Speaker 1: Yes, yes, y'all, welcome to another installment of Civic Cipher.
Speaker 1: I am your host, rams' Jah, and true to form,
Speaker 1: we have another special guest in the building, another freedom fighter,
Speaker 1: another social justice warrior, and someone that I really think
Speaker 1: needs to get a message to you. Your life is
Speaker 1: going to be better hearing what she has to say.
Speaker 1: Her name is Alexandra Pablos. And let's see. I'll talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about what I know of you, but
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to fill in the gaps because I've fortunately,
Speaker 1: I've been able to meet you a few times, and
Speaker 1: of course I've been very inspired by you and your
Speaker 1: message and what you stand for. But so I know
Speaker 1: that you were born in Mexico and you came here
Speaker 1: when you were very young.
Speaker 2: That's right, baby, baby.
Speaker 1: Okay, And I want to say you spent some time
Speaker 1: in Tucson, right, Okay, you grew up in Tucson. Okay,
Speaker 1: but you were you did go to California when you
Speaker 1: first came out of right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I was in California when I was until
Speaker 2: I was fourteen fifteen, and then I moved to Tucson.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, very good. So there are some routes in
Speaker 1: the West coast of the United States and in Arizona,
Speaker 1: of course. And you know, I think the way the
Speaker 1: story goes is you kind of got in some trouble
Speaker 1: when you were a teenager, and that's kind of been
Speaker 1: held over your head by the government and policing agencies
Speaker 1: and things like this. And I don't want to tell
Speaker 1: too much of the rest of the story because I
Speaker 1: really do want to hear it from you. But I
Speaker 1: think it's very important to tell your story before we
Speaker 1: get to what you're doing now, Just your story as
Speaker 1: a human being growing up in those circumstances, and how
Speaker 1: maybe some of the things, some of these conditions have
Speaker 1: been used against you or to profile you, or whatever
Speaker 1: the case is. So just talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: growing up and kind of how you kind of got
Speaker 1: started on this path.
Speaker 2: Sure, thank you for your kind of words.
Speaker 1: Of course.
Speaker 2: My name is Alexandra. Folks who know me call me Alee,
Speaker 2: and I am a community organizer. I do a lot
Speaker 2: of national work. By work, I mean a lot of
Speaker 2: storytelling work, a lot of organizing relations because we know
Speaker 2: that the only way to really change things right is
Speaker 2: to really shift culture. And by shifting culture, it's by
Speaker 2: really getting to know one another right and really, you know,
Speaker 2: having joy and who we are instead of criminalization for example,
Speaker 2: that might be a new word for folks, and I
Speaker 2: can talk a little bit more about that. But I'm
Speaker 2: a community organized the first and foremost. I'm a storyteller.
Speaker 2: I share my experience in order for you know, to
Speaker 2: make space for other folks to be able to share
Speaker 2: their story. And in the world that we live in,
Speaker 2: sometimes storytelling is not a thing that happens. I know
Speaker 2: for myself, as a Mexicana immigrant family, working family, family
Speaker 2: that comes with a lot of intergenerational trauma, we didn't
Speaker 2: we don't do a lot of storytelling. So I found
Speaker 2: that when I started doing community organizing work after I
Speaker 2: was incarcerated, I was introduced to Injustices Right, and I
Speaker 2: was upset and I was angry, and I was like,
Speaker 2: I need to organize these feelings. So I got introduced
Speaker 2: to the movement, and I think through the movement, I
Speaker 2: found the power of storytelling. So I started to share
Speaker 2: my story, my many many stories, right, because my life
Speaker 2: is multiple identities, it's intersectional. I not only care about
Speaker 2: you know, education or injustices or racial justice or queer justice.
Speaker 2: I care about all of the things right, humanity rights.
Speaker 2: So what happened to me a closer, So what happened
Speaker 2: to me was, honestly, the United States happened to me.
Speaker 2: You say, like, I got into some trouble, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: I got into this country. This infrastructure already built on racism, right,
Speaker 2: rooted in senophobia, right, fear of people, built on lies right,
Speaker 2: and what we now see white supremacy built into our peacemakers, right,
Speaker 2: which is the police. So growing up, I didn't really
Speaker 2: care about my immigration status until somebody told me I
Speaker 2: was an illegal person.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I was a legal permanent resident. My mom is a
Speaker 2: naturalized citizen. Most of my family was born here. But
Speaker 2: I have a lot of folks that we're from a
Speaker 2: mixed status family. That's what you call, right, folks that
Speaker 2: are not citizens. And I had an opportunity probably at
Speaker 2: some point to become a citizen. But I also never
Speaker 2: really needed to write I was a legal permanent resident,
Speaker 2: which sometimes folks call that a green card. You hear
Speaker 2: a lot of folks that are documented right or getting DACA.
Speaker 2: Those are folks that are also undocumented but have this
Speaker 2: very short term ambiguous kind of protection right now by Obama,
Speaker 2: the president, right, And they're DAKA students, so they have
Speaker 2: permission to work, they have permission to be here. Promise
Speaker 2: that they won't be deported, right, that they won't be
Speaker 2: actually haunted, like isis haunting people right now. So you
Speaker 2: have those folks, right, you have folks that maybe or
Speaker 2: state visas. Right. You have folks that have had some
Speaker 2: sort of legal status but over state or myself right,
Speaker 2: committed something that to the US government is deportable, right,
Speaker 2: which minds you in Arizona DUIs are deportable in California
Speaker 2: that are not, for example, So we live in a
Speaker 2: in a state one of the high like the most racist.
Speaker 2: Obviously we know our Pio. We know we come from
Speaker 2: the regime of our Pio. And those are the things
Speaker 2: that inform me, right, racial profiling folks just for being
Speaker 2: for looking like they might be immigrant folks, migrant folks.
Speaker 1: Right, That brings to mind SB ten seventy.
Speaker 2: Right, So we come from that. We're still seeing the
Speaker 2: harms of that.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: People fought, communities fought really hard. I mean, you had
Speaker 2: ice out there just like you know, doing the same
Speaker 2: shit that cops have been doing. Right to black communities.
Speaker 2: We know as in documented people, as people who've been
Speaker 2: criminalized that you know, like I said, I've been I've
Speaker 2: been formally incarcerated because of a DUI put in deportation
Speaker 2: proceedings for things I already went to through the system, right,
Speaker 2: the criminal justice system, which I can now call the
Speaker 2: criminal injustice system. But anyways, when that happened to me,
Speaker 2: that kind of changed my life. Right, I went, I
Speaker 2: got picked up on probation. I was on probation. Ice
Speaker 2: picked me up and I just they were like, oh,
Speaker 2: you're going to Mexico. I mean, little do they know
Speaker 2: what they do, because that's you know, they're just jobs.
Speaker 2: People don't need to really understand the system. They're like
Speaker 2: oppressing others for right. They have a good job. It's
Speaker 2: probably the only jobs that have good health care, right
Speaker 2: and good benefits. As why all of our people are
Speaker 2: also cops and those are things we also have to battle.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so you know, I got I got picked
Speaker 2: up by ICE and then two years spent in in
Speaker 2: our backyard. An now we're away from here. There's an
Speaker 2: immigration center called the Alloyd Detention Center, one of the biggest,
Speaker 2: one of the nastiest. They're all nasty. They're all literally
Speaker 2: a threat to autonomy. Right, just because you were deemed
Speaker 2: and labeled illegal and documented, you can literally be locked
Speaker 2: up for no reason, just for that reason. So when
Speaker 2: I was there, it opened up my eyes to like, holy,
Speaker 2: there's a whole lot of other injustices happening, right, and
Speaker 2: it woke me up. Twenty eleven, I began organizing from inside.
Speaker 2: I was already before that, Like you, I know, you
Speaker 2: asked me who am I before that? And I was
Speaker 2: already a teacher. I was already going I had graduated
Speaker 2: from the U of A. I was doing a lot
Speaker 2: of community organizing in the school. I used to be
Speaker 2: a teacher for the emotionally disabled students, the multiply disabled students,
Speaker 2: so I was in the special ed department. Words that
Speaker 2: I feel like are should be more updated, and there
Speaker 2: probably are. I'm not working in the public schools anymore.
Speaker 2: So I think I brought those skills naturally when I
Speaker 2: went inside, right when I had to be there. I
Speaker 2: started teaching classes in there. I started, you know, leading
Speaker 2: all the conversations with the women, translating, interpreting from them, right,
Speaker 2: like really defending people at the moment, because they we
Speaker 2: would get we would get offered dirty bloody clothes, underwear
Speaker 2: like used underwear that was already used I was expected
Speaker 2: to wear. I fought that because I spoke English, right,
Speaker 2: people are they were? Actually people inside were like why
Speaker 2: are you in here? And I'm like, well, because I'm
Speaker 2: not a citizen, right and you know so far or whatever.
Speaker 2: So I started to really see that people that are
Speaker 2: inside are not people that are doing nothing right. I
Speaker 2: should not be here either, nobody should be. There was
Speaker 2: people surviving domestic violence, poverty, right, you know, abuse, all
Speaker 2: of this stuff. And then I'm then I started to
Speaker 2: see how bigger it was than us. It was like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is like that the world governments are doing right.
Speaker 2: So then I started to really just yeah, I didn't
Speaker 2: want to let it go. I came home. I was
Speaker 2: there for two years and I was only like released.
Speaker 2: I'm still in deportation proceedings as somebody who's lived here
Speaker 2: my whole life. And let me not get into the
Speaker 2: point of like, oh the border cross does and this
Speaker 2: used to be in Mexico. You know, this is a
Speaker 2: this is all this indigen is obviously native land, but
Speaker 2: as also like a Mexican woman, right, and we are
Speaker 2: fighting identity crisis as well as generation in general. But
Speaker 2: as Mexican people were like, you know, Mestizo people were mixed.
Speaker 2: We have some wine in us too, so we come
Speaker 2: with that intergenerational trauma. But it's complicated. I've been fighting
Speaker 2: for nine years now. It's going to be nine years
Speaker 2: September twentieth when I just picked me up and handcuffed
Speaker 2: me and didn't let me go for another two years
Speaker 2: until we fought to come home. After going through many courts,
Speaker 2: spending thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars for things.
Speaker 2: I've already gone through the system that's supposed to just
Speaker 2: be the system. You're supposed to go through it rehabilitated.
Speaker 2: We didn't get I didn't get that benefit of the doubt, right,
Speaker 2: I didn't get to rehabilitate. Yeah. The last thing that
Speaker 2: happened in my immigration court cases, actually I went through
Speaker 2: the last court. I saw a judge and the judge
Speaker 2: told me to my face, like, you haven't rehabilitated yet.
Speaker 2: The community turned in over three hundred letters of like character, right,
Speaker 2: over one hundred and fifty individual letters mad people outside
Speaker 2: the core right just hala attention, you know, mass attention,
Speaker 2: national attention. My case were really viral, and they still
Speaker 2: looked into my eyes and said, like, you deserve that
Speaker 2: those charges. You deserve what's happening to you, and you
Speaker 2: didn't her rehabilitate. So just that hypocrisy, right, because again
Speaker 2: laws are here for black and brown indigenous people. People
Speaker 2: are above the law. The cops are here to protect them, right,
Speaker 2: they take them down peacefully, and they shoot us at
Speaker 2: just by the color of their skin or how we look,
Speaker 2: we're a threat. Right. So I started to grapple with
Speaker 2: those things and just started sharing. I mean I came
Speaker 2: out organizing, volunteering, doing what I could. I actually you know,
Speaker 2: met you, originally doing some just community work, right, because
Speaker 2: that was important to me. But I started to just
Speaker 2: get real, real politicized because I understood that the things
Speaker 2: that I actually also stood by, I think the identities
Speaker 2: I led right were criminalized, you know. So yeah, so
Speaker 2: I think fast forward, I started to share my story
Speaker 2: maybe three years after being released out of prison, and
Speaker 2: I just started to share my story and I started
Speaker 2: to see that, wow, people are receiving it really well. Yes,
Speaker 2: I have some people that don't like it that. You know,
Speaker 2: possibly sometimes even some of my own peers, right or
Speaker 2: maybe cringe that I'm just too unapologetic or just really
Speaker 2: open and just complicated and unapologetic about it. And I think, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it's been it's been a long journey. But
Speaker 2: I started to share my story and that's what I became.
Speaker 2: I became kind of also like doing some writing, right.
Speaker 2: So I think my organizing work is like around building relation,
Speaker 2: sharing my story and like building with people and creating
Speaker 2: new projects and sustaining ourselves. Is really complicated when you're
Speaker 2: going through immigration proceedings, Folks sometimes can't work, sometimes you
Speaker 2: can work. You know, those things are considered, right, those
Speaker 2: things follow you that you've been criminalized into the criminal
Speaker 2: justice system. You know, I've been arrested for being at
Speaker 2: protest right profiled in Virginia doing reproductive justice work in DC.
Speaker 2: I was doing that kind of work in the DMV
Speaker 2: area as well, and like being at protests fighting Ice
Speaker 2: over there, being arrested, being brought back over here, been
Speaker 2: asked to turn myself into Ice. Imagine we here you
Speaker 2: know here today. I don't know if you've heard, but
Speaker 2: Ice was doing allowing hysterectomies, right, literally taking you know,
Speaker 2: you know the womb out out of out of migrant
Speaker 2: women that were entertained without consent. Right. So those are
Speaker 2: the people that, like I've had to go in and
Speaker 2: out repeatedly just because ICE feels like it, right, just
Speaker 2: because they say they have some risk assessment tools, which
Speaker 2: are the same tools that like say that people in
Speaker 2: certain zip codes right in certain neighborhoods are already like
Speaker 2: maybe gang related. Right again, that kind of like those
Speaker 2: algorithms of the cops us right to bring people in
Speaker 2: to say, oh, you're going to be a risk, right,
Speaker 2: things that follow peop outside of when they are done
Speaker 2: with their prison time and they go into probati risk
Speaker 2: management assessment. Always it is just criminalization from prison to
Speaker 2: prison to prison pipeline, right, there's like really no true freedom.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think for me, it's just been about
Speaker 2: talking about those those that state sanctioned violence, that mass incarceration, right,
Speaker 2: Like that's just huge as that's how we are building
Speaker 2: the back of the United States right now. Right, we
Speaker 2: talk about it happened with enslaved people before, it's happening
Speaker 2: right now with people in prisons. All that free label right,
Speaker 2: all the labor. We see the fires in California, all
Speaker 2: those folks that are out there firing the fires, yet
Speaker 2: they can't come home and be firefires.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You will always be a felon, You will always be disposable,
Speaker 2: you will always be criminalized. And I said, I said, no,
Speaker 2: I'm nine. I'm going to bring joy int who I am,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to share, and I'm gonna you know, talk,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to do the things that I want
Speaker 2: to do, which is like, you know, transform with my
Speaker 2: community alongside of my community, right, think of new things,
Speaker 2: invest in new things, because it doesn't work, we've seen it, right.
Speaker 2: But I think again we are the people speaking up.
Speaker 2: Is a smaller amount of people, right, a smaller percentage,
Speaker 2: and it's about mass shifting, right. So I think that's
Speaker 2: why it's super important to bring these conversations to like
Speaker 2: wider like platforms, right, wider communities, and maybe not so
Speaker 2: much folks and the movements. Sometimes we preach to our
Speaker 2: own a lot. Yeah, And you know, mad respects to
Speaker 2: all the community organizers doing work right now with nonprofits, right,
Speaker 2: and they do their part, right. The folks doing electoral work,
Speaker 2: they do their part is so important to get Trump out, absolutely,
Speaker 2: but we understand that that, you know, Trump just really
Speaker 2: put America's dirty laundry, the United States dirty laundry out
Speaker 2: in the open.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: We've known that we didn't we don't sustain communities that
Speaker 2: care about support, about care about food and housing. You
Speaker 2: know that we both met right when we were at
Speaker 2: hashtag lunch bag right doing you know, giving back community
Speaker 2: to the community. That's what we do, right. Those are
Speaker 2: mutual aid groups and that's what we do as well. Right.
Speaker 2: We make sure that the people that we're organizing with
Speaker 2: have all of those things. And it's a halliss type
Speaker 2: of organizing, right. It's also you know, collectively for us
Speaker 2: to heal and empower our like you know, agencies together
Speaker 2: and that's when we're going to really like shift stuff, right.
Speaker 2: And I think for me it's been important to get
Speaker 2: people to understand my story because I'm not the only one. Right,
Speaker 2: people are really scared to become you a citizen still,
Speaker 2: and so they are at risk or deportation. Everybody who's
Speaker 2: not a citizen is at risk of deportation no matter what.
Speaker 2: You can't be doing anything right if you are if
Speaker 2: you have a traffic topic and put you in deportation
Speaker 2: proceedings at this point. So it's really really like wild
Speaker 2: to see people just I don't know, if you saw
Speaker 2: Immigration Nation, you got to see that. It's so wild.
Speaker 2: I was like kind of like, don't see it. I
Speaker 2: don't want to see trauma porn. But Immigration Nation really
Speaker 2: like highlights how nasty ice agents are these cops and
Speaker 2: what they're doing their tactics to literally like follow people
Speaker 2: around to arrest them. Seventy or eighty percent of the
Speaker 2: people they arrest is like collateral, like they were looking
Speaker 2: for someone else, but everybody else just happened to be undocumented,
Speaker 2: so they're writing everybody up, building up those bets in
Speaker 2: the mass incarceration system.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this now, of course I know
Speaker 1: the answer, but what do you say to someone who says,
Speaker 1: if you want to come to this country, just do
Speaker 1: it the right way. Because that's a popular thing, that
Speaker 1: a popular rebuttal whenever you try to point out these injustices.
Speaker 1: So if someone were to say to you, just come
Speaker 1: to this country the right way and there's no problem,
Speaker 1: what do you say to that?
Speaker 2: Oh? Man, Well, first I say, got a lot of
Speaker 2: work to do. We still got a lot of work
Speaker 2: to do as organizers and obviously people in general, because
Speaker 2: if you really really looked into it, you really cared,
Speaker 2: you really wanted to have an answer for that, because
Speaker 2: I feel like it's a very lazy answer. I think
Speaker 2: it would be that there is really no right way.
Speaker 2: My Diah, my mom's sister, has been waiting for any
Speaker 2: type of legal legality and it's been over twenty five.
Speaker 1: Years exactly right.
Speaker 2: You know, we see the racism in who gets to
Speaker 2: be allowed you have a list of like you know,
Speaker 2: and also because Mexicans are right next door, we're also
Speaker 2: like really low priority on any really relieves or like
Speaker 2: applicants to come and you know, there's like lotteries and
Speaker 2: all this, like Mexicans Filipinos, right the worst of the
Speaker 2: worst are of course like not you know, they don't
Speaker 2: get a lot of lottery tickets or you know, it's
Speaker 2: really it's really complicated. But it's again, we got to
Speaker 2: look into that. We can't just say, oh, do it
Speaker 2: I legally do it the right way. There is no
Speaker 2: the right way when literally the system is like is
Speaker 2: racism itself? Right? When right now we're seeing literally right
Speaker 2: now we're seeing a lot of white immigrant people getting
Speaker 2: more permissions to come, right when we're having bands all day,
Speaker 2: when we literally right now at the border of the
Speaker 2: United States at Mexico, there's a refugee camp, the worst
Speaker 2: of these kinds of the world, and we have it.
Speaker 2: And of course the administration of the media. Right that's
Speaker 2: that's right wing, because right wing owns the media. That's
Speaker 2: why it's important for you to have this radio show,
Speaker 2: for us to create more programming around this, for us
Speaker 2: to have our own media centers, to talk about our
Speaker 2: own and have our own analogus because one day they're
Speaker 2: going to take off the Wi Fi and we need
Speaker 2: to make sure we know how to put a radio
Speaker 2: radio right literally on the antennas. But right now, literally
Speaker 2: a refugee camp at the porter people are literally being raped, robbed, hungry,
Speaker 2: intense in summer intense, right, And we've denied them the
Speaker 2: human right to ask for asylum. And he and and
Speaker 2: literally this administration and Trump is above above the law. Right,
Speaker 2: So people say, I've broken laws? What the fuck? What
Speaker 2: the what is literally happening? And but we get criminalized, right,
Speaker 2: I'm disposable. So I think it's a mass shift on
Speaker 2: like you know what this is both? Right? Like yeah,
Speaker 2: like what is this democracy? Who's a part of it?
Speaker 2: The constitution? Who are these men? Nearly not us? Not
Speaker 2: people of color, black and brown and indigenous men? You know,
Speaker 2: So you start really to think like what the heck
Speaker 2: is going on? And you start so I think for
Speaker 2: those people, it's just like, yo, it's time to do
Speaker 2: some real work, real research, right, And like if you
Speaker 2: have that much privilege to be such away from communities
Speaker 2: that you know that you really don't understand why we're
Speaker 2: where we're at. Right. White people are desperate? Right, White
Speaker 2: people like clearly why we're begging for fifteen dollars an
Speaker 2: hour when we know that burgers are fifteen books? Right? Like,
Speaker 2: if you really like have that privilege, then it is
Speaker 2: going to be difficult for those folks to open up. Right.
Speaker 2: But are we talking to those folks?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Is that my audience? I can't turn everybody to do,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? I got to talk to
Speaker 2: our people, right, our people that are right? There still
Speaker 2: are people next my neighborhoods that are calling the police, right,
Speaker 2: my own people, my own family members that are pro
Speaker 2: cops or pro ice agents. You feel me like, we
Speaker 2: got a lot of work to do. The revolution starts
Speaker 2: at home, met in our communities.
Speaker 1: So I want to if you're just tuning in, were
Speaker 1: our guests today on Civic Cipher is Alejandra Pablos, I
Speaker 1: want you to talk a little bit about me Hinte
Speaker 1: and your work with me Hinda Dope.
Speaker 2: Mihinte is a Chicken eggs LATINX digital organizing hub, a
Speaker 2: network of super dope healers, organizers, artists, you know, just activists, advocates,
Speaker 2: pro black, pro worker, promohad, pro queer, all of these
Speaker 2: pros right because we need to say them. We need
Speaker 2: to say them right, and we need to be out
Speaker 2: loud about it, and we need to bring join all
Speaker 2: of our identities. So it is an organizing hub. Is
Speaker 2: my political home, one of many of my political homes,
Speaker 2: but also one of my favorites, and it's where I've
Speaker 2: learned a lot and developed my organizing. But informed by
Speaker 2: Mihinta right now is doing a fuera Trump campaign. I
Speaker 2: know that they are obviously, you know, have the voice
Speaker 2: and the platform for many LATINX people, whether you identify
Speaker 2: as LATINX or not. You know, the Diaspa Latinidad and
Speaker 2: brown folks. They're really taking up that space. Somebody has
Speaker 2: to do it. It's super important and what Trump is
Speaker 2: one of the biggest campaigns that have going on right now.
Speaker 2: I think Mihanta has also just been leading in like
Speaker 2: culture just culture shifting, really bringing in I was really
Speaker 2: fortunate enough to you know, I'm a member obviously, and
Speaker 2: they supported my obviously and organized and led my campaign
Speaker 2: to come home when I got re arrested. So I
Speaker 2: talked about earlier twenty eleven and being arrested. I came
Speaker 2: home after two years and then I got re arrested
Speaker 2: in March of twenty eighteen. They led my campaign to
Speaker 2: bring me home. That was because of the arrest in Virginia.
Speaker 1: Is that the keep il a free yes campaign? Right?
Speaker 2: So, which is what's currently happened, is which is keep
Speaker 2: me from jail?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: You know, clearly were just a little freedom.
Speaker 1: But real quick, I want to say this, if you are,
Speaker 1: if you have your phone near you, go ahead and
Speaker 1: type that in hashtag keep alf free k E E
Speaker 1: p A l E f r ee and just look
Speaker 1: what comes up. It's it's massive. Yeah, you're a very
Speaker 1: special person. And obviously this story is resonated with a
Speaker 1: lot of folks.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's super dope. I have a lot of
Speaker 2: creative friends, so they made that pop. It was a
Speaker 2: countdown and everything. So yeah, follow the hashtag. Also follow
Speaker 2: me on Instagram. Actually just changed my name my Instagram.
Speaker 2: It's emotional Gangster with a Z instead of an S.
Speaker 2: I feel like that's easier to say than the one before.
Speaker 2: But anyways, well I got I was fortunate enough to
Speaker 2: come home right after organizing with them, you know, getting
Speaker 2: released from the nonprofit industrial complex and going straight into
Speaker 2: a tour okay with them again with me, Hint is
Speaker 2: a place where we do a lot of culture shifting,
Speaker 2: a lot of narrative shifting, and we have we do
Speaker 2: it by cultural relational cultural workers, a lot of a
Speaker 2: lot of healing, a lot of language justice, a lot
Speaker 2: of workers. Right, So I got to host a tour
Speaker 2: and we got to tour through the country. I think
Speaker 2: it was around seven or eight maybe no, like nine places,
Speaker 2: and we filmed, filmed, I hosted, and I interviewed the
Speaker 2: organizers or the community members doing resistance work. Because at
Speaker 2: this moment in twenty eighteen, Trump was an office. I
Speaker 2: mean it still is but he was going hard body
Speaker 2: on bands on communities on two eighty seven G programs
Speaker 2: with our which are contracts between ICE and cops to
Speaker 2: work together to like trap community members and deport them
Speaker 2: just for being them. And we started to also that's like,
Speaker 2: how do we also document our escalations right our Like
Speaker 2: we're going from knowing our rights, from knowing our power
Speaker 2: right to we've seen people create body body walls, you know,
Speaker 2: to stop ICE from getting people. We understand right now
Speaker 2: we're not in a moment where we're questioning if ICE
Speaker 2: is needed. We know they need to be abolished because
Speaker 2: of the terror that they bring in, right, and immigration
Speaker 2: does not have to be like we don't have to
Speaker 2: criminalize the immigration. That's what's happening. Trump is literally criminalizing
Speaker 2: the right to migrate. So I think it was amazing
Speaker 2: to do some of the at work. Right. We documented that.
Speaker 2: We have a bunch of series, So if y'all are listening,
Speaker 2: please go to tour dot com. You can also find
Speaker 2: it on the Mahanta website, but you can go and
Speaker 2: it's a series, and we have like about they're like
Speaker 2: five to six minute little short films, super dope meeting
Speaker 2: folks really talks about the intersections of the police machine,
Speaker 2: the ice machine, and it's really comprehensive and it's also
Speaker 2: brings a lot of joy in the organizing and the
Speaker 2: resilience that we've had to have, right, because I want
Speaker 2: to just have joy. I don't want to have to
Speaker 2: have resilience, right. Resilience is what has to be built
Speaker 2: for us because we're surviving this, right. But also, you know,
Speaker 2: our bodies want to rest, right, our bodies ought to
Speaker 2: want to rest. So I think for me, yeah, Mihantha
Speaker 2: is just doing amazing work. What what do you like
Speaker 2: about me?
Speaker 1: HINTA, Well, before we get to there, I think it's
Speaker 1: there's a couple of things that you touched on. And
Speaker 1: I think that for a lot of folks that deal
Speaker 1: with you know, immigration and you know, just this narrative
Speaker 1: that well, if you're born on this side of an
Speaker 1: imaginary line and you get to do this, and if
Speaker 1: you're born on that side of an imaginary line, then
Speaker 1: you don't get to do this, and the sense of
Speaker 1: entitlement there, I think that it really is a sort
Speaker 1: of morally bankrupt position to hold. And I think that
Speaker 1: you know, especially for people that do migrate into this country.
Speaker 1: I'm from California, and I've shared that before, and I
Speaker 1: spent a good amount of my life in Arizona. Now
Speaker 1: I've seen the world, I've seen the country, but I
Speaker 1: grew up around Mexican people, and I grew up near
Speaker 1: Mexico my whole life, and so I've heard a lot
Speaker 1: of very Mexican stories. And you know, when you think
Speaker 1: in terms of like human beings, I think that a
Speaker 1: very important question to ask yourself is, you know, who
Speaker 1: has the power to define crime and what motive do
Speaker 1: they have to do so? And I think that that's
Speaker 1: something that's really lost on you know, as I stated
Speaker 1: those morally bankrupt arguments and positions and perspectives, because you know,
Speaker 1: because you won some sort of you know, birth location lottery,
Speaker 1: that it somehow entitles you to more opportunities or entitles
Speaker 1: other people to less opportunities. I think that that is
Speaker 1: a narrative that really bears revisiting for a lot of folks,
Speaker 1: and so I just wanted to make sure that I
Speaker 1: stated that before we got too far away from it. Now,
Speaker 1: there's something that you mentioned to me before. You said
Speaker 1: that the immigration system targets people with criminal records, but
Speaker 1: I believe the intention of being able to deport them.
Speaker 1: Like if you're if you're an immigrant and you have
Speaker 1: you know, you've made a mistake, you know, twenty years
Speaker 1: ago or something like that, it's a lot easier to
Speaker 1: deport you so that you get specifically targeted or singled out.
Speaker 1: Can you explain a little bit more about that or
Speaker 1: any like personal experience with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean, so you know, the whole immigration piece,
Speaker 2: which is like customs, border, patrojans, immigration, and customs enforcement,
Speaker 2: homeland security, all of those are under the Department of Justice.
Speaker 2: Ok So there's a really dope podcast right now. I
Speaker 2: mean it's not that dope, it's okay, but it's called
Speaker 2: Homeland Insecurity. It actually does a little four part series
Speaker 2: of like how immigration got started through after the ninety
Speaker 2: eleven terrorist attacks. So it's really interesting when you brought
Speaker 2: up the whole part of the illegality, right, who's empowered
Speaker 2: to define that? You know? And you know, you know,
Speaker 2: being in a certain zip code can be illegal, right
Speaker 2: And in Florida, if you let go of a helium balloon,
Speaker 2: that's illegal, you know. So I mean there's like so
Speaker 2: many laws, you know, we can get into that conversation.
Speaker 2: But I think it is super interesting that we have
Speaker 2: to fight back, right. I think that's another reason why
Speaker 2: I resonate with with people because I kind of say
Speaker 2: the things that people would they could say. Right. I'm
Speaker 2: like that, right, I'm like wait, why wait? But you
Speaker 2: know when I love this argument with my brother all
Speaker 2: the time and he goes, so you're saying that because
Speaker 2: cops don't go to jail for killing people, nobody should
Speaker 2: go to jail for killing people. And I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: there has to be the sense of like what is
Speaker 2: the law and like what is it? What's like, you know,
Speaker 2: what is what we want to like abide by. Right,
Speaker 2: So we're saying that people should go to jailing, Yeah,
Speaker 2: everybody should, and if there isn't, then nobody should not
Speaker 2: that I believe in that. I'm an abolitionist. I think
Speaker 2: that we need support instead of like caging people, right.
Speaker 2: And we haven't seen in a United States that does that.
Speaker 2: It's we're a for profit, capitalist country, so we don't
Speaker 2: invest in unabled body people, sick people, right, and we
Speaker 2: hate we have cent aphobia where we have white supremacy
Speaker 2: in our in our in our policy. So I think Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it's just really important to talk back and
Speaker 2: to talk about criminalization, to really talk about how we
Speaker 2: criminalize people, how we we ourselves are policing each other. Right.
Speaker 2: And I think that's why again, I do what I
Speaker 2: do on my social media, and I talk about all
Speaker 2: these things, and I talk about, for example, you know,
Speaker 2: even things of like I don't want to shave my
Speaker 2: legs and I'm going to be completely like hairy, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to push back on that, and you know,
Speaker 2: and that's even interesting sometimes too, right, the pushback that
Speaker 2: you get from your own people. My mother hates it
Speaker 2: body hair is like, oh my god, you're the nastiest
Speaker 2: thing ever. But it's a moment to really talk about why, right,
Speaker 2: why do we criminalize, Why do we force bodies to
Speaker 2: be different? Right? Why do people get to be like
Speaker 2: that's my preference, right when it's like we should be
Speaker 2: like accepting people at all times. Right. And it's again
Speaker 2: this capitalistic word world, right, that's forced you know us
Speaker 2: to like abide by those like beauty standards.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So I think it's not just you know, the you know,
Speaker 2: you know this particularly just even just immigration work that
Speaker 2: I do, Right, it's this more like holistic like and
Speaker 2: pushback on patriarchy right on, like policing bodies on top
Speaker 2: people what they need to do, right when literally like
Speaker 2: this country has no saying that, like you literally have
Speaker 2: never taken care of people. History has shown us this, right,
Speaker 2: Like we are just repeating history itself. Right now, We're
Speaker 2: getting kids sprayed at march at marches and protests, right,
Speaker 2: We're seeing cops still being funded. Right. You know, it's
Speaker 2: an upside down world. Right. You don't see the folks fighting,
Speaker 2: you know, people who have abortions, the pro lifers. You
Speaker 2: don't see them trying to shut down ice for literally
Speaker 2: like stopping women from having babies. Right, shouldn't we have
Speaker 2: our babies? Right? So it's very upside down. So I
Speaker 2: think the important part of like the work that we're
Speaker 2: doing right now is again that it's like now in
Speaker 2: a bigger, more awakening, Right, more people are interested in learning.
Speaker 2: More people are also open to learning. Right, But abolitionists, folks,
Speaker 2: you know, folks way before me that I've been learning
Speaker 2: from have been talking about this, right, have been talking
Speaker 2: about the whole culture of the prison industrial complex. Right,
Speaker 2: we hear the nonprofit industrial complex, all these like just
Speaker 2: to show that there's infrastructures that are allowed to just
Speaker 2: keep status quo and keep people in poverty, right, keep
Speaker 2: people like uninformed right not you know, it's in so
Speaker 2: much trauma that they can't even walk in their power,
Speaker 2: you know. And that's why we're here, and that's why
Speaker 2: storytellers like ourselves exist, you know, and it's super important.
Speaker 2: So I think for me, my immigration status is unfortunately
Speaker 2: has become my identity right now. That's this is what
Speaker 2: I do now, is I talk about my story. I fight,
Speaker 2: you know, I try to deconstruct and give more and
Speaker 2: give you know, space for political education, for people to
Speaker 2: learn through my experience so that this doesn't happen to
Speaker 2: other folks, to share resources, tools, et cetera. And but
Speaker 2: I also wish it wasn't right. I also want to
Speaker 2: do just other right, Like you know, I'm in the
Speaker 2: middle of a playwright it's about my experience. I'm working
Speaker 2: on a podcast it's about immigration and deportation defense work,
Speaker 2: and we want to like use that podcast and knock
Speaker 2: on doors to really talk about deportation defense and so. Right, So,
Speaker 2: like my whole life change because of this huge like
Speaker 2: barrier my life and like it won't go away right about.
Speaker 2: You know it's been nine years, you know, ice is
Speaker 2: still there. People are talking about freeing folks, right. We
Speaker 2: have the campaign free them All. Follow that hashtag as well,
Speaker 2: Freedom All. It's talking about releasing everybody from prisons in jails, right,
Speaker 2: and they're not doing that, right, They're not They're they're
Speaker 2: not releasing nobody, especially you would think they wear in COVID.
Speaker 2: Time to go be you know, to go social distance
Speaker 2: and stop the spread. Now it's actually incubated it, right
Speaker 2: and kept the spread up. So in this place, like
Speaker 2: we're literally trying to live with COVID like and none
Speaker 2: other countries where those countries have tried to get rid
Speaker 2: of it. You know, it's just so it's really insane
Speaker 2: because again, who gets to be above this pandemic? Rich people, right,
Speaker 2: Wealthy people that get to be at their house all
Speaker 2: day long in space, right, we have We see it
Speaker 2: here in our in our areas, in our streets, unsheltered
Speaker 2: people policing like going and over there and harassing people
Speaker 2: in this moment. Where are they going to go when
Speaker 2: we literally have not invested in universal housing, right, So
Speaker 2: talking about things that like people are like what do
Speaker 2: you mean universal housing? And it's our do to insert
Speaker 2: these these creations because if we can imagine, then we
Speaker 2: can create them. These policies that are races were created
Speaker 2: and imagined by racists. Yeah right, So we need to
Speaker 2: be the ones doing that and we need to be
Speaker 2: at the table. So that's why it is important to
Speaker 2: do electoral work. It is important to do all the work,
Speaker 2: the cultural work, organizing, the knocking, the right, the workers,
Speaker 2: right work, all of it is important and we need
Speaker 2: everybody to do a piece of it right. It is
Speaker 2: not enough for you to be at the crib watching TV.
Speaker 2: TV sucks, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Listen to the radio. Fact, So there is something that
Speaker 1: I do want to talk about. So you mentioned that
Speaker 1: you know, a big part of your identity is your
Speaker 1: immigration status, and obviously you're a human being, so you know,
Speaker 1: there's much more to your life than that. But that
Speaker 1: can serve as a beacon to a lot of other
Speaker 1: folks who are having to deal with those issues, and
Speaker 1: people like me who I don't deal with that issue personally,
Speaker 1: but I'm sympathetic to it, you know, as I stated,
Speaker 1: you know, I kind of spent my whole life around people,
Speaker 1: A lot of whom have to actually deal with that
Speaker 1: or have some relatives that have to deal with that.
Speaker 1: And you know, I want to I want to mention
Speaker 1: something and just kind of get your thoughts on it.
Speaker 1: But you know, uh, when a community is overly policed,
Speaker 1: it skews everything. It scus the prison population, it scus
Speaker 1: the data. You know. In other words, if ninety percent
Speaker 1: of the police are in the bad neighborhood, well it
Speaker 1: doesn't even have to be the bad neighborhood. I don't
Speaker 1: even want to start there. Let me let me start over. Okay,
Speaker 1: how about this. We'll take drugs, right, marijuana. My understanding
Speaker 1: is that marijuana is used equally roughly by black folks
Speaker 1: and by white folks. Right, just to you know, keep
Speaker 1: it simple here. But if all the police are in
Speaker 1: black neighborhoods stopping black folks more frequently, you know, again
Speaker 1: overly policing, then what you're going to get is a
Speaker 1: lot more black folks in jail, And then you're going
Speaker 1: to get a lot more data suggesting that because these
Speaker 1: are the people who are getting arrested, that somehow these
Speaker 1: people are there's something wrong with these people, and it
Speaker 1: ignores the fact that they're just being overly policed. And
Speaker 1: I think that that can extend to you know, folks
Speaker 1: in Hispanic primarily Hispanic or Spanish speaking communities in this country,
Speaker 1: if they're being overly policed, then what you find is
Speaker 1: people like like we mentioned before, targeting effectively immigrants and
Speaker 1: sending them or attempting at least to send them to
Speaker 1: another country or otherwise interfere with what would otherwise be
Speaker 1: a normal life. And I think that speaks to again
Speaker 1: a lot of the racist tendencies of you know, those
Speaker 1: decadent capitalist pigs, but also.
Speaker 2: Also you know, yeah, but the and the fact that
Speaker 2: you brought up weed right, like marijuana like it's no
Speaker 2: but even like that, because it's real. That's a thing,
Speaker 2: but it's a thing in a world. Let me listen, y'all.
Speaker 2: This is still the thing in a world where people
Speaker 2: get to have yoga and smoke weed and have weed retreats.
Speaker 2: And we as black, Indigenous and people of color, that's
Speaker 2: another term BIPOC. Some BIPOC people are still talking to
Speaker 2: having this is our language still right, because we are
Speaker 2: still criminalized for it, not them. We are, though, right,
Speaker 2: So even that, and yes, it's very very true, you know,
Speaker 2: you literally go and look for this and you go
Speaker 2: criminalize these communities. Right on top of it, the media
Speaker 2: still makes all the movies, all the crime shows, all
Speaker 2: the cop shows, right add to that. But yes, that's
Speaker 2: very true. And also to me my thought when you
Speaker 2: said that, I was also like, yeah, and also for that,
Speaker 2: I really need alternatives or I don't really need you
Speaker 2: to criminalize anybody. Leave people alone and they want to
Speaker 2: smoke a little bit over there or something, you know
Speaker 2: what I'm saying, Like people do that. My thing is
Speaker 2: like people get so upset over us having some regular
Speaker 2: basics rights when they literally live in an abolition world already.
Speaker 2: They don't see cops until they call them, you know
Speaker 2: what I'm saying. Their kids don't go to school with
Speaker 2: no cops at their at their at their schools or
Speaker 2: no you know, security whatever, metal detectors, right, you know,
Speaker 2: they don't have cops at their grocery stores, you know.
Speaker 2: So we can go on and on and on, right,
Speaker 2: but they have they cross borders, they can go and
Speaker 2: be residents and citizens in my country easy, right, So
Speaker 2: like they why why don't people want that for us?
Speaker 2: This already exists for people, my dude, Like I don't understand, right,
Speaker 2: So it's bigger than like can it be done? You know,
Speaker 2: people always like it's expensive to do things right while
Speaker 2: we're spending hella billions on and weapons things that don't
Speaker 2: really help us, right that that's not like you know,
Speaker 2: fruitful and back into our communities. So those are the
Speaker 2: things that we're like at the moment where we have
Speaker 2: to push back and we have to start creating these
Speaker 2: visions of like this is the world we want. And
Speaker 2: that's why we say, defund the police, invest in the
Speaker 2: things we need. Sure we don't need more cops, right
Speaker 2: we do, yes, sure fire them because the but also
Speaker 2: you know we need to not hire anymore, right, how
Speaker 2: do we shrink the system as well? So I think,
Speaker 2: you know, the defund police work is just the beginning
Speaker 2: and we are going to win. We are going to
Speaker 2: abolish especially the Immigration Customs and Informent Enforcement Entity because
Speaker 2: it is so new and because we really don't need it,
Speaker 2: they just built it up for themselves to start, you know,
Speaker 2: terrorizing communities. And I don't you know, a whole episode
Speaker 2: can be talked on just the injustices right of like
Speaker 2: ICE agents being caught doing you know, raping women like,
Speaker 2: you know, kidnapping people, trafficking drugs, right, all of the
Speaker 2: and it it's organized, it's organized right higher you know.
Speaker 2: So anyways, I don't want to go into that piece,
Speaker 2: but yeah, recognizing that that we have, all of us
Speaker 2: as people of color, have a common enemy, right, And
Speaker 2: that's then a four yeah, which you know is the
Speaker 2: fear right, that the fear amongst each other. Right is
Speaker 2: white supremacy.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It's these you know, this administration that's literally breaking down
Speaker 2: any type of support that we've even had, you know.
Speaker 2: So I think I'm really proud to be an abolitionist
Speaker 2: in this moment.
Speaker 1: Sure. Sure, And speaking of which you mentioned one of
Speaker 1: earlier you were talking about you were inspired by someone,
Speaker 1: and I remember that I saw it somewhere maybe you
Speaker 1: said it to me, but you said Angela Davis was
Speaker 1: an inspiration of yours. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I mean she's bad. I mean she beat people
Speaker 2: at a court like they were trying to take her down,
Speaker 2: and she beat them like I need to beat them
Speaker 2: at immigration, y'all. I need everybody's support, you know. So
Speaker 2: she's hell of an inspiration. Absolutely. Also, all of Angela
Speaker 2: Davis spoke and talks I can just nerd out on
Speaker 2: YouTube and just go our body. But I think that
Speaker 2: I think all of my homies, all my homegirls, are
Speaker 2: also my inspiration I have, you know, I organize and
Speaker 2: I build relations with people that share my values, share
Speaker 2: you know, these identities, share this this transformation of communal
Speaker 2: work that we're doing. So all of those people are
Speaker 2: teaching me how to be a better human too. You know,
Speaker 2: some people got the Bible super limited. I got community evolving,
Speaker 2: ever evolving, community non binary, which means it doesn't ever
Speaker 2: abide by two binaries with it, whether it be female
Speaker 2: or male, or whether it be like it was bad
Speaker 2: or good. Write something that even the President Obama started
Speaker 2: right felons, you know, families not felons, right or like
Speaker 2: you know, so I always pinning people write daka right people,
Speaker 2: these kinds of students deserve legalization, but the rest are
Speaker 2: are disposable. There's eleven million plus of us that are
Speaker 2: non citizens, you know. So, I think the fact that
Speaker 2: people are are opening up these conversations, are fighting back
Speaker 2: and being like you know what, yeah, even if I
Speaker 2: haven't had a bad interaction with the police like that,
Speaker 2: I see that there shouldn't be you know, these deaths,
Speaker 2: you know, and so forth.
Speaker 1: So that's actually what I wanted to touch on. So
Speaker 1: we've mentioned a lot of things about race, about black
Speaker 1: and white or hispanic or how do you say LATINX,
Speaker 1: I like that I do and uh and white and
Speaker 1: how white people do this and black people do this
Speaker 1: and Hispanic people do this and so forth. But let's
Speaker 1: say that you know, the person listening to this right
Speaker 1: now is white or or black or whatever, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, if you're just tuning in, today's interview on
Speaker 1: Civic Cipher is with Alejandra Ablos. But the question is,
Speaker 1: what is it that this person, this white person can
Speaker 1: do to help, you know, change or contribute to, you know,
Speaker 1: the recentering of the moral arc of the universe or
Speaker 1: at least of this country. What is it that you
Speaker 1: would call upon your Caucasian brothers and sisters to do
Speaker 1: to support you toward this end?
Speaker 2: Caucasian people, have you just turned in? I am Alejandra Pablos.
Speaker 2: I'm a community organizer facing deportation, fighting the policing system
Speaker 2: in Arizona and nationally and sharing my story one person
Speaker 2: at a time, And I think for folks you know
Speaker 2: that are here listening that are not familiar to these
Speaker 2: issues or these conversations, and especially the white folks. I
Speaker 2: think it's just really taking this moment for self reflection, right,
Speaker 2: the role that your privilege takes. It's really tough to
Speaker 2: talk about privilege, right, the privilege that we do have,
Speaker 2: especially white people. It's really tough. I get it. I
Speaker 2: get it. You don't feel racist, right like you you
Speaker 2: don't literally go and create policies right that keep unsheltered
Speaker 2: people on the street, but you also just hop over them, right,
Speaker 2: And I can you know, make that you know, I
Speaker 2: can give examples so far of all those things. So
Speaker 2: I think it's about actively using your privilege, reflecting on
Speaker 2: what that is, right, actively using it, and sharing some
Speaker 2: of that. So I think it's again that moment you
Speaker 2: really think like, yeah, what are what are my privileges?
Speaker 2: And I don't need to hoard all these things, right
Speaker 2: or I don't need to do all these things, And
Speaker 2: what is my role in the in the liberation and
Speaker 2: development of humanity right now? Because as it is it
Speaker 2: is right now, humanity kind of sucks, especially if Trump
Speaker 2: gets to define it right. Literally, Trump is the phase
Speaker 2: of us, all of us as a collective in this
Speaker 2: country right the way that it is, and like that's
Speaker 2: what we're showing, you know, So I think that's your people,
Speaker 2: Like have y'all checked in with each other? Like have
Speaker 2: y'all talked to each other? Right? So it's just really like,
Speaker 2: you know, organize your people and like do better. You know,
Speaker 2: it's not enough to have a good heart and love people.
Speaker 2: Cops do that. They have good hearts with their families
Speaker 2: and they love their families, but they kill people on
Speaker 2: the streets. Right, So it's actively really like you know,
Speaker 2: being in relation with people and doing what you can
Speaker 2: at least even if you're outside of communities to share
Speaker 2: that privilege that you have to give back, to give
Speaker 2: back in not charity, right, but also just like balancing equity.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, so reproductive justice to touch on that, how did
Speaker 1: that become central to your message and what is it
Speaker 1: that you are hoping for?
Speaker 2: Yeah, reproductive justice. I love that. It's so sexy, rolling
Speaker 2: off my mouth, reproductive justice. But yeah, I think when
Speaker 2: I first got introduced to that framework, I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's me. I totally live at that at those intersections.
Speaker 2: So it's very simple. Basically, I was here in Arizona,
Speaker 2: in Phoenix or in Tucson. I'm sorry. I was working
Speaker 2: to Habitaugh for Humanity. I had just been released from prison.
Speaker 2: I'd done two years. I had like I was two
Speaker 2: years to do a probation coming out. My choice was
Speaker 2: already like, you know, locked up all that. They had
Speaker 2: given me four years of probation for this DUI. Who
Speaker 2: gets four years of probation for a DUI? And I
Speaker 2: got a felony for it, like my first one. So
Speaker 2: already hella racial disparities when white people came in and
Speaker 2: did like twenty four hours, you know. But so yeah,
Speaker 2: I came out, I came out of a prison, and
Speaker 2: I just was organizing, organizing, right, and I was I
Speaker 2: knew I had two more years of probation, and I
Speaker 2: was like, as soon as I leave, I'm gonna go
Speaker 2: work in DC because I went to go do a
Speaker 2: campaign and immigration campaign there. So I was like, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna leave as soon as I'm off of probation. And
Speaker 2: I started looking for jobs, and I was just like,
Speaker 2: you know, I already had been volunteering in a lot
Speaker 2: of community spaces using my you know, my skills, my
Speaker 2: you know, my organizing skills, my talking skills. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm very outgoing, you know, blase, And and I got
Speaker 2: an opportunity to go work in DC. I started doing
Speaker 2: border suppression campaign and I also got an opportunity to
Speaker 2: apply for a reproductive justice organization. The National Latina Institute
Speaker 2: for Reproductive Health. Came across me and they were talking about,
Speaker 2: you know, the Latina Institute is about you know, you know,
Speaker 2: working with Latinas to have political social economic power. And
Speaker 2: I'm like, what the fuck is that I want that
Speaker 2: that you know, political economics, social, yeah, like vice for
Speaker 2: like autonomy, the right for women to have and to
Speaker 2: create the lives that they want to have, families or
Speaker 2: not when they want to insafe community. Sure, and I'm like, what,
Speaker 2: that's what I want. And then I'm like and then
Speaker 2: they're like, and we're also finding the stigma of abortions
Speaker 2: because abortion is at the forefront of reproductive you know,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. And I was like, oh, I've had
Speaker 2: some Oh my god. And then I just applied. And
Speaker 2: then I was like, I meant for this job, and
Speaker 2: sure enough, I applied for it, and literally my story,
Speaker 2: my you know, my experience being incarcerated because literally, if
Speaker 2: I'm talking about autonomy over my body, right, what's the
Speaker 2: direct threat napolicia, jails, prison and police. I can never
Speaker 2: be safe as a as a brown undocumented legal permanent resident,
Speaker 2: or as a black person, right, like you know, you know,
Speaker 2: literally enforcing black pop forcing black people and kidnapping black
Speaker 2: people from their countries. Right that that was like the
Speaker 2: main the birth of reproductive injustice right in the in
Speaker 2: this in this country. So anyways, I saw this organization,
Speaker 2: you know, and I was just like, what the this
Speaker 2: is all mean? Like this is Obama and you see
Speaker 2: a bunch of Latina as you see a bunch of
Speaker 2: people in like blue, and they're like they're sure, and
Speaker 2: and I just was like, oh, this is my I
Speaker 2: interviewed and I got the job, and I organized for
Speaker 2: almost two years in Virginia, and I started to really
Speaker 2: just learn learn, well what do I mean to share
Speaker 2: your public, your your your your share, share your your
Speaker 2: abortion story out loud? How how empowering it was because
Speaker 2: I never shared it before, and how many women were
Speaker 2: doing it. I found out that one in four women
Speaker 2: have abortions, right people, not all people that have a
Speaker 2: are women. And so then I was just like oh totally.
Speaker 2: And I started to just like find so much power
Speaker 2: within my sharing my story, and then I started to
Speaker 2: really understand all of the issues. It wasn't just abortion
Speaker 2: reproductive justice, right, it was the fact that again there's
Speaker 2: threats to my autonomy, the fact that either you're immigrant
Speaker 2: or not, you can actually have like an ability to
Speaker 2: get a good job, right, Like that actually matters, Like
Speaker 2: your kids can actually travel if you're undocumented. Like you know,
Speaker 2: you started to really see like, oh, there's like tiers
Speaker 2: of like human rights in a sense, right, classes or whatever.
Speaker 2: But you're like, wait, but we're like the most powerful country,
Speaker 2: Like there's no way it's you. It's you, and you
Speaker 2: start that's that's what you really come at it with.
Speaker 2: And then you're like, no, actually, it's a systemic if
Speaker 2: there's more than one hundred and fifty people in poverty, Like,
Speaker 2: it's not just us, it's systemic, right. And it's like intricate, right.
Speaker 2: So it's policing, it's lack of education, right, it's taking
Speaker 2: away you know, our history from books, right, It's it's
Speaker 2: from taking jobs out of the community. Right, it's for
Speaker 2: you know, you know, again over policing places. So and
Speaker 2: all of that like is a part of like how
Speaker 2: I've been informed and how young people grow up. So
Speaker 2: it was really exciting to do reproductive justice, to still
Speaker 2: be doing reproductive justice work. But that's what that work
Speaker 2: looks like. It's about making sure that people have access
Speaker 2: to like going to a hospital, going to the doctors
Speaker 2: without fear of the police going there. Right, Like, you
Speaker 2: have the human right to create families when you want to, right,
Speaker 2: and and you can't do that, you know, if you
Speaker 2: think you're going to not be safe when you you know,
Speaker 2: when you're going to have this, you're going to start
Speaker 2: this family. We talk a lot about black maternal deaths,
Speaker 2: right Literally black bodies are literally sterilized as respected, ignored,
Speaker 2: not listen to and so forth, and women are dying.
Speaker 2: So people are choosing not to have babies, you know,
Speaker 2: So that's pretty world. It's pretty Yeah, we're still begging
Speaker 2: for fifteen hours an hour, right, you can barely like
Speaker 2: you know, everything's going up, but your wages are not
Speaker 2: going up. Like why would I want to have a
Speaker 2: child here? I can bear to your four miles, you
Speaker 2: know what I'm saying, Like, so just really understanding that
Speaker 2: reproactive justice was literally about. It was the threat of
Speaker 2: you owning and making decision over your body. That was
Speaker 2: what people off. Right, That's the root of like people
Speaker 2: being eriminalize, right, people choosing to have abortions because like,
Speaker 2: if you don't abide by what the status quo is,
Speaker 2: right about this idea about what the United States is,
Speaker 2: which is this like faith pro life in a sense,
Speaker 2: right like or you know, even in our communities we're
Speaker 2: very pro anti abortion Latinos, black folks, like we're very
Speaker 2: still you know. So that's why it's important that we
Speaker 2: do this work in Spanish too, you know, and so forth.
Speaker 2: But I think that's the powerful thing is that we're
Speaker 2: pushing back on stigma, on taboo, on myths, and people
Speaker 2: and women, queer folks, trans young folks are talking about
Speaker 2: it for the first time and actually stepping into their
Speaker 2: power and being like all that, like, also debunking myths.
Speaker 2: Right I've had I've had more than one abortion. I
Speaker 2: can still get pregnant, done it multiple times, right, like,
Speaker 2: and I can do it. So debunking these myths, like
Speaker 2: you know, people have been having abortions, have been you know,
Speaker 2: reversing pregnancies. People have always not gotten pregnant. Period. Not
Speaker 2: everybody wants to be up, but that's what the United
Speaker 2: States wants to tell people, that people have to be parents,
Speaker 2: so you to produce people so then you can be
Speaker 2: a part of the economy. And if you don't, if
Speaker 2: you're gay, you're going against that, right, you're not producing humans. Right,
Speaker 2: if you don't get married, you're not like buying into
Speaker 2: the tax world, you know, and so forth. So you
Speaker 2: started understanding that it's bigger than you. That's actually like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is just the way of that that I'm supposed
Speaker 2: to be information and we're saying that formation getting our
Speaker 2: own formation.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. So another thing, another facet of the work that
Speaker 1: you do is murals. I've seen you do a lot
Speaker 1: of murals. What do you think is the benefit to murals?
Speaker 1: And you know, just explain their role in.
Speaker 2: I'm glad. I feel flattered that you think I make murals,
Speaker 2: but I don't, and I'm always but yes, curating. I
Speaker 2: wish I was more artsy for real, for real, because
Speaker 2: I'd be having some bomb designs in my head. But yes,
Speaker 2: so I work, and I you know, I organize amongst
Speaker 2: creatives and artists and muralists and painters, and I'm one
Speaker 2: of one of the organizers in a newly organized, you know,
Speaker 2: collective that's really creating out the end images and visions
Speaker 2: and visuals for a world without police, for a world
Speaker 2: where people actually thrive and not get killed. So we've
Speaker 2: been designing a lot of things. And yes, we've been
Speaker 2: a product a part of some community projects where we organize,
Speaker 2: for example, the deon Justin Johnson, UH Justice for Dion
Speaker 2: mural on Seventh Street, and so yeah, So I think
Speaker 2: for us as as creatives, as community organizers, is about
Speaker 2: creating the city we want to see. That that includes
Speaker 2: what's art, what's up? What's up? What's up? What's you know?
Speaker 2: On the walls? What do we want to see? What
Speaker 2: is the messages? What do we want to hear? And
Speaker 2: I think again you said we need to have our
Speaker 2: you know, our own because we're being literally censored all
Speaker 2: the time too as artists, you know. So the community
Speaker 2: work that we're doing right now is trying to do
Speaker 2: more community murals. We're trying to finish that Dion Johnson murals.
Speaker 2: So we're fundraising right now to pay uh Giovanni the
Speaker 2: Black artists to come back and finish that mural. I
Speaker 2: think it's also important to be working within other communities
Speaker 2: to make sure that we're again putting up the demands
Speaker 2: of the community. Right right now, we still have seen
Speaker 2: no justice. Right over one hundred killings just with you
Speaker 2: know this new mayor in Phoenix, right over one hundred
Speaker 2: people have died and I think it was like one
Speaker 2: hundred and nine cops have killed, not just shot. That's
Speaker 2: a bigger number, right, And it's all happening right now
Speaker 2: in the under our noses, right and we're allowing that
Speaker 2: to happen, right. So I think it's important just for us,
Speaker 2: not just murals. But we've done a lot of whe Yeah,
Speaker 2: some wee pacing murals too, but to keep uplifting that
Speaker 2: right to let make sure that people are not forgetting.
Speaker 2: So we have a wheat Pace mural also on fifteenth Street,
Speaker 2: fifteenth A, I'm sorry, fifteenth A and Polk Street by
Speaker 2: Van Viuren And that's another deon Johnson wheat Paste that
Speaker 2: calls out the cops being murders, Blue Lives murder and
Speaker 2: then the next week. Pace is a dope image created
Speaker 2: by actually Mexico City artists. It was a tribute to
Speaker 2: George Floyd. It's super powerful. It's huge and big. So
Speaker 2: there's a big George Floyd Wheat pace on fifteenth app
Speaker 2: next to Dion Johnson on Polk Street, and then there's
Speaker 2: the Dion Johnson Mural on Seventh Street. So yeah, we're
Speaker 2: working on definitely doing more big, bigger stuff, more projects.
Speaker 2: We're working on possibly getting some billboards, but we're also
Speaker 2: like you know, meeting censorship through that. We want to
Speaker 2: get some bus ads, you know, But right now we're
Speaker 2: just building and creating a lot of digital stuff. Did
Speaker 2: you get to see the the wop image we just created,
Speaker 2: I think, so come on, that was like genius. That
Speaker 2: was definitely you know, something that I worked with another
Speaker 2: designer to do, right, and it was around you know,
Speaker 2: switching it back to like you know, the weak police, right,
Speaker 2: because on that day they actually were threatening the women
Speaker 2: of some of the community organizations, the director of an
Speaker 2: anti police org, a brown immigrant woman, and then right
Speaker 2: like the black Fems from BLM Local Phoenix, Metro right
Speaker 2: and really you know, you the cops really organizing and
Speaker 2: like the white the white ring really like organizing to
Speaker 2: put threats. So there was a lot of threats and
Speaker 2: when there's threats, it's because we're doing something right. Right,
Speaker 2: So was able to use that you know, wop acronym
Speaker 2: right to put weak police and put an image of
Speaker 2: a policeman all scared and these two beautiful black black women,
Speaker 2: brown women, and it was Cardi and Meg and all
Speaker 2: over them they had just written like free them all,
Speaker 2: you know, black lives matter, like all of these dope messages.
Speaker 2: And again it was giving that vision of like, that's
Speaker 2: how scared they are because we're so powerful, we're big,
Speaker 2: you know, blah blah blah. So I think again, I
Speaker 2: think the role of artists right now and creators is
Speaker 2: to to uplift those those visions, right, of a of
Speaker 2: a of a pro community future, one that doesn't invest
Speaker 2: in policing and violence and militarization right and and literally
Speaker 2: disposing of people, one that actually, instead of funding prisons,
Speaker 2: can fund you know, more rehab centers. Right, We're more,
Speaker 2: you know, just care for the elderly. There's no profit
Speaker 2: in caring for old people, right, and unabled people, so
Speaker 2: we don't give up about them. That's but that's what
Speaker 2: we're saying that we want the money and take that
Speaker 2: money because you know who has that money, more than
Speaker 2: seven hundred billion. The Phoenix City Police has that and
Speaker 2: we want to get it from them. They're going to
Speaker 2: give us that money. And that's that that's the goal,
Speaker 2: that's the vision, and that's the mood every day, and
Speaker 2: that's what we're trying to invite all the folks you know,
Speaker 2: to get with that, because it's not just about like
Speaker 2: you know, getting cops to lose their jobs, although that
Speaker 2: is the goal too, is to shrink the system to
Speaker 2: not need them to have cops. And your your your fathers,
Speaker 2: your uncles, y'all, they're not going to be jobless. We're
Speaker 2: going to be creating other things. They should also probably
Speaker 2: go through some heavy unlearning after being cops before we
Speaker 2: let them work in our community. But the thing is
Speaker 2: we're going to be creating jobs in new systems. So
Speaker 2: y'all can go be counselors or some some coaches or
Speaker 2: some builders or something. You know, there's other things.
Speaker 1: Sure, sure, So once again, if you're looking for a
Speaker 1: champion h with respect to you know, abolishing ice, or
Speaker 1: if you're looking or a champion with respect to reproductive justice,
Speaker 1: or you know, just the unfairness that's built into the
Speaker 1: immigration system, or the criminal justice system, or the way
Speaker 1: you said it was the criminal injustice system. You know,
Speaker 1: Alejandra Pablos can certainly be such a champion. Certainly you
Speaker 1: have been one such champion in my life. I've seen
Speaker 1: the work that you've done over the years. A very
Speaker 1: very much an inspiring person and I'm grateful that you
Speaker 1: uh took the time to come and hang out with
Speaker 1: us here on Civic Cipher. But before we go, just
Speaker 1: know that this show exists for the community. So if
Speaker 1: you have any questions, you got any topics, anything like that,
Speaker 1: you can hit Civiccipher dot com or follow us on
Speaker 1: all social media at Civic Cipher. And also don't forget
Speaker 1: that this show is also supported by the community, so
Speaker 1: you can also donate through the website. Have made it
Speaker 1: very easy for you to do all that. And before
Speaker 1: we leave one more time, make sure that you hit
Speaker 1: your social media so people can keep up with you.
Speaker 2: Yes, y'all also get on Instagram Emotional Gangster with the
Speaker 2: Z not an s. And I'm also on Twitter if
Speaker 2: y'all want to put me on Twitter, Ali la A
Speaker 2: l E l A p l e b E should
Speaker 2: PRIA try to switch them together too. Yeah, so I'm
Speaker 2: really excited that if folks do follow me, go to
Speaker 2: the website, keep out. If you dot org, I also
Speaker 2: you know, update there. But my social media Instagram is
Speaker 2: the best way to get connected and to get access
Speaker 2: to resources and just like this, you know, conversation and
Speaker 2: this love, this love that I also share.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, you're an inspiring person and once again thanks for
Speaker 1: coming to hang out with us on civic SciTE for
Speaker 1: be sure to check us out next week, same time,
Speaker 1: the same channel. And until then, you guys, take care
Speaker 1: of yourself peace, think