Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Late in the afternoon of January two thousand seventeen, Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: guided by Stephen Miller, issued the Muslim Ban. Hundreds of
Speaker 1: people had their immigration status changed in mid air. They'd
Speaker 1: taken off from their home countries with permission to migrate,
Speaker 1: or to visit friends or have a business meeting. They
Speaker 1: landed essentially as illegal immigrants. Those travelers needed the rule
Speaker 1: of law, needed a savior. They found one in my
Speaker 1: guest today, Becca Heller. Her organization, the International Refugee Assistance Project,
Speaker 1: deployed an army of volunteer lawyers to the airports. One
Speaker 1: of them obtained a court order forbidding deportations. As Trump's
Speaker 1: court troubles grew, he essentially gave up for a while
Speaker 1: the good guys had won. Heller was an overnight celebrity
Speaker 1: on every nightly news show. She got a New York
Speaker 1: Times profile, a Daily Show appearance, and a MacArthur Genius grant.
Speaker 1: I WRAP tripled its budget in a year. Now, almost
Speaker 1: two years later, Heller has helped over two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: migrants and refugees stay in the United States. It would
Speaker 1: be heroic work for anyone, but especially so for someone
Speaker 1: in their mid thirties with a toddler and a pile
Speaker 1: of student loans. Where do her energy and courage come from?
Speaker 1: As it turns out, the answer is suburbia. My dad
Speaker 1: was a cardiologist. My parents are both still Have'm using
Speaker 1: past tense just because they're retired, not because anything tragic happened.
Speaker 1: But I was a cardiologist in my mom todd Public
Speaker 1: School where I grew up in the Bay Area. I
Speaker 1: have many siblings. I have one younger brother. And what's
Speaker 1: he doing now? He's not solving the immigration problem he is.
Speaker 1: I think he's day trading, is how you would describe. Okay, school,
Speaker 1: someone's got to do that. Yeah, someone gonna take the
Speaker 1: money that you have in your budget and invested somewhere.
Speaker 1: He's not trading our budget. He's not helping your budget.
Speaker 1: He's not even hoping me personally. I've asked him what
Speaker 1: I should do with my money, and he doesn't want
Speaker 1: to be responsible if I lose it all. I had
Speaker 1: a dear friend that might say the same thing to me.
Speaker 1: I said, what should I do in terms of the
Speaker 1: business manager to invest my money? He goes what he goes,
Speaker 1: What would I do? Or what do I think you
Speaker 1: should do? How different? He said, I would never tell
Speaker 1: you to do what I did. I don't want that responsibility.
Speaker 1: And now, so you grew up in the Bay Area
Speaker 1: and through high school were you an activist to what
Speaker 1: were you doing? I was like, I want to be activist,
Speaker 1: Like I had all these ideas for things all the time,
Speaker 1: and I felt sort of very empathic towards especially homelessness
Speaker 1: is a very visible manifestation of area in the Bay Area,
Speaker 1: you know, because the weather is good, right, it's a
Speaker 1: tolerant community to like, there's a there's a level of
Speaker 1: homeless and you just don't see on Park Avenue in
Speaker 1: the seventies and I live in the village and you
Speaker 1: see quite a bit of it because that community down
Speaker 1: is a lot more tolerant, right. And you know, we'll
Speaker 1: see if tech changes that for better, right. But I think,
Speaker 1: you know, that was so visible, and I remember always
Speaker 1: being really worked up by that and having these big
Speaker 1: ideas of you know, when I was ten, I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do a blanket drive and then just not
Speaker 1: doing it because I think I don't know if I
Speaker 1: felt dis empowered, or I just felt scared or I
Speaker 1: didn't know my own You had the passion, but you
Speaker 1: didn't follow through. Yeah, pretty like many people, I think.
Speaker 1: And then you go to Dartmouth, y u S. Darmouths
Speaker 1: like of all the IVS is like the most animal
Speaker 1: house of the ivs. Is that is that fair? You
Speaker 1: think I can't roll with animals? No, I'm I'm closing
Speaker 1: my eyes. I'm thinking about you like having a blanket
Speaker 1: drive up there, and and well, here's the thing. I
Speaker 1: never did the blanket drive, right, I'm the person who
Speaker 1: wanted to and then went to Darmouth instead. No, I
Speaker 1: actually I had an amazing time at Darmouth Dartmouth. I
Speaker 1: messed up applying to college the first time around. Um.
Speaker 1: I applied to two schools early, and one of them
Speaker 1: found out and told the other, and they both rescinded
Speaker 1: my offer of admission, and I took a year off
Speaker 1: and I did AmeriCorps Um, which I would pinpoint as
Speaker 1: sort of like the turning point of when I realized
Speaker 1: that I need to re say that, because I dropped
Speaker 1: that on the table and it made a weird echoing.
Speaker 1: I think people can tell, right, away. This is going
Speaker 1: to be a very bumpy interview, Aracor. It's the kind
Speaker 1: of domestic peace corps. Where So, where did you go?
Speaker 1: I stayed at home because they don't pay you very much,
Speaker 1: So I lived with my folks, and I was working
Speaker 1: at an elementary school in Berkeley on sort of broadly
Speaker 1: equal opportunity education stuff. And they just gave us this
Speaker 1: big budget and they were like, do programming to help
Speaker 1: fight institutional oppression. And I was like, I don't know
Speaker 1: what that means. I don't know how to do that,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna give it a shot. And then I think,
Speaker 1: much to my surprise, it turned out there was a
Speaker 1: lot of things that that we could do collectively. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: when you leave school, when you leave Dartmouth, you go
Speaker 1: to law school, you go right one to the other.
Speaker 1: You take another gap. Oh no, I took I took
Speaker 1: two years. What you doing that? Two years? I was
Speaker 1: in Malawi for a year on a full bright um
Speaker 1: and then I actually went to Vermont for a year,
Speaker 1: partly for a boy partly for a job. I ended
Speaker 1: up working on the Freedom to Marry campaign in Vermont.
Speaker 1: Did you find you had to kind of a peripatetic nature.
Speaker 1: You like moving around, and you weren't married at the time,
Speaker 1: you had no kids, And did you find now is
Speaker 1: the time for me to go to Malawi? For Were
Speaker 1: you were there for like a year? Right? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: was there for a year. I still I am pretty peripatetic. Actually,
Speaker 1: I get really claustrophobic if I stay in one place
Speaker 1: for too long. Um. I like to move around. I
Speaker 1: think the world is just completely fascinating. I like to
Speaker 1: see as much as your husband's share of that passion
Speaker 1: with you or he's he has like a huge zest
Speaker 1: for life. He doesn't like long plane rides as much
Speaker 1: as I do, but yeah, he loves to travel and
Speaker 1: I'm taking Actually, Um, the day after Trump was elected,
Speaker 1: I couldn't really get out of bed, but I went
Speaker 1: to the Brooklyn Public Library and got my kid, who
Speaker 1: was one at the time, a passport because just I
Speaker 1: professionally help people flee UM, and I like, if this
Speaker 1: all goes to ship, I'm not going to not be
Speaker 1: able to get across the Canada border. Because she has
Speaker 1: a different last name from me, but she's never actually
Speaker 1: traveled internationally. But in in January, taking her and my
Speaker 1: mom to Costa Rica, which I'm really excited about. I
Speaker 1: want I want her to be equally parapedetic. What was
Speaker 1: your awareness of Malawi and what was going on in
Speaker 1: Malawi before you showed up there. Well, I had been
Speaker 1: in Zimbabwe on and off for the year before doing
Speaker 1: what work. On paper, I was helping build community gardens
Speaker 1: as a response to HIV related malnutrition at public health clinics.
Speaker 1: But I think when you're you know, if you're an
Speaker 1: activist and you're deep in the middle of a problem,
Speaker 1: you're always like, what's the root cause of this? Right?
Speaker 1: And in Zimbabwe, the root cause of this was like
Speaker 1: the ruling party, So I ended up getting involved in
Speaker 1: some political opposition stuff um and ended up needing to
Speaker 1: leave the country. What kind of gardens community community gardens
Speaker 1: to address malnutrition in the HIV community? That sounds pretty
Speaker 1: benign and pretty wonderful. What do you land in Zimbabwe
Speaker 1: knowing that the government and the status quo needs to
Speaker 1: be addressed, or do you learn that there land the
Speaker 1: accidental activist or you're predisposed both. I mean I didn't.
Speaker 1: I would say that I landed aware of the problems
Speaker 1: because I do my homework, so like I landed knowing
Speaker 1: that ZANU p F, which was the ruling party, had
Speaker 1: said no one can buy maize meal, which is the
Speaker 1: staple food without a political party membership card, which means
Speaker 1: that like it doesn't matter how sick you are, in
Speaker 1: order to get food, you have to say that your
Speaker 1: loyalty right literally or starved to death. So, like I
Speaker 1: knew that, I didn't go in there saying, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna fix that. I'm going to address that, you know,
Speaker 1: but eventually couldn't help yourself. I mean, I stumbled into
Speaker 1: a meeting of the opposition party and had some feelings.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I was primed in a way
Speaker 1: that like, I'm not afraid of a good fight on
Speaker 1: behalf of a good cause. But I also I think
Speaker 1: going into on place, especially with like a fighting mentality,
Speaker 1: is usually like really unproductive. Tell me about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think historically America hasn't been that good at not
Speaker 1: doing that. Um, So I didn't go in saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna struggle for regime change, but I went in
Speaker 1: being like, there's a problem, which is that like really
Speaker 1: sick people don't have access to immune boosting foods. And
Speaker 1: this was before anti retroviral therapy was really widely available.
Speaker 1: And you know, HIV doesn't kill you. What it does
Speaker 1: is weaken your immune system, and then you get a
Speaker 1: secondary infection that kills you. So nutrition becomes really important.
Speaker 1: So I had this like theory that I thought might work,
Speaker 1: but I went in knowing that it was just a
Speaker 1: theory and that really, like I didn't know shit about
Speaker 1: ship and so I was open to learning that the
Speaker 1: problem had other facets and there might be a better
Speaker 1: way to Yeah, political or not. What kind of facilities
Speaker 1: did you live in? I lived with a family. I
Speaker 1: originally actually was living with a black family because I
Speaker 1: had this weird concept of like solidarity that like, oh,
Speaker 1: just because I'm privileged and have a cell phone, like
Speaker 1: doesn't mean I should get to stay in a fancy house,
Speaker 1: like I should stay in the township like everybody else.
Speaker 1: And then one night some rocks were thrown in the
Speaker 1: window and the rocks said ma zongu on them, which
Speaker 1: means like, white person, go back to the embarcadera. I'm
Speaker 1: from the East Bay, so I don't mess around. Um.
Speaker 1: It was a sort of awakening moment for me of like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's solid aarity doesn't mean that I like pretend that
Speaker 1: we're the same. How much longer did you last in Zimbabwe?
Speaker 1: That was the beginning, and so what happened after that?
Speaker 1: I kept doing the same work, but I moved in
Speaker 1: with a white family so that I wasn't like putting
Speaker 1: people in danger with my physical presence. So what is
Speaker 1: the end game there? I mean, when did you realize
Speaker 1: it was time to get out of there? Well, I
Speaker 1: got to report it, like someone comes to your going
Speaker 1: the I got picked up by the local police and
Speaker 1: take into a police station and uh, they like held
Speaker 1: me in an office for seven hours, and I started
Speaker 1: out really scared, and then by the end, I just
Speaker 1: like had to pee worse than I've ever had to
Speaker 1: pee in my life. And then they came in and
Speaker 1: they're like, you need to leave the country. We're going
Speaker 1: to take you to the airport. And I was like, great,
Speaker 1: can we stop my bathroom please? And that was kind
Speaker 1: of and then they the family ship me my stuff
Speaker 1: like came home. What happened? What'd you start doing? That
Speaker 1: was when I got the full bright to go to Malawi.
Speaker 1: And then I went to Malawi for a year, and
Speaker 1: what was the work in Malawi. I was working for
Speaker 1: the Malawian government. What did the Malawian government want you
Speaker 1: to do? I was working for their Ministry of HIV
Speaker 1: AIDS and Malnutrition, and they wanted me to write their
Speaker 1: like five year HIV AIDS and Malnutrition. Probably yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know, I'm twenty three. I still don't know anything
Speaker 1: about these issues. They wanted someone who could write fluently
Speaker 1: in English, that they could submit proposals to the World
Speaker 1: Health Organization to get funding. And then when you were
Speaker 1: there for a year, Yeah, did you accomplish what you
Speaker 1: wanted to accomplish in Malawi? Not remotely. Should we look
Speaker 1: back on that year, how do you characterize that year?
Speaker 1: I was bored and you learned? I don't know if
Speaker 1: I I mean, I came back opposed to foreign aid.
Speaker 1: Why for a bunch of reasons. I mean, one, I
Speaker 1: feel like a lot of it gets lost to corruption.
Speaker 1: To I feel like it displaces the growth of a
Speaker 1: real middle class. I think that if you know, in Malawi,
Speaker 1: for example, um, some huge amount of their g d
Speaker 1: P was in the form of foreign aid. And if
Speaker 1: like America keeps subsidizing farmers to grow a bunch of food,
Speaker 1: we don't use and then dumps that food for free
Speaker 1: on countries like Malawe. It becomes really hard from Allowyan
Speaker 1: farmers to ever grow anything market take care of themselves. Right,
Speaker 1: So it just created infantalize the culture there. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it it prevented any real local economic growth. To your board,
Speaker 1: You're like, what do I do? Let's go to Yale
Speaker 1: law school? Now. Then I chased a boid of Vermont
Speaker 1: because I thought I really missed Vermont and i'dywre there
Speaker 1: for how long? For a year? And in pursuit of
Speaker 1: helping gay men and women get married? Did you end
Speaker 1: up getting married to the boy you chased it for? Monty?
Speaker 1: Did you close that deal? I did not. We I
Speaker 1: am married to someone else. Once that guy you chased
Speaker 1: everyone found that he can get married to a guy.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't marry a guy. That must have been what happened?
Speaker 1: Why else would we not be together anymore? How long
Speaker 1: were you in VERMONTI here, so it seems like a
Speaker 1: year or your shelf lest well, it was in your youth.
Speaker 1: Are you saying I'm not in my youth anymore? But
Speaker 1: like in your pre youth? You invite me onto your
Speaker 1: podcast and you tell me I'm no longer in my year,
Speaker 1: in your natal stage and your prenatal stage when I
Speaker 1: was an embryo nine months was my shelfy Um, No,
Speaker 1: I did a lot of stuff for here. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think I think most people in their early twenties
Speaker 1: should do that, like a year or two. I think
Speaker 1: your twenties is a time tops of issues. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: you like you don't know what floats your boat, like
Speaker 1: try out a bunch of stuff like that's your I
Speaker 1: always tell people that I said, either before you go
Speaker 1: to college in this way of a gap year, which
Speaker 1: I just love that idea, said don't go to college,
Speaker 1: I said, take a year off and work at travel.
Speaker 1: If you can take a gap year is the I mean,
Speaker 1: I didn't do it on purpose, but it's the best
Speaker 1: thing that ever happened to me. So then when when
Speaker 1: you just said to go to law school and why
Speaker 1: I think I've was kind of known I was going
Speaker 1: to go to law school, did you feel that that
Speaker 1: was just like that was a that you wanted in
Speaker 1: your chamber. I didn't know kind of like which social
Speaker 1: justice just us I wanted to take on. But I
Speaker 1: felt like whatever I was working on like at a
Speaker 1: certain point, you just run up against the law, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to know if a law degree was a
Speaker 1: way to kind of get over that hurdle, and I
Speaker 1: worried that it wasn't. How do you describe your gears
Speaker 1: in law school? Intense? It was a lot. I mean,
Speaker 1: Gale's nice because they don't make you take any classes.
Speaker 1: So I basically just did clinics, which is where you
Speaker 1: work on cases directly. I founded I RAP in law school.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get to that, yeah, yeah, But I mean
Speaker 1: I just I did I WRAP. I did like the
Speaker 1: human rights clinic. I did the immigration clinic. I got
Speaker 1: to like depose racist cops. That was pretty fun. Uh
Speaker 1: in New Haven in Danburry? How did that go over? Oh?
Speaker 1: I loved it and we won the case? Did you
Speaker 1: get deported from Connecticut? So when you found I wrap?
Speaker 1: How does that idea come to you? How does the
Speaker 1: the idea of im ration is the issue that becomes
Speaker 1: your creed decur obviously for the last several years. How
Speaker 1: out did that happen? When I came to law school,
Speaker 1: I thought I wanted to do international human rights law,
Speaker 1: and then I realized that that's mostly pr like when
Speaker 1: when an international human rights court rules on something, it's
Speaker 1: not really binding, right, Like they can hold that this
Speaker 1: thing that the US does is illegal and the US
Speaker 1: is free to keep doing it. And what happens is
Speaker 1: there will be an article that the like YadA YadA, YadA,
Speaker 1: court ruled that this country is behaving illegally. But usually
Speaker 1: it doesn't actually lead to anything in practice. The sort
Speaker 1: of naming and shaming element of the sort of public
Speaker 1: relations nature of human rights law is really important. It
Speaker 1: just didn't interest me as the thing I wanted to
Speaker 1: be doing every day, because I wanted something a little toothier.
Speaker 1: And so I got really interested in an asylum law
Speaker 1: because it's people who are fleeing international human rights violations
Speaker 1: and then looking for a remedy that will actually help
Speaker 1: them kind of restart their lives. There's you know, they've
Speaker 1: fled something really awful, They've gotten to a place where
Speaker 1: they think they can be safe, and they're trying to stay.
Speaker 1: So it felt like a way that I could address
Speaker 1: the fallout of international human rights violations, but in a
Speaker 1: way that had concrete meaning, even if it was on
Speaker 1: you know, a person by person scale, rather than like
Speaker 1: a nation by nation scale. So you decided to set
Speaker 1: it up? How and where? What's the physical operation there?
Speaker 1: There wasn't one for a long time. I mean, I
Speaker 1: have a cell phone. I don't even know if I
Speaker 1: had a self I guess I had a cell phone.
Speaker 1: I didn't have an iPhone. I sort of wandered into
Speaker 1: the issue. I was doing an internship between my first
Speaker 1: and second years of law school, and the NGO I
Speaker 1: was with just sort of didn't have enough for me
Speaker 1: to do. And I really hate that, like I hate
Speaker 1: wasting my time. Well, also, you know we're all going
Speaker 1: to die, so the minutes are important. To see all
Speaker 1: the painties in the museum before I started with my childhood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that that's very exciting and very admirable. But
Speaker 1: you've been doing this for how long though? Six years,
Speaker 1: seven years, eight to ten, depending on a long long time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've improved my shelf life by in order of magnitude
Speaker 1: you're in. I'm in. I as the Hotel California for me,
Speaker 1: as I thought, I go startra or the Eagles, and
Speaker 1: I want the Eagle. I'm always down. Okay, I hate
Speaker 1: the fucking Eagles. Man. Know, I was quoting the Big
Speaker 1: LASKI we're doing overlapping cultural references. I know, I was
Speaker 1: trying to hang eagles. I love it when when when
Speaker 1: law school ends, well here's what happened. I am really
Speaker 1: obsessed with efficiency, going back to my mortality thing a
Speaker 1: little bit. But I also just like, I'm not It's
Speaker 1: not about ego for me, right, I'm not like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to start an organization, like I actually really didn't.
Speaker 1: People go to law school not knowing what they want
Speaker 1: to do, and I actually went to law school wanting
Speaker 1: to be a lawyer. Like I love the practice of law. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just like it's it mirrors how my mind works.
Speaker 1: Really well, I think, yeah, I don't do that really, uh,
Speaker 1: because that's not It turns out running an organization isn't
Speaker 1: about like doing the programming of the organization basically. Like
Speaker 1: I I met with these refugees in Jordan's after quitting
Speaker 1: this internship in Israel, and they all just needed legal assistance. Um.
Speaker 1: They were you know, they can't go back to a
Speaker 1: rock because something terrible happened to them. They can't stay
Speaker 1: in Jordan because they have no status, that can't work,
Speaker 1: Their kids can't go to school, they can't get healthcare,
Speaker 1: they could be deported at any time for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: There's only one direction they can go, right, and and
Speaker 1: the process of deciding sort of who gets to go
Speaker 1: in that direction and how and then who has to
Speaker 1: get on a raft across the Mediterranean or who has
Speaker 1: to go back to Syria and get killed is just
Speaker 1: incredibly legalistic, super arbitrary, really complicated and bureaucratic. So I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, you need a legal advocate, Like this
Speaker 1: is a legal process. Your life depends on the outcome.
Speaker 1: If I were in illegal proceeding and like the death
Speaker 1: penalty were on the line, the thing I would want
Speaker 1: the most would be a good lawyer. So, for example,
Speaker 1: to distill this part of it down, because I want
Speaker 1: to think about it, I want to I want to
Speaker 1: get in this theoretically for a minute where someone can't
Speaker 1: go back because that means death. Like, I understand them
Speaker 1: getting all the help they can, But do you think
Speaker 1: that there should be limitations on immigration in this country?
Speaker 1: And where do people who are typically line up on
Speaker 1: the opposite side of the issue than you, Where do
Speaker 1: you think they're right? I think mostly the problem with
Speaker 1: how we can suptualize of immigration policy in this country
Speaker 1: is that we look at it in a vacuum. I
Speaker 1: think you can't answer, you know, I get asked like,
Speaker 1: do you think there should be an open border? Do
Speaker 1: you think do you think we should let in as
Speaker 1: many immigrants as possible? I think it's an irrelevant question.
Speaker 1: I think as long as we're or I think the
Speaker 1: answer is yes. As long as we continue to overthrow
Speaker 1: democratically elected governments and rape countries of their natural resources
Speaker 1: such that there's no political stability or jobs, I think
Speaker 1: we shouldn't be surprised when people have to flee those
Speaker 1: places and show up here where all the resources have landed.
Speaker 1: So to me, like, as long as our economic and
Speaker 1: foreign policies are what they are, it seems really hard
Speaker 1: to decouple our border policy. Think the United States is
Speaker 1: responsible directly. MS thirteen exists because we overthrew governments and
Speaker 1: then deported people back there. M S thirteen was deported
Speaker 1: from l A to l Salvador. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: you know, and for decades, like for the whole the
Speaker 1: isis of Central America we made in the sense that
Speaker 1: we made it sure like how many democratically elected leaders
Speaker 1: did the CIA overthrow in Central America in the eighties,
Speaker 1: like tons like we destabilized that region. And then prior
Speaker 1: to that, you know, with like United Fruit Company, like
Speaker 1: we created plantations, we enslaved the population, We took most
Speaker 1: of their natural resources and took them here, like we
Speaker 1: prevented the growth of local economies. We did everything possible
Speaker 1: over the last hundred years to destabilize them. And now
Speaker 1: you know this whole idea that like, oh, people are
Speaker 1: only coming because there's no jobs. It's like, well, the
Speaker 1: fact that there's no jobs is what leads to like
Speaker 1: drug violence, gang violence, murders, domestic violence, and that's kind
Speaker 1: of on up. We point the finger there and say
Speaker 1: it's a mess, and it's us. We may it's our
Speaker 1: mat to a large degree. Yeah, I don't remember immigration
Speaker 1: being this hot of an issue politically, hasn't been in
Speaker 1: the sixties, seventies, eighties. Government has made it a higher
Speaker 1: priority to use its power to persecute immigrants than they
Speaker 1: ever had. But I don't know that anti immigrant sentiment
Speaker 1: is necessarily that different. I think it's being stirred up right,
Speaker 1: I think it's more activated. But I think you know,
Speaker 1: you go back to you know, I went on this
Speaker 1: kick on on July four this year, I read seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy six and an attempt to remember that like revolution
Speaker 1: on American soil was once possible. Um, they hated immigrants then,
Speaker 1: like you know, the immigrants were the Irish, and then
Speaker 1: later the immigrants were the Germans, and then they were
Speaker 1: the Italians. But that you know, we've always hated immigrants.
Speaker 1: There's a you know, the first ever Supreme Court case
Speaker 1: saying you can't discriminate against people based on national origins
Speaker 1: from the end of the nineteenth century about Chinese immigrants, um,
Speaker 1: who were being sort of systematically discriminated against. And the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court was like, no, you can't, you can't do
Speaker 1: that under this constitution. But it took the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: stepping in two and it didn't fix it. I was
Speaker 1: going to say, to fix it, but it didn't fix it. UM.
Speaker 1: So I think, you know, and of course, like I'm Jewish, um,
Speaker 1: and you think about the St. Louis, which is the
Speaker 1: you know, the ship carrying Jews fleeing the Holocaust that
Speaker 1: went from port to port to port in the very
Speaker 1: beginning of World War two, and and no one would
Speaker 1: let it dock and eventually it had to go back
Speaker 1: to Europe, and they traced the futures of most of
Speaker 1: those people and most of them died in Auschwitz. Um
Speaker 1: and and America basically said, like, we would rather send
Speaker 1: these people to their death than have to admit Jews
Speaker 1: as refugees. That doesn't feel that different to me. Um
Speaker 1: It just like, is is really tragic that we can't
Speaker 1: seem to learn from our mistakes. Lawyer and refugee advocate
Speaker 1: Becca Heller of the International Refugee Assistance Project. There are
Speaker 1: now more refugees in the world persecuted and unable to
Speaker 1: go home than at any time in history. Only the
Speaker 1: end of war and hunger can keep people from trying
Speaker 1: to move to save for countries. The medical charity Doctors
Speaker 1: Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, is on
Speaker 1: the ground wherever violence or disaster strike. Their international president,
Speaker 1: Joanne Lou joined me on here's the thing and talked
Speaker 1: about her experience working in Czechenia. You are putting other
Speaker 1: people in danger. We were on the attack on a
Speaker 1: regular basis, that's one thing, but the threat of being
Speaker 1: abducted was so huge and we knew that if something
Speaker 1: were ever to happen to the MSF staff, then we
Speaker 1: will pull out, So we were praying for not It
Speaker 1: was so nerve wracking out of fear. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: hate that because you know this, this is so self
Speaker 1: centered and compared to what all those people are going through.
Speaker 1: Come on, get a grip on yourself. Here the rest
Speaker 1: of that interview in our archive at Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: dot org. After the break what really went on behind
Speaker 1: the scenes and in the spotlight after the Muslim band
Speaker 1: came down. This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing now more with the hero of
Speaker 1: the Trump resistance on refugee policy, Decca Heller. When did
Speaker 1: you realize that Trump had a viable candidacy? Were you
Speaker 1: even paying attention to that? I'm sure you. I'm assuming
Speaker 1: you were. And when you sit there and go, oh
Speaker 1: my god, he's gonna take this thing and there there's
Speaker 1: plenty of kindling on the ground and he's squirting lighter
Speaker 1: fluid all over the floor. Honestly, not until not until
Speaker 1: they called Pennsylvania. I mean, we like I remember, um,
Speaker 1: like we were really excited for election night because we're
Speaker 1: like oh, we're gonna eat popcorn and like watch come
Speaker 1: up and happened and and show that like you can't
Speaker 1: win an election based on hate, and we like you know,
Speaker 1: had beer and other things that I don't want to
Speaker 1: say on the radio, and we put our kids to bed.
Speaker 1: You can let it rip. I mean I I don't
Speaker 1: want to get my bar membership revoked. No, no, don't
Speaker 1: you dont don't, don't, don't do that. We could let
Speaker 1: it rip in the studio, but just don't like that
Speaker 1: in here, put that out, put it out. But we
Speaker 1: I think everyone had this experience of just like this,
Speaker 1: did you in the campaign? You sensed he was different,
Speaker 1: You sensed he was nuts. I mean I knew. I
Speaker 1: followed it really closely, like I knew it was happening.
Speaker 1: And I was one of those people who was like,
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. Hillary is totally gonna win. There's
Speaker 1: no way she doesn't. I completely had my head in
Speaker 1: the sand, like um, And I remember going to bed
Speaker 1: waiting for them to call Wisconsin, and I woke up
Speaker 1: at like three thirty and my husband was too o'cock welcome. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I woke up and passed and woke up at three. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my computer. My husband was on his phone, and I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, did they call Wisconsin? And he
Speaker 1: was like, they called Pennsylvania. I was, I was my
Speaker 1: wife and I fell asleep because we got you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of little kids, and my wife literally like
Speaker 1: she was because she wasn't so miserable and tired because
Speaker 1: of breastfeeding the baby, and my oh god, and she
Speaker 1: just passed out again. Yeah. No, that was the same,
Speaker 1: except for not passing out again. I just like spent
Speaker 1: the rest of the night and sort of a series
Speaker 1: of panic attacks. But yeah, no, I I didn't see
Speaker 1: it coming. I really didn't. And part of that is
Speaker 1: because I'm, you know, the bicoastal elite who like I
Speaker 1: went from California to New England to New York, Like,
Speaker 1: apparently I have no idea what's happening in the middle
Speaker 1: of the country. January seventeen, everybody's at the airport. Describe
Speaker 1: what happened, Yeah, I mean it started the three Actually,
Speaker 1: so Trump gets sworn in on the twenty, he takes
Speaker 1: the weekend off to go golfing because why why would
Speaker 1: the president work on the weekends, and everyone sort of
Speaker 1: waiting to see, like of the various awesome things that
Speaker 1: he's promised you during the campaign. What's going to come
Speaker 1: down first? And Monday, the travel being actually leaks to us. Um,
Speaker 1: someone takes a photograph of a desktop monitor in the
Speaker 1: White House, sends it to someone who sends it to
Speaker 1: someone who sends it to us, and it has the
Speaker 1: text of the travel ban on it. And we're like, oh, so,
Speaker 1: And we knew it was coming right, Like, it was
Speaker 1: not a secret that Trump didn't want refugees coming in
Speaker 1: from Syria, and we assumed that we'd be grappling with
Speaker 1: that at some point. We didn't know that it would
Speaker 1: be like one of the first things to occur. So
Speaker 1: we start We have a number of clients who have
Speaker 1: permission to enter the US, but who haven't left yet
Speaker 1: because it takes a long time to sort of sell
Speaker 1: everything you own, tie up all your loose right to back,
Speaker 1: right to give up your entire Yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: he was a lot younger and didn't have a family.
Speaker 1: So we start calling our clients and saying up and
Speaker 1: get on a plane, like whatever, like take the hit
Speaker 1: on the loss of your house and and get on planes.
Speaker 1: And you're saying clients you're saying the organization had had
Speaker 1: a relationship with these people. We need to get out.
Speaker 1: We represent thousands of individuals, Thus, how fine a bunch
Speaker 1: of ways. We have offices in the field, We have
Speaker 1: the NGOs and the u N re our cases to
Speaker 1: us um the budget of six and a half billion
Speaker 1: dollars that kind of outreach. Yeah. Yeah, we have four
Speaker 1: people whose full time job it is just to like
Speaker 1: reply to every inquiry where we get because so many
Speaker 1: refugees just reach out to like hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 1: people and here nothing. And we feel like, at the
Speaker 1: very least, like if you're sort of a voice crying
Speaker 1: out in the darkness, you you deserve an answer. And
Speaker 1: usually we try to also provide a helpful answer with
Speaker 1: like legal advice, and then we take on their legal
Speaker 1: cases too, and we actually the the u N refers
Speaker 1: cases to us. That was what originally triggered me to
Speaker 1: realize I needed to do this full time. Was when
Speaker 1: the un called the summer between my second and third
Speaker 1: years in law school and asked if they could refer
Speaker 1: cases to us. First, I was really flattered, and then
Speaker 1: I was just like ship, like, you don't have anyone
Speaker 1: else to call like I'm not even a lawyer, Like
Speaker 1: someone has to do this, you know. But so we
Speaker 1: had a bunch of clients and a couple dozen who
Speaker 1: had permission to enter but hadn't come yet. So we
Speaker 1: reached out to all of them and we were just like,
Speaker 1: get on a plane, well spot the plane tickets. We
Speaker 1: got law firms to cover them, and then UM, that Wednesday,
Speaker 1: we had a transgender client flying into l a X.
Speaker 1: And with transgender clients, it's always really tricky when they
Speaker 1: fly because their documentation doesn't match how they present, and
Speaker 1: usually you worry about that when they're exiting UM, and
Speaker 1: this time we were. I was really worried about that
Speaker 1: when they entered, because I was like, they might be
Speaker 1: looking for like any excuse to funk with anybody coming
Speaker 1: in from one of these seven countries if the band
Speaker 1: comes down. And so we arranged for a lawyer to
Speaker 1: just like surreptitiously hang out in the arrivals area of
Speaker 1: l a X and make sure that this woman had
Speaker 1: the lawyer's contact info in case anything went wrong with
Speaker 1: her entry, and thankfully it didn't. UM. But that night
Speaker 1: I was g chatting with my policy director and she
Speaker 1: was like Oh, thank goodness, the band didn't come down today.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, because this woman was able
Speaker 1: to make it in. And Betsy was like, yeah, all
Speaker 1: the other people who are on her flight, and I
Speaker 1: was like, holy sh it, this band comes down. Whenever
Speaker 1: that is, there's gonna be thou of people who are
Speaker 1: in the air who had legal permission to enter the
Speaker 1: US when they took off and are going to land
Speaker 1: essentially as undocumented, and nobody knows what's going to happen
Speaker 1: to them. And I had spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: between November nine and January twenty being like, what tools
Speaker 1: do we have to deploy in this upcoming war on refugees? Right?
Speaker 1: And the biggest thing we had was this army of lawyers.
Speaker 1: So we had put some thought into how can we
Speaker 1: organize that, what we want to do with it? So
Speaker 1: I was like, we should organize lawyers to go to
Speaker 1: all the airports. So we emailed our network and organized
Speaker 1: lawyers to go to every international airpart lawyers we organized
Speaker 1: six d and then I don't know how many it
Speaker 1: ultimately ended up being, I mean thousands of thousands, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean. And the cool thing was that, like for
Speaker 1: the first couple of days, like we were organizing most stuff,
Speaker 1: and then everyone started self organizing, um, which was amazing. UM.
Speaker 1: Like I remember being at JFK and there was this
Speaker 1: just like super competent guy sort of like assigning people
Speaker 1: tasks and and I've hadn't slept because we were trying
Speaker 1: to file the lawsuit, which we can talk about, and
Speaker 1: so of a mess. And I remember thinking I should
Speaker 1: recruit him, and I pulled him aside at one point.
Speaker 1: I was like, who are you, Like, what do you
Speaker 1: do and and he was like, oh, I work at McKenzie.
Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, are you happy there? He's
Speaker 1: like I love it. And I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: good to meet you. You know, next, how many people
Speaker 1: did you get into the country? Two thousand in partnership
Speaker 1: with other n g o s and a ton of
Speaker 1: lawyers and you know, I mean it wasn't kept in
Speaker 1: telling if you kept in touch with them and monitored them,
Speaker 1: and they all still here. I have no idea, you
Speaker 1: have no idea. I literally don't know their names. We
Speaker 1: wouldn't know the number if the a c LU hadn't
Speaker 1: sued under the Freedom of Information Act. I guess what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is you get him here, then the rest
Speaker 1: is up to that. Most of those people are coming
Speaker 1: on temporary visas. My daughter is scheduled to have a
Speaker 1: C section. I really want to be there for her.
Speaker 1: Someone's getting married, someone is dying, someone there's an event,
Speaker 1: um not people who are want to immigrate to the
Speaker 1: United States, and most of them are trying to visit
Speaker 1: family because from these seven countries, like, we're not giving
Speaker 1: out a lot of tourist visas for you manis to
Speaker 1: come go to Disneyland and so so most of of
Speaker 1: visas that we're giving out, it's because you have a
Speaker 1: really compelling reason to come and some tie to the
Speaker 1: US because our our visa program like was not free
Speaker 1: of sort of racial or national origin profiling before this,
Speaker 1: right Like Irab has a Syrian staffer and we've been
Speaker 1: applying for a visa for her to come to New
Speaker 1: York for our all staff retreat like since the Obama administration,
Speaker 1: and we can't get one for her. Why do you
Speaker 1: think because they don't believe that you could be Syrian
Speaker 1: and not intend to immigrate. The State Department, yes, and
Speaker 1: the various other you know, you come out the other
Speaker 1: end of this experience of the two thousand seventeen UM
Speaker 1: airport weekend. Airport, that's what I called. My mom called
Speaker 1: you Chase in airport weekends. He doesn't get to be
Speaker 1: in it. Rogan could definitely play me. So you you
Speaker 1: have airport weekend and you come out the other end
Speaker 1: of that, and you you realize things have changed for you.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that they change for you personally in
Speaker 1: your in your career, your arc? I mean I I
Speaker 1: don't maybe. I mean my mom called me on Sunday
Speaker 1: and I was going into day three of no sleep,
Speaker 1: and she was like, how are you doing? And I
Speaker 1: was like, Mom, I'm living the first line of my obituary. UM.
Speaker 1: But I said it more for like shock value then
Speaker 1: because I actually believed it, and in retrospect it might
Speaker 1: have been true. Um. I just wasn't thinking about it
Speaker 1: in that way. Like we came out with a ton
Speaker 1: of lawsuits on our hands and you filed right. So
Speaker 1: the travel band came down. It was signed at four
Speaker 1: thirty pm on Friday, and we were tracking people coming in.
Speaker 1: So we had clients who are coming in and one
Speaker 1: of them was a man named Hamid Darwish who had
Speaker 1: worked for us Forces in a rock on a Ford
Speaker 1: Operating base for ten and a half years, which is
Speaker 1: relevant for a number of reasons, one of which is
Speaker 1: that to work on a on a FOB you need
Speaker 1: to get a military grade level security clearance every six months.
Speaker 1: So Hamid had had twenty one military grade level security checks.
Speaker 1: There had been multiple attempts on his life, he had
Speaker 1: young kids. Um, he was given this visa through a
Speaker 1: program that Senators Kane and Kennedy had created in Congress
Speaker 1: to try to protect those who would put their lives
Speaker 1: on the line to assist our military, which I think
Speaker 1: if we don't implement well, we're going to have trouble
Speaker 1: finding allies in the future. And he showed up here
Speaker 1: and he was handcuffed and locked in a room, and
Speaker 1: they let out his wife and kids and they came
Speaker 1: out crying and they we have their lawyer and their
Speaker 1: law students waiting for them, and they said, you know,
Speaker 1: Hamid is locked in a room and there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of other people in the room with them, and we
Speaker 1: don't know what to do. So Um, I called a
Speaker 1: friend of mine from law school, and because I'm not
Speaker 1: a litigator, and I was like, what do we file um,
Speaker 1: and he was like, we need to file a habeas petition.
Speaker 1: Habeas corpus literally means like produced the body. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's what says that you get like some amount
Speaker 1: of trial if you're held in Guantanamo, Like the US
Speaker 1: can't turn airports into a black site and detain anyone
Speaker 1: from a Muslim country who looks brown. You have to
Speaker 1: have a hearing in front of a judge. And so
Speaker 1: my friend Justin Cox said, you know, we should file
Speaker 1: a habeas corpus lawsuit, which was brilliant it and now
Speaker 1: he works for I WRAP, which only took me like
Speaker 1: a year and a half to effectually. Then we called
Speaker 1: our former mentor from me A law school, Mike Wishney,
Speaker 1: who said, let's make it a class action, which meant like,
Speaker 1: let's file a habeas petition on behalf of anyone who
Speaker 1: might be detained by the government anywhere in the country.
Speaker 1: And then we looped in the Immigrants Rights Project, the
Speaker 1: a c l U, the National Immigration Law Center, and
Speaker 1: then everyone stayed up all night so that we could
Speaker 1: get the thing drafted, it on file by five o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning, because we wanted it filed before any
Speaker 1: international flights could take off because we didn't want them
Speaker 1: to be able to deport anybody. And we were granted
Speaker 1: a hearing that night in Brooklyn at seven thirty and
Speaker 1: legal learned from the a c l U argued it
Speaker 1: and Lee is like a ringer, just like if you
Speaker 1: ever have an argument about due process and immigration and
Speaker 1: you can get Lee to argue it for you, like
Speaker 1: you should. You should definitely do that. Uh. You should
Speaker 1: make sure he's sober um, but if he's not, he'll
Speaker 1: still win. He's well, we called him, We literally called him,
Speaker 1: and we were like, Lee, what are you doing right now?
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm in a bar. What's going on? We're like,
Speaker 1: we need you to go to Brooklyn and argue this
Speaker 1: case right there. And he won. Uh, and so we
Speaker 1: want to eat thirty and the judge said everyone has
Speaker 1: to be released. And the Customs and Border Protection officials
Speaker 1: of the airport didn't believe us that we had won
Speaker 1: this court decision. So Omar Jodwat from the a c
Speaker 1: l U tweeted out a picture of the court order.
Speaker 1: So you had lawyers at airports all over the country,
Speaker 1: like running around showing customs officials the photo of Omer's
Speaker 1: Twitter feed on their phones and they obeyed that Twitter post.
Speaker 1: At JFK, we literally got a plane turned around on
Speaker 1: the runway and they were trying to deport an Irani
Speaker 1: and Fulbright student to Ukraine of all places. And she
Speaker 1: was on the plane and she was on the phone
Speaker 1: with us, and we were trying to decide, like should
Speaker 1: we have her stand up and make a fuss and
Speaker 1: get thrown off the plane? And then we're like, no,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't do that because she'll lose her visa if
Speaker 1: she does that. Like, yeah, but when you get the
Speaker 1: woman off the plane, when you argue the case and
Speaker 1: you win the case and he gets off the bar
Speaker 1: stool and you have the Twitter picture, there's like a
Speaker 1: great movie. Do you ever meet some of these people
Speaker 1: whose lives you've affected, our lives you've changed, Oh, for sure.
Speaker 1: And I'm still in touch with some of them, and
Speaker 1: we you know, when we have events, we try to
Speaker 1: have clients come speak at the events because I think
Speaker 1: it's really important that we're not speaking for people. But
Speaker 1: we also have a lot of clients who don't want
Speaker 1: to stay in touch. You know. I think a typical
Speaker 1: symptom of of going through something really traumatic is to
Speaker 1: want to just like put it all behind you. And
Speaker 1: we're very tied up in that trauma, like where what
Speaker 1: happened before? Right, and once you're here, you don't want
Speaker 1: to deal with what happened before. Um, So some people
Speaker 1: want to stay in touch and some people don't. And
Speaker 1: I you know, I don't force it. Well even for
Speaker 1: people who the immigration issue is uh, some of that's
Speaker 1: not in the forefront. The number one issue is the
Speaker 1: economy and their paychecks. The number two is healthcare. That
Speaker 1: this ripping children away from their parents changed everything. I mean,
Speaker 1: this becomes the image of the most heinous. What was
Speaker 1: your response to that? I mean, I think your organization
Speaker 1: have any role in that. We actually want a big
Speaker 1: lawsuit on behalf of two thousand, seven hundred unaccompanied kids
Speaker 1: in Central America who are trying to reunite with a
Speaker 1: parent in the United States. But you know, we don't
Speaker 1: have offices on the border. I mean, I took a
Speaker 1: lot of hope from that, actually, which I know is strange,
Speaker 1: but I think this is the bottom that we hit.
Speaker 1: We made at the bottom, right, it didn't go further.
Speaker 1: You know. The thing that was amazing about airport weekend.
Speaker 1: Is that like we organized the lawyers, but nobody organized
Speaker 1: the protesters. Totally spontaneous, thousands of Americans went out and
Speaker 1: freezing shitty January weather to just be like this is
Speaker 1: not cool. The executive order was rescinded before the lawsuit.
Speaker 1: The lawsuit we once said that they can't hold people.
Speaker 1: But the one that we won right away wasn't about
Speaker 1: sort of the legality of the order on its face.
Speaker 1: It was the public pressure that got the administration to
Speaker 1: rescind the executive order and the so called like chaos
Speaker 1: at the airports, which I will forever be proud of.
Speaker 1: And I the same thing happened with the family separation
Speaker 1: policy on the border. There were plenty of lawsuits about it,
Speaker 1: you know the lawsuits. Ultimately we're victorious. Congress like fucked around.
Speaker 1: It didn't end up doing anything. Um what got it
Speaker 1: to stop was just like the number of people who
Speaker 1: who stood up and said like this is not okay,
Speaker 1: the number of journalists who refused to stop reporting on it. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: it was just straight up public pressure that caused the
Speaker 1: administration to rescind the policy. And it hasn't been totally rescinded. Right,
Speaker 1: they're still separating kids from families. Like, it's not a
Speaker 1: perfect solution, but as you watch, like so many of
Speaker 1: the sort of systems to protect democracy and the rule
Speaker 1: of law be dismantled, it does give me hope that
Speaker 1: when something that agreed just happens, people are still willing
Speaker 1: to stand up and say like, this is an American
Speaker 1: and that when they do, it means something. Um in
Speaker 1: your mind, I'm assuming that you're capable of citing a
Speaker 1: couple examples if you're willing. Are there any heroes in
Speaker 1: the Senator of the House on this issue who you
Speaker 1: think get it right about this issue? Senator McCain was
Speaker 1: amazing on this issue. He was amazing on refugee issues.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that is? Because I think if
Speaker 1: you have served in the military overseas, you understand how
Speaker 1: important it is for our foreign policy to have a
Speaker 1: humanitarian component. You understand that if the US wants to
Speaker 1: be taken seriously as an enforcer of national security, that
Speaker 1: that can't just be a stick, that that it needs
Speaker 1: to have a carrot. Also, that we need to take
Speaker 1: responsibility for sort of the peaceful side of national security issues.
Speaker 1: And I think he understood that deeply. Senator Shaheen has
Speaker 1: been great for us on these issues. Um, I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to, you know, the new Senate and the new
Speaker 1: House and seeing what we can do with them. And
Speaker 1: I hope that I hope that there are more heroes
Speaker 1: of the six and a half million that comprises your
Speaker 1: current budget or roughly, that most of that money comes
Speaker 1: from where it's individuals, foundations and corporate We do not
Speaker 1: take government funding. Describe your relationship with the promptin's substitute grandparents. Really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have been very generous too. I mean they're just lovely,
Speaker 1: Like Charles is just hilarious and sassy and has me
Speaker 1: to his house and it is just like really supportive
Speaker 1: and support Yeah, but they've become family. And I don't
Speaker 1: know as media and savvy with social media at all
Speaker 1: important to you or not it is important. I think
Speaker 1: it's tricky right now because I think earned media doesn't
Speaker 1: have the impact that it did a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: I think, um, there's so much crazy stuff happening all
Speaker 1: the time that you just when you get a story
Speaker 1: in the New York Times, it just doesn't mean what
Speaker 1: it used to mean, and it doesn't stick the way
Speaker 1: you used to stick. And you also you have an
Speaker 1: administration that doesn't care when The New York Times says something.
Speaker 1: One thing that I've become really interested in and I
Speaker 1: have a project that I've been working on for a while,
Speaker 1: UM is sort of using popular culture. UM, and how
Speaker 1: can you sort of you know, like people maybe won't
Speaker 1: read New York Times articles or won't register them, but
Speaker 1: like they'll binge watch for fourteen hours like the newest
Speaker 1: season of whatever. UM Sola Mirror. Yeah, I can't watch
Speaker 1: Black Mirror because it freaks me out too much. But
Speaker 1: you know, But so if you can get like a
Speaker 1: narrative about a more positive or more useful narrative about
Speaker 1: immigrants or refugees into a pop culture format, I think
Speaker 1: that has a lot of promises, a way to try
Speaker 1: to you know, change hearts in minds. What's next for
Speaker 1: you book? No, you're not interested in that. You have
Speaker 1: time to reflect. I reflect in a very like neurotic, anxious,
Speaker 1: obsessive way that does not lend itself well to like
Speaker 1: overarching narrative. But I think with people like you get
Speaker 1: things done. Yeah. I got some offers to write books,
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, when you know so and
Speaker 1: so activists wrote a book like how did they do it?
Speaker 1: And they're like, oh, they took book leaf And I
Speaker 1: was like, that's the last thing I'm gonna do right now.
Speaker 1: Let's just be like, oh, well, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: attention to any issue ebbs and flows, right. Like, we
Speaker 1: definitely had our fifteen minutes around airport weekend. We were
Speaker 1: aware at the time time that it was fifteen minutes,
Speaker 1: and so we approached it really strategically and said, you know,
Speaker 1: what can we keep from this, Like what can we
Speaker 1: hang on to that we can continue to use in
Speaker 1: the future. And and I'm continuing to sort of take
Speaker 1: that approach of just you know, with the MacArthur like
Speaker 1: that's amazing. I feel like it adds a lot of
Speaker 1: pressure on me to make sure I'm leveraging it for
Speaker 1: the work as much as possible. Pay yourself very much money.
Speaker 1: Well now I don't have to, thankfully, thanks MacArthur. No
Speaker 1: I I do, okay, it's not like thirty rock money.
Speaker 1: Um No. I want to keep fighting this fight. I
Speaker 1: have a ton of ideas for what should be next,
Speaker 1: and the other staff at Arabe has a bunch of ideas,
Speaker 1: and we've got you know, two years ago we were
Speaker 1: a two million dollar organization, So we've grown pretty fast,
Speaker 1: and we're trying to manage that growth in a way
Speaker 1: where the you know, quality of our work is still high,
Speaker 1: in our organizational culture is still good, but also we're
Speaker 1: aggressively growing to fight these problems. And you know, so
Speaker 1: like where is like if Hillary had been elected, we
Speaker 1: would be making a big play around climate refugees because
Speaker 1: to me, that's like the single biggest thing that we
Speaker 1: have to contend with, right Like, the first major manifestation
Speaker 1: of climate change is going to be and is already
Speaker 1: like the displacement of large numbers of people, and we
Speaker 1: have no no legal or systematic regime whatsoever to deal
Speaker 1: with that anywhere. I think I work a little better
Speaker 1: in a bunker mentality, Like getting back to your press,
Speaker 1: I don't like pressure, but I've I've process resistance is
Speaker 1: you know, creative resistance is a better fit for me
Speaker 1: than like scaling up widgets. You're one of those people
Speaker 1: who are like, you know, where would the world be
Speaker 1: without you? I mean that quieter that was tireless refugee
Speaker 1: activist and could have been stand up comic Becca Heller
Speaker 1: her organization once again is the International Refugee Assistance Project
Speaker 1: at Refugee rights dot org. I'm a like Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you're listening to here's the Thing and