 here. Can you all hear us in the back? Is that all right? Okay, good. So I want to extend my thanks for this wonderful play and this space, and for the invitation to be part of this panel moderating with the speakers that we have here. And I think the timing of this play is incredible. I really just can't believe that Central America is back in the news again the way it was in the 1980s. And that Central American migrants are once again portrayed by our government as a threat as they were in the 1980s. And so I think it's a moment for all of us to reflect on what are the similarities? What have we learned from the 1980s that we can carry forward to the fight for justice today? What's different about the migration today? And so we have two speakers on this panel with very deep experience in these issues here in Tucson. To my left, we have Zaira Lever, who's from the People's Defense Initiative. And Isabel Garcia, who is a long time lawyer here and founder of Derechos Humanos. And is also working with the Free the Children Coalition. And so the way we're going to run this panel is each of them will speak but very briefly just for a couple of minutes about the work that they're doing. And then we can open it up for questions and discussion. Okay, thank you for that introduction. And thank you, Milta, for that beautiful play. I do have deep experience but not by many years as an organizer. I have deep experience because I am an immigrant. I came here with my mother and my brother in the early 90s. I was born in Queretaro, Mexico and was brought here around the age of eight. We did cross the border illegally and lived as undocumented children. My mother actually, once she got here, had to leave us. So we were then left with an aunt of ours. And my brother and I were here for about two years before my mother was able to return. We were raised in the south side of Tucson. I eventually graduated high school. Soon after, my brother was actually incarcerated and deported some years later. I actually went to the University of Arizona and I studied neuroscience. So I did not go to school for any of these issues that we're discussing. Once again, my experience is really from deep roots in this community as a migrant and as a working mother. I started organizing oddly enough in college, was then able to work on the minimum wage campaign that we passed in Arizona in 2016 that would take our minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020. I think we're about 1050 now. It was at eight. After that, I really went really deep into the grassroots community here and I started to organize with Migrants Rights Action Committee Lupe, Lucha Unidad de Padres y Estudiantes. I've also been working closely with jobs with justice as I do come from the economic justice end of things. And through that work, I was able to found with a partner, the People's Defense Initiative. Now, what we do there, we just started just in April, actually April 2nd was my first full-time day there. I am the director and sole employee of the organization, although I do have, thank you, I do have a large network of comrades and colleagues and friends and volunteers that are very deeply ingrained. My vision for PDI is for it to be a political home for folks of all different backgrounds. What we want to do is we are dedicated to building a radically inclusive and transformative movement which upholds and defends human rights. We want to implement through that, we want to implement progressive and inclusive policies, promote community engagement, direct action organizing, which I'm very well versed in, popular education, transformative leadership development, advocacy, coalition building, and the end game with that being through that movement and through that collaboration is to then uplift the voices of our marginalized community. My community to be one of them and put our leadership directly into public office here in Tucson and Southern Arizona. Our core values are racial and socioeconomic justice, women's liberation, LGBTQ and gender equality, and radical inclusivity, which is something that I love. So that's a little bit about what I do. I'll hand it over to Isabel. Thank you, Zaira, and thank you for everybody who has stayed. I know it's tough on a Thursday evening. And yes, thank you to Milita and Borderlands for producing the play. So I'm with Derechos Humanos and of course with other organizations, but you know, I was around, as you can tell from my gray hair. I was part of the Monzo Area Council when all of this happened. I'll never forget that the reason we even started this was a woman from El Salvador came in and she had a bullet lodge still in her ribs. And that began to take over all our Mexican work. Really, I mean, we were dealing with Mexican migration. Monzo Area Council had had trained with Bert Gorona in California to do immigrant processing work. They were raided in April of 1976. That's when I joined the Monzo. And we did a lot of Mexican work until the Central Americans came and pretty much took over all of our work. We wound up going to El Centro, California. I imagine that Margo and Lupe going all the time. And I was already a lawyer at the Pima County Public Defender when we were doing that. And so I would take days off or go on the weekends. And one day we were in the El Centro the entire day. Imagine, not people from California, the women from Monzo were there. And we were there all day and I was pregnant. We came out and all four tires had been slashed. Anyway, so from that, you know, from all of the Monzo experience, you know, a lot of us have kept involved in the immigrant rights work. We ended Monzo like in 86. We created the Arizona, well, we formed a couple of committees wound up being the La Mesilla Organizing Project as you know. This is el Tratado de La Mesilla encompasses all this territory. We know it is the Gatston Purchase. So we organized this La Mesilla Organizing Project and we decided that we needed to have a framework that was broader than our African-American brothers and sisters had struggled under because that was our model. And that was the civil rights framework. And we decided migrants cannot fight within the civil rights framework. We need human rights. And so we decided to name ourselves Derechos Humanos because of that in 93. And so, you know, we've been involved in all of it since and calling out after the Central American stuff happened. We then brought out the sanctuary folks. We brought John Fife back out to the fore on June the second of 2000 with a rally that we had of 2000 people at Armory Park where he said, I have been in this community before and now I'm asking you to come back again. And they formed really strong. You know, we've worked on many things with labor, with environmental groups to bring down the walls. We did a lot of know your rights work beginning in 2006 that has now been, you know, it spread everywhere. Citizenship bears have spread everywhere. Things that we did. And so at this point, you know, we are really focusing on really the militarization of the issue, the border, the fact that our policies are still based on death. Death of Mother Earth, death, whether they find your body or they don't know who you are. The ambiguous death, the biological death, the social death that Zayda talked about when you're deported, people live social death. Some of those social deaths wind up in real deaths. And so, you know, that's the fight. You talked about how it compares to now. Well, you know, the bottom line is the United States public still has very little awareness of why people come from Central America, which is why they continue to blame and demonize. I mean, President Trump had the nerve to say, you know, all these caravan from Honduras is coming. Well, of course, they have a right to come to the country that is destroying them and continues to, you know, prop up a phony, fraudulent government president. All of Latin America says, no, Hernández is not a valid president except the one power that counts, right? The United States of America. Guatemala, what we've done, I was in El Salvador four years ago and saw the devastation of what we did. You know, I knew I had to go at some point after doing the work that we did in 80s and heard the torture and all of the stories. I had to go to El Salvador and to see El Salvador, the way it was was just even worse than I imagined because we have left a mess in El Salvador. And then we ask why people come, why there's migration from El Salvador, from Guatemala, from Honduras and from Mexico, a war on drugs that we claim we have has claimed over 200,000 lives over there. We have a criminal, you know, justice system that is geared toward, you know, demonizing all of us, migrants, people of color. And so these issues are really still alive with us today, unfortunately. I think we can take comments, questions from the audience here. Yeah, I want to say that as I've been told by the playwright that this part is just up until the declaration of sanctuary. So I think there's part two and three, but, you know, I'm really probably not the best person to talk about Nicaragua, and maybe you can talk about it, but it's a complicated, you know, situation is all I can say. Yeah, maybe I should. One thing I can say is that the Center for Latin American Studies is sponsoring an event on Nicaragua that Ted Warmbrand is bringing two musicians, Katia and Nina Cardena, in October. And they will be, there'll be a couple of events around Tucson. And at the Center for Latin American Studies on October 5th, from one to two, they will be giving an update on the situation in Nicaragua. So if anyone's interested, I think the situation is very serious in Nicaragua. As far as migration goes, there are a couple of worrisome developments. Most Nicaraguans, if they migrate, they have gone to Costa Rica, where they can find seasonal work in Costa Rica and then go back to Nicaragua. What we have been seeing recently in the past month or so is a rising anti-immigrant sentiment in Costa Rica and some anti-immigrant demonstrations in Costa Rica. So that is something to keep an eye on, because if Nicaraguans can't find Safe Haven in Costa Rica, then what? Yeah, just thank you all of you for the play. We enjoyed it very much over in our row here. I will have a question for Saida. I don't know if you remember us, but Jill and I had you in our class a couple of years ago. And when you were organizing your successful campaign, I wondered if you could just talk a little bit about your experience of being an organizer on campus and where you see the energy coming for our future generations, because the folks in the play are obviously not the versions of themselves now. They're kind of in another generation. So tell us what's happening in your generation and what you see out there. Thank you, and nice to see you again. I think my perspective is a little unique. My experience organizing at the U of A was really interesting. While I was there, I did a lot of voter registration. I think the group that I was working with that I founded there to be able to do that work, we registered in that summer a few thousand students to vote, which was huge. I know that groups that do this work on campus would do maybe a hundred per summer. So we blew out a lot of these out of the water, and it was very much so because we were really talking about issues rather than going there representing a particular candidate. And once again, for me as a student who was working full-time, who was a single mother, and who just comes from a different background than most U of A students, it was a little difficult for me. It was a lot difficult for me, actually. And I find that that's still the case with a lot of students there that come from the background that I come from. Aside from that, when I started organizing outside of the U of A and when I became the Southern Arizona director for the minimum wage campaign, we had a lot of really young college students and otherwise joining that team fully and wholly, knocking on doors almost every single day, completely dedicated. We knocked on 15,000 doors with our small team here in Southern Arizona, and we only had three paid staffers on our campaign. So every other person that knocked on doors was a community member, a volunteer, and the way that we ran that was to really keep it very personal, right? We're not just here to run to win the minimum wage. Why is the minimum wage important for each of us? We made some really lasting friendships and relationships. We're still like family, most of us. And a lot of those folks that we got involved into that campaign are not doing some really amazing things locally, and are themselves now activists and advocates for themselves and for their community. We have people working in representatives office. We've had people run for office after that. So I think we're all very enthused. Of course it's tiring, thankless work a lot of times, and those of us that do it full-time struggle, but mostly I think when we keep the end game, and when we move with love, which is what this work is, it's a work of love, we persevere, and that's where I see the movement now. As strong as ever, and me being pretty new to all of this, watching the play was really interesting, because I see those dynamics happening right now in the spaces that I'm in, and it's like the same thing I'm watching today, which is interesting, but also makes me a little sad to know that we go so far and then we take two steps back, but that's what the struggle is. It's a continuing struggle. I want to say something about the youth. I think it's the most important thing to talk about. You know, Direchos was always seen as very radical all the time, until the youth came. I'm telling you, until the dreamers came, we were fringed, and we were outliers, and everybody talked bad about us. Not really, but we were on the fringe, and the dreamers came, and why did the dreamers come? The dreamers came because we engaged in NAFTA. That resulted in 9 million subsistence farm workers and their little surrounding economies to literally, from 2006 to 2009, 6 million, literally up and crossed, quote, illegally into our country. We're one of the few countries in the world or maybe the only one that criminalizes migration, and especially it's ironic when we criminalize the very migration that we cause, but it's until these DACA students came, dreamers came, that generation came, I didn't think, I was not being so optimistic anymore, you know, even though it's hard to tell, I'm not, because we keep at it, right? We're obviously optimistic because we keep at it, but until that young group came, I'm telling you, we were still in a mess. We were still having politicians saying, oh, well, they should be legalized because they came because of no fault of their own. They shouldn't come, we should allow immigrants if they don't have a criminal background. We never believed any of that, many, all, and more than that, that it shows never believed in all of that stuff, and everybody demonized this until the dreamers came. The dreamers said, heck no, I'm not gonna say my parents are at fault, they saved my life. Criminals, you're the criminals, we don't buy into that, right? And so the youth is critical. They're the ones who are gonna make the difference, and these old white men in D.C. have no idea, but they're the ones who are really gonna transform our nation. If I could use my prerogative to ask a follow-up question, because thinking about the 1980s, when Central Americans came as refugees fleeing the violence in the region, they didn't just remain as victims here. In fact, they came with a lot of organizing experience from Central America in unions, in church groups, in all kinds of movements, and they brought that here and really took on very important roles in the U.S. Labor Movement, in the Justice for Janitors campaign in California with Salvadorans, the Guatemalans in the tomato fields in Florida. And so my follow-up question is, how do you see that dynamic today in terms of the participation of immigrants, recent immigrants in the social justice movements that you're involved in, and given that we are in a very dark, difficult moment for people to act publicly in that way? Well, it just, I mean, I think you said it, right, from the beginning, that immigrants who make the journey, I mean, think about what it takes to make a journey. You're an extraordinary human being to make that journey. You know, I mean, you're extraordinary as it is, because I don't know that I could do it, right? I don't know that I would be that powerful to do that. So when people come over, they've got strong values, strong senses, and so, of course, we shouldn't be surprised that they come with these values to fight for social justice, especially when they've been deprived of them in their homes. My father, I mean, we have six generations here in Tucson on my mother's side, right? My father was born in Culiacan, so I'm first generation from his side, but I'm telling you, he brought the fight for social justice. We always, you're right, we always talk about immigrants in terms of, well, they work hard and they pay taxes and maybe they contribute to our culinary, you know, scene, but people don't talk about that they bring strong fight for social justice. Look at my father, three years of education, he came and formed a union to organize farm workers while my mother finished high school, but she was traumatized. Juan Johnny behind her at Drackman was slapped for speaking Spanish, and my mother was bold. She finished high school, the only person, but they bring in so much to our movements. In fact, that's what fuels the movement. In fact, all of us only act on what our community brings us. And so the community brought us migrants that came from Central America with, I'm telling you, a bullet lodged, and we simply responded and reacted and accompanied them, but it was their leadership. I mean, I don't know, later on, the other segments will be developed, but the leadership of the Central Americans, even at that time, was really powerful. I don't think I have anything more to add to that. I agree fully that they, we show up and express ourselves as the product of our life and our experience, and that's what we bring with us on top of all of the other quantitative things we bring our experience and our perspective, and definitely our will to fight. And that's not to say that, you know, many migrants aren't in these spaces fighting, and I do always like to hold space for that, because I'd say the majority of migrants here in Tucson are working or putting their children to sleep or don't have the privilege to take a moment to lift their heads above water and say, wait a minute, what's going on? Why can't I make ends meet? Why do I feel this way? On top of being criminalized 24-7, right, it's tough to just lift your head up, and I say that from experience, having been that migrant, having been that person that is doing some very creative stuff to be able to pay my rent at the end of the month, to be able to, you know, choose between parking at the U of A or eating that day. So like, I do like to hold space for folks, migrants that are here, but are never in these spaces, because they're either working or unable to be here, and I think that kind of leads back to one topic of the conversation, which is globalization, and you touched a little bit on it earlier, and so has Isabel. We are oppressed in our countries to a certain degree, to a large degree sometimes. We flee or leave for certain reasons, a lot of the time it's for, because of poverty, and Mexico where I'm from, it's because of massive poverty, and it is because it's basically a narco state. You're in danger all of the time in Mexico. Of course, you won't hear that there's a crisis in Mexico because of the United States, or if Mexico had to admit that there's a humanitarian crisis happening in Mexico, then the militarization of our border wouldn't be allowed, right? So illegal immigration is practically a structural feature of what we see in late 20th century capitalist globalization. It's a forced structure that has to be there now where it wasn't a thing in the past. There's a long history of it now because of this integration of markets globally that are coming together, the only one thing that's not being integrated is labor. So we're seeing what's happening in Costa Rica. Now we're seeing anti-migrant sentiments popping up and it's not just there. The United States is helping or basically pushing Mexico to criminalize their borders as well. We're having walls and militarized borders popping up all over the world because this isn't something that the people in charge, the governments, are not prepared for. They're preparing for the inevitable. And that is forced migration. They're going to make it illegal and of course they're going to criminalize it. And then we see what's happening here, right? Markets are popping up, private prisons everywhere, private detention centers, operation streamlined that criminalizes migrants for just crossing over. When my family crossed over, we got returned three times. We get caught and they grab us and they toss us over to the other side. That's completely changed now. Right, you get prosecuted. Now that little stepping over that line is the highest federally prosecuted crime. So all of this is very connected, NAFTA, the destruction of economies and as well as the mass exploitation of poor countries, their people, their resources and their labor power are completely connected with what we see now. I think we might have time maybe for one comment or a question. You know, it's really incredible that we live in this world that we call globalized, right? We're globalization and we're a small world and whatever and you would never know it in terms of policies, right? And on a worldwide level, we have been dealing with migration not very long. In 2006, we've been demanding hearings and they had the first high level dialogue, imagine just high level dialogue on migration and development. Not migration and human rights, migration and development. And we, the civil society, have demanded to have a people's civil society counter space. Anyway, we've been following this along. I do it through the National Network for Immigrant Refugee Rights who are a member of the Migrant Rights International and they've been looking at the worldwide situation and it's a mess. The way they are looking at it is really in terms of migration and development like widgets. We're developing worker programs, guest worker programs. That's what they'd like so that Mexico develops a system where they send 20,000 farm workers and when these widgets, we're done with these widgets, we don't treat them like humans. We say we're done with them. Mexico has to be in a position to receive them. That's what we're working toward. Anyway, civil society has been added and added. We've accomplished two things. We got a international, imagine this, recommended guidelines for enforcement of human rights at the border and they make a statement in their preface just sort of like African Americans do to say black lives matter. I am human. Things that are natural, this book says borders are not zones of exclusion for enforcement of human rights. Can you believe that? That has to be said. The second thing I want to talk about is just mention is that we had a global compact. We've been successful and we got this, not the best thing, it's not perfect but it was a global compact on migration and it has really good things. I ask you to look for it, to look for it, but Trump took us out of it. So there we are. We're in a mess. The next here, the next conferences and side conferences and everything is happening December like 8th through the 12th in Morocco. But that's what we're in a mess internationally too. I mean that's what's amazing that people have been pushing to define migrant rights. The United States of America refuses to adopt the United Nations Convention on the Protection of Migrant Workers and their Families too. So I have a practical question. Where can people find out more information about both of the groups you're representing? People's Defense Initiative and Derechos Humanos and Isabel also free the Children Coalition. For PDI you can visit our website. We have a great website. A local artist put that up for us and it's peoplesdefenseinitiative.org. It's very long. We try to shorten it up but every possible short name that we found was already taken. We are there. We have a platform. Our core values are there. You can sign up to our mailing list and you can start coming to our open meetings. We're actually hosting a series of forums that will then lead up to a peoples defense summit in March of this coming year. I suppose one thing that I left out of PDI is our one area of focus is in criminal justice which includes mass incarceration, migration of course, Arizona being ground zero for that and that really being the intersecting issues between all of the grassroots movements that we see across this country and definitely here in Arizona. So our focus is that. Our very first forum actually will be on the 20th of October at 4 p.m. It will be at Pueblo High School and our topic is actually force migration and the role of U.S. foreign policy. It's exactly this issue except we'll be talking about U.S. imperialism and the the role that these policies play. We're also on Facebook if you'd like to check us out. We're DerechosHumanosAz.net. I also ask you to look at the end streamline coalition. We've come up with a new website and a lot of things are being added. End streamline coalition, if you don't know what caused the child crisis, the kidnapping of children, you need to know that it was the prosecution for illegal entry which you know represents over 52 percent of all our federal criminal prosecutions across the country but must be 90 percent of what consumes our federal court. So end streamline coalition, we're doing a lot of work to try to figure out how we're going to dismantle the prosecutions. And the other thing I want to and then there's the free the children coalition and I don't even know when the next meeting is but that's that's also meeting and I think that I think you can find that meeting out in people's defense initiative.org. We have a coalitions tab if you click on that you will see free the children coalition with information on that but the best place for updated information and events that they're working on constantly is on on facebook free the children at facebook there's events and constant information being updated from the coalition. And one other organization I'd like to mention is well only because we talked about the electoral thing is that there is a national organization mi gente that is trying to to be involved in important elections so that's another thing you might look at mi gente spelled with a j m i j e n t. Okay well thank you all for staying so late and for your ongoing interest in in these issues and thank you very much to the panelists and again to the organizers. Thank you.