguez, by then living in Utah, had just enough money to hire a coyote to bring them into the United States. They were caught walking through the arid Arizona desert. After being detained for weeks, the two teenagers were released. They joined their mother in Utah but were placed immediately in deportation proceedings.

Even with her two sons scheduled to be deported back to El Salvador, Canenguez took comfort in being reunited with them. She fell in love, got married and gave birth to two U.S.-born children, now 6 and 7. And although she had two more young sons in El Salvador, she believed it would be a couple of more safe years until the gangs found them suitable for recruitment. Unfortunately, those years came sooner than expected.

Canenguez had been gone from her village for nine years when she received a call from one of the gangs. The message was clear: They would kill her sons unless she wired $25,000. Instead, Canenguez decided to raise the money to hire a coyote and bring them to the United States. Mario and Erick, who at the time were 12 and 10 years old, were caught at the border and placed in a Mexican orphanage, spurring Canenguez to cross into Mexico to begin what would become a long battle to get her children back.

Two months later they were released into her custody. She hired yet another coyote to help them cross back into the United States. After walking through the desert for miles, Canenguez realized she was running low on food and water. Fearing death, they decided to turn themselves in. After being detained for week, the three were finally allowed into Utah. Facing the same fate as her other two sons, Canenguez, Mario and Erick found themselves in removal proceedings.

“Before I had the help (of the Salt Lake Dream Team), one lawyer told me to go into hiding,” explained Canenguez. “That was my only option. And for one moment I was seriously thinking about it. My family and I would change states, and we would live in fear until the police caught us. Hiding like criminals.”

I was detained once

Within the year, the Obama administration will have deported a record two million people since 2008. Even as immigration reform once again becomes a White House priority, thousands of people are deported daily. This stalling by politicians has sparked widespread actions, from the “March for Dignity and Respect” that took place in more than 100 cities earlier this fall to the ICE shutdowns occurring across the country.

“It’s obvious the immigration system is broken,” Garcia said, as we road our bikes back from the meeting, stencils in hand. “Ana’s case has received a lot of media attention. Hopefully that will show people who would usually be complacent that they can speak up with their community behind them.”

I remembered what Canenguez had said during the meeting about reform for the other 11 million undocumented migrants in the United States. “We need to lose fear of speaking out …  It would be beautiful if the 11 million lost fear. Everything would look different. The more people that lose fear, the more power we have. In unity there is power.”

As we talked, Garcia stopped in a dimly lit area.

“You know, I was once detained,” she said quietly, looking over her shoulder before pulling the can out of her bag. “There were women in there from Poland, Mexico, two from Africa and a few from Brazil,” she continued while spray-painting her monarch butterfly on the sidewalk.

“I remember one day I French-braided my hair. One woman warned me to take it out; she said that the guards would think someone did it for me. But at the same time, she was really excited I knew how to do it. She asked me to braid her hair later, since it had been a while since someone has come through that knew how to,” she said.

She explained how they set up a lookout system and hid in the corner farthest from the guards. “I quickly made two braids and we used loose elastics from our socks as a hair tie,” she said. The no-braids rule was strictly enforced to stop romantic relationships, Garcia explained. But it was also to ensure there was no bonding, of any sort, between the detainees.

She stood up to admire the freshly painted butterfly and smiled. “First it’s braids,” she said. “Then it’s revolt.”

[theofficialmyle]

WOW

The 7th episode of the Fosters. Get on that!!!

It raises so many issues, and especially weighs heavily on immigration/undocumented families. 

[pleasurekilledthevibe]

I'm working on a documentary series about my family, here is the first vid!

  A short and sweet recap of an amazing meal spontaneously prepared by my Uncle, a huge role model of mine. We are a family of immigrant from Guatemala and have struggled to find time in this country to have quality time for most anything, so every moment spent, with family especially, is too precious not to record.

[mgutierrezjr]

austin, tx

undocumented and unafraid.

[18mr]

Watch this fantastic short doc on three young undocuasians who are part of RAISE Our Story. Their diverse experiences are nevertheless bringing them together to fight for a path to citizenship!

[jvalasimages]

[reallifedocumentarian]

"I hear a lot of youth & people blame the parents, but it's our parents who are really unafraid!" - @felipebaeza #undocunation #undocumented #immyouth

[foreverthesoniag]

. @culturestrike 's very own @juliosalgado83 and @favianna1 leading a screen printing workshop #migration #undocumented #art4 #UndocuNation

[latinarebels]

Printmaking with @favianna1 and @juliosalgado83 #undocunation

[culturestrike]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE For more information contact:

Julio Salgado (SPANISH) julio@culturestrike.net or Lauren Taylor (ENGLISH) lauren@newcomm.org, 312.970.0491

  Pro-Migrant Artists and Creatives Gather in Atlanta for UndocuNation

Grammy winning & nominated musicians, immigrant visual artists and performers come together to celebrate the migrant experience and speak out against unjust immigration laws.

Atlanta, GA. On May 30th and 31st, Grammy winning & nominated musicians, visual artists, performers, and local community members will host the 5th Undocunation, a traveling arts and music festival that both uplifts migrant stories and speaks out against unjust immigration laws that separate families and discriminate against LGBTQ communities and people of color.

The multidisciplinary, free event is open to all community members and will feature performances, art installations, and workshops featuring leaders and artists engaged in civil, immigrant and LGBTQ rights.

Friday evening, May 30, will showcase musicians and performers such as Ceci Bastida of Tijuana No!, Shawn King of DeVotchKa, Raul Pacheco of Ozomatli, Sonia Guinansaca and Soultree. Art will be on display by Yehimi Adriana Cambron, Carol Belisa, Rommy Torrico, Felipe Baeza, Julio Salgado and more! Interdisciplinary artists and cultural organizers who are actively shaping today’s social movements will also be in attendance.

Saturday, May 31st will feature a full day of interactive workshops and panel discussions that explore immigrant rights in the context of human rights and racial justice. All are invited to hone their art and organizing skills to dismantle racism. Simultaneous interpretation will be provided (Spanish/English). See the next page for more information, including location, schedule, and a complete listing of workshops, panels, and presenters.

The UndocuNation event is rooted in the conviction that art, music and creativity can transform the debate around immigration. UndocuNation seeks to uplift creative activism and provide communities with the tools to address threats to civil liberties at the intersection of our nation’s most pressing social justice issues. Art and culture, together with community organizing, is a powerful vehicle to advance the rights of marginalized people and diminish the impact of discriminatory activity at the local level. History shows that when culture changes, politics follows.

Event co-sponsors CultureStrike and Center for New Community have coordinated UndocuNation events in San Francisco, Charlotte, Berkeley and Denver, and are excited to collaborate with local representatives from the following organizations to bring the event to Atlanta: Freedom University, Southerners on New Ground (SONG), Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, National Dreamers Alliance, SisterSong, Southeast Immigrant Rights Network (SEIRN), Georgia Detention Watch, the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, and American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia.

All UndocuNation events are free of charge. Please RSVP for one or more of the events here  http://bit.ly/undocu-atl