¡Presente! Immigrant voices are loud and clear in Providence, Rhode Island!

I.

This next part is a love story. It's packed with all of the passion, romance, and adoration we entertain. It's the story of how enamoured I feel about the community of young immigrant activists I have found in Providence, RI.

They call Providence a "minority, majority" city. The immigrant population here is mostly Central American, Bolivian, Mexican, Dominican, and West African. And yet, this minority is no majority in the eyes of Congress: there are 24 anti-immigrant proposals up for a vote, and only three pro-immigrant ones. Scary, but a good introduction for this next part.

When I last wrote, I was flouncing around in that bakery, which, according to various activists I have met, is actually a pretty fair representation of the relationship between the business and immigrant communities in Providence. So it was a good place to start.

Thanks to Julian, one of my temporary housemates at Mary's, I have been able to go a little bit further. Julian introduced me to Monica, a firecracker of a young woman who is an organizer, a student and a supportive collaborator for many of the immigrant voices you will hear. I have watched her give backup to other organizers and long for my supportive role back home.

Monica works for English for Action, Ingles en Accion. When I visited the office last week, I jotted down the following quote from Pedagogy for the Oppressed, featured on the brightly colored wall:

"Students should be allowed to negotiate learning outcomes to cooperate with teachers and other learners in a process of discovery to engage in critical thinking and relate everything they do in school to their reality outside the classroom."

-Paulo Friere

Students take English classes in the evenings and simultaneously participate in the Action Committee. An activity referring to fear and the police hangs on the wall, providing a visual for the kind of work done here. Students learn English, and how to be organizers because the program supports the idea that teaching English for survival is not where the process should end. I arrived at their office in West Providence, on my bike with a flat tire and no bikelight (and for the love of God, there are no street signs but plenty of street glass in Providence!) into a darkened, sketchy old warehouse area. The deserted parking lot betrayed the warmth to be found inside, where community leaders, students and others were gathered to participate in a discussion with a community leader from Chiapas. People were also there to talk strategy about the New Bedford raids.

Now here's a story for you all. Have you heard the one about the New Bedford raids yet? In a factory in New Bedford, Mass, hundreds of people go to work daily for less than any of us would want to be making. They work long hours (and no benefits!), leaving their families, small children included, so that they can afford to live. What are they manufacturing, you ask? Material for army gear, backpacks, equipment, etc. in camouflage....i.e. the necessary evils so our soldiers may be well equipped to go after other brown people. Does the government appreciate the work they are doing for our war efforts? Well, they send a Latino ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agent to infiltrate the factory. He is employed for several weeks, becomes friendly with the workers, even going to dinner at their houses. They trust him. Then he turns them in. We are talking about a community who already lives in fear...how will they begin to repair their trust?

The big mistake they make...they take many mothers into custody, and the press grabs ahold of the drama this creates. The images of children crying for their mothers adds to our hope of conveying what a humanitarian crisis this war on immigants is. Their crime? Doing the best they could to feed their family.


The news from New Bedford turned on the pressure for Providence activists. They are scared this could happen in their community. They are not ready. So this week they got ready. Signs were made that stated, IMMIGRATION RAIDS, NOT IN OUR COMMUNITY. What has happened in many communities could happen here. When immigration comes into town, good people get scared, they hide, and families and communities are broken up. In Portland, Maine, we know what this is about. It happened to us two years ago. And we weren't ready.

I sat around the table two days later with the same activists. The question was whether or not to have a press conference at the ICE office downtown, with tons of exposure. One woman gets so excited she talks about urinating on the headquarters. (Isn't it unfortunate we don't have one in Portland?) Then one man speaks up and talks about how concerned he is because he wants to protest at the site, more than anything, because of the fear immigration provokes. He states, "The fear is greater than we are". The whole room hushes its enthusiasm and the same woman proclaims, "oh yes, we should not speak until we hear from non-citizens".

They have so much to lose. Someone recently told me that the price to pay to get a coyote to take you across the border into the States is now 5000 dollars US from Guatemala. And that doesn't guarantee that you make it, or that you won't be tortured, robbed, raped, or killed. So I was amazed and impressed when we all went around the table to voice our feelings and every person who is not yet documented voted to show their face at the immigration office. One young man had said, "If I am not here to fight with you tomorrow, keep fighting for our rights." And when he said "our" he meant OUR rights, all of us. We are all effected. We should all be asking NOW, "What are our collective civil /human rights?"

So we gathered, shouted, held signs. Sure there are definite structural problems, and bickering among community organizations. That was our story in Portland, it is their story in Providence. It happens when people who like to fight for justice also like the power that brings and people with priviledge step in and make too many decisions, further oppressing the people they want to help. Ah! But that is not the story I want to tell. I want to tell you how these immigrant bodies with their amazing minds and hearts crossed over that border and crossed over their fears to become visible. How they stood with signs over their faces and slowly, with more confidence and numbers, took the signs down. This is one great story of leaders in our country's current civil rights movement.

II.

Sometimes an unlikely hero emerges to be your guide through the story. He may not appear to be a Yoda, but he is wise and his guidance carries you through. This is how I feel about G.

When I met G, the first thing I noticed was that he hugged me. Since he is a Guatemalan man about my stature and age, I expected him to uphold tradition and kiss me formally on the cheek. But G will tell you that he admires much about this culture, incuding nice, big bearhugs.

Coincidentally, G works at the bakery I mentioned in my last entry. He works long hours, and often isn't able to get to his English classes on time. He sort of has benefits, when the owner is paying attention. Asserting himself with his supervisor means that he may be able to get off a little bit earlier than the day before.

When he lived in Guatemala, G was a truck driver. He left for Providence because he wasn't making enough money, and someone he knew through a family member was here to orientate him. It's been four years and he still remembers making that walk through the desert. We were on a windy street corner coming back from the press conference, cheeks brushed by chill, as he started talking about the delirious heat of that environment. "I remember a time when I was as tired as I am now, when I was in the desert, I was so tired I wasn't sure I was going to make it. I remember I was holding onto the man in front of me, and we were walking through the desert, each person stumbling through the cactus and rock in the darkness together, like a chain of people. And it was so dark I said to the person in front of me, I said, don't leave me."
Together those ten people made it out of the desert, even though they had previously had to leave a man behind.

G told me that you can't make it if you don't have any survival skills. He quickly learned how to talk like a Mexican, and trick his thieving guides into giving him money for food. He also talked about making tough decisions, like having to get off a hitchhiked ride and fork over most of his money to save a woman's life.

I told him about the work I am doing on this trip, looking at immigration and trauma. We looked at the map together, in amazement of how much land and work there is out there. I thought about my trip to the border and the images of altars and precious human refuge in artistic array in the desert and asked him if there was one incident or image that reminded him of this journey. Among a few, he mentioned that he remembers one night when he and two friends didn't have much space to sleep, travelling in a truck, and they huddled together, three men under one blanket. After discussing their fear that they might not make it, one of them stated that he would always remember the others. They slept in this embrace.

He asked me what I thought of his organization, and I shared some of what Portland went through in our organizing in the Latino community. I told him I thought he ought to keep making chains in Providence, working on uniting all these various groups to step out of the desert together.

People heal their trauma through many types of expressive, hands-on therapies...here we can classify community action as therapy. People that travel here by crossing the border experience such rupture with the community they are from, and create new communities where they end up. Many immigrants who don't find solid communities of the same language, traditions, or compassion live double lives in the US. They struggle with substance use, partners and employers. They leave behind children, only to father or mother others in their new home. They have such a hard time building new chains, trusting others, feeling like they don't have to be on the run. G confirmed this with his own story of his first two years here, when he had a hard time trusting people. Then he found his voice.

These are the stories I want to tell, to continue to find hope and healing in our communities. Many of us are making the trip to New Bedford this weekend. The New Bedford folks need supplies now: interpreters, financial resources and babysitters. Soon they will begin to rebuild their trust.