Executive Action and "Being Happy with What we Got"

I came home last night so exhausted and with not much energy to even look at my phone and read up on any facebook updates.  It has been such an emotion filled couple of days that I am still processing what I feel.

Our community has been fighting for so long for some sort of relief and now we have it, that it is still difficult to have a reaction.  This is undeniably such a HUGE victory, but yet so many people have been left out of the celebration.  I’ve read posts this morning saying that we “should be happy with what we get” that we should be grateful to Obama for “giving us something.”  These words alone “what we are getting” remind me that this is not something we are getting from ANYONE. 

This is something our community has achieved, a huge milestone given the context in which our families live on the day to day.  We have exposed the ugliness and complex nature of immigration.  We have exposed the racism that still penetrates, breathes, and lives in the fabric of our society.  We have brought to light the injustices for people of color in Arizona and nationwide.  We have RESISTED and learned to resist from the people who live the reality of living in the label of illegality on a daily basis, despite an entire system designed to oppress them and keep them in a status of illegitimacy and trauma.  We have witnessed our families resist this very system that targets and harasses and hurts and kills through the construction of shifting borders that exclude and divide.   

We have resisted and learned to resist from the leadership of organizations who through various tactics have moved the movement for human rights forward.  We have resisted and learned to resist from our youth, from students and dreamers who questioned the status quo, who risked arrest, and continue to experiment with ways to demand more from this process that continues to deny our families the human rights we continue to exercise and know we have.  This is a HUGE victory for ourselves, we have exposed this problem and forced the United States to recognize its need to address the mess they know they have but a mess that our community has loudly and passionately been screaming is NOT okay and it is something we are TAKING NO MORE OF. 

While the administration thinks this is enough, we all know in our hearts that it’s not.  But should we be happy, YES! We have came this far in pushing for the recognition of our human rights and while this is not the answer nor the cure for this sick society that profits and sustains itself from the exploitation of people of color, it is a step in the right direction, a step to reenergize our movement and continue fighting till brown and illegal cease to be synonymous, to continue fighting till the stigma of criminality is shifted away from the sweat of immigrant workers, till every single mother no longer has to worry about abandoning their children when and if they are kidnapped by our government through detention and deportation, till every student is able to focus on living his or her dreams and their education instead of on trying to protect the status of their families, till we are finished teaching fear to our children by having to have conversations about la migra, till speaking Espanol is something we value rather than denigrate, till ethnic studies is recognized as a necessary component of our history and education, the fight will continue till  these and so many other important issues are resolved in our community, the fight continues. 

We know from Ferguson and various other communities that despite their legality, being a person of color continues to be a problem in the United States, we have scratched the surface of a much deeply rooted historical element of America’s tradition.  But in this tradition, the struggle continues and I know our community is far from done, we will continue moving forward.

Spaces of Resistance

The migrant center in Naco is small and often crowded, yet it has already found a special place in my heart. I want to say that it’s the people that I meet that make me love to be there, but reality is that it’s the place itself. I have always found that places, spaces, are juxtaposed in such ways as to bring about the most interesting lessons about life and living. Your position within the space, teaches you so much about who you are and who you want to be. I suppose it becomes another symbolic reminder that learning is always taking place, both in and out of the classroom.

It is there where I am learning over and over that life itself is so very random. It is a paradox that we struggle daily to embrace. The situation of so many migrants is no different or is drastically different than the situation I once knew or didn’t know. What I mean is that there is not a day that I don’t say to myself I’m glad that isn’t me or that the person I just met is just like me. There is nothing intrinsically different from the communities that live on either side of the border.  But the border is there, and with it are the many unheard stories and reasons for crossing it.

Se van a regresar? O van intentar de Nuevo? (Are you returning home or trying again?) These are some of the questions, among others, that we ask at the migrant center. The answer is irrelevant from our perspective. Our only concern is of how to help. If they are going back, we try to inform them of their resources for return. If they are trying again, we give them food, water, a phone call. It’s not much. But it is. I think that perhaps the greatest resource is simply welcoming them into the center. As I said, it is a space where learning happens. Where for an hour or two, people get to feel human once again. The outside contains not one border, but many. The police, the polleros, the financial borders, the wall, the dessert, border patrol. So many barriers to cross and overcome. Identities constantly challenged against the many institutions of power and control. Dominance and submission; and from all of it, resistance continues to be born.