Speaker 1: Try and carpool, try and shove into cars as best
Speaker 1: you can, just so that we don't have a mile long.
Speaker 2: Line of cars.
Speaker 3: We have trash bags, we have gloves, we have things
Speaker 3: that we're bringing up there, so what we have cars
Speaker 3: that you can get all of that out of.
Speaker 2: Once we pull over. We're also setting up a couple
Speaker 2: of pop ups.
Speaker 4: Hocumba, California, is a tiny town. You've probably never heard
Speaker 4: of it. It's actually really charming. There's a hot spring
Speaker 4: and a gorgeous hotel, a few stores selling our drinkets,
Speaker 4: that kind of thing. There's a lovely lake fed by
Speaker 4: the spring. And on this Sunday morning, there are about
Speaker 4: fifty people outside an old petrol station, nervously pounding bottles
Speaker 4: of water, applying sunscreen, and getting ready to head out
Speaker 4: of the desert to clear up the ad hoc migrant
Speaker 4: camp that has held as many as fifteen hundred people
Speaker 4: out in the open when Title forty two ended and
Speaker 4: Border patrol made no plans to keep them anywhere. It
Speaker 4: was a diverse bunch of people hidden beneath sun hats.
Speaker 4: There's an Australian film producer who was at a conference
Speaker 4: in Orlando and booked a fly over a grad student painter.
Speaker 4: The folks who were in the Hookumber hotel who organize
Speaker 4: this whole thing, they're friends from the hospitality industry in
Speaker 4: San Diego. There were students and mums and dads and
Speaker 4: about the entire population of this tiny desert town. There
Speaker 4: were also two former International Aid workers who are in
Speaker 4: a tower where you can look at the desert, which
Speaker 4: is actually a much cooler thing than it sounds. And
Speaker 4: there's also a museum of boulders right next to it.
Speaker 4: You should proably check them out during the area. I
Speaker 4: spent the day helping out in Neucumber after the refugees,
Speaker 4: some of them in handcuffs, had been taken by private
Speaker 4: contractors to be processed by CBP's Office of Field Operations.
Speaker 4: We met at a petrol station in the middle of town.
Speaker 4: The space where the pumps should be was filled with tons,
Speaker 4: and I do mean tons of bottled water, masks, hand
Speaker 4: sanitized and other necessary supplies. When I'd arrived the night before,
Speaker 4: around ten pm, the eerie green and yellow lights reflecting
Speaker 4: from the roof had lit up palace of water like
Speaker 4: some kind of giant lava lamp, and driving across the desert,
Speaker 4: the town looked like it was glowing. The town certainly
Speaker 4: has had a bit of a glow up in the
Speaker 4: last few years. Three business partners purchased their Cumber hot
Speaker 4: Springs hotel down in the mouth property that had once
Speaker 4: been a glamorous desert resort, and they've been restoring the
Speaker 4: place for nearly two years. Inadvertently, they also purchased a
Speaker 4: lot of land and a few other rundown buildings in
Speaker 4: a town that were sold as a lot with the hotel.
Speaker 4: It was in one of these buildings, the old gas station,
Speaker 4: that they set up a de facto mutual aid hubbo
Speaker 4: almost overnight. The hotel's not finished yet, and they probably
Speaker 4: didn't make much progress on it during the week when
Speaker 4: they were feeding more than a thousand people in the desert.
Speaker 4: The town's lake, fed by a natural spring an old
Speaker 4: bath house used to be attractions. Today the bathhouse's roof
Speaker 4: has fallen off, but it still makes a pretty cool
Speaker 4: concert venue, and the whole town offers commanding views of
Speaker 4: the border wall, which sadly is only a couple of
Speaker 4: one hundred yards from the main street. When I arrived
Speaker 4: in Houcumber, everything was close. The mini Mark was sold out,
Speaker 4: the hotel was still being worked on, and the hotel
Speaker 4: kitchen was churning out food for volunteers at the clean
Speaker 4: up effort. I asked Marissa, one of the volunteers I
Speaker 4: met that day, about her first impressions on arriving at
Speaker 4: a meeting point.
Speaker 1: I was incredibly impressed by what the people of hu
Speaker 1: Kumba and the hotel group of individuals that have organized this,
Speaker 1: Like I couldn't believe seeing their donation depot in that
Speaker 1: old car wash, just to how well organized everything was,
Speaker 1: and that they provided so much for the volunteers, and
Speaker 1: the just the level of love and compassion and was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was an amazing opportunity to be part of, very humbling.
Speaker 4: I've been there since late the night before after visiting
Speaker 4: border crossings in California and Arizona, and Jeff, one of
Speaker 4: the co owners a hotel, can you let me put
Speaker 4: up my truck in some desert behind his house.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: I'm a person who enjoys sleeping outside, and I do
Speaker 4: it as often as I can. I try and camp
Speaker 4: police a month. But that night I was cold even
Speaker 4: underneath my down blanket, and I couldn't help but think
Speaker 4: of how desperate it must have been to spend nearly
Speaker 4: a week out there with nothing but in my last
Speaker 4: base blanket and some thorny bushes to keep you warm.
Speaker 4: It's certainly not the welcome that one would expect from
Speaker 4: their richest nation on Earth, which had three years to repair.
Speaker 4: For the day, Title forty two ended to get a
Speaker 4: bit of background out of town. I spoke to Natalie.
Speaker 3: So the previous owner bought it at an auction, and
Speaker 3: I don't think that the previous owner didn't realize how
Speaker 3: much she was getting, and he kind of just like
Speaker 3: neglected a bunch of it, you know. And then he
Speaker 3: was older, and so he finally sold off the hotel.
Speaker 3: He thought he was just buying the hotel, but he
Speaker 3: buying all the land as well. So they when they
Speaker 3: bought the hotel, they acquired all their land. And they're
Speaker 3: actually putting money into it and fixing and everything up,
Speaker 3: which is really wonderful.
Speaker 4: The hotel in Lake and hot Spring really are wonderful.
Speaker 4: But the scene that had played out there on the
Speaker 4: eleventh of May with anything but within a short period
Speaker 4: of time, more than a thousand people of all ages
Speaker 4: and nationalities will be held in the open desert and
Speaker 4: left defend large for themselves. I let Natalie describe the
Speaker 4: space there in.
Speaker 3: There's lots of cactuses everywhere, so there's environmental like a
Speaker 3: watch out where you're walking that it's hot. It's hot
Speaker 3: in mid day and really cold at night. Because it's
Speaker 3: the high desert, there can be gusts of wind that
Speaker 3: can just take over, get dust in your eyes, your hair,
Speaker 3: everything's just you're just filthy and lack of food.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's no resources. You're in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 4: I talked to a lot of the volunteers, many of
Speaker 4: whom have been in the desert for me yet week.
Speaker 4: It'd first been made aware of the impending humanitarian crisis
Speaker 4: late on Thursday night, but one of the people working
Speaker 4: on the renovation of the Hot Springs Hotel got a
Speaker 4: call about it. Within a few hours, the hotel, zwners
Speaker 4: and all this stuff were running what became very nearly
Speaker 4: the only source of food, shelter, and water for more
Speaker 4: than a thousand people trapped and held in the desert
Speaker 4: by CBP. I spoke to Sam, another volunteer, to get
Speaker 4: sensor response. Now, Sam is a kind of guy who
Speaker 4: just looks like he's a home in the desert. His
Speaker 4: Wi brim hat, boots, and long cleeved shirt and pants
Speaker 4: told me he spent plenty of days under the baking
Speaker 4: sign out here. And his redness with an isoproble alcohol
Speaker 4: spray disinfect people's boots after walking in an area that
Speaker 4: was likely covered in human shit told me he'd been
Speaker 4: around one or two situations like this in the past.
Speaker 6: I spent a great deal of my life as his
Speaker 6: second career, working for in developmental relief logistics in Southeast Asia,
Speaker 6: mainly working with large age organizations for example World Food Program,
Speaker 6: Doctors without Borders, shild units, many many differrom that place things.
Speaker 4: In the context of that kind of experience. It's easy
Speaker 4: to understand why people come to the United States, but
Speaker 4: I asked Sam to put the situation here into perspective
Speaker 4: for me. It's understandable that folks came to the US,
Speaker 4: but why to a tiny desert town of five hundred people.
Speaker 6: These people were radically unprepared for what they were going
Speaker 6: to go through because they were sold a bill of
Speaker 6: goods by coyotes on the other side about what was
Speaker 6: going to happen to them. You understand. So they had
Speaker 6: really no idea what they were getting into at all,
Speaker 6: and so there was not anything in the way of
Speaker 6: life threatening situations for any of those people in any
Speaker 6: meaningful way, a great deal of discomfort. It could have
Speaker 6: turned very badly if these people here had not stepped up,
Speaker 6: because the border patrol was completely overwhelmed, and so there
Speaker 6: was never that bad of a situation here compared to
Speaker 6: what I have seen in other places in the past.
Speaker 4: A sound pointed out the migrants were now gone, but
Speaker 4: we were still surrounded by times of supplies. But at
Speaker 4: the time there was no way of knowing the scope
Speaker 4: or scale of the need. People reacted as best they could.
Speaker 6: Actually it was overkilled, but you had no way of
Speaker 6: knowing right at the time. There's just no way to know.
Speaker 6: How do you know ahead of time? You always ask
Speaker 6: for as much as you can get, because why would
Speaker 6: you not. I mean, you never know what. You don't
Speaker 6: know how many of them with babies that are on
Speaker 6: the other side of the wall right now might be zero,
Speaker 6: might be five hundred.
Speaker 4: You have no idea, you know, before anyone knew how
Speaker 4: if this was going to end, or really what even
Speaker 4: was going on, dozens of people across the county decided
Speaker 4: to help. One of them was Katie. Here she is
Speaker 4: describing some of the volunteers she worked alongside.
Speaker 7: There was a hard hodgepodge of people and as volunteers
Speaker 7: and leading it were some of the owners of a
Speaker 7: hotel out there, and that was the main organizers. But
Speaker 7: who showed up were people from the town, people that
Speaker 7: I knew and recognized. There was some really devout, like
Speaker 7: they're twenty four hours a day, and then there was
Speaker 7: some coming in and out. But I met people from
Speaker 7: all over the county, and most of them answered the
Speaker 7: call through Instagram of the hotel.
Speaker 4: All those volunteers called their friends, who called their friends,
Speaker 4: who gradually coordinated response. Natalie first became aware of this,
Speaker 4: as many volunteers did, through an Instagram post by Melissa
Speaker 4: and another the three co owners of the Combo Hotel
Speaker 4: on Thursday night, just as title forty two was ending.
Speaker 4: Natalie saw the post and decided to help. At first,
Speaker 4: she wanted to leave right then at one am as
Speaker 4: soon as she'd seen the post, but after consulting her family,
Speaker 4: she decided to make her own post, asking for people
Speaker 4: to bring supplies that were needed. Soon she was overwhelmed
Speaker 4: by the response.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean immediately, even at one in the morning,
Speaker 3: I was getting messages because I posted it.
Speaker 2: That's when I posted the.
Speaker 3: Story, I immediately got messages from front say I'll bring
Speaker 3: a blanket over.
Speaker 2: What's your address.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everyone just kind of rallied and started bringing supplies over,
Speaker 3: collecting money as well. Some friends started collecting money and
Speaker 3: then bought stuff and brought loads of food and things
Speaker 3: to my house.
Speaker 4: Her husband and ferried the supplies to Akomba, where they
Speaker 4: were joined by donations from all over the county in
Speaker 4: the old petrol station. Like Natalie, Katie also saw a
Speaker 4: post and immediately felt compelled to help. She called a
Speaker 4: friend and some members of her family instead about raising
Speaker 4: funds and buying supplies.
Speaker 7: So I met my friend at a cafe and in
Speaker 7: that in the meantime, and I don't know how much
Speaker 7: of this is really important. So in the meantime, I
Speaker 7: text my mother and my two sisters who live on
Speaker 7: the East coast, and just it was late at night
Speaker 7: for them, and I just said, I would love for
Speaker 7: you to send prayers, because that's something that I believe in.
Speaker 7: I believe in prayer or intention and thought reality, and
Speaker 7: some of it was just because I felt so touched,
Speaker 7: like praying for the community that I love too. And
Speaker 7: the next thing, I know, like my venmo was blowing
Speaker 7: up and there was one thousand dollars in my venmo
Speaker 7: sent from my family members. And so by the time
Speaker 7: my friend arrived, we were like, let's go and we
Speaker 7: filled our car with Amazingly, we found like organic, there's
Speaker 7: grocery outlet, right, so we found organic soup for you know,
Speaker 7: dollars something a can, and we spent a few hundred dollars.
Speaker 7: And the next morning we met early and we stopped
Speaker 7: in El Cone on the way and we spent all
Speaker 7: the rest on We went to three or four thrift
Speaker 7: stores and bought every blanket and hat and baby carrier.
Speaker 7: Because we have both focused on motherhood in our careers.
Speaker 4: I asked the people I spoke to about a week
Speaker 4: later how the experience had impacted them.
Speaker 3: It was overwhelming, just the the way the community really
Speaker 3: came around and supported the people in Hukumba that were
Speaker 3: trying to help. You know, after we finished cleaning up,
Speaker 3: when we're back at the gas station, the Amazon driver
Speaker 3: was delivering like I think he delivered three hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty boxes and so we had to open them up
Speaker 3: and sort them and it was there was so much food.
Speaker 3: I think that it was insane amount of food, and
Speaker 3: it was awesome. It was really cool just to see
Speaker 3: how many people stabbed up and donated.
Speaker 4: I like some of the people I saw in Santa Cedro. Natalie, Katie,
Speaker 4: Sam and Marissa are not part of an NGO or
Speaker 4: a mutual aid collective. They're just people who wanted to help,
Speaker 4: and that describes most of the people in Ucumber, although
Speaker 4: some of them did have previous and regular volunteer experience
Speaker 4: with excellent groups like Border Kindness. I asked Katie to
Speaker 4: reflect on the mutual aid approach and the absence of massive,
Speaker 4: multimillion dollar organizations. Yeah, wasn't there, right.
Speaker 7: No, they weren't there. We were told that the Red
Speaker 7: Cross couldn't come unless Border Patrol called, and Border Patrol
Speaker 7: told us that they weren't allowed to call the Red Cross.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a pretty standard.
Speaker 4: The one institution that did show support to people in
Speaker 4: Hucumber was one that you might not expect, given the
Speaker 4: support for this cruel immigration policy by almost all the
Speaker 4: Democrats in DC. But things are different when you can
Speaker 4: see the results of these policies with your own eyes.
Speaker 4: Perhaps that's why I didn't see a single elected official
Speaker 4: in my entire week at the border. But one person
Speaker 4: I missed whoever one mentioned, was a lady who worked
Speaker 4: for California Senator Steve Pidia. I won't name her as
Speaker 4: I don't have her permission, but hopefully one dayssume we'll
Speaker 4: be able to interview her. I'll let Katie describe the
Speaker 4: role this woman played.
Speaker 7: There was someone from Steve Padilla's team, and that's the
Speaker 7: woman I rode with.
Speaker 8: And.
Speaker 7: She was incredible. Her brother in law is the chef
Speaker 7: at the hotel, so I think, I mean, she might
Speaker 7: have came anyway, but she came faster and there was
Speaker 7: true connection, and she stood up to the border patrol
Speaker 7: and said, you know, said we're allowed. We're here on
Speaker 7: behalf of this senator. So I mean I saw some
Speaker 7: like had had like arguments about our right to be there,
Speaker 7: and most of us didn't. Weren't paying attention to that.
Speaker 7: We're paying attention to the people that we were, you know,
Speaker 7: around and no one that was out there what didn't
Speaker 7: believe that we should be out there and that more
Speaker 7: help should be out there.
Speaker 4: Sadly, part of that familiarity with the system this woman
Speaker 4: brought to the team also meant a familiarity with the
Speaker 4: cruel and arbitrary nature of it. Katie says that they
Speaker 4: had to organize for that as well.
Speaker 7: So my friend and I we ended up writing in
Speaker 7: her truck, so in Steve Padia's Senator Padia's assistant truck.
Speaker 7: So we had the opportunity to ask some questions that
Speaker 7: probably everyone out there wanted to know, including the migrants,
Speaker 7: And it was like, what will happen in what's the
Speaker 7: process from here? And how do you know that these
Speaker 7: people are being tended to? And I literally heard her
Speaker 7: on the phone getting as many bodies on the ground
Speaker 7: to start going to those centers where they're being taken
Speaker 7: to make sure that they were that that we would
Speaker 7: follow them through the entire process as best possible, monitoring
Speaker 7: their well well cared for, that they were well cared for,
Speaker 7: as well cared for as possible in a system and
Speaker 7: a process like that. Yeah, yeah, but she literally said
Speaker 7: they're going to be busted off and putt in cages
Speaker 7: and that they would do their best to make sure
Speaker 7: that that no one was split up, and that everyone
Speaker 7: was fed, showered, and they weren't allowed to bring anything
Speaker 7: with them, So a lot of the cleanup was all
Speaker 7: of the things that everyone donated that had to be
Speaker 7: left behind, including some of the stuffed animals.
Speaker 4: For all the volunteers I spoke to, the chance to
Speaker 4: be of service was empowering. Here's Natalie discussing that, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, well, like and so many times do you
Speaker 3: like feel overwhelmed with like so much suffering in this world,
Speaker 3: and like what can one person do?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 3: And so it did feel good that to actually see
Speaker 3: an immediate impact, like I'm doing this and this is
Speaker 3: a result, because sometimes you can just get discouraged, you know,
Speaker 3: like we're just one person.
Speaker 2: What can we really do and can we really make
Speaker 2: an impact?
Speaker 3: And just seeing that and being able to see directly
Speaker 3: how that one person can impact, you.
Speaker 2: Know, can rally.
Speaker 3: Like just seeing how my friends came together, you know,
Speaker 3: went shopping, bought things, gathered money, collected money. You know,
Speaker 3: my really good friend Sam, she went to her local
Speaker 3: bar after she collected a bunch of money, went and
Speaker 3: dropped stuff supplies off at my house. She was just
Speaker 3: down at her local bar and just chatting with them
Speaker 3: and like, oh, what did you do today, And so
Speaker 3: she told them, oh, I collected money and I bought
Speaker 3: supplies and the people She ended up collecting about two
Speaker 3: hundred more dollars at the bar from people hearing her story.
Speaker 3: And so then the next day she went and bought
Speaker 3: more supplies and she actually ended up driving them out herself.
Speaker 3: She ended up doing like three trips just from her
Speaker 3: own talking to people and collecting. So just like the
Speaker 3: little impact that, you know, everyone just kind of coming
Speaker 3: together and making a difference.
Speaker 4: Santa Sedro, a pretty diverse range of San Diegan's came
Speaker 4: to help. On the first night. I personally left at
Speaker 4: about one in the morning, after spending almost two hours
Speaker 4: trying to leave but needing to get charged phones back
Speaker 4: to their owners by loudly in Spanish and French, then
Speaker 4: English describing the backgrounds on the phone or the color
Speaker 4: of their case. It wasn't a great system, and by
Speaker 4: the weekend, Cabra and others had seen that more help
Speaker 4: an organization was needed and they decided to plan a response.
Speaker 4: Here's cable describing how they prepared for that.
Speaker 5: Abe. I'll just grabs, you know, I was paying attention
Speaker 5: to people I knew who were doing and what supplies
Speaker 5: they were saying was needed. The particular store near me
Speaker 5: has like a wall of travel size like these giant
Speaker 5: times where you can basically just scoop out one hundred deodorant,
Speaker 5: hands and to paste and things like that.
Speaker 4: CAPA met up with some other members of a local
Speaker 4: mutual aid group. I'll make sure to include donation links
Speaker 4: for all the groups I've mentioned at the end of
Speaker 4: this series, so please make sure to listen right through
Speaker 4: to the end.
Speaker 5: I met up with him and he had just received
Speaker 5: a bunch of donations through through mutually networks, so we
Speaker 5: we know even more of a travel size I got
Speaker 5: some Truth Truth hygiene kits and deodorant and UH and
Speaker 5: and a bunch of friends and papers because because the
Speaker 5: kids that are between the walls don't really have actually
Speaker 5: do unfortunately, so so that those were those wren really fast,
Speaker 5: and so we got a whole bunch of bands of
Speaker 5: all those kinds of supplies, and then we just done
Speaker 5: of the break from there.
Speaker 4: By the time they arrived, various organizations had organized areas
Speaker 4: along the wall for different kinds of aid to be
Speaker 4: passed through. Everything clothes to food, to medical supplies and
Speaker 4: toilet paper was piled up, given.
Speaker 5: Out the relations and you know, organizing toilet paper, food,
Speaker 5: everything like that, and people just come up to the
Speaker 5: wall and if their family needed something, they would just
Speaker 5: kind of going to it or ask us if we
Speaker 5: were able to, you know, if there was a common
Speaker 5: language there. So yeah, we just kind of, you know,
Speaker 5: gave things as people needed them. I know that I
Speaker 5: helped give out some of the friends and times of
Speaker 5: paper and those were all those were tons of kids
Speaker 5: all came running over from the whole, all the parts
Speaker 5: of the camp when they heard that there was there
Speaker 5: were toys being given out, So that was it was.
Speaker 5: It was heartbreaking, but it was also you know, it
Speaker 5: made me smile to see them smile.
Speaker 4: And the smile because of the need to use c
Speaker 4: BP one and of course they need to stay in
Speaker 4: touch with families back home. There was a conn in
Speaker 4: an overwhelming demand for phone charging. News reporters took phones
Speaker 4: back to charge in their cars. Some people bought charge
Speaker 4: bricks and power strips, and mutual aid groups wrote names
Speaker 4: on the back of the phones using painter's tape and
Speaker 4: sharpie so they wouldn't get separated from their owners. By
Speaker 4: the second day it was a better system, but on
Speaker 4: the first day it was chaos. I let Kber, who
Speaker 4: spent a whole day charging phones, described the system that
Speaker 4: volunteers came up with to mitigate that chaos a little bit.
Speaker 5: And obviously they couldn't charge their phones if they're just
Speaker 5: in this kind of desert gap between between the walls
Speaker 5: that doesn't have any kind of romanies or anything. So
Speaker 5: we had a system where they would passive phone through
Speaker 5: and we had we went, we would put a piece
Speaker 5: of tape on it with their name and give them
Speaker 5: a piece of tape with their name the same name,
Speaker 5: and then they would give us that if they came
Speaker 5: back to give us the tape back, and we would
Speaker 5: match their names and phone and and that was It
Speaker 5: worked well enough. I mean, it was still an extraordinarily
Speaker 5: chaotic process. I mean we had we always had at
Speaker 5: least one hundred phones on our side of the wallet
Speaker 5: at a given time, and and some people had you know,
Speaker 5: some people have chargers, some people didn't. Some people had
Speaker 5: Android or Samsung or all the iPhones, and some people
Speaker 5: had well adaptors, and some people didn't have the wallet
Speaker 5: ac adapters, so we kind of had to every phone
Speaker 5: that came through was we had to find a way
Speaker 5: to get it, you know, basically chained into the set
Speaker 5: of generators that we had, which was do we have
Speaker 5: power strips and we have to write cables and and
Speaker 5: and we have space on those cables and and I
Speaker 5: think it was it was a bit of a puzzle
Speaker 5: the whole time. The only part of it that really
Speaker 5: overwhelmed me was we did overload. Someone brought a bunch
Speaker 5: of h USBC power strips and we blew out one
Speaker 5: of them, and so there was now eight phones attacked
Speaker 5: that they had to find new spaces for. I was
Speaker 5: I was just frustrated by the situation. And in addition
Speaker 5: that refer to that I think particularly whatever.
Speaker 4: Happened to it, it was chaos, but it was a
Speaker 4: good natured chaos. Over several days that migrants would attained
Speaker 4: in the open with no shelter an inadequate sanitation, just
Speaker 4: about two miles from the discount mall where you can
Speaker 4: buy cheap Ralpherend's shirts if that's your jam. People showed
Speaker 4: up in ever increasing numbers. The American Friends Service Committee
Speaker 4: helped organize volunteers into groups to distribute food, package up
Speaker 4: wet white snacks, medicines, give out tarps, and do just
Speaker 4: about anything else that they could or anything else that
Speaker 4: they could fit to ziploc bags that could be passed
Speaker 4: through gaps in the wall.
Speaker 8: At least.
Speaker 4: People who had been immigrants themselves or who were the
Speaker 4: children of immigrants were notably numerous, and the volunteers I
Speaker 4: spent to one of them with.
Speaker 8: My name is Lon Chai.
Speaker 9: I'm part of Asian Soliday Collective grass with organization here
Speaker 9: in San Diego.
Speaker 8: I've been I've been coming over here since yesterday.
Speaker 9: I came here around five six yesterday, and then I
Speaker 9: came back through here this morning and been here since.
Speaker 9: I got home at twelve last night and woke up,
Speaker 9: dropped my kid off, and came right back with more supplies.
Speaker 9: I've been reaching out to family, friends and community to
Speaker 9: help donate supplies and things.
Speaker 8: Like that, food, whatever, whatever they may have.
Speaker 9: And I've pretty much been driving around city and collecting
Speaker 9: from from folks that can't make it so I could
Speaker 9: bring it down here myself.
Speaker 8: So that's what I've been doing.
Speaker 4: LUNCHI explained to me why it was so important to
Speaker 4: show up my community.
Speaker 9: I'm pretty sure they they they're sympathetic to this because
Speaker 9: I'm coming from I'm a first generation Cambodian American here
Speaker 9: in the US, and when my parents and my family
Speaker 9: fled their country, they went through this as well. So
Speaker 9: somebody somewhere came and provided to support, provided to aid
Speaker 9: the donations.
Speaker 8: For them to be able to to make it.
Speaker 9: To America to crossover, and and able to to to
Speaker 9: provide out here for for me growing up out here.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 9: So it's just I just sympathize with it, with the
Speaker 9: whole thing. I mean, I mean everybody should should should
Speaker 9: feel the same way because somewhere down the line, our
Speaker 9: families went through similar situations. If you're not an indigenous
Speaker 9: then then then your family somewhere down down to history
Speaker 9: went through the same thing.
Speaker 8: So you know that everybody should have a heart for
Speaker 8: this and be able.
Speaker 9: To come down here and and and and donate or
Speaker 9: donate their time or supplies whatever the case may be,
Speaker 9: you know, come out in help.
Speaker 4: He also explained why he feels it's important to encourage
Speaker 4: empathy for refugees.
Speaker 8: Well, it's it's you have to you have to.
Speaker 9: You have to be keep in mind, there's there's this
Speaker 9: families out here, there's this young children, there's babies. I mean,
Speaker 9: it takes a lot for for for a mother to
Speaker 9: pick up her infant child and to leave where she's
Speaker 9: coming from. So that just says a lot about where
Speaker 9: what's going on, where she's come, for her to trek
Speaker 9: and to go through this, to sit out here and
Speaker 9: coll and stuff, because if she would rather endure her
Speaker 9: endure this and take the risk and the chances that
Speaker 9: means where she's coming from is not as you know,
Speaker 9: if she's willing to take that risk.
Speaker 4: Later that night, I saw an Afghan family come to
Speaker 4: help the other Afghan families. Their kids talk to other
Speaker 4: Afghan kids separated by the border war. They passed crayons
Speaker 4: through the wall and coloring books, and the little daughter
Speaker 4: asked her dad if she could give her watch to
Speaker 4: the Afghan girl being held in the camp. Her dad said,
Speaker 4: of course, I don't record or photograph people's children, certainly
Speaker 4: not without asking, And I wasn't about to interrupt them,
Speaker 4: but it was a very sweet moment. The father of
Speaker 4: the family had worked in the Army Corps of Engineers.
Speaker 4: He'd been to the border before to build this section
Speaker 4: of the wall. I didn't really need to ask him
Speaker 4: how it felt to see folks stuck behind it, but
Speaker 4: it said a lot that he and his family had
Speaker 4: taken the time to drive down, buy bags and supplies
Speaker 4: and then come face to face with the people who
Speaker 4: needed them and hand them out. Like dozens of other folks,
Speaker 4: they tried to pass whatever they could through little gaps
Speaker 4: in the war to make someone's day a little bit brighter.
Speaker 4: Another volunteer who we heard from yesterday came from a
Speaker 4: local group called Pana. Hermira had been at the wall
Speaker 4: since five in the morning and it was getting on
Speaker 4: for five pm when we spoke. I normally ask people
Speaker 4: what they ate for breakfast, just to tune in the
Speaker 4: volume levels on the recorder a bit, but I'm going
Speaker 4: to include it this time, just so you can see
Speaker 4: how long her day had been and how hard she've
Speaker 4: been working.
Speaker 10: Okay, do you know what do you want me say? Second?
Speaker 6: I mean, you have a breakfast again.
Speaker 10: I don't remember anymore French shast FRESD shosts, but my
Speaker 10: name is Harmira Yusafi and I'm with a partnership for
Speaker 10: the Advancement of New Americans PANA, or an organization in
Speaker 10: San Diego that fights for the full inclusion of refugees
Speaker 10: and those who come from refugee producing countries.
Speaker 4: We spoke about the emergency that had kept her hair
Speaker 4: all day.
Speaker 10: So in terms of this morning, I mean I was.
Speaker 10: I was very concerned because there was an asylum seeker
Speaker 10: who had an emergency and was rushed out of this place.
Speaker 10: Where now, like for example, where we are at right now,
Speaker 10: is people who are being detained and the most inhumane
Speaker 10: way possible. This is going against TBP's own protocols and
Speaker 10: policies as to how they're being detained with No they're
Speaker 10: not giving them food, they're not giving them bathrooms, they're
Speaker 10: not giving them basic basic things that they need to survive.
Speaker 10: And so that's why the community is out here today
Speaker 10: to do that.
Speaker 4: Sadly, not everyone who showed up at the makeshift detention facility.
Speaker 4: We're showing up in solidarity. Local anti migrant activists and
Speaker 4: blogger Roger Ogden showed up.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: Ogden might be familiar to some listeners due to his
Speaker 4: attempts to host he called a Patriot picnic and his
Speaker 4: advocacy for the removal of the historic murals in Chicken
Speaker 4: on A Park often organized gatherings in the park in
Speaker 4: twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen, and they resulted in a
Speaker 4: huge and overwhelming community response to defend the park, and
Speaker 4: this time Olden decided to keep to himself, but Natalie
Speaker 4: ran into some people who weren't quite as shy about
Speaker 4: their opinions.
Speaker 3: You know, a lot of the people in the community
Speaker 3: are you know, lower income. You know, they are struggling
Speaker 3: in their own struggle on their and so I know,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe I don't know, it's like for those people,
Speaker 3: I don't know, like, yeah, it's hard.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, towards the end, like when I was walking
Speaker 3: to my car, this man, this man in a car
Speaker 3: like pulled up and he's like, excuse me, what's going
Speaker 3: on over there? And I was like, Oh, we're gathering
Speaker 3: you know, somepplies for the asylum seekers. And then I
Speaker 3: you know, like, if you're from here, you kind of
Speaker 3: if you're in Hookumba, you kind of already knew what
Speaker 3: was going on, and so him asking me that, I
Speaker 3: was kind of like, m and then he just started
Speaker 3: laying into I've had illegals, you know, have broken into
Speaker 3: my house a few times.
Speaker 2: Why are you supporting illegals?
Speaker 3: And I'm like, we're trying to, let like make sure
Speaker 3: that people don't die, and he just kept going off
Speaker 3: on me, and so he you know, the whole.
Speaker 2: All the talking points that people have about not.
Speaker 3: Allowing people to seek asylum here, and so I just
Speaker 3: walked away.
Speaker 4: Maurica didn't run into the same kind of vocal opposition,
Speaker 4: but she said in her conversations and attempts to process
Speaker 4: everything she'd seen, she ran into some of the sort
Speaker 4: of need JC responses. So people can only really make
Speaker 4: about immigration when they haven't looked the cruelty that they're
Speaker 4: advocating for in the face.
Speaker 1: It took me a little while to kind of work
Speaker 1: through just how I felt about it on an emotional,
Speaker 1: maybe a spiritual level.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: I spoke with family and friends about it, about my experience,
Speaker 1: and and it's it's difficult to I found it difficult
Speaker 1: to explain my experience because I don't know that somebody
Speaker 1: can really truly understand that unless they've actually been out
Speaker 1: there and done it themselves, because the arguments or or
Speaker 1: they're kind of debate, so to speak, what they would
Speaker 1: come back at me with when I was sharing that is,
Speaker 1: but we don't have enough food or housing to be
Speaker 1: able to support that many people coming in. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: but we just had so many people and so much
Speaker 1: money put out there to help in a very short
Speaker 1: amount of time. Look how many donations were donated, how
Speaker 1: much money was contributed in a short amount of time
Speaker 1: from not that many people. I'm like, obviously we do
Speaker 1: have the money, Obviously we do have the food, So
Speaker 1: where's the where's the breakdown? Like, is it our system
Speaker 1: that just doesn't allow for that happened? I don't know,
Speaker 1: and that that's where like I don't I don't understand
Speaker 1: it enough.
Speaker 2: But I feel like.
Speaker 1: It just made me realize that I don't know that
Speaker 1: anybody that I spoke to afterward really understands it enough,
Speaker 1: either because their arguments or they're a defense and what
Speaker 1: they tried to share on the opposite side of me
Speaker 1: going out there and supporting just felt like it was
Speaker 1: just something to say, you know, and like what they
Speaker 1: what they hear from the general media out there, and
Speaker 1: they also don't really they can't quite grasp it, so
Speaker 1: they're just kind of throwing something out there I guess
Speaker 1: is what it felt like.
Speaker 4: Kaiba also ran into some less and charitable San Diegans,
Speaker 4: this time down the sant Asiedra.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so, I guess my first part it is why
Speaker 5: they might have or how they might have found us there,
Speaker 5: which is there's a a local news organization San Diego
Speaker 5: called Harisai, which is kind of a I would describe
Speaker 5: as a local equivalent of something like one American News,
Speaker 5: which is really unfortunate because we already have more American
Speaker 5: news here. Uh, but they are are pretty well known
Speaker 5: for kind of a lot of like misinformation, kind of
Speaker 5: scared mondering about and has people immigrants, vaccines and and
Speaker 5: all that sort of sort of thing, but with kind
Speaker 5: of a local news sort of aesthetic to it. And
Speaker 5: they were, as far as I could tell, they were
Speaker 5: really the only ident of able media that were there
Speaker 5: throughout the day. I read articles eventually that made me
Speaker 5: realize there were other reporters there that they were identifying
Speaker 5: themselves the way that Hasy was, but they sided it
Speaker 5: was one cameraman just shooting b role, I guess, and
Speaker 5: he walking to all the different parts of the wall
Speaker 5: and like all the different sort of stations for aid
Speaker 5: and like trying to really trying to get as many
Speaker 5: faces as possible they could.
Speaker 8: Kind of have that.
Speaker 5: That's like what he was doing. Everyone who I was around,
Speaker 5: I was I was kind of you know, oriented mostly
Speaker 5: with kind of the like sort of like anartists between people.
Speaker 5: And you know, when they saw the lame aside track,
Speaker 5: they were like, okay, when it's their masking, you know,
Speaker 5: and I killing in ninety five with me so where
Speaker 5: and I am I don't you know, slightly identifying logo
Speaker 5: on my struct shirt which I take over so that
Speaker 5: you know, that image wouldn't show up Now.
Speaker 4: Kus I have drifted further and further right since twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: Along with their relatively miniscule viewership. These days, they engage
Speaker 4: in fake news culture war stuff, like repeating the recent
Speaker 4: false accusations that Target was making tuckable swimming costumes for kids,
Speaker 4: or labeling everyone in the asylum process illegal immigrants. It's
Speaker 4: sadly pretty standard for writing news organizations now. Kayle thinks
Speaker 4: that some of the people who saw footage on k USI,
Speaker 4: or perhaps found the location posted on Obten's blog, came
Speaker 4: down to the border.
Speaker 5: Like several hours later. That's like when we started to
Speaker 5: see people you know, kind of went buy and and
Speaker 5: and we could tell that they weren't volunteers, because like
Speaker 5: when people who are like playing people who weren't even
Speaker 5: necessarily voluneer, which weren't buy and so like, hey, I
Speaker 5: just heard watching on. I brought a piace of water
Speaker 5: and they bring it the water and then they drive away.
Speaker 5: But the people who are doing who are like cute
Speaker 5: where I think, you know, kind of do some kind
Speaker 5: of intimidation where you know, they wouldn't approach directly. They
Speaker 5: would just kind of get out of their exceptionally large
Speaker 5: estuvies and and just kind of just kind of watch
Speaker 5: and they would kind of, you know, get a little
Speaker 5: bit closer at a time, and then you know a
Speaker 5: little bit closer and kind of whispered to each other
Speaker 5: and you know, pointed things, and you know, it's just
Speaker 5: kind of that they were just watching, and you know,
Speaker 5: they got post enough that I could read their shirts,
Speaker 5: and and the shirts had a slogan that's associated with
Speaker 5: a Christian nationalism slogan, so as this whole family is
Speaker 5: kind of kind of sad that the kids were wearing
Speaker 5: the shirts too, and and so I kind of yah,
Speaker 5: I figured out that that's what was going on. And
Speaker 5: I never talked to them. I didn't approach them, but
Speaker 5: I stood when I was, you know, something to get
Speaker 5: close with this or I kind of positioned myself in
Speaker 5: between the rest of the volunteers and in this group
Speaker 5: and and just kind of you know, didn't really start
Speaker 5: at them, just kind of looked at them and and
Speaker 5: just made it clear with my body language that I,
Speaker 5: like I knew, you know, they were doing like they
Speaker 5: weren't you know, they weren't doing any kind of secret
Speaker 5: agent thing or whatever, like they were being really really obvious.
Speaker 5: And I would just you know, stood and position myself
Speaker 5: in a way that I pated that you know, I
Speaker 5: know what you're doing, and you're not going to get close.
Speaker 5: You're not going to interfere with you know, what we're
Speaker 5: doing here. You're not going to contact to any wine
Speaker 5: or you thrill anyone or whateveryone did. And eventually one
Speaker 5: of the people who is either volunteer or work for,
Speaker 5: like one of the engineers, can definitely tell there's something
Speaker 5: going on, so she went over and had a conversation
Speaker 5: with them that I couldn't hear, and eventually they decided
Speaker 5: to move, and I think she was just kind of
Speaker 5: trying to be diplomatic, but just sort of like asked
Speaker 5: them if they wanted to help, and if they don't
Speaker 5: want to help, and you know, yeah, go be somewhere else,
Speaker 5: I suppose, And and it was I mean, the sort
Speaker 5: of one amusing part of people like that was that
Speaker 5: they apparently complained to this person about me because they
Speaker 5: said that I had been watching them and I was
Speaker 5: I was racially profiling them because they were white. And
Speaker 5: I realized now that this is an aroundous interview, but
Speaker 5: just for the listeners, I am very very white myself.
Speaker 4: I think it's important when we discuss volunteering to honor
Speaker 4: how hard this kind of experience could be on people. Obviously,
Speaker 4: the trauma is associated with seeing people brutalized by the
Speaker 4: state and capital. It's not the same as being brutalized
Speaker 4: by state and capital yourself. But that doesn't mean it's easy.
Speaker 4: I asked Nathlete to reflect a little on children's toys
Speaker 4: we found in the shelter when we were cleaning up
Speaker 4: the camp, like.
Speaker 3: As a mom, like I have my own children, and
Speaker 3: it just really it was emotional. It's like it's just
Speaker 3: like I'm like, who's who? What child was playing with this?
Speaker 3: You know here in this space, and you know that
Speaker 3: no child should be ever in, you know, an encampment
Speaker 3: like that or it just no one should be living outside,
Speaker 3: no one should be doing that. But also it's like
Speaker 3: kind of like the humanity in a way like that.
Speaker 3: You know, even a child's going to play wherever child's
Speaker 3: going to play, and like that little toy of little
Speaker 3: hopefully it brought that kid some joy in that moment,
Speaker 3: you know, if it was there a little piece of
Speaker 3: home or someone gave it to him or what, you know,
Speaker 3: it was yeah, the reality, it was like it was
Speaker 3: like a person, you know, like a little artifact of
Speaker 3: someone who was actually there.
Speaker 2: You know, like it was a little more tangible than
Speaker 2: you know, a sock.
Speaker 3: You know, that's not that's not I'm not think you
Speaker 3: know who wore that sock? But thin give who who
Speaker 3: was playing with that doy? You know?
Speaker 2: Was it a little boy, a little girl? Hold? Were
Speaker 2: they did they bring up home? Are they missing it?
Speaker 2: When they?
Speaker 3: When I saw they have that, she needed people to
Speaker 3: clean up. It was like, Okay, I took a day
Speaker 3: off of work and went out there and just felt
Speaker 3: overwhelming almost. I mean, just one day of me working
Speaker 3: out there was really emotional. I can't imagine how you know,
Speaker 3: Melissa and all the people that were on the ground
Speaker 3: just dealing with it, and I know they're just struggling
Speaker 3: a little bit and just processing it all has been
Speaker 3: really hard, you know, really hard. It's just just just
Speaker 3: how how privileged we are. You know, like no one
Speaker 3: leaves their country because they want to. They leave because
Speaker 3: they have to, but they feel like they have to.
Speaker 3: And you know, it's I mean, it's respecting and honoring
Speaker 3: and understanding the privilege that you're in and not taking
Speaker 3: for granted because it's very easy to both.
Speaker 4: Katie Marisa said they don't really identify as political and
Speaker 4: that they wanted to be there as people. Sometimes often
Speaker 4: politics can become a complicated game of numbers and statistics.
Speaker 4: But it's important to remember that what this is really
Speaker 4: about is organizing in such a way that we can
Speaker 4: take care of one another, and that the most important
Speaker 4: politics of war is the politics of feeding hungry people
Speaker 4: and maybe bringing a sad child of stuffed animal. Here's
Speaker 4: Katie talking about the community response.
Speaker 7: I think I'm a really compassionate person and I'm not
Speaker 7: very political in the sense that like I don't really participate.
Speaker 7: My life in my community's life is solution oriented. So
Speaker 7: I saw like that on a large scale, the like
Speaker 7: when people come together, we create solutions when and you
Speaker 7: don't wait for someone like the government to show up
Speaker 7: and fix it, because then people will die. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 7: I mean that's the reality is if that community didn't activate,
Speaker 7: there would have been a lot of dead people in
Speaker 7: the desert.
Speaker 4: Katie shared with me that she's been having a difficult time,
Speaker 4: feeling guilty for not having the language skills to do
Speaker 4: more and questing her own worthiness to be their helping
Speaker 4: But in the end, she said she felt that what
Speaker 4: she'd done was right and important. I'll leave you with
Speaker 4: her thoughts and tomorrow I'll be back to talk about
Speaker 4: the people who put everyone in this situation in the
Speaker 4: first place, the Department of Homeland Security.
Speaker 7: I think an important thing is like so many times
Speaker 7: we hear about things and we say, isn't that awful,
Speaker 7: and we kind of shut down because we don't feel
Speaker 7: empowered or we don't know how to help. And literally
Speaker 7: a smile makes a difference, a feeling of like I
Speaker 7: see you and you belong on this planet makes a difference.
Speaker 7: And you know, little kids packing up canned goods and
Speaker 7: fruit snacks for other little kids. They didn't see those kids,
Speaker 7: but when the adults said they're going to be so
Speaker 7: happy to get that package, they felt like they made
Speaker 7: a difference. And those little girls are gonna grow up
Speaker 7: and not be afraid to step up and make a difference.
Speaker 7: I think a lot of people think like they can't
Speaker 7: do enough, so they don't do anything. And if we
Speaker 7: all just do a little bit or what you can,
Speaker 7: then I think we would see a very large impact.
Speaker 7: Hakamba is a town of five hundred and they just
Speaker 7: fed thousands, house thousands, closed thousands, hugged and welcomed thousands
Speaker 7: of human beings. And those people in that town don't
Speaker 7: have much excess, and they made a difference.
Speaker 10: And I was.
Speaker 7: Proud to be a part of that community in a
Speaker 7: way that I'm on the fringe of it, and it
Speaker 7: made me want to be even more a part of it.
Speaker 7: My feelings an intuition about that town, we're confirmed by
Speaker 7: watching the simplest action make an incredible impact on real
Speaker 7: lives and real people, and that this isn't demographics it's
Speaker 7: real bodies that have breating hearts and breathe and we
Speaker 7: all share the same air in the same water, and
Speaker 7: we're all connected. And when you make one little drip
Speaker 7: in the bucket, it actually does make a difference. And
Speaker 7: I think that stops us sometimes when we think what
Speaker 7: we have isn't enough to give, but when someone has nothing,
Speaker 7: what you have is more than what they can imagine.
Speaker 4: It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.