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Speaker 1: Hey, this is Anny and Samantha, and welcome to Stefan

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Speaker 1: never told your protection of by her radio.

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Speaker 2: And welcome to another edition of Activists around the World.

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Speaker 2: And we know there's a lot of bad things happening

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Speaker 2: in the world, but one thing we know is that

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Speaker 2: in those bad times, we have amazing people who rise up,

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Speaker 2: do the work and push us to do better. So

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Speaker 2: we have featured so many of these people already, and

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Speaker 2: today we have another person to add to the list

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Speaker 2: of people we want to admire and want to go

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Speaker 2: ahead and get flowers to as they are in the

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Speaker 2: crux of all that is happening and really really pushing

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Speaker 2: to become an advocate and activist for many people. And

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Speaker 2: that is Catalina Vealesquez. So Valeskaz is a Colombian transactivist

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Speaker 2: who has worked in the field of intersectional advocacy. She

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Speaker 2: is the current executive director of Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network

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Speaker 2: WAISN and she is currently residing in Seattle, Washington. So

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Speaker 2: here's a bit from Pride Foundation dot org on a

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Speaker 2: profile of her. They write, Catalina Veleska's is a trailblazing

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Speaker 2: transgender refugee Colombian Latina feminist scholar, social impact executive, and

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Speaker 2: movement builder. She is the executive director of the Washington

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Speaker 2: Immigrant Solidarity Network WAISN, the largest immigrant led coalition in

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Speaker 2: Washington State. Her work embodies intersectional feminism, decolonial methodologies, and

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Speaker 2: transformative justice, making her a luminary in immigrant rights advocacy

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Speaker 2: and beyond. So that's a pretty big introduction and is

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Speaker 2: right on. Obviously, her works have followed closely with her

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Speaker 2: life experiences. At the age of fifteen in alaska's family

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Speaker 2: was detained and then deported from Florida. So they were

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Speaker 2: detained in a detention center in Florida, which we know

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Speaker 2: there's a few And here's a quote from an interview

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Speaker 2: she did with Washington State Standard dot com. She says,

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Speaker 2: my family was deported in February of two thousand and nine.

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Speaker 2: I went over fifteen years without hugging my parents. That

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Speaker 2: set me off in a situation where I was houseless,

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Speaker 2: I was hungry, I didn't have any resources. I had

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Speaker 2: to figure things out by myself while being a full

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Speaker 2: time student at a very rigorous academy that politicized me.

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Speaker 2: I was outraged that my family was deported. It also

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Speaker 2: reflected a much larger systemic issue expelling immigrants out of

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Speaker 2: the country without accounting for how the US has exacerbated poverty, inequality,

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Speaker 2: and violence, especially in Latin America. That savement alone feels

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Speaker 2: like a moment that we need to pause because I

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Speaker 2: think again, like there's so many people who comes out

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Speaker 2: here like do it legally, do it legally, And we

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Speaker 2: know that's just a bull rhetoric that has no compassion,

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Speaker 2: no humanity, and no understanding of the immigration process. Again,

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Speaker 2: I know, speaking to the choir. So I'm a leave

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Speaker 2: it be. So in an article she wrote for Seattle's

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Speaker 2: child dot com, she talks about the struggles her family

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Speaker 2: went through and why they fled their country and why

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Speaker 2: it was important that they had to flee the country,

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Speaker 2: and she's talked about the results of understanding this type

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Speaker 2: of situation in such a personal way. As continued mass

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Speaker 2: deportations have occurred throughout the country, Velasquez has been very

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Speaker 2: vocal about the damage that this has caused, as well

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Speaker 2: as the brutality and cruelty of how the government has

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Speaker 2: continued to abuse. Again, this current rhetoric that has no

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Speaker 2: sensical reasoning, It just doesn't make sense to me. Again,

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Speaker 2: I guess we can say that about all kinds of

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Speaker 2: hate things, including for the queer community and for any

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Speaker 2: marginalised communities. These excuses that they have to finding scapegoat

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Speaker 2: or villains. They need a villain for the story, the

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Speaker 2: bad guy, and it has to be this type of rhetoric.

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Speaker 2: And since her career began, she's been a part of

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Speaker 2: several different organizations and groups advocating for the rights of

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Speaker 2: refugees in the US, from being the director of People

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Speaker 2: for America Way Foundations, Young People for being vice chair

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Speaker 2: of Our Revolution, to helping with the National Latina Institute

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Speaker 2: for Reproductive Justice, Bileasca's has been working on an interseational

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Speaker 2: level in her community, in our community. And with all

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Speaker 2: of that, she's also the first transgender immigrant Latina appointed

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Speaker 2: as the Commissioner of the District of Columbia Office of

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Speaker 2: Latino Affairs, which she served for four years. Apparently she

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Speaker 2: was handpicked by Bernie as well for some of the

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Speaker 2: boards as well, So she knows what she's doing and

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Speaker 2: she has been recognized as being a leader. So her

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Speaker 2: organization WAISN, which started in twenty sixteen, was a response

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Speaker 2: to the anti immigration policies and escalations. From their site

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Speaker 2: waisn dot org, they write, in twenty sixteen, in response

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Speaker 2: to escalating white supremacy and anti immigrant threats, a coalition

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Speaker 2: of immigrant and refugee led organizations that had been supporting

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Speaker 2: their communities across Washington State for decades came together to

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Speaker 2: form the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network. Today we are the

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Speaker 2: largest immigrant coalition in the state. So this is obviously

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Speaker 2: based in one state, but her work is federal obviously

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Speaker 2: and from their side, this is their mission. We are

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Speaker 2: the largest immigrant justice network in Washington that convenes and

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Speaker 2: cultivates a statewide, transnational solidarity coalition to protect and advance

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Speaker 2: the power and rights of all immigrant and refugee communities.

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Speaker 2: As a queer and transgender founded and led nonprofit, we

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Speaker 2: organize from a place of abundance and commit to intersectional,

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Speaker 2: multi faith, intergenerational, multi lingual, multiracial, multi ethnic, immigrant led

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Speaker 2: efforts by investing in base building and growing the leadership

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Speaker 2: of forced migrants. And interestingly, as we were looking into

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Speaker 2: the staff information, because I always like to be up

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Speaker 2: to date about who is leading, because you know, boards

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Speaker 2: change and all that they have this headline it says

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Speaker 2: a strategic silence, why our staff remains unlisted, So they

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Speaker 2: actually don't have anything listed. Instead, they have this and

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Speaker 2: they say, as the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network, we write

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Speaker 2: this message not from a place of fear, but from

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Speaker 2: the place of strategic resistance. In this moment where xenophoic violence,

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Speaker 2: surveillance of immigrant communities, and attacks on human rights defenders

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Speaker 2: have reached alarming levels, we have made a deliberate choice

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Speaker 2: to protect our team by not publicly listing our staff members.

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Speaker 2: This decision emerges from both lived experience and scholarly understanding

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Speaker 2: of how power operates to silence those who challenge oppressive systems.

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Speaker 2: So really interesting if you go and look at that

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Speaker 2: specific site, you'll see that says our staff. On that

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Speaker 2: same page, they go on to talk about different subjects

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Speaker 2: such as protection, as resistance, collective safety, collective power, and

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Speaker 2: present even in absence. So I think it's a really

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Speaker 2: important page and it does communicate a lot of that fear.

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Speaker 2: Like I've talked about my own fears of being unnaturalized

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Speaker 2: citizens and us doing this type of content, that could

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Speaker 2: mean if we actually do, for some reason blow up,

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Speaker 2: and you know, in the viral sense of the way

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Speaker 2: of like who is going after what and what kind

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Speaker 2: of surveillance states that we are under because it's not wrong.

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Speaker 2: We've already talked about it, facial recognition. Hello, So Valaskis

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Speaker 2: has talked about the importance of local and state government

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Speaker 2: and working for immigrant rights on that level. Her PhD

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Speaker 2: has been a focus on quote feminist world making through

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Speaker 2: mutual aid and solidarity networks, which she has obviously already

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Speaker 2: established herself in. So very cool. And of course she

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Speaker 2: has several accolades under her belt, and this is from

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Speaker 2: Pride Foundation dot org because she doesn't have a Wikipedia

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Speaker 2: page yet, not that that's the basis, but you know

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Speaker 2: they do list off a lot of good stuff on

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Speaker 2: that also, there's a significance to that right anyway, going on.

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Speaker 2: Catalina's accolades include the twenty seventeen Women of Excellence Award

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Speaker 2: from DC's Mayor Bowser's Office of Women Affairs, the twenty

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Speaker 2: seventeen Advocacy Award by the Latino glbt History Project, and

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Speaker 2: the twenty two for Creating Change Immigrant Justice Award by

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Speaker 2: the National LGBTQ Task Force. And then she was named

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Speaker 2: several other days, gotten grants and all these other things.

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Speaker 2: So you should definitely check that out, but just wanted

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Speaker 2: to do a shout out to Catalina. Thank you for

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Speaker 2: your hard work, for your example and for doing this

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Speaker 2: incredible work as an refugee and an immigrant who is

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Speaker 2: in the system and has seen the system and how

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Speaker 2: it can be so ugly.

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Speaker 1: Yes, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, and

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Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll be checking back in in the meantime. Listeners,

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Speaker 1: please let us know if there's somebody you would like

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Speaker 1: for us to cover on this segment, you can contact

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Speaker 1: us at Hello Steffannever Told You dot com. You can

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Speaker 1: we have a book you can get wherever we get

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Speaker 1: your books. Thanks as always for our super producer Chris

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Speaker 1: Tina or Executi producer my Ander coodtributor Joey.

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Speaker 2: Thank you.

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Speaker 1: Thanks to you for listening Stuff Never Told You Inspection

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Speaker 1: by Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,

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