The Dream is Now

The Dream is Now team is joining Inside Out 11M for their last 3 stops. The Photobus will be in Arizona this week!

If you're in Miami then come be a part if the Inside Out / 11M project. They're at Freedom tower today, tomorrow and Saturday from 12pm - 7pm. More information can be found on the Inside Out / 11M website.

Opinion: DREAMing of a Better Future

The DREAMers — young immigrants, like Rosa Velasquez from United We Dream – have defined the immigration debate by sharing their stories with the American people and reminding us what’s at stake.  No nation that condemns young people to a life of limitation is living up to its most deeply held values. Our immigrant youth movement has exposed this moral contradiction in a powerful way.

But DREAMers are not just leading this fight for themselves; they are also fighting for their families and their communities. Condemning anyone to second-class status, barred from the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, violates the very core of our democracy.

Read more

"We have a strange immigration policy for a nation of immigrants. And it's a policy unfit for today's world." - Mark Zuckerberg

We don’t see the train, but feel it. The building vibrates as the train rumbles by on the tracks directly opposite, but we are separated from it by a massive concrete wall. In a way, so much of the migrant life is about walls. From trying to break through walls of poverty and lack of opportunity, to crossing the border walls, and keeping walls up to remain unseen along the way.

For a moment though—in a small concrete building across from the railroad tracks in the heart of Guadalajara, Mexico—here we get a chance to break through the walls of the migrants as they come in to access services at an organization called FM4 Paso Libre. Guadalajara is located about ten days to two weeks travel by train from the border with Guatemala. Ten days is long enough for most to have had a run in with danger: being extorted, assaulted or otherwise abused. Recently, one young woman told us of how she escaped from her kidnappers, but not before she witnessed them kill another woman in front of her.

Upstairs in the kitchen of FM4—an organization that provides humanitarian assistance to migrants passing through the city on the train—it is blisteringly hot. The rainy season is starting, and the moments before the rain, it is humid and the air doesn’t move at all. In the kitchen, we have the stove elements at full blast as the other volunteers and I prepare a simple meal based around the donations that have been received.

The FM4 comedor runs on volunteer and donor power, is open six afternoons a week, and provides food, showers, clothing, basic medical care and phone calls home for the migrants passing through. Depending on the supplies that we have on hand and what they need, migrants can usually get some clean clothes and toiletries. They can take a shower, wash their clothes and get a meal. One of the best parts at the comedor however, is the opportunity to make a short phone call home via skype. Such a basic thing is probably one of the most valuable humanitarian services that we provide. For the migrants on such a high-risk journey, a connection with home is a lifeline: a chance to reassure loved ones at home, and perhaps to feel a bit less lost in such a challenging situation.

Here in Mexico, beyond the dangers that come from riding atop a train through scorching heat and extreme cold, they also face the violence from the cartels and often-complicit authorities: extortion, kidnapping, abuse, rape and murder. The migrants are cloaked in the invisibility that both protects them and endangers them. They make for perfect victims: without documents, trying to be unseen by police they don’t ask for help when they’re in danger, often with little knowledge of their rights, and their families and friends generally have no idea where they are or when they will hear from them again.

The situation of the migrants is incredibly complex here in Mexico and there is no quick fix. As a country that sends many migrants north, is a transit country for Central American migrants, and is also seeing a flood of returning migrants, Mexico’s situation is quite unique. FM4 also works in the community on sensitization campaigns as many citizens only see migrants on the street corner asking for change, which is further complicated by poor Mexicans doing the same—referred to as migrantes falsos. Cases of violence near the tracks is also blamed on the migrants. Consequently, fundraising for the work of FM4 is hampered by a widespread public sentiment against the migrants.

At the end of the day though, the work that we are doing here is pretty basic: with a firm commitment to human rights, we want to see a dignified, violence-free passage through Mexican territory for our highly vulnerable brothers and sisters.

On the counter by the door is a shoe box full of various creams and sprays. The young guys liberally douse themselves in deodorant, run gel through their hair, and spread cream on their faces and hands. Clean, fed, having rested a bit, and some with the contentment that comes from talking to a loved one at home, they then head out into the big, scary world again. What happens once they make it to their destination is yet another question of survival, but I can’t help but wonder how many of them will not make it there safely in order to have that opportunity to struggle through.

Another train rumbles past, the building vibrates, and the migrants head out the door, and we probably will never see them again. We call out: “Que les vaya bien!” (hope it goes well for you). Indeed. Que les vaya bien.

Photos from the Inside Out Art Project in Washington, DC.