The COVID-19 pandemic has made things complicated around the world, and America has been equally affected by this global health crisis and the impact it has had on society. The Radical Futures Now Podcast brought back professor Jason De León to help us understand and decipher immigration rights and electoral politics in America. In this episode, we dive deep into issues of diversity and differences between various minority groups in America in context of the political build up towards the upcoming national election. Jason De León also provides his professional thoughts and opinions about the re-opening of universities and other academic institutions amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
Resources:
Undocumented Migration Project webpage
Transcript:
Intro:
Welcome to The Radical Zone Podcast, where we get updates on the current state of the world and how various communities are impacted from activists and organizers who are out there doing the work. The Radical Zone Podcast is housed under the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. I know you’re probably wondering what the Arcus Center is. The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership also known as ACSJL is an initiative of Kalamazoo College, whose mission is to develop and sustain leaders in human rights and social justice through education and capacity building. We envision a world where every person’s life is equally valued. The inherent dignity of all people is recognized, the opportunity to develop ones what potentially is available to every person and systematic discrimination and structural inequities have been eradicated. Listen to and engage in conversation with organizers and activists across the globe about social inequities that impact us all.
Rhiki Swinton:
So welcome back to another episode on The Radical Zone Podcast. My name is Rhiki Swinton, and I will be your host. Today, I brought in Paige, who was a former student staff member of the Arcus Center. Paige, tell the people about yourself a little bit.
Paige:
Hi everyone. I’m really excited to talk to Jason De León today. I recently graduated from Kalamazoo College. I’m a writer and organizer. I mostly do creative writing like poetry and plays. I also volunteer at APIENC, a queer and trans Asian Pacific Islander group out in the Bay Area. Shout out to APIENC and you can check out my writing at miublue.com, M-I-U-B-L-U-E. And follow me on Instagram @miupaige, M-I-U-P-A-I-G-E.
Rhiki Swinton:
So like Paige said, we’re bringing back Jason De Leon, who is an anthropologist and executive director of the Undocumented Migration Project. If you haven’t heard our first episode with Jason, please go back and listen to that. You can hear more information about his work and the projects that are coming out of his organization. Jason, thank you for coming back to The Radical Zone. We’re so excited to talk with you.
Jason De León:
No, my pleasure. Thank you for having me again.
Paige:
I was recently just telling Rhiki actually this morning that I used to live in, Nogales, Arizona, which is a border state. I’ve been thinking a lot about that as we prepared to talk to you today. And so I’m really excited to learn more about your work. And I just want to start off by asking, what’s been on your mind this week, Jason?
Jason De León:
This week is kind of a busy week for me because we are launching our global exhibition Hostile Terrain 94. We have our virtual launch on Friday in Santa Fe and actually that exhibition is physically up as well. I believe that people can go see it. They are working on social distancing protocols that allow people to visit the gallery space one at a time. So we’ve got a whole bunch of events developed around that, that are happening this week. So that’s sort of been on my mind, but then also, I’ve just driven from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh. So I’m here in Pittsburgh now in my in-laws house. And I was telling Ricky before we started that we camped the entire way. We did basically primitive camping so we could avoid all people as much as possible to get here.
And it was just very interesting and I knew this was going to happen. It was just to see the differences in people’s responses to COVID by state. I went to Arizona and getting gas in Arizona, for me, a typical Arizona occurrence where the gas station clerk is not wearing a mask, but is wearing a gun. So pretty kind of indicative of how Arizona has approached COVID-19, New Mexico was a complete opposite, every single person I ran into had a mask on and they were very conscious about that. Every time I went into a gas station about whether or not people had masks on and if they didn’t, they weren’t allowed to come into the store and then getting into Missouri, which looked a lot like Arizona people just being very, very nonchalant about this whole thing.
And so I’ve just been thinking about, coming out of California and coming out of Los Angeles where I feel like despite some people not taking it seriously, for the most part, my neighbors and people I would run into at the store and stuff seemed to be really serious about the spread of coronavirus. And that’s, I think very much a bubble. I think there’s other parts of this country that like many issues, whether it’s immigration, police brutality, healthcare, this variation in how people are responding to this stuff. So for me, it was a little sad to see that, it doesn’t really matter what California does right now, or Los Angeles, because there are huge parts of this country that aren’t taking things seriously. And I think you could say the same thing about immigration, about politics, voter fraud. I mean, whatever kind of political or social issue that’s kind of on our minds right now, there is a huge variation across this country, which says a lot about, I think our future.
Paige:
Yeah. I think that’s an interesting choice that you made to drive out to Pittsburgh and then primitive camping. My friend actually recently drove also from Los Angeles, I think, to Boston, but he chose to stay in hotels. What was going through your mind? I know you had talked a little bit about wanting to have as least contact as possible. What else also going into that decision making process for you?
Jason De León:
Yeah. I mean, I have no desire to be around strangers right now, especially considering that most, I think that I just assume that everybody has COVID-19 and that they’re all acting irresponsibly. And I also don’t know if I have it and so I really want to be cautious and I want this pandemic to end as soon as possible. And I think the only way that that’s going to happen is for people to take that kind of responsibility and not be this, so selfish about, I want to go to the bar, I want to go out and do stuff. I’m like, you know what? No shit, I want to do all those things too. But the more you keep doing it now, the longer it’s going to be before we get to do those things again.
And so for me, it’s trying to be a good citizen, but also trying to set a good example for my kids, who are with me and teaching them about social responsibility and trying to instill those kinds of values. But even just like, bars and restaurants had been open at for a little bit in L.A. and I just remember, driving by people are sitting outside eating, and if your waiter is wearing a hazmat suit, why would you want to be in that place? I really, I just, I don’t understand it. And I get the being stir crazy thing, but it’s this idea that it’s just going to go away if we ignore it, I think is a very much an American. Americans, we’re irresponsible about so many things or either irresponsible or negligent or ignorant of many major social issues. And so we just choose to ignore things and hope that they’ll go away.
So we can ignore COVID-19 and hope it’s going to go away. We can ignore Black lives matter and hope it’s going to go away. And so even when I’m seeing now, I think it’s representative of where we are in this country at this moment. But for me, the decision to avoid people. I mean, we’re here in Pittsburgh, we’re going to sit in the house. I mean, it’s not like I’m going to come here and, I can see my in-laws, but I have no desire to go out and do anything, especially now in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh had been doing very well and is now surging.
Paige:
I’m glad that you and your family were able to make it to Pittsburgh safely. And I think, I’m also in Los Angeles right now with my family and yeah, going to restaurants and seeing someone with a hazmat suit is like, why would you? Yeah, I totally agree with what you were saying for sure.
Jason De León:
I mean, It’s really disheartening when I go out and people are not following social distancing rules right. They’re not keeping six feet apart or they could walk into a grocery store and everyone’s wearing a mask except for them. And they can just think that that’s totally okay. It’s very, this thing is very, I’m trying not to get angry about it, but it’s kind of mixed reaction to this whole thing is very infuriating. But yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I just think that people are going to learn the hard way, unfortunately,
Rhiki Swinton:
I liked what you said earlier about how our mixed reactions across various states and across the nation is also somewhat symbolic of our mixed reaction when it comes to immigration specifically. And I remember reading in your book this point where you talk about how you think people have this kind of historical amnesia, basically around the way they view early European immigration compared to the way we view immigration now. So can you tell me a little bit more on basically what you think, can you talk to me a little bit more on this idea of historical amnesia and kind of point out the parallels between early European immigration and immigration that we see today?
Jason De León:
Sure. I think that we, as a country are very selective about what we remember. We live in a White patriarchal, heterosexual society that privileges those particular narratives, overall others. And I think that that viewpoint dominates what we talk about in the current moment. And it sure as hell dominates how we remember the past. And anyone that has a romance about the past, I am skeptical of because we know that our history is so incredibly complicated. And so to think that it was better then than it is now, let’s make America great again, the new… now it’s keep America great. But when we reflect, if someone reflects back and goes, yeah, the 1960s were great or the 1860s were great, that was when America really was America, those aren’t people of color saying those sorts of things.
But unfortunately, the people who have that viewpoint are the ones who control the narrative and who find themselves in positions of power. But we do, I mean, Americans oftentimes too, we really Whitewash how we think about the past. And one of my kind of favorite examples of how waves of immigration or generations of the more you are removed from that kind of first generation of landing in the U.S. the more kind of twisted, I think your viewpoint is of those times. And there was a sociologist named Herbert Gans who had written quite extensively about different generations of immigrants. And he would say, generation number one is, they come to this country, they’re demonized, they’re given shit jobs. They don’t speak English very well, they’re ghettoized.
And then he says, then they have kids. Those kids grow up in the U.S. they grew up speaking English as the primary language. They try to distance themselves from the generation of their parents, because they know that they were experiencing so much discrimination. And so they’re kind of more American than Americans. And then you get this third generation after them that then now hasn’t really experienced any kind of discrimination because of their background. And I’m talking mostly about European Americans. And so a third generation Irish person can be Irish and proud and not have to worry about being excluded from a restaurant or being beaten up by the police or this kind of stuff. They can romanticize the kind of Irish past, and they can embrace that identity because it doesn’t negatively impact them on a daily basis.
And so Gans talks about this idea of symbolic ethnicity, where this third generation is able to wear the ethnicity of the home country as window dressing. So you can be a proud Irish American, or a proud Italian-American, and you don’t have to worry about discrimination. I mean, we aren’t demonizing Italian-Americans like we are demonizing African-Americans or Latinx folks or Asian Americans. But so the people who, and you never hear, well, occasionally you do, but you most, when someone says, why don’t these filthy immigrants come here and be like my grandparents who worked really hard, who learned English, who pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and lived the American dream, the people who were saying those things are White. These other people of color, they recognize that it doesn’t matter what generation you are of you’re still facing this discrimination.
And so I think that the historical amnesia we have is very much a White American historical amnesia, because I think people of color recognize that 1860, 1960 and 2020, you can see parallels in the things that are happening, the lynching of Black people has continued up until present day. It doesn’t matter what decade or century we’re in the violence that has been perpetuated against African-Americans by people like the police has continued to exist forever. And so there is no historical amnesia for those groups, but I do think that’s White America loves to forget about those things. And whether it’s the treatment of African-Americans, the treatment of native Americans, Asian Americans, the people who tend to control the narrative are the ones that want to paint themselves in this kind of, in a better light.
And that’s when I was just listening to an interview the other day with the native American author, Tommy Orange, he’s talking about his book, There There, and I forgot the woman’s name who was interviewing him, but it was very interesting because they were talking about Thanksgiving and about Native American history. And one of the things that this interviewer had said to him was, I’m increasingly thinking that it’s not so much that me as a White person needs to learn more about Native American history. I need to learn more about what my White ancestors did to Native Americans, how they created these structures. And like, what was my part in this whole thing, which I think is a radically different kind of perspective for a lot of White people who think that just because they can learn a little bit about history that then suddenly that makes everything okay. Just because you’re educated about this thing, then everything is much better now, or educated in a way that makes you feel okay about being educated, as opposed to kind of owning up to the legacy of things like White privilege.
Rhiki Swinton:
I agree with what you said about the whole education thing. I think, honestly, in my opinion, people educate themselves enough to be able to define and use, those sorts of buzz words and conversations that allow people to know that they have done some research that they have educated themselves a little bit, but I don’t think they really educate to understand the gravity of the issue or educate themselves to really learn how they could become an organizer or become an ally and actually do the work to move the issue forward and to move the ball a little bit further along. I really think it is just a kind of, I don’t want to say performance, but being the good White person, if that makes sense. Just know enough where you’re conscious that these things are happening and you know the language and you’re able to engage in conversation but not educating yourself past that point, I think I see a lot.
Jason De León:
Yeah. I mean, especially in the universities, I mean, as a faculty member, there is a lot of performance of diversity or people say that, Oh, I’m all for diversity. I’m all for embracing people who are not like me, being more inclusive. And I think so much of that is very empty. And as a person of color who gets asked to be on these diversity committees, I mean, that’s not my job to make this thing diverse. It’s other people’s jobs, as far as I’m concerned the people who are in power and who benefit from the structure, it’s up to them to dismantle this thing or to make it more inclusive. And I think there is a lot of lip service but I am also hopeful. I do feel like in this current political moment, people are fed up.
I mean, I love seeing all the stuff on Black Twitter where it’s things like it doesn’t matter if you can stop calling the bedroom in the house, the master bedroom that doesn’t, I don’t care about historical language of slavery being changed. I care about major, defunding the police, major structural changes, none of this, the lip service that we give, oftentimes, because it’s so much more work to actually to make real changes. And I do feel like people are really pushing back on that now. And really it’s uncomfortable. And I think it’s uncomfortable in a really good way. I love this whole thing where people say, I don’t care if you’re not racist, I want to know that you are anti-racist, which is a very different kind of thing.
And also a very different kind of language that we’re using now than we have in my lifetime. I mean, I think at this point we are talking about race and inequality in ways that we haven’t seen in over a generation. And that does give me hope because it’s making a lot of White people take stock of who they are and their privilege and making a lot of people really uncomfortable. And I do think that it’s going to have to be uncomfortable before we make any change. And I remember to myself in 2016, after Trump was elected thinking, okay, things are going to get bad. How bad will they get? And will they get bad enough that things will have to start to change? And I’m optimistic that we’re starting to see the beginnings of that. It’s of course not pleasant and it’s really difficult, but I think no good change is easy. If it was easy, we would’ve done it a long time ago.
Paige:
I was thinking about what you were saying earlier about the difference in generations. I think something that I’ve been listening a lot about for the upcoming election too, is that people should focus more on the Asian American vote. And one thing that is heavily looked over with the Asian-American people in the U.S. when it comes to elections, is that a lot of people aren’t talking, politicians aren’t talking enough about immigration. And I think that’s one thing that a lot of Asian-Americans can unite behind. I’m just thinking about your commentary about difference in immigration generationally. I think there’s definitely a process of assimilation that I think is discussed in the Asian-American community. And I don’t really know what I want to say about it, but you’re definitely bringing up a lot of interesting thought provoking things.
Jason De León:
Well, I would even go further and say this idea that people are finally recognizing that the Asian vote is important. I think one of the problems with that is that a lot of people don’t understand the diversity of who Asians are. And I think that growing up in Los Angeles, I grew up in Long Beach with huge Vietnamese and Cambodian population who those are people who have fundamentally different kinds of immigration experiences than say people from China or Japan. And I think there’s a lot of work that can be done. I mean, there’s so much coalition building potential, I think between the Vietnamese and Latinx folks, Cambodians that share very similar experiences that might be more aligned with Latinx folks, with Filipinos than perhaps with the people from China.
And politicians of course, I think are not very, they also think that all Latinos are from Mexico. And so not recognizing that diversity either. But I do think, I hope that if people are smarter this election year and into the future it’s recognizing that diversity is really important and those individual identities are oftentimes radically different and we can build different kinds of coalitions by thinking beyond, maybe it’s not Asian-ness that unites people, but maybe it’s immigration issues that the parallels are incredibly striking. And unfortunately, you can know that growing up in California because you see it so much, but people in the Midwest perhaps don’t necessarily have that kind of understanding about, what’s the difference between a Mexican and a Guatemalan or a Honduran or Vietnamese, Cambodian, Chinese. That nuance oftentimes is completely lost on the general public. And I think also lost on politicians.
Paige:
Yeah, definitely. I’ve been thinking about that as well, the possibility space of solidarity amongst Asian and Lanitx racial groups in the U.S. and the upcoming election. And that actually brings me to this quote that we prepared for today. And something that I’ve been thinking about too, Angela Davis actually talks about how we can’t create radical consciousness by focusing on a single issue. And she goes on to talk about intersectionality. But instead of talking about the intersections of identity, talking about the importance of recognizing the intersections between our struggles and if our struggles can intertwine, then we’d be more likely to do cross movement building.
And something that also I’ve been thinking about. I just re-read this recently, yesterday. I was rereading he Combahee River Collective statement, which was written in 1977, which was the founding document of contemporary Black feminism and expresses, not only that political stakes and urgency of a movement that seeks to intervene in all systems of oppression, but also the analytical insight that systems of oppression are interlocking and must be addressed at the site of their multiplicity and not one at a time. And I was just wondering, how you see, cross movement building within your work, Jason, with immigration and with hostile terrain and your book. So I was just wondering how you’ve been thinking about cross movement building, especially in this moment.
Jason De León:
Well, I think you can’t do any of this work in a bubble or a vacuum. And I think people in general have to understand that the Black lives matter movement is not just for Black people. I think, it’s a global issue and it’s one that affects all of us. And I think people have to understand that these movements, we are a part of them, we’re either contributing to the trauma that they create or we’re actively fighting against them. And sometimes it’s really hard to get people to recognize that their voice is important in these things, how to be an ally, how to be part of a movement without being the straight White male in the room who then suddenly talks, aloud us and takes over this whole thing. It’s how can people from different backgrounds be a part of these movements in a kind of healthy way, but then also explaining to people that they need to be a part of this.
If we’re going to push for equality and positive social change, it can’t just be of color doing this. And I think with my own work, like with Hostile Terrain 94, this is this global exhibition that’s going to happen eventually 130 plus locations around the world on six continents. And the fact that this exhibition, which is about migrant death in Arizona, which is largely Mexican and Central American deaths, we’re putting this exhibition into places that are not in Latin America, or aren’t on the U.S. Mexico border. So Europe, Australia, Asia, places where people are dealing with their own immigration issues. And we see this exhibition as a way to kind of stand in solidarity, globally with migrants and refugees from around the world. And so we actively partner with nonprofits and NGOs that work on these issues.
Our first European show is slated to happen in Lampedusa, Italy. And we are anticipating working with largely refugees from Africa, whether it’s West Africa or North Africa who land in Lampedusa and are detained there before being sent elsewhere in the EU. We will be working with those refugees to build that exhibition there. And for us, that’s an important moment of solidarity with these other folks who are going through the same issues, but just happens to be in the Mediterranean and not the Arizona desert. And so part of this project really is about connecting with migrants and refugees globally.
But then also trying to find other ways to show parallels with the issues of things like structural violence that people experience in the desert and how they experience it in other places. One of the first shows that signed on was Flint, Michigan, and very early in our conversations with Flint, Michigan, we wanted, and they wanted to find ways to think about how this structural violence that affects Brown bodies in the Arizona desert is similar to the structural violence that affects Black bodies and Brown bodies because of the water crisis in Flint. And so we have been letting all of our exhibition hosts determine what type of programming we’re going to add to this exhibition, who they’re going to invite to talk and how they’re going to best connect this issue of immigration to the things that are most important in their community.
And it might be that the most important thing in the community is immigration, or it could be something else that’s related. And that impacts people in different kinds of ways, but is running in parallel, or we can see a kind of a helpful comparison of these different kinds of experiences. So, with the current exhibition, I mean, that’s one of our big goals is to have it be inclusive and completely collaborative so that our hosts can tell us, this is what’s important for us, and this is how we think we can connect the immigration issue to other things that are impacting our communities directly.
Paige:
So I know you have a background in anthropology and archeology, reading about your work with Hostile Terrain and the artwork. I was wondering a lot about what was the intention and the thought and the choices that you were making when you made to center the violence in the death of those who crossed the Sonoran Desert. I think to me, it’s very obvious that that experience of migration of the journey through that terrain is hostile. I think that’s obvious. And I’m wondering what choices you were making when you chose to center that and the art pieces.
Jason De León:
You mean why migrant death?
Paige:
Yeah.
Jason De León:
It’s an issue that I’ve been working on for about over 10 years now, and whether it’s, the forensic work that I’ve done on migrant death in Arizona, working with the families of the missing and of the dead. So it’s something that I’ve written about extensively. It’s something that I’ve researched extensively, but with the exhibition, I really wanted to draw attention to the fact that 1,000s of people have died migrating, people continue to die every single day, and we oftentimes forget or ignore that this is actually happening. And so my initial thing was, coming up on this election, I want it to recenter. I know immigration is going to be a big issue in the fall, but I want people to also be thinking about the historical depth of the migration crisis in places like Arizona that have claimed the lives of 1,000s of people. And so I really wanted to find an exhibition that would directly engage with different publics in hopes that people would have a more nuanced understanding about what it is that happens along the U.S. Mexico border.
And when we talk about border security and we talk about undocumented migration, that it’s not just as nameless, faceless statistics that we might see on the news, but people with names and lives that have been cut short by border policies. And so I wanted to find a way to directly connect with people on this issue and in hopes that they would walk away from it with more knowledge and perhaps with a better understanding about this issue, but then also about what they can do next, who to vote for, how to discuss these issues, how to perhaps have a counter narrative when someone talks about invading immigrants or building a wall, and someone can come back and talk about, well, what about the 1,000s of people who have already died because of other policies. So that really has been the goal is to kind of change some of the conversation away from the things that Donald Trump wants us to focus on in regards to immigration, and think about more of the realities that migrants actually experienced on a day to day basis.
Paige:
Yeah, I think hearing about your goal and talking to you right now is really insightful. I think to me, I came up in ethnic studies and read Gloria Anzaldua’s, Borderlands and read Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead. And so to me, I’ve mostly heard about these things through stories and storytelling and language, and I hadn’t seen it in this form of art before. So I think it was really thought provoking when I had encountered your work and talking to you today.
Jason De León:
Yeah. I mean, I’ve just been experimenting over the years with different formats, whether it’s writing articles or books or making documentary films. I’ve been working on exhibition work since about 2013. And I find that it’s a good, it’s a different kind of project that I think reaches different kinds of audiences, as opposed to the people who will read my next book or watch a documentary film that I make. I think the exhibition, especially the exhibition that we’re doing now, which is really about collaboration with communities. I mean, for us to realize these 130 plus shows around the globe, it’s going to require 1,000s of volunteers to help us build these exhibitions. And for me, that seemed like a new and exciting audience that I could engage with who maybe would never read a book about migration, or would never watch a documentary film, but perhaps I can get them to engage with this issue through the construction of an exhibition. And so we’ll see. I mean, I’m hopeful that we will connect with different audiences, but this is a complete experiment that we’ve been running for now going on 16 months.
Paige:
It sounds like to me, when you say you’re hoping different audience will engage with it, that wouldn’t maybe pick up your book and read about it on their own. Are you hoping that people… I’m guessing, I’m wondering who you imagine your audience to be when they see these exhibits? Are you hoping, say a Trump supporter would come in and have different thoughts about immigration after seeing the art piece?
Jason De León:
I’m not so concerned about Trump supporters anymore. I mean, there was a time where I felt like we needed to extend a hand across the aisle, but I think if you’re still supporting Donald Trump in 2020, there’s nothing that I can say to you that’s going to change your mind. And I don’t even want to change your mind. There’s nothing I can say to you that would allow us to have a rational conversation. I think for me, I’m more interested in people who have never really thought one way or another about immigration. It’s easy to get to pro immigration people, people who are very sympathetic to migrants, that’s easy to get them into the door to have to work on this exhibition. I think what’s harder is to get people who have never tried, who have never thought about engaging with this issue.
And that for me, is a much more important audience. This audience that is only now starting to really think about these things. And I think Trump in a lot of ways has forced our hand, or at least forced the hand of a lot of Americans to now kind of pick a side. And things like his indifference or his hatred of immigrants is seeming hatred of people of color, of Black people, his indifference to the murder of African Americans. I think in a lot of ways that has been good for a certain segment of the population who is now kind of standing around going, Oh my God, am I going to be that person? Is that who I am? This person who doesn’t care about the lives of others, who’s indifferent to these things, or am I seeing so much hatred and violence in the world now that I no longer have a choice to kind of stay quiet?
And that’s really the audience that I’m most interested in connecting with, because I feel like they’re open to learning new things. And that’s all I can hope to do is to try to teach people something new about the world in hopes that they can take that information and go out and do something good with it.
Rhiki Swinton:
So I want to backtrack just a little bit to what you were talking about as far as parallels. And I think you mentioned some great parallels between Latinx folks and migrants with other communities, but I think some other parallels that we can draw from immigration and the uprising that’s happening today in the Black community is the criminalizing of Black and Brown folks. I think police brutality is a result of social profiling and the way in which Black bodies are viewed, but also think ICE and the policing of the border is a direct result of the way in which we view migrants. So can you talk a little bit more about policing Brown bodies, specifically migrants across the borders and how that impacts the way in which the world views them?
Jason De León:
Yeah, I mean, I think for good reason, we’ve been so focused on police brutality in the U.S. but a lot of people don’t know that the border patrol ICE, we’ve been brutalizing people of color for decades, and there’s way less oversight with that organization than there are even with the police. And this is largely because the folks that they’re brutalizing are undocumented and they don’t have a lot of rights, they don’t have access to, oftentimes to legal representation. And they’re in these incredibly vulnerable positions where they can be taken advantage of more so than a lot of other folks. And people are already starting to talk about the defunding and the abolishing of ICE and of the border patrol, because we know that the assaults, the murder, those things have been happening for a long time.
There’s lots of footage of migrants being killed by the border patrol and nothing has come of it. And that system is structured in such a way that it’s kind of a perfect storm to allow the police to continue to do these things that go unchecked. So as we’re thinking about police reform or defunding or whatever, this new moment’s going to look like the next turn, then we’ll be also to think about what’s happening with ICE and with the border patrol. But it’s definitely an important issue to think about. And also the fact that we incarcerate so many migrants and they are put into detention centers that are typically privately run, poorly managed, no oversight. And so the abuses that happen in detention centers too are mortifying.
And yet there’s very little that has been done because this stuff happens behind closed doors. And it happens to people who are so disenfranchised that they just have no voice oftentimes, to raise awareness about these things, which means that other people have to step in. And we’ve got so many different fights that have to happen, but I definitely see the Black lives matter and this movement to do abolish ICE as being very much interconnected and very much part of the same struggle.
Rhiki Swinton:
Yeah. So I’m really curious to get your thoughts on this next question. It’s a little bit off the topic of what we’ve been talking about, but I just think it’s crazy. So I don’t know if you heard Jason, but the Trump administration announced his intent to pull out a rule blocking international students from coming to, or remaining in the United States if their courses are taught entirely online. So I’m just curious, have you heard about this new thing that’s been happening and how do you think it’s going to affect immigration or just, yeah. How do you think it’s going to affect immigration in the United States and what will it mean for us moving forward if we’re not allowing this open education to happen as well?
Jason De León:
Well, I think that universities are going to fight this tooth and nail and find all kinds of work arounds. And I say that not because I think universities really care a lot about international students. I think universities care about the tuition that international students are paying, and that’s why they will pick up this fight. And that’s why I think Trump is picking on international students because he knows that it’s a way to try and force these universities to hold classes. I mean, that’s really what they want. They want to open up the economy at the risk of the American public, especially at the risk of poor people, people of color, these populations that are more directly impacted by COVID-19. This is a way for Trump to really push the hand of these universities.
And you’re going to see the universities do everything they can to keep the students in the U.S. and paying tuition. I wish it was for more, I wish they had better intentions, I do want to believe that there are some people who care about international students, and I have many colleagues who do, but I do think at the level of like these large corporations, these universities, they care much more about the money because you’re not seeing them stick up for undocumented students who are enrolled in college. They’re sticking up for these international students. And that’s because the undocumented students, they don’t contribute as much money to these systems. And yet they’re even more vulnerable and have been ignored by many places or marginalized on campus.
But I do think that you’re going to see a lot of this getting tied up in the courts. And I don’t think they’re going to be able to keep out these international students. I think the universities are going to find work arounds to do it. But it’s just going to get very ugly and just be so time-consuming. I mean, it just, we’re wasting our time fighting with the administration that should be working to make everything better. I mean to be taken care of us as a people, as opposed to pushing their own political and economic agendas. I mean, this is just one more kick in the ass by the Trump administration to get what they want at the cost of everybody else.
Rhiki Swinton:
So Jason, you’re a professor. So how do you think with what we know about the pandemic and the fact that it’s not going away as quickly as we might’ve hoped, how do you think institutions should have moved forward with the whole going back to school thing in the middle of a pandemic?
Jason De León:
I think they should have just been cautious. I mean, people are foolish to think that we’re going to reopen in the fall and anyone, I’m not going back, I’m on leave, so I don’t have to go to campus, but if I wasn’t on leave, I sure as hell wouldn’t be teaching any courses on campus. I don’t think students should go back. My kids aren’t going to school in the fall. So why would I, I can probably, no offense to college-aged students, but having been a college-aged student, I wasn’t the most responsible person. And I don’t think that I would be someone who necessarily would be as diligent on campus with all these regulations that people think are going to work. I think we are foolish to think that any kind of reopening in the fall is going to be good for us.
I think we should have, in the beginning, just called it all and said, everything’s going to go online and virtual until this thing is solved because we’re going to keep trying to open up, it’s going to crash again. We’re going to keep doing it again, as opposed to just saying, let’s just do the hard work once, as opposed to doing it three different times and just admit that we need to get tougher on ourselves until this thing has passed, and then we can do it because we’re just… look at Texas, Arizona, Florida, that’s what you’re going to get with places that want to reopen in the fall is, Oh, everything’s fine and then crash, here it is again. I’m lucky my institution, UCLA, everything’s online for the fall.
And they’ve been very cautious about when staff can go back, when faculty can go back, when students can go back and just basically saying, look, we need to play it by ear. And the best we can do right now is to be overly cautious. I wish everybody else was doing that because when I see people say stuff like, Oh, we’re going to open, or we’re going to open with some hybrid model. If I was a parent, I wouldn’t send my kids to those schools. And if I was a student, I wouldn’t go to those schools. I would just try to find some other place that seemed like it had my best interest in mind, more than the bottom line in terms of, how do we make money off of this thing? I mean, and that’s really what it is. It’s all about money. It’s not about people’s safety, because if it was about people’s safety, we would have shut down everything a long time ago.
Rhiki Swinton:
Yeah. Paige, I have a question. So as a student or as a recent graduate, let’s say you didn’t graduate and you did have to go back to school in the fall. What will your thoughts be if that was the case?
Paige:
So I relate to Jason. I would not go back to school. As a public health stance, it just doesn’t make sense at all. I wouldn’t go. Yeah. I just wouldn’t go. I would definitely go to school online. Yeah. I think college students, especially, even before Corona virus became what it is, as we know it now in the U.S. when things started to really become more apparent to us in March. I remember it was the last week of winter quarter and all of my friends and I were like, Oh, we need to stop seeing each other. And it was very difficult because up until that point, that’s a very difficult concept to grasp quickly to stop seeing everyone that you know on campus when you’re so used to seeing everyone and especially on college campus, a lot of your family and your community that you depend on are your friends.
And so I think it will be very difficult for students if they have to go back in person in the fall, because the community between students is so tight, everyone wants to see each other all the time. I think that’ll be very difficult. And that’s not even to talk about parties or any of the social gatherings that’s just on a community basis.
Rhiki Swinton:
Yeah, that’s true. Now that I think about it, especially being a person of color on college campuses, your community are your fellow people of color, and it’s already hard enough being at an institution where you don’t really see yourself represented in the staff and the faculty, but to go through that and be in a pandemic and you can’t really gather a community of support because it’s kind of dangerous to do so, it’s really hard to kind of fathom what that will be like.
Paige:
Yeah. You’re already in isolation in the sense that you’re at a PWI as a person of color. So our last question for you Jason today is because of the pandemic and everything that we’ve talked about so far people who can socially distance, places like prisons and detention centers are at very high risk. And I’m wondering, what are ways people can learn more about the organizing that’s happening at the border and how can we support the children at the detention centers?
Jason De León:
That’s a good question. I don’t really know because it’s notoriously hard to get access to the [inaudible 00:44:46] anyway, and now that things are shutting down and they’re decreasing visiting hours and that kind of stuff, we don’t really know what’s happening behind those closed doors, which is very, very scary. I’m worried that we’re going to hear these horror stories long after they’ve happened. And we’re already hearing them in terms of people being deported back to Central America with COVID-19 showing symptoms, spreading those diseases now back into these little communities that have very little health infrastructure. I think there’s a lot of stuff that’s happening right now in prisons and in immigration detention centers that we just don’t hear about. And it may be a while before we do hear about, so I don’t really have a good sense of how.
And people are talking about it. I mean, there are organizations I think that are trying to at least raise awareness about these issues. But I couldn’t name one right now that I could point people to that said, here’s a place that’s doing really good work to help folks because I feel like everyone’s struggling just number one, to wrap their head around what is actually happening. And then number two, how does one get access to these things that are notoriously difficult to get access too? What I would say is at least to be thinking about those folks and to just, this is a moment where the news cycle doesn’t always pick up on these issues, but you can find some stories. So just trying to be aware of these things and keep an eye out for moments where people can actually be helpful.
I think there’s so much chaos happening right now that it’s like a million fires, and we don’t know where to put our energy which is making it difficult, I think, to get anything done. And we’re even seeing now, as things are crashing in different parts of this country, because of COVID-19, that’s slowing down some of the Black lives matter movements. I mean, things are kind of hibernating. They’re going to come back again. I think at this point, the best thing people can do is to just be aware of what’s going on in their community. And then also to just be thinking about the election. How do we vote out politicians who are creating this chaos and who are not having our best interests at heart?
And so it’s getting out to vote. It’s helping people to register to vote, just being aware of the issues that are going to impact the election in the fall. Because I don’t think until we get an adult, a high functioning, just even a semi functioning adults in the White House, we’re going to be dealing with this chaos for a while.
Rhiki Swinton:
Well, Jason, thank you so much for talking to us again. We really appreciate you taking even more time out of your schedule to be a part of this podcast.
Jason De León:
My pleasure.
Rhiki Swinton:
And Paige, thank you too, for the people who don’t know, like we said before, Paige recently graduated. So this is just more work that Paige is doing to help out the Arcus Center and we really appreciate it. So if you really enjoyed this conversation, please let us know. And by commenting on our social media, and remember that the conversation is not over, we will continue to talk about different issues like migration, police brutality, racial reconciliation in the episodes to come. So please be on the lookout for those and join us next time on The Radical Zone.
Outro:
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