 Mm-hmm. Alicia Rivera. ¿Estás? Are you here? ¡Aquí estoy! ¡Va, pues, amor, amiga, gran amiga! So, my dear friend, I'm going to find her. She, Alicia Rivera, I will introduce my dear friend, L.A. Alicia Rivera fled repression in El Salvador in 1980 and has been living in Los Angeles ever since. She has been active in issues of refugee rights, economic and social justice, and currently focuses on environmental defense of frontline communities as lead organizer for communities for a better environment. And I want to say, somehow you came out a while ago in the LA Times, one of the top 10 most important women in Los Angeles. Go get them. Well, thank you very much. I am, it's been, I really, I didn't think I was going to be sitting all day listening here, but I wind up doing that. And I have learned so much from people that I have here, you know, and learn from, such as Daniel Elspher and from FAIR, that program, I learned so much from El Salvador and as Jose Miguel, I had to flee El Salvador in 1980 for my life with my two younger siblings. After I saw people being killed, young people that I have gone to school with, that I have grown up with, teachers, including priests, because I went to a Catholic church school. So some of the priests that I knew from my early education were killed. And this happened so suddenly in 1979, starting, you know, I really didn't know that being involved in the Christian communities, on the, the offices of I think of Romero, was going to get us to be labeled communists. And that's about all the politics I knew just within the church. But there were many people who were disappeared, who's had to go into hiding. And when Bishop Romero was assassinated, I knew that they would not spare anyone, because everyone that I saw being killed were simple, you know, were simply students, teachers, nurses. I didn't think they were involved in even with the guerrillas that at the time, you know, we just starting to be, to organize openly. So I fled with pretty much everything I had. And we tried to cross the border. And we were stopped more than twice. And they would just throw us back to the Mexican border. But on the third time, we were arrested in San Diego. And we again said that we were Mexicans, but we were hoping to be deported there. So we could quickly try to cross the border again. But this time the US immigration beat us up. They beat up my younger brother. And so I couldn't take his being beat up in the open, in the call, in December with the clothes off. They had taken off his clothes. And so I told them that we were from El Salvador. And so they put us in a plane full of other people and we were deported. I had a younger brother here. And so he hired a coyote to try to get us through the border. But it took me a while to convince my younger brother who was really traumatized by how he had been treated physically. So anyway, so when I got here is when I learned more about what was happening in El Salvador with the Civil War. And we were hiding. It's almost like you see that you have a sign here in your forehead that says mojado, illegal, and that everyone is really checking you out. So when I see eyes now on the Trump, I remember, you know, being exactly with that fear of being, you know, arrested and deported. So and when I see, you know, all this migration waiting at the sad border, you know, I can't help to see myself there. And then I learned that, you know, we were applying, you know, I somehow was end up homeless. And I got help from the Lutheran Church. And I was helping translate some of the stories of the refugees that were coming to get aid. And it was unbelievable, the stories, you know, those disappearances and why had they they have left. But I realized that, you know, we had to put all these testimonies together to put this asylum application and they were all being denied. And then people were afraid to apply because they were afraid that immigration having the information would come and arrest them. So I realized that, you know, it was going to be a contradiction that the United States was spending one billion a day, one million a day to help the government in El Salvador that was killing us. So why would they give us asylum? That would be accepting that that government is not, is creating refugees that are coming and crossing the border. And, you know, the Cold War, what I am one of those people who because of this Cold War, I remember Reagan saying that they had to stop communism in El Salvador. And everyone was being called subversive. Now they're called terrorists. And so, and so we I am a product of this Cold War trying to stop the communism from growing in Latin America. And that, you know, created untold and terrible suffering in El Salvador that's been according to the data, 75,000 people killed. Something like 8,000 people disappeared. And the rest of the people, over one million, I am one of those that got this place, you know, wherever you could go, you left. And so they approve us. But then when you come here, they don't want you. So you realize that the United States, this is what this intervention and this stopping communism creates is displacing people. And now, you know, and everybody makes money out of this war. You know, the ones that are making the weapons, of course. So, you know, it's a business every time they intervene and every time they're going to a war, as you all know. But I am lucky in Jose Miguel as well, have been able to live and be a witness to how the U.S. intervention in our countries forces us to live and to flee. And now, what's happening is these hundreds and thousands of refugees that are fleeing from Guatemala, from Honduras, from El Salvador, and are right there on the other side of the border. It's because there's different things. There's climate change, people are in all these transnational corporations that are mostly Americans coming to set up projects like dams, and they need to mind the minerals and they displace the communities. You know, the people in El Salvador, I was there seven years ago to bury my mom. And this man, there were a lot of people at my door asking me to give them jobs. And I found out that if they were paid well, it was $12 for eight hours of work. Sometimes they ask you to work for you for the food. And that's when they can find something. So people are really starving. And you know, there is all this money that Jose Manuel mentioned that the U.S. invests. But where do that money go? No, they're privatizing the water, they're privatizing the electricity, they're privatizing medicine and public health. And so what happens is that when you make it so difficult, you know, when I was in El Salvador, people made 25 cents an hour. And my father even made that wage. And so, but people manage even in the poverty to grow their own food. But when there is war, and when you're being killed, and you don't know why, you know, when they're going to come and massacre your whole hamlet, which happened in El Salvador, you have to live. You can no longer make a living, a meager living, what I saw in El Salvador and grew up with. And so I really appreciate having heard from everyone for the years that people in this group have been involved in all these injustices happening globally. And that's, you know, I really appreciate it. I, and it is the solidarity that I was involved with, with Americans here that stopped the war in El Salvador together with the rebels fighting the military. And so that's what stopped the war, finally. But, you know, the countries end up in such poverty, everything is destroyed. I remember Nepal being dropped by airplanes. We have never seen that in our lifetime. So every time, you know, the planes fly so close to my house where I live now, where I hear them, I can't help to think what it's like when all these planes are flying so close to you dropping bombs. It marks you forever. And even if you try to forget, every time there is another war, another El Salvador in Iraq, another El Salvador in Syria, you know, another El Salvador in Guatemala, you know, it comes back. So I am fortunate to have been able to remain in the struggle all these years alongside with people like you all heroes and heroes. And we're going to continue to do it because injustice, economic injustice, it's to learn of how poor people are objectivized. And, you know, in the labor struggle and capitalism, it's the worst system that has ever happened. And it will continue, and it is continuing to deplete the natural resources in El Salvador and Guatemala and El Salvador and everywhere because the GDP has to continue to grow and grow no matter what. And so I am involved helping and empowering and working with communities in the frontline where oil is the one that is getting our climate warmer. And so I invite everyone to, in addition to what you're doing, you know, help us out. We're doing a lot to fight oil. And of course, we all are doing that. And I'm going to put my contact information here in the chat. And in fact, we have, we're trying to get rid of oil drilling at the moment in all of Los Angeles. And that campaign has taken a big leap. We are expecting the city council to approve an ordinance that would ban all fossil fuel extraction in Los Angeles. They already did it in Culver City, you know, Culver City City Council decided that they're going to ban oil drilling and they put a moratorium right away. So let's get rid of oil. Let's get rid of all this work. You know, if we get rid of, you know, the US got a word for oil in Iraq. And it goes for oil, whatever it is, and for everything else. And so, you know, to know about the struggles, what's being done and what can be done is so important. And that's what got me all these years, you know, because information is power, you know, and so, as we know, and so it is very important, as Jose Miguel said, to send people to witness what's happening in this coming election. So thank you very much for inviting me. And it's been amazing. Thank you, Rachel and Frank. Thank you, Alicia, for your testimony. It will be put into the record. And yes, oil everywhere. The US military burns 100 million barrels of oil a year and pollutes more than 140 countries all combined. It's the largest single polluter on planet earth and we have it in our backyards, don't we? Also, Alicia. And I want to say to you, you know, I teach Spanish, Alicia, and every year the kids learn about El Salvador and from me. And so it's my compromiso for you. And Alicia has been with us when we visited our congresswoman here, Annette Barragan, who was a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. So that's another angle, you know, making sure that that people, you know, represent if they're going to use the CHC label, they better start doing this internationally or, you know, more window dressing, more hypocrisy. But Alicia had all of us pretty much in tears at that meeting. So it's very, very powerful if you can go into a congressional office with someone from the frontline community and make them listen. Thank you.