An Artist Stands Up for Jornaleros
By Nina R. Salerno
I’m not a day laborer or even an immigrant. I’m an artist. But how I make a living hardly matters in the current emergency. Our national community is under attack. Our immigrant friends and neighbors are under siege. Armed masked men are conducting militia raids in our hometown, on our streets. They are terrorizing immigrant workers, destroying families, and attacking values and rights precious to us all.
I’m no good at sitting quietly in times like these. So, I stood up, along with dozens of other volunteers in Pasadena, just like thousands of others around the country, trying to do what we can, nonviolently and creatively, in solidarity with immigrant workers and families.
At first it wasn’t clear what I could do. The near-daily raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents chasing and assaulting immigrant workers across Southern California have been chaotic, violent, and dangerous. One day laborer at a Home Depot not far from Pasadena was chased to his death on a freeway. What could a peace-loving civilian woman like me do in the face of an armed invasion?
Quite a bit, I realized.
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