American Friends Service Committee

(originally published here)

In California's diverse Central Valley, culture and art are tools for strengthening immigrant leadership and for building a sense of place and belonging.

Twelve years ago, Genoveva Vivar came to California’s Central Valley when she was 8 years old. Extreme poverty had forced her family to leave Copanatoyac, their hometown in the mountains of the Mexican state of Guerrero. Seeking better opportunities, they embarked on a migration journey that led them through the northwestern states of Mexico, including Sinaloa and Baja California, before they made their way to the U.S.

Genoveva’s family represents a recent wave of Mexican indigenous immigrants who began arriving in California’s Central Valley in large numbers in the late 1980s. The native cultural traditions and languages they brought with them have been instrumental in making the Valley one of the most culturally and ethnically diverse areas in the country.

Because it’s one of the largest agricultural and food production regions in the country, the Valley has attracted immigrants from around the world. Although the majority are Mexican farmworkers, families from Laos and Cambodia, for instance, also came seeking refuge following the Vietnam War.

In spite of immigrants’ contributions to the local economy, families like Genoveva’s have struggled with poverty, cultural discrimination, and alienation in their new surroundings. They work in harsh and isolated conditions, make less than the minimum wage, and live in constant fear of deportation. Central Valley immigrants have a legacy of resilience and perseverance, working to maintain their language and cultural and artistic identities. They welcome compassion and empathy, but they long to be seen and heard as "seres pensantes" (thinking beings) capable of managing their own struggles as they have done throughout history. In response to this changing immigration landscape, the American Friends Service Committee founded the Pan Valley Institute (PVI) in Fresno in 1998. Our basic mission was to give immigrants a place where their creative expression and cultural traditions could be validated, and their sense of dignity maintained. Since its inception, PVI has also provided immigrants with trainings and other leadership opportunities while accompaning them in their struggles for social change.

In 2002, we established the the biannual intercultural Tamejavi Festival to showcase the visual arts, theater, dance, spoken word and other artistic expressions from these diverse communities—it was the first time many indigenous immigrants felt welcome to share their cultural traditions in a public forum.

In 2011, we launched the Tamejavi Cultural Organizing Fellowship Program to provide immigrant leaders like Genoveva the tools to form deeper understandings of their communities’ most pressing issues while opening opportunities for promoting social change. Through the program, fellows learn the basic principles of popular education, participatory action research, and cultural organizing.

Popular education is a community education effort that engages grassroots leaders in a process of learning from one another and analyzing the world around them, while exploring actions for social change. Like popular education, participatory action research (PAR) is an inquiry process in which a group of people collaborate in generating information and knowledge to change a problem or situation impacting them and their community. Cultural organizing opens opportunities for immigrants to practice their traditional culture and art as a platform for developing a sense of belonging.

To date, 20 grassroots immigrant leaders have participated in the 18-month fellowship program. Representing the Valley’s cultural diversity, the fellows have been Mexican Indigenous (Mixtecos, Otomies, Zapotecos, Purepechas), Salvadorian, Hmong, Cambodian, Iranian, Punjab, and Nigerian. With the support of volunteers and learning groups, they have expanded the Tamejavi Festival into a series of culture and art events around the state. These public presentations allow fellows not only to practice their newly acquired skills, but also to test their ability to mobilize and engage people in creative endeavors.

Genoveva, an alumni of the fellowship program, said this about her experience: “I now know how much my community desires to have an opportunity to show our traditions and cultures without feeling ashamed or embarrassed to express who we are, where we come from, or what we eat. This event truly opened doors for the people of my pueblo to be exposed without fear or embarrassment.”

Through participatory research, we continue finding answers to our questions about the impact of our work. For us, cultural organizing is ultimately a strategy that addresses issues of social exclusion, inequity, and the impact cultural colonization and social marginalization have had on indigenous immigrants. We use culture and art as a tool for strengthening immigrant leadership and for building a sense of place and belonging. The hope is that immigrants will ultimately be inspired to become active participants in public life.

Rather than leaving immigrants to feel judged, unwelcome, and excluded, we remain committed to supporting them in becoming leaders who will inspire a much-needed change in attitudes toward immigrants. Our success is measured in the confidence that we see in our fellows as they learn to reclaim their pride and identity, moving forward on their journey in becoming part of this society on their own terms.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Myrna Martinez Nateras

A few weeks ago Rev. Dr. William Barber spoke at an annual AFSC gathering about the "Third Reconstruction"--people working together across lines of race, class and religion, for a deep moral change. Here are a few short video highlights from his talk.

Bayard Rustin and a few other Quaker prophets: Rev. Barber recounts moments of courage in action among Friends.

The Third Reconstruction: In this excerpt Rev. Barber talks about his sense that we are in the midst of the Third Reconstruction where people of many faiths and none, across race and ethnicity, across gender identity, across sexual orientation, across class lines are working together for a deep moral change and how the resistance has worked in the past and is working currently to stop this movement of the Spirit.

Seriously though?

169 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since October. The U.S. has a responsibility to find out why. (originally published here)

On Feb. 26, 17-year-old Palestinian-American Mahmoud Shaalan was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint near the Beit El settlement in the West Bank. The Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint shot Mahmoud several times, and later reported that he had tried to stab them.

The week after the incident, the Palestinian Ministry of Health released a statement saying that the teenager’s body was “riddled with bullets.” Witnesses said that the soldiers continued to shoot Mahmoud as he lay on the ground, left him bleeding on the road for two-and-a-half hours, and prevented a Palestinian ambulance from taking him to the hospital.

This is one of dozens of horrific stories of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military in recent months—stories that should have the attention of the U.S. government, since the U.S. sends billions of dollars in military aid to Israel each year.

Numerous U.S. laws and regulations, including the Leahy Law, prohibit the U.S. from providing security assistance or training to foreign military units that violate human rights. Although organizations like Human Rights Watch have documented dozens of extrajudicial killings and other human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territory, none of the units behind these attacks have been held responsible.

The killing of Mahmoud Shaalan—a high school student with hopes of studying medicine, who had returned from the United States three days before his death—is just one example of the unlawful killings that continue to occur. Even if Mahmoud had a knife, as the Israeli soldiers claim he did, the soldiers resorted to excessive and unnecessary force instead of attempting to disarm or apprehend him.

The media often only report Israeli accounts of violent incidents--which is usually that a Palestinian killed was about to commit a crime. This typical obfuscation of the entire story justifies ongoing human rights violations and discourages further investigation from taking place.

Since October 2015, Israeli security forces have killed at least 169 Palestinians, 112 of whom were alleged assailants like Mahmoud. According to Amnesty International, a significant number of those Palestinians were killed unlawfully through “extrajudicial executions.”

The United States cannot ignore these mounting numbers.

Although the U.S. Department of State confirmed that Mahmoud is indeed a U.S. citizen, the U.S. has not issued any official condemnation. The White House and Department of State have not even publicly called for an investigation into this incident to date.

AFSC is working with a coalition of organizations urging the U.S. to call for investigations into human rights violations committed by Israel. Together, we’re calling on the U.S. to stop funding Israeli military units that commit human rights abuses against Palestinians.

Mahmoud should still be alive today. The U.S. has a responsibility to find out the truth about what happened and to hold his killers accountable. Failure by the U.S. to call for an investigation into Mahmoud’s death—as well as dozens of cases like his—will continue to justify violent killings of Palestinians for years to come.

(Originally published here)

In my 20 plus years working as an artist and a staff member at AFSC, I've seen the power of art to bring people together for education, dialogue, healing, and advocacy.

I've had the privilege to work on art and social change projects that have garnered national attention like Eyes Wide Open and Windows and Mirrors, which vividly illustrated the human cost of war, as well as projects that have a more local focus. I'm based in Chicago, a city with a rich history of artists, scholars, and organizers working together on long-term, local initiatives for social change.

I want to share a couple of recent efforts that I've been involved with that demonstrate how community building through art practice can transform attitudes, culture, and even policy. Both projects focus on instances when conduct by the Chicago Police Department (CPD) revealed the unequal access to power and resources by marginalized communities—and the propensity of the CPD to use violence against people of color. The CPD is one of the oldest modern police forces in the world, and has been plagued with scandals, corruption, and misconduct for just about the entire time.

These two projects helped shine a light on these issues and brought communities together to work for change.

Mother of torture survivor Michael Johnson, Mary L. Johnson, speaks to the press after the City Council passes unprecedented reparations legislation. Photo: Sarah Jane Rhee

Chicago Torture Justice Memorials project

Between 1972 and 1991, then Chicago Police Department commander John Burge tortured more than 100 African American men and women in order to force confessions. It took decades of community organizing to expose his crimes.

In 2010, a group of attorneys, artists, educators, and social justice activists founded the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials (CTJM) project to honor and seek justice for survivors. CTJM invited artists to propose ideas for public monuments to memorialize the police torture cases, hoping to bring attention to these atrocities and galvanize the community to take action. They put out a call for proposals, which culminated in a major exhibition and a year-long series of teach-ins, roundtables, and public events in 2013.

As an artist, I contributed a proposal with my collaborators titled “100 Actions for Chicago Torture Justice,” including such actions to address torture like the one at right.

In the year after the initial exhibit, we collected hundreds more written actions from community members and conducted movement and writing workshops in communities around the city. Our workshops started with the history of John Burge and police torture in Chicago, then broke into groups for discussion and writing actions that one might take in response. After sharing the actions, we’d move around the space, getting people comfortable with the idea of using their bodies for expression. People then took the written actions and developed short and powerful performances.

One participant commented, "I'd love to see these performed outside of Cook County Jail, it was great using my body to perform actions in the world," and another said "I learned about the actions of John Burge and what power looks like to different people."

Collectively, all of the CTJM proposals involved scores of people across the city, leading many to become involved in the campaign for reparations for the survivors of police torture.

A black star added to Chicago's flag became a symbol memorializing those tortured by police. Here, AFSC staff and partners in a "die-in" demonstration at City Hall. Photo: Jessica Alaniz

One of the proposed memorials was a new Chicago flag–the four red stars of our current flag, plus a black star to represent this dark chapter in our history. This image became a potent symbol of the reparations fight, and many wore t-shirts with this image at city council hearings and demonstrations.

In 2015, a concerted six-month intergenerational and interracial campaign led by CTJM and partners brought about a historic $5.5 million reparations settlement for the survivors and their families. AFSC Chicago was proud to be one of the 40 organizations that supported the reparations ordinance. The settlement provides not only financial compensation to survivors of torture by John Burge and his officers, but also includes a public school curriculum, an official apology from the city, a public memorial, free college for the families of survivors, and a counseling center on the south side to serve survivors and their families.

This policy victory was the culmination of a process that started with the use of art to engage the broader community in the discussion to imagine what was possible.

Gone But Not Forgotten community quilting project

MaciasLast year, artist Rachel Wallis, in collaboration with We Charge Genocide, created a community quilting project to memorialize the 146 people killed by the Chicago Police Department in the last five years. AFSC Chicago supported this important project by helping Rachel research and develop a dossier on each person killed whose name was available in media reports.

Rachel organized six community quilting circles across the city, bringing together a wide cross section of people to work on the quilt. The circles were designed to assemble diverse groups of people who might not ordinarily interact with each other—people directly affected by police violence and those not.

In these gatherings, each person in the circle is given the dossier of a person killed by the CPD, and a Chicago star with the person’s name in it to embroider. In small groups, people read the stories of those killed—some were familiar from media reports, but others have sadly become invisible to anyone outside of the immediate family. At the end of the evening, participants take part in a facilitated discussion with a Circle Keeper, reflecting on the feelings that inevitably arise. Participants express a range of emotions, as seen in a poignant short video—outrage, sadness, and desire to act to make change. 

One participant said, “My godchild died on the front porch. Violence is all around me,” and another, “I often think there is nothing I can do, but one thing I can do is not call the cops.”

Rachel plans circles for this spring to continue building community memory and awareness of these deaths, and AFSC Chicago will host one of them in May.

These are just two projects that I happened to be involved in, but there is so much art infused in the movement that has coalesced around youth and policing and the fight for racial justice in Chicago. Exhibits, art collectives, public displays, and even community banner making for protests bring people together across Chicago. They give us space for joy, for sadness, anger, and ultimately transformation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Zerkel

A few picks from AFSC staff this week:

"Palestine: Hungry for freedom," by Ben White, Newsweek

Palestinian journalist Mohammad Al Qeeq recently ended his 94-day hunger strike protesting his indefinite detention without charge in an Israeli prison. According to Newsweek, “Al Qeeq’s detention is symptomatic of a wider undermining of press freedom by the Israeli authorities. Although the recent brief detention of two journalists working for The Washington Post by Israeli border police officers made headlines, Palestinian media workers are routinely harassed, detained, or subjected to violence, at the hands of Israeli forces.”

AFSC has worked for peace and justice in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territoryfor many years, and is currently challenging Israeli military detention as part of theNo Way to Treat a Child campaign.

"Meet the badass moms leading the fight for clean water and justice in Flint," by Katie McDonough, Fusion

It’s no coincidence that the contaminated water supply in Flint, Michigan has become a national news story. Community members and activists on the ground—and mothers in particular—have been working tirelessly for access to clean drinking water and environmental and economic justice for their city. Katie McDonough writes, “When it came to the struggle in Flint, Desiree told me something I heard a lot that day: ‘The water was just a symptom of something bigger that has been happening for a long time.’ The water needed to be clean, yes, but the jobs in the city also needed to pay fair wages, the schools needed to offer kids a good education, the health care needed to be accessible and affordable.”

"In absence of federal immigration reform, states are taking action by Esther Yu-Hsi Lee," Think Progress

As Congress has failed to act on comprehensive immigration reform, and President Obama’s executive actions on immigration are awaiting a ruling by the Supreme Court, states across the country are creating their own immigration-related policies. According to Esther Yu-Hsi Lee, “Some of those policies include requiring local law enforcement officials to enforce federal immigration law; requiring employers to verify work eligibility; and either reducing or expanding driver’s licenses, in-state tuition, and prenatal care and child health insurance to undocumented immigrants. Only 11 states had not adopted one or more policies that researchers looked into.”

(originally published here)

Tomorrow marks the fifth anniversary of the start of the Syrian war. Since March 15, 2011, more than 4 million people have fled Syria to escape war and violence, while millions more have been internally displaced.

Today—as representatives of the government and opposition groups convene in Geneva for a new round of peace talks and countries continue to grapple with the influx of refugees—it’s crucial to remember that we must address the heart of the crisis in Syria.

“The most important solution for dealing with the displacement crisis is not to deal with it as a charity issue—neither by bringing them to the U.S. or other countries nor by helping them to stay as refugees and displaced people,” said Raed Jarrar, AFSC’s government relations manager during an online discussion in January. “The most important thing is to address the root causes of displacement so that people will go back to their homes. That is an important mindset.”

For more, watch a recap of the full discussion, featuring Raed and AFSC's Giovanna Negretti, Middle East regional director, and Layla Razavi, director of Human Migration and Mobility.

(originally published here)

At an event for a presidential candidate last summer, I had the opportunity to talk with Iowa U.S. Rep. Steve King. Even if you’re not an Iowan like me, you may have heard some of the comments he’s made about undocumented immigrants—comparing them to dogs, calling one person “a deportable,” and insisting that many were drug smugglers with “calves the size of cantaloupes.”

When I met Rep. King, I told him about my family here in Des Moines. I told him we had emigrated from Mexico when I was 2 years old for a better life. And that my parents had worked hard to support us while contributing to the community.

None of that seemed to faze him. We were here “illegally,” as far as Rep. King was concerned, and had no right to be in the United States, even though, as a child, I had had no choice in the matter.

I’ve had several encounters like these during my time as grassroots engagement coordinator with AFSC’s Governing Under the Influence project. In the year leading up to the earliest presidential primary contests, I worked with young people, particularly Latinos and other people of color, and encouraged them to question candidates about excessive corporate influence on public policy, including immigration.

When I started, I knew I would meet those who didn’t see eye to eye with me. But I wasn’t prepared for the xenophobia and fear that candidates would stir up through rhetoric aimed at immigrants like me.

People ask me how I keep my composure in such hostile situations. Why I don’t get upset or cause a scene that would draw more public attention to such hateful speech.

In these situations, I stay calm. I remind myself how important it is to engage with all people, including those who strongly disagree with me. I remind myself of the power of education to change hearts and minds. And I remind myself that I can’t begin to educate people if I walk away. Or act in a manner that makes them push me away.

These people aren’t my enemies. They’re people who, through their own life experiences, have developed stereotypes and misconceptions that haven’t been corrected. I think about what might have happened in this person’s life that made them afraid of people like me. I recognize that they’re probably generations removed from the immigrant process, that they don’t understand the difficulties we face just living our lives.

I think of these things because I want to understand where people are coming from. If I don’t, I’m guilty of dehumanizing them as much as they’ve dehumanized me. Sharing my personal narrative is the most powerful tool I have against statements like, “You shouldn’t be here.” My mother came to the U.S. with a law degree not knowing she’d have to work as a housekeeper. Being undocumented meant I couldn’t get a driver’s license, vote in elections, or qualify for financial aid for school. But I graduated from college, with honors, and am now making a life for myself the way my parents hoped I would.

Even those who yell at me at rallies or town hall meetings can relate to my story. I know some people will never change their minds, but I also see signs that some people can. And I’m putting in the work—and withstanding some difficult situations—to move us all toward a place where we respect the humanity and dignity of all people.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hector Salamanca Arroyo