Almost forgot…she also is a devoted writer for that American stalwart Al-Jazeera.
PS:
She's still on suicide watch over Fidel.
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By
Sarah Lazare
She used a different photo. I thought this would be more fitting from her perspective.
You'll see why.
"After the election, we've been asking folks to prepare," Armando Carmona, spokesperson for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, told AlterNet over the phone from Los Angeles. "We don't want to get stuck in fear, but we need to be prepared, and be prepared for the worst."
Carmona is one of many organizers across the country reeling from the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, following his campaign of racist incitement against immigrants, refugees, Muslims and the Black Lives Matter movement. Already, Trump has appointed white nationalist Steve Bannon as chief White House strategist. Jeff Sessions, who was determined too racist to serve as a federal judge under the Reagan administration, is Trump's choice for attorney general. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a war hawk who says he is "open" to torture, is Trump's designate for national security adviser. The anti-immigrant hardliner Kris Kobach is just one of Trump's alarming picks to lead his transition team.
While it is difficult to predict what this bevy of right appointees will do once they take the White House in January, undocumented people — or people merely perceived to be undocumented — have reason to be concerned. From day one, Trump ran on an anti-immigrant ticket, issuing outrageous statements smearing Mexicans as "rapists" and repeatedly proclaiming he would build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and make Mexico pay for it. He claims that, during the first 100 days of his presidency, he will "begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the country." That threat follows earlier campaign pledges to build a "deportation force" to expel 11 million people.
Trump says in his first 100 days, he will "suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur" and impose "extreme vetting" on "all people" coming into the United States. In addition, he vows to further criminalize immigrants by imposing a "2-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the United States after a previous deportation, and a 5-year mandatory minimum for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions or two or more prior deportations."
Speaking after the election with Leslie Stahl on "60 Minutes," Trump said, "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate."
This pledge goes far beyond the troubling precedent set by Secure Communities, which was initiated by George W. Bush and expanded by Barack Obama. According to Dara Lind, writing for Vox.com, Trump's policy "would put every unauthorized immigrant in the United States under a one in four chance of being separated from family, thrown in jail or sent back to a country that many of them haven't set foot in for years."
Kevin Appleby, the senior director of international migration policy at the Center for Migration Studies of New York, told The New York Times that in order to accomplish large-scale deportations, Trump "would have to conduct a sweep, or raids or tactics such as those, to reach the numbers he wants to reach. It would create a police state, in which they would have to be aggressively looking for people."
Maria Poblet, the executive director of the Bay Area-based Causa Justa, said in an interview with AlterNet that these new conditions require re-calibration. "In this political moment, more than any other, the big Washington D.C. organizations that are oriented toward getting best possible policy out of the White House are not going to have the solutions," she said. "There is a need to face the communities impacted right now, to build the broadest possible front to address attacks on immigrants and lift up our shared humanity."
In interviews with grassroots organizers who work with undocumented people across the country, AlterNet was repeatedly told that the task, now, is not to petition or persuade the Trump government, but to fortify communities on the local level and coordinate resistance nationally, in order to levy the most effective and strategic defense of people at risk. At a time when many are upset, scared and willing to take bold steps to protect their neighbors, communities and families, these organizers are working to develop infrastructure for a nationwide fightback.
Expand the sanctuary movement
Last Wednesday, as anti-Trump protests continued to rage nationwide, students at more than 80 high schools and universities across the country staged walkouts, protests and sit-ins to demand that their administrators declare sanctuary campuses for immigrants.
"There was a unified message around students standing up to hate and racism and asking administrators to not share personal information with Department of Homeland Security agencies, to make it clear that ICE is not welcome to campus," Carlos Rojas Rodriguez, an organizer with Movimiento Cosecha, told AlterNet. "Students were demanding protection for maintenance, janitorial and culinary workers who are taking care of students and the administration."
Rodriguez says that among immigrant rights networks, "the idea of sanctuary has been floated as a primary weapon of protection" from Trump's policies. The movement has roots in the 1980s-era sanctuary movement, in which religious congregations transported and housed refugees fleeing violence in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, often at the hands of U.S.-backed militaries and death squads. According to Puck Lo, writing for the Nation, "At the movement's height, more than 500 congregations nationwide hosted refugees and operated an underground railroad that moved migrants from Mexico to cities all over the United States and as far north as Canada."
In 2011, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced it was directing its forces to avoid enforcement efforts at "sensitive locations" like churches and funerals. Organizers with the new iteration of the sanctuary movement have sought to use this protection to expand safety and shelter for undocumented people targeted during the Obama years, which saw more than 2.5 million deportations.
In the face of the incoming Trump administration, said Rodriguez, now is an important time to "declare sanctuary in cities, colleges, universities, congregations, shelters and community centers." He indicated that the aim is to deter, as well as defend against hardline policies, posing the question, "What are some policies or symbolic statements that locations can use to send a clear message to ICE and the incoming administration that there is going to be a confrontation, and allies are willing to put their bodies on the line?"
Meanwhile, Trump has pledged that in the first 100 days of his presidency, he will "cancel all federal funding to sanctuary cities," setting up potential battles between his administration and local lawmakers. According to Poblet, "Depending on the strength of local progressive movements, and the support they have in city hall, this could be a chance for lawmakers to be the champions of the people they represent."
Get ready for rapid response to raids
If people are unable to make it to an officially recognized "sensitive location" before ICE comes for them, organizers are preparing to bring sanctuary to them. "The idea is that if ICE comes to someone's house, they can't leave to seek sanctuary with the congregation," explained Peter Pedemonti, co-founder and director of the New Sanctuary Movement in Philadelphia. "So we're bringing the congregation to them. We're calling it 'sanctuary in the streets.'"
Pedemonti's organization works with 19 congregations in the Philadelphia area, including churches and synagogues, and hopes to double that number, including by reaching out to area mosques. "We have an emergency hotline that people can call if ICE shows up, and it is staffed 24/7," he said. "Our plan is to have an alert system so that if ICE comes to get someone, everyone shows up at their house as soon as possible to pray, sing and film ICE. The purpose is to accompany and show solidarity with the family and to pressure ICE not to do this." Ideally, explained Pedemonti, a small number of the rapid responders would be willing to risk arrest to stage a direct action in defense of individuals targeted for deportation.
He said that before the election, 65 people were signed up to this rapid response team; now, there are 930. "It's been amazing and powerful," said Pedemonti. "Every day, 100 people are signing up. The next step is to get everyone trained."
Carlos Garcia is the director of Puente, the Arizona-based human rights organization that played a key role in unseating Sheriff Joe Arpaio in the Nov. 9 election. A prominent Trump surrogate, Arpaio spent 24 years terrorizing Maricopa County, Arizona residents by erecting a tent city prison he referred to as a "concentration camp"; publicly humiliating and torturing people incarcerated in his jails; and repeatedly defying court orders to stop racially profiling people of Latin American descent.
Garcia organizes in a state with some of the harshest immigration laws on the books, including SB 1070, which "requires police to determine the immigration status of someone arrested or detained when there is 'reasonable suspicion' they are not in the U.S. legally," according to a summary from the ACLU. In this climate, Garcia says, it has been important to "create defense committees and really think of ways to defend ourselves. This means neighbors helping neighbors, finding places willing to provide sanctuary, finding allies. It means documented people being willing to risk arrest and stand in the way of people being taken. It's going to be important to alter our tactics once we understand how they're coming for us."
