 Hi there and welcome to Frontline. I'm Merron Khalili and this is a show about people who confront power to figure out how they do it. Its goal is to leave you with tips, tactics and inspiration for your own activist projects and in this episode I'm talking to Miguel Duarte. Miguel is a young migrants rights activist and back in the period of the EU migration crisis 2016-2017 he helped to save over 14,000 people who were stranded in the Mediterranean Sea. People who were crossing on small boats, unfit for purpose, trying to reach Europe. But all of that came to an abrupt halt when the Italian authorities charged Miguel with aiding and abetting illegal immigration and Miguel faced up to 20 years in prison. I really enjoyed talking to Miguel, I think he's a great guy and there was a lot here, a lot of inspiration, a lot of content that I think activists in general could really get something from. So whether you're working in migrants rights or any other area I hope you'll enjoy listening. Let's get to it. I'm Miguel, I'm Portuguese, I'm a physicist, I live close to Lisbon and I've been involved in the struggle for migrants rights in Europe since the summer of 2016 when I joined my first search and rescue mission in the Central Mediterranean. Back then I joined this ship or the crew of this ship called the Juventa. It was a fishing ship that started really that summer to operate and I basically joined the crew of volunteers, young volunteers from several different places in Europe that basically didn't see themselves represented in the EU migration policy. What's the situation in 2016 here? What's the geopolitical situation that's causing large numbers of people to try to cross the Mediterranean to enter Europe? So a lot was happening back then for several different reasons. I guess if I have to point out two or three specific events that were most significant I would say, well the war in Syria definitely contributed to a huge influx of people from the Middle East into Europe through several routes. Also the beginning of the Civil War in Libya caused enormous instability in a country where almost half of the population was already people from sub-Saharan African countries that lived in relative poverty. So when the war starts those are the first people to flee and so those two routes kind of picked up just a few years after those two wars started. For a while the Italian government were rescuing people from the sea and this was before you volunteered. I mean tell me a little bit about that and why that operation fell apart and they ended up just leaving people to drown essentially trying to come over to the EU. Yeah so in the Central Mediterranean which is the route where I was most involved numbers were picking up quite a lot by 2013 and it was a decision by the European Union to start a military rescue operation in the Central Mediterranean. So it was funded by the EU but then it was operated by the by the Italian Navy and this operation was called Marinostum and I mean it had huge means I think we've never seen anything like that since and I'm not entirely sure but that we'll see again because the fact is over the course of the year so I think from October 2013 to October 2014 Marinostum was responsible for rescuing more than 150,000 people huge numbers and what happened then was so only a year after the beginning of this operation several states in Europe started pressuring for the cancellation of this operation and in the end it was replaced by something by a front-ex operation. Front-ex is the sort of the border guards of the European Union so the main purpose of this operation was border control and not rescue and this is huge right. Also it was much less funded than the first one and what this resulted in is again shipwrecks by the hundreds, people dying by the hundreds already in 2014 so because of this civil society started organizing and put together fundraising projects to fund small ships to go to the Mediterranean. They got cruise together and they started rescuing people themselves. I mean I'm looking at some stats here it says that when Marinostum was terminated and superseded by this operation Triton from Front-ex which was as you say very much less funded they weren't able to enter international waters which Marinostum did and the death rate among migrants sadly between 2014 and 2015 increased tenfold as a result of this change of policy. So you were just saying that how NGOs stood up to fill that gap. Go on tell me about the NGO that you joined and what civil society was doing to rescue migrants. Yeah so these groups started getting together and I would say I mean I can't speak for everyone of course involved in civil rescue but I would say that this is definitely a work that has two sides to it. It's not I mean these these groups came up first as humanitarian organizations but they went there with a very specific political goal in the sense that from the start these organizations most of them were very critical of the cancellation of this of this rescue operation by the by the European states and were basically going not only to rescue the people themselves but also as a means of protest saying we are here but we'd rather not have to be and it's it would like the ideal situation is that is that you know the states fulfill their their duty to rescue people at sea. And so I think it wasn't the end of 2014 beginning of 2015 that the first organization started and they only joined in 2016 the small ship called the event. Explain to me a little bit about the asylum policy in the EU because if I understand correctly asylum seekers in the EU need to be physically present to request asylum so they need to come to an EU country in order to do that and yet there is there are no means for them to to do that easily so they end up having to having to get on a dinghy and cross and cross choppy waters to get to the EU right I mean I explain the background a little bit the policy how that yeah exactly I mean there are to be very strict about this there there are resettlement programs from countries outside the European Union to the European Union itself but but but these are accessible to a very very reduced number of people and so effectively you know for the large majority of the people this is just not an option so and so basically what people are left with is paying enormous amounts of money you know typically a lot more than they would pay even for flights you know for a safe flight to a European airport so just so that they're able to set foot on the European shore and be able to to to file for asylum right because otherwise they just cannot do do that and you know international law protects the right right of people to to to ask for asylum if I if I cross the border illegally and I'm physically in another state I can also I can always you know the state has to has the duty by international law to to to consider my application my so I mean there's a lot of things wrong with with with the asylum procedure in Europe this is this is certainly one thing and it's definitely one thing that then kind of feeds all of the networks of human trafficking across all of these countries and into the European Union right because people will migrate people have migrated since the beginning of times for several different reasons people will do that and regardless of the policies that we have in place now they can do it safely or they can do it unsafely and and it's up to us to choose which options to give them right and if if we're taking away the legal options then they will be left with the illegal options and the dangerous routes to to Europe this is what feeds all of these networks that then end up profiting and even fueling civil wars like in Libya okay so it's summer 2016 um if I'm looking if I if my stats are correct there was about 5000 people a day which sounds unbelievable um mostly from Syria and because of the collapse of this marinostrum program creating a situation where many more people die you volunteer and join this NGO take me take me through um what happened I joined in 2016 and that was I'm not a sailor I'm not a doctor and I'm not a nurse um so you know typically I wouldn't think of myself as somebody who could be useful in a situation like this uh but that means that means only one thing which is that the people who have trade who have the means to be there are not right this is the reason why you see back then back in 2015-16 you saw so many volunteers uh amateurs really uh joined these missions and and you know basically I found out about this organization uh that ran the event up back in in July 2016 and they were halfway through their first mission they had been on the water for for a week and they had participated in the rescue of like a thousand people um a group of say 12 or 13 uh youngsters uh who don't you know most of them are not professionals that's at what they're doing right so this this means two things this means something is terribly wrong right that that these people have even the possibility of doing something like this right it just means that there's no other option for the people who are uh fleeing and and it also means I have to be a part of this somehow I have to contribute somehow so I reached up and I fortunately they were looking for crew back then and then I joined them just kept learning and doing as I as I went there were different approaches that you could have taken though to tackle this particular problem I mean what some people were doing for example was to lobby the EU in order to restart that program did you consider those approaches before you went out on the humanitarian aid mission essentially or or not yeah yeah very much so I mean um but I think the two things are not mutually exclusive actually they help one another in the sense that um these NGOs even the the visibility given to us by the work that we do can be used as a as a as a tool to get to to to to policy makers right to get to people who can actually make a significant change so so there's there's these two sides to the work right uh there's certainly the political word that needs to be done and fundamentally is the most important thing to be done because it's the only thing that can achieve uh long-term change uh but then also in the meanwhile people need to be rescued we can't just watch thousands upon thousands of people losing their lives uh and cross our arms and do nothing right you know the the best we can do with the means that we have is to decrease somehow the suffering right we won't solve the problem with C rescue that's for sure okay so you're on a boat you've got a degree in physics uh I I don't know how much you know boat uh captaining or whatever the term is that you've done before I mean I don't know if you were seasick or what but like how how does that work I mean you just you just sitting in the port waiting for a call to go out on a mission uh well the the work that I do has nothing to do with physics right nothing whatsoever uh so it's I guess it's just two sides of myself um but um I I just I joined not knowing much uh about about the technical details of the work right so I was I was taught basically as I came in I was taught how to do the stuff that I needed to do and you know mission upon mission I learned more and they took different positions on board according to you know to wherever I could be useful basically uh then we're not exactly in port waiting for a call because the because the the central Mediterranean is quite large so what we did was we uh bunkered the ship uh we stocked up on on food and water and we would go down south we would take we back then we were based in Malta so we would take around 24 hours to get to to uh the the the region where we were where it was most likely you know in international waters where it was where we were most likely to have um to find distress cases and and then we would stay there for about two weeks uh three weeks something like that then we'd come back depending on you know the weather conditions the people we found what we had to do the the the fuel the water everything I assume but practically how did you intercept these people I mean you're if I understand right you're you're sitting in the middle of the Mediterranean how do you know when there are going to be when there are people in the area I mean does it show up on a radar dingy or is it just through site do you have to be in the right place at the right time so there's there's a number of ways and they have changed along along the time back then in 2016 17 when I started doing this work the majority of the cases that we found the majority of the distress cases that we found were signal signal to us by the Italian maritime rescue coordination center so that's an institution that belongs to the to the to the Italian states uh all of the many many states have such a thing and it has the responsibility to coordinate the rescues in a certain parts of the of international waters let's say um and by then our cooperation was our cooperation with or their cooperation with us was at least um uh at least it was going on you know it happened uh so they knew we were in the area they knew that we were a rescue ship and they would they would when they got the information from an airplane or a helicopter or a warship or whatever in the area they would see where we are and ask us call us and ask us to to to rescue and we did just that you know because that was what we're there to do nowadays things are a lot different the political landscape in Italy changed a lot um I mean it changed in the whole wide Europe but but specifically in Italy that's that's what affects us the most um and cooperation with authorities has been just declining and declining over the years um and and sadly uh we're not informed so much uh about the cases so we need to many times to just find them uh by ourselves you saved about 14 000 people during your time with you can read at the um German NGO yeah how many missions was that I think that's around eight missions in in in 2016 and about eight as well in 20 in 2017 um there were missions that were very very busy there were like I remember like my last mission on the event over the course of two weeks we we participated in the rescue of of 3700 people uh yeah we're in a very small ship right it's not like we fit everybody in the ship that that's not even possible but as as I said by then cooperation with the Italian authorities was was uh a lot more uh it worked a lot more and as soon as we we almost as soon as we had people rescued uh many most of the times the there was a postcard ship or a warship that would pick the people up safely and bring them safely to to european shores uh so it wasn't it wasn't always your boat that was taking the people to the coast right back then it back then it almost never happened because we we had this we had this cooperation with with I understand okay nowadays it happens I see okay gosh and how did that feel I mean when you're you're out there you see you see the boat how did it feel when you saw your first boat of people fleeing their country knowing that that boat probably wouldn't make it to the shore yeah I remember by first rescue quite well actually um uh I mean naturally I had almost no idea of what was going on and um and you know when you see it I mean you see it on tv but it's not the same thing right and and when we got there it was uh a small boat relatively easy rescue operation small wooden boats uh at high seas the engine wasn't working and the people had been in the water for roughly two days under the sun uh super dehydrated and they all thought that we're gonna die and when they saw us with the life jackets and the helmets and the rescue equipment they you know all of them just started crying uh uh and it was even it was even not a typical rescue because because as soon as people saw us and they they understood that they were about to be rescued safe and brought safely onto a ship they started uh there were Christians from Nigeria and mostly and they started singing a hallelujah song while it was very emotional moments and um yeah we were able to bring them all safely uh onboard the ship and I just felt like you know we was not even um midday and that had already been the most useful day in my entire life so I felt like like this is what I want to do and and so I did as much as I could possibly do until I was stopped in uh August 2017 right tell us about that the case against you and the ensuing smear campaign by the establishment against you personally and against uh several of your your fellow crew members how did that how did that start so it started abruptly in in in august 2017 when our ship was forced to port in Lampedusa in Italy by the Italian authorities and when we got there the crew was forced to to leave the ship and the ship was seized by the Italian police uh and they basically we were informed that there was um an investigation uh ongoing uh whose target was specific members of the crew but we didn't know who back then they didn't inform us of that um and the the the suspicion was human three three suspicions of crimes let's say one was uh human trafficking another one was uh aiding at the Vedic illegal immigration and another one was possession of firearms we couldn't decide which was the most absurd uh human so you at this moment you were being accused of being a human trafficker basically yeah and also carrying firearms I mean on a humanitarian ship so so then we uh what we did was what you know what what what you'd expect somebody to do in the situation we tried as much as we could to to get the ship back on the water as quickly as possible because we know we knew how needed it was you know we knew that people were dying when we were there so you know more people would die if if you decrease the the the the the number of rescue assets present in the central med right so we tried and tried but we couldn't uh we couldn't really do it and the ship is seized to this day actually um uh so and then about a year later in 2018 June 2018 myself and nine fellow crew members started getting letters in our mailboxes uh basically in guiding us of uh uh aiding in the Vedic illegal immigration so the human trafficking in the and the possession of firearms were were dropped uh but still the absurd accusation of of aiding illegal immigration uh persisted and it's a crime that just by itself by Italian law could lead each of us to 20 years in prison okay um so so so i mean they seized the boat so they it's managed to stop all the all the operations that your boat was doing um and then you're just sitting there for a year waiting to find out what's going on and then they alert you uh to tell you that you're being charged with aiding in a betting illegal immigration and this is the beginning of a case that took several years to resolve right yeah it's not resolved yet you can um i'm yeah so basically after 20 2018 uh we were so the 10 of us were officially under investigation we got a lawyer to start um to start doing uh to start preparing the defense but we still had to wait around three years that the investigation was concluded and the formal charges were were uh brought against uh the crew members and in that moment actually not the 10 of us were accused i'm off the hook for example along with five other crew members um so five uh yeah exactly so so four uh of us uh were formally accused mainly because they were in leadership positions so they were captains and heads of mission uh and uh but you know the but the the absurd charges persist and that and indeed the the preliminary hearing will will be will be uh in about a month in starting in in Sicily in Italy for the for the remainder um so what what kind of evidence i mean did they have how did they concoct this case against you using what uh there was it was there was an enormous amount of of of information and it actually surprised us very much because uh um uh many of our phones were tapped for example so our conversations were overheard um the the ship was bugged as well so conversations on the ship were overheard as well uh and there was even an undercover agent in another NGO in another ship uh uh to there to to take pictures and to kind of monitor our actions so they've been building this case against you for some time i mean you were actually operating while they were building the casing absolutely almost since the beginning of the operations of of the event uh and now we know uh i mean sometime later sometime after the the seizure of the ship we learned that um that the investigation was actually started by uh some by by by some people who had connections to to the to uh Lega from Salvini Matteo Salvini far-right Italian politician and uh Lega the the northern league party his far-right party okay go um and they were actually kind of instructed by Salvini himself to to monitor us so that the that some investigation of this sort could could start um so there's you know probably thousands of hours of conversations uh overheard and of pictures and stuff like that and i i read all of the all of the files that were given to us upon the seizure of the ship and um there's you know so much uh information that's completely taken out of context so that it looks uh like uh so that it kind of smears our image let's say and and the the the i mean another huge indication that the that was indeed the ultimate goal is that as soon as the ship was seized and we were informed of the investigation uh all of the all of these documents were leaked to the main Italian newspapers as well right so a lot of the information we were actually you know we were the target to this investigation but we were getting the information through Italian newspapers um and you know our full names our pictures were disclosed in in newspapers uh i'm pretty sure this is illegal under Italian law but but still it's it's it's done uh and you know Italy was going through the this this moment in which migration was was the hot topic right and uh you had lots of far-right populism uh lots of far-right parties just uh just going on and on about the the problems of migration and the the invasion that we're uh subjected to and that the Italian public shouldn't shouldn't have to stand for this and all of that and then you know when at the right moment when you publish news in the in the newspaper saying ah actually these NGOs that you thought were only uh you know uh the good guys rescuing people preventing you from dying at sea they're actually in in bed with the devil you know this is something that resonates in people's minds when they're in a situation like this so you don't even need proof to get judged by the public right uh and and so and the the the you know the proof of what i'm saying is is that basically all NGOs that acted in that area back then acted in that area back then were then you know we were just the first case all of them were accused or investigated of similar crimes and nobody to this day has been convicted of anything accused but in terms of legal cases uh there were other NGOs as well as yours or was it them all of them were actually there was a case against them not not just accused in the media you mean legally yeah i see yeah not not just not certainly not just the media there were cases brought so back in 2017 we were just the first case and in 2017 and 2018 this was a method right this was uh what people call lawfare right it's basically instrumentalizing the the judicial system to serve a political goal because in the end uh nobody was proved proved to be guilty right so right there has been no compelling evidence of any of any wrongdoing by any of these organizations you know you could even say that maybe there's some people who are doing something wrong none have been convicted to this day but when this whole thing started you were the first one um right and i mean that must have been awful for you you must i mean i must have thought my god i just came here to help people and now i could potentially be facing 20 years in an Italian prison uh i mean take me through that mental process a little bit like what was going on in your head well we we knew we were making so we knew a lot of a lot of you know powerful institutions and people did not like what we do particularly uh but honestly i was not expecting at all an outcome like this and you know when i get a letter in my mailbox that i don't understand because it's written in lawyer language and i show it to a lawyer and the lawyer says uh you know you're facing the possibility of 20 years in prison you get again at least a couple of sleepless nights there um uh but then you know i got together with the people who were with the rest of the people who were um indicted and got together with with other NGOs were um it from from the starts completely ready to support us in whatever we could well whatever they could and and then we we started doing this uh you know creating a campaign to to inform people about this uh about the situation and also to to fundraise for the legal defense and all of that went so well we got uh we got such a big response from the from the public in in in most countries in europe but also outside europe we got thousands and thousands of people donating and showing support and institutions uh even we got human rights awards and stuff like that and even you know with the goal of of shedding light um on the topic that at some point you know that together with seeing all of the other NGOs being subjected to to to to accusations uh like like this we we immediately felt that you know this is part of the fight this is part of the political fight and if if we went to the Mediterranean in the first place not only to rescue people but also to change politics so that these people don't have to die um you know this is the same fight we're now fighting against criminalization of people who are trying to help people who don't want to die right uh but how but how did you raise all that awareness i mean um what wasn't there a risk that anything you do or say could compromise your case how did you put that those mechanics in action to to be able to get all that support yeah so there there was that risk right and we were warned countless times of that risk and we knew how easily it was already to to take anything we say out of context that make it look bad right because that's exactly what was used against us um but so there was that risk but in but also there's i would say there's a moral imperative there's a moral obligation to tell the story not because our our case is super special it's not it's it's because it describes quite well the political situation so the the the situation in which we find ourselves in terms of european migration migration policy um it describes to me it it lifts the veil on a very important um a very important thing which is that people are not dying because uh because the the european states refuse to help people are dying because they're actually that because there are intentional policies put in place to make that happen right i'm not saying that the ultimate goal is for people to die but i'm saying that's the direct and intentional consequence of the of the of the uh of the conscience consequence of the of the policies put in place right now right for europe exactly so this is this is this is part of a of a of a wide spectrum of measures that's that have been implemented not only in italy but but across europe hundreds of activists and and humanitarian workers have been uh prosecuted and they're still facing enormous uh you know trials that hopefully will end up uh in um what do you call it um and people you know being declared innocent i don't know the legal terms in english about this you know and and and as a tactic i mean i i guess it's pretty effective isn't it it stops you doing what you're doing puts you in a in a defensive mode a need for fees uh distracts you uh from helping people it's very um it's technical you need expertise you need the right people on board it's not something that you can just resolve with a couple of social media posts or a smart campaign to be honest i i think if you look uh closely at the NGOs and at the at the at the work that's been doing you know there was there was a clear message sent by european states to the the humanitarian workers doing this this kind of work in greece in italy in france in malta in a lot of different countries there was a very clear message which was uh if you don't stop doing this there will be serious consequences legal consequences and all and all that right so the the message was was you know was was passed was conveyed and was understood still you see so back in 2018 because of mostly because of this problem uh there were practically no uh rescue ships available in central medics ready so and people were dying right um in 2019 the doctors without borders for example they they they they had cancelled all the operations uh sometime earlier because the that ship aquarius was seized in france for some absurd accusations by the italian governments that then the the french police um helped out with with the whole seizure and everything they cancelled the operations but then in 2019 they decided to go back to the sea get a bigger and better ship um and and and go back and then back then the statement was was was something like um we've made our choice uh the we are determined to to render assistance to whoever needs it and we're not alone because civil society in europe is mobilizing this is what they said some you know not not the exact words um and but they were right uh i mean if in 2018 there were practically no ships right now you have i can even count them off the top of my head but something like eight or nine ships from several countries in europe are doing actively missions in the in the central mediterranean uh and that means hundreds maybe thousands of activists and and humanitarian workers going back to the sea that means ten times or a hundred times that uh people donating to get these ships on the water because that costs a lot of money right so there is resistance and if you if you look closely to the to the to the to what's happening in the front line and i'm talking about the central mediterranean but this is the this is the same in greece right uh all of the NGOs all of the activist groups all of the collectives were doing uh protests and and you know basically showing solidarity um you can see this all around people are resisting people are resisting people understood the consequences that still are are ready to to face the meaning so the response was kind of well okay you can try and take one of us down but we'll come back with a hundred more and you can't take us all down i see okay so so what happened uh i mean you mentioned crowdfunding how much money did you manage to get to together for your legal defense i saw a figure of 50 000 back in the day i mean a couple of years ago uh i think that you managed to crowdfund or we we we we managed to crowdfund 50 000 in a specific campaign we made in portugal but we got a lot more than that in other countries uh uh so in yeah it's so specifically in portugal we got we got just above that i think um which which is absolutely amazing um and and but we got a lot more than that in in i don't i can't tell you numbers already already okay i don't remember but in you know in germany where most of the crew members were from um we got a we got a lot more than that we did a lot of communication work there and and it's not even that we did such a great job at that's communicating this right it's it's that the first of all the story is outrageous and second of all people are ready to help and that's what's inspiring about the whole thing and soon after the case was dropped against you you went back out onto the seas right and this is what you're doing yeah so in uh march last year the the case was uh so the investigation was was concluded and i was let go together with five others and we decided to to go back to the sea um we we talked to sea watch uh as i said another um german NGO that's um rescuing in central mediterranean uh and they decided to to invite us to be part of their cruise and since then i've been on two rescue missions so in april and may last year and also in november and december and yep and what are the numbers like now in in terms of people coming over um so in the beginning of covid numbers decreased uh slowly when they so numbers of successful crossings let's say because the numbers of departures are very hard to pin down right because nobody's watching and then they started increasing again and so from 2020 to 2021 there was a significant increase and and again it seems like 2022 is going to be uh a lot higher than 2021 so far yeah but i'm actually i've got some stats in front of me here it's from the european parliament says that um 2020 there was 125 000 detected quote illegal border crossings unquote in 2020 um majority was it as if there were legal border crossings in this yes yes um majority uh well from from other countries but but the the largest country represented is uh that was syria people of syrian nationality and then morocco algeria tunisia afghanistan bangladesh and turkey um so if somebody is listening to this and they're not deterred by the fact that there was a case against you and that you were in legal limbo for several years and had to had to crowdfund your way out of it um how could they get started what would you recommend to someone who wants to be active in this in terms of resources points of contact or anything that can make a difference in the short term where is help most needed i'd say so as as we've been saying a couple of times already in this in this interview uh and that that is the most important message i suppose the problem is political right and it will only change with politics in the in the long run um and so um to be honest i believe that you know for for uh common people like us the the way to get started is to get organized basically to you know get together with the local collectives that that's uh treats um the topics related to human rights to borders to migrant rights um on all of this stuff you know and there that's you know getting in contact with the people who are in contact with this with this topic not only the refugees themselves and the the migrants themselves but also people who've been helping it and showing solidarity for years that's that's you know that it's meeting those people every day that you that you learn uh most about uh about all of this and that's where you see where it could be the most useful as well are there any specific organizations or umbrella organizations or networks um that people could search for if not it's fine if they don't come to mind but i'm just trying to think of names that people could google for in order to immediately get active i mean i can name i can name a few i suppose in in germany uh in germany there's a lot of rescue organizations and and all of those you know it would be useful to that people contact it contact them and and offer help but there's also this organization called zeb hook it's a sea bridge in german and um they do a lot of a lot of advocacy work they do protests they do a lot of work regarding this topic in um in portugal for example we have uh i'm part of i work with a collective called hub humans before borders and we do the same type of work on a smaller scale um uh you know advocacy uh kind of work we talk to to uh to people who to policy makers and we when we talk to people and we organize protests we organize um actions awareness raising fundraising and stuff like that um so in spain for example there's there's a big NGO called open arms they do a lot of very professional rescue work and and certainly they do a lot of a lot of a lot of work other work as well background work so you know all of that is is all of those are are extremely useful ways to go and and to get started okay cool well we'll find links to those organizations and put them in the in the description of the of the video the audio um anything else that you would like to cover i mean i i have a bonus question for you actually but it's not necessarily related to this or maybe it is just two or three books that you might recommend it could be anything really but but ideally related to the kinds of topics that we've been discussing today well i've i've i've been recommending this book a lot because uh i've i read it and i find it i find it really really good it's it's called hope in the dark by rebecca solids uh rebecca is a is a an activist from from the west she's been involved in a lot of anti-war protests and stuff like that and and this book is a little bit like a text written for um uh tired activists i would say so basically people who kind of need that hope in the dark they because it's easy to uh to get lost in all of the bad things that happen right i mean when you get into this kind of work you see the powers that the powers that that are around you and that prevent you from from from you know creating the world that you you would rather you would you would want to live it and and all of that at some points necessarily will look a lot bigger than what you possibly changed and it probably is um but um this is like this is like a way to the text is like it offers a different way to look at history like it's it's uh takes all of the social change that we've had all of the positive social change that we've had in the past uh decades and and it kind of sheds the light on how much activism was needed to do that you know and how dependent on activism that was all of that you know let let it let whether it is the women's vote for example uh abortion um rights uh you know all of this positive social change that we've had in the past uh years and and how much it depended on all common people you know so that would be my suggestion i suppose great thank you for that um noted i think that wraps it up thank you very much for your time miguel that was really interesting really inspiring um and uh take care stay safe thank you thank you for the opportunity to speak to you