Speaker 1: Cause media.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, it's James. I am just recording an introduction
Speaker 2: for today's episode, which we recorded on Sunday night. I'm
Speaker 2: recording this on Monday night and you will hear this
Speaker 2: on Tuesday morning. That's Tuesday, the twenty eighth of November.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to include another ask for donations right
Speaker 2: up front here, because we are tired, broke and sad.
Speaker 2: I spent last night sleeping out by the migrant camp
Speaker 2: in Nocumber, one of the camps. It was extremely cold
Speaker 2: like and I had a good sleeping bag, right it
Speaker 2: must have been much much worse for people have blankets.
Speaker 2: I had a young woman completely breaking down and crying
Speaker 2: this morning, understandably because it's terrible and people have been
Speaker 2: there for five six days now. We ran out of
Speaker 2: food all our distribution sites today. We just desperately need
Speaker 2: more help and we need a much larger scale operation,
Speaker 2: but we can't find that. So if you're able to help,
Speaker 2: please please do. I know it's a difficult time of year.
Speaker 2: I'm not asking you to give money that I wouldn't give.
Speaker 2: I'm thousand plus dollars deep in this. I'm not asking
Speaker 2: you to do things that I wouldn't do spending half
Speaker 2: my week out there. Like I'm not just preaching something
Speaker 2: that I am not part of. Is something I'm very
Speaker 2: much part of. Some think it's very important to me
Speaker 2: and it would mean a lot to me if people
Speaker 2: could help however they can, either materially or with their time.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much and I hope you enjoy the episode.
Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: Hello, it's me James, the guy who does podcasts who
Speaker 2: talks to you when you're driving to work, and today
Speaker 2: on this podcast it Could Happen Here, which is about
Speaker 2: the world falling apart and people who are putting it
Speaker 2: back together. I am joined by two friends of mine.
Speaker 2: We are in the desert in a Cumber at the
Speaker 2: Cumba Hot Springs Hotel, which is open now thankfully. We've
Speaker 2: just spent most of today and the last two months
Speaker 2: doing mutual aid project out here. So if you guys
Speaker 2: like to introduce yourselves in any way you think is relevant,
Speaker 2: that would be great to start off with, and then
Speaker 2: we can talk about what's been going on here.
Speaker 3: I am have aal I use the them pronouns. I
Speaker 3: live in San Diego but now currently living in Harcumber
Speaker 3: helping out with the migrant crisis at the border.
Speaker 4: Hi, I'm alo like alo Vera, I use she her pronouns,
Speaker 4: And I've been doing mutual aid for a couple of
Speaker 4: years now and recently have come into the scene of
Speaker 4: helping with the refugee crisis at the border.
Speaker 2: Massive thank you, Okay. So I think to start off with,
Speaker 2: can one of you or both of you describe just
Speaker 2: what we've seen today. I think it's very hard for
Speaker 2: people to get a grasp of how the scale of
Speaker 2: what's happening and how bad it is here.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So today we are in the wake of a holiday
Speaker 3: where c BP takes off, well most of them are
Speaker 3: taking off for the holiday, and probably what is it
Speaker 3: iss action as well, who picks up the migrants. So
Speaker 3: there's a huge backlog of people not getting picked up,
Speaker 3: stuck in these open air detention sites. And this is
Speaker 3: some of the highest numbers that we've seen in a
Speaker 3: long time since like the beginning of this what happened
Speaker 3: in September, right, Yeah, and it's insane, like the amount
Speaker 3: of people that we were running out of food. Basically
Speaker 3: we barely made it by on peanut butter and jelly sandwich,
Speaker 3: the world famous peanut butter.
Speaker 2: Because we feed them they just want the sandwich.
Speaker 1: And it was wild.
Speaker 3: It was It's it's like the desperation is getting worse
Speaker 3: because as it gets colder, you know, people are suffering more.
Speaker 3: They're you know, shivering more, so it's using more energy.
Speaker 3: They're more hungry when we show up there tailing our
Speaker 3: van as we pull up, which doesn't didn't always happen,
Speaker 3: And yeah, the desperation is real.
Speaker 1: We saw what like three sixty I.
Speaker 3: Think at one camp Willows and then at another camp
Speaker 3: it was one fifty at another camp totally what seven
Speaker 3: math is hard?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it varies throughout the day, right, Like
Speaker 2: I'm surprised. We should explain, maybe Ali can do this.
Speaker 2: What is it open at detention site?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: Oads is yacarnoon we use What does that look like?
Speaker 4: So an opener detention center from what I've seen, is
Speaker 4: literally just people left out in the desert with nothing.
Speaker 4: The shelter that they have has either been built themselves
Speaker 4: by the shrubs and you know, the manzanita bushes that
Speaker 4: they find around there that they also burn, which creates
Speaker 4: awful smoke, as well as what we provide them in
Speaker 4: terms of tarps, blankets, tents. What I've seen in the
Speaker 4: open air detention centers is essentially when Border Patrol has
Speaker 4: the start of a quarter, they have the money to
Speaker 4: really get people out of there. You have a lot
Speaker 4: of people just processed very quickly. It doesn't pile up.
Speaker 4: And then because of that, all the infrastructure that we
Speaker 4: put into these places, and all of the infrastructure that
Speaker 4: these refugees build themselves, right this is not provided by
Speaker 4: Border Patrol, gets basically ruined. And so you have soiled
Speaker 4: blankets that have become the tops of tents because that's
Speaker 4: their only use.
Speaker 1: At this point.
Speaker 4: You have not enough shelters, so people are sleeping just
Speaker 4: among the rocks and trees because it's the best they can.
Speaker 4: And I think one of the most notable points of
Speaker 4: these open air detention centers is legally speaking, Border Patrol
Speaker 4: gets around this by not really calling them detention centers,
Speaker 4: saying that they're not detained and that technically they're free.
Speaker 4: But the reality is there's nowhere for them to go
Speaker 4: without getting you know, arrested or deported. But because of
Speaker 4: this loophole, Border Patrol has no obligation to feed them,
Speaker 4: and so when they do feed them at the start
Speaker 4: of the quarter when they have the budget at which
Speaker 4: they blow. It's oranges, it's crackers. It's not enough to
Speaker 4: live off of when you're stuck there for five days.
Speaker 4: I spoke to a Kurdish migrant today who had been
Speaker 4: there for five days. And you know, we've heard of
Speaker 4: people staying there for an entire week, just stuck in
Speaker 4: these camps as they overflow with people because they're not
Speaker 4: cleared due to whether it be a holiday season or
Speaker 4: whatever it might be that puts us in this circumstance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and obviously most people won't have been here. You
Speaker 2: can look on a map or Google Maps that you
Speaker 2: want to, but all of this is happening like literally
Speaker 2: in the shadow of the border wall in some cases,
Speaker 2: or right next to the border wall. Sometimes it's a
Speaker 2: little bit next, a little bit further away. And just
Speaker 2: to explain why there are these where they eye you,
Speaker 2: guys want to explain like how people are getting to
Speaker 2: the because cir Cumber. If you've got Google Maps, if
Speaker 2: you're not driving, like, you can put it up and
Speaker 2: you can look right, we're like an hour and a
Speaker 2: bit east of San Diego, at seventy miles east of
Speaker 2: San Diego closer to El Centro in San Diego. So
Speaker 2: can you explain how people are ending up here by
Speaker 2: the hundreds of thousands.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so.
Speaker 3: Talk to many migrants and they stay in a hotel
Speaker 3: in TJ. I have no idea which one, and wouldn't
Speaker 3: give that information if I did, but they, Yeah, they
Speaker 3: stay in a hotel in TJ. And they get separated
Speaker 3: by nationality. So the Coyotes take their passports from them
Speaker 3: and put them in stacks and separate them by their nationalities.
Speaker 3: So you'll get you know, Chinese nationalists together, You'll get
Speaker 3: people that are from Turkey together, mostly Kurdish, and.
Speaker 1: Then you'll get whatever their nationality is.
Speaker 3: And I'm sure the outliers get just lumped into whatever
Speaker 3: is the most you know, like group, yeah, language group exactly.
Speaker 3: And then they get in the morning, I guess that
Speaker 3: like five or six am, they drive all the way
Speaker 3: out from TJ to Hkamba and get dropped off at
Speaker 3: there's three points where there's breaks in the walls. And
Speaker 3: these walls obviously they don't go over the mountains because
Speaker 3: Trump was trying to build distance rather than actual stopping people,
Speaker 3: and so these breaks in the walls are very easy
Speaker 3: to cross.
Speaker 1: It's literally just walking over.
Speaker 3: There was some remnants of concertina wire or bob wire
Speaker 3: like in the area, but it's all ripped and super
Speaker 3: easy to cross.
Speaker 1: And so the.
Speaker 3: Coyotes will drop them off near or bits away from
Speaker 3: that point and have them walk in when that's where
Speaker 3: border patrol. After they cross, border patrol will intercept them
Speaker 3: give them wristbands for the day they arrived. We actually
Speaker 3: just saw this last week. They must have ran out
Speaker 3: of wristbands because they were giving like Sunday wristbands when
Speaker 3: it was like a Wednesday. Yeah, everybody saying fuck like
Speaker 3: and that makes our job more complicated too. Not only
Speaker 3: their job, I'm sure, because they're trying to process them
Speaker 3: in order, but our job because we're trying to record
Speaker 3: how long have people been here. I remember I was
Speaker 3: talking to a Chinese nationalist and had to call a
Speaker 3: translator just to see like because they had a Sunday
Speaker 3: wristband and I think it was Tuesday or something already,
Speaker 3: and I was like, wait, you got you've been here
Speaker 3: for two days. And they were like like trying to
Speaker 3: explain what the language barrier wants. The translated like, no,
Speaker 3: we got here three hours ago. We kept thinking they
Speaker 3: got here three days ago. They kept showing the number
Speaker 3: three on their hands, and so, yeah, they give them
Speaker 3: these wristbands and then tell them to wait in these
Speaker 3: areas that are very close to where they are intercepted,
Speaker 3: and Border patrol will tell them there's cameras all over
Speaker 3: the desert, we're watching you, so don't leave, and if
Speaker 3: you leave, it'll mess up your migro process or your
Speaker 3: asylum process, and so they most of them stay. We've
Speaker 3: actually have seen a lot of people walking on the
Speaker 3: eighty here trying to get to town because they're desperate,
Speaker 3: they're cold, they're hungry, and they're probably just like fuck this,
Speaker 3: you know. But it's interesting too, how like border patrol
Speaker 3: in all media aspects denies the existence of the camps.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not explicitly to me right later, they don't exist,
Speaker 2: or they don't detain people people that they what they'll
Speaker 2: say to people aren't detained here, that they're free to go.
Speaker 1: Which technically they are and they can walk.
Speaker 3: But I had a Kurdish friend that I met at
Speaker 3: one of the camps that we call Moon Camp, and
Speaker 3: twenty year old from Turkey, and he said that him
Speaker 3: and a bunch of friends that he was traveling with
Speaker 3: just walked to the subway up the street, got a
Speaker 3: subway sandwich, and then border patrol showed up after they
Speaker 3: had ordered their food, yeah, and said you have to
Speaker 3: go back with us, but finish your food here, because
Speaker 3: imagine them walking in was being taken back with subway
Speaker 3: sandwiches and be like, oh, we can just leave and
Speaker 3: get out of here. Like so they just finished their
Speaker 3: sandwiches and then he took them straight back.
Speaker 1: So that is detention. If you can't leave, then you're
Speaker 1: in detention. That's the debt. By definition.
Speaker 2: I feel like, yeah, and I don't think people think
Speaker 2: they are free to leave. And I don't think people
Speaker 2: certainly they're not told what situation they were in, right,
Speaker 2: I think that maybe they would assume that, But there's
Speaker 2: also not very many places for them to go. We
Speaker 2: are in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 4: So from what I've talked to different people, you know,
Speaker 4: on top of just like crossing the border, there's also
Speaker 4: an entire period where these people are traveling and all
Speaker 4: of them travel in different ways, and some of them
Speaker 4: are traveling all the way from South America through Panama,
Speaker 4: through the jungle, and you know, people are dying on
Speaker 4: the route over here, and some of them are lucky
Speaker 4: enough to just fly in and and you know, right, yeah,
Speaker 4: they have to fight to Cancun, fly into Cancun, and
Speaker 4: then make their way over to TJ and make it
Speaker 4: through the border. And I have seen, like for myself
Speaker 4: with my own eyes, you know, burns from motorcycle exhaust
Speaker 4: from you know, the different methods that they've used to
Speaker 4: get here. And I've seen spider bites, I've seen, you know,
Speaker 4: injuries that are infected that have been infected for a
Speaker 4: long time because they've been that way since they were
Speaker 4: in the jungle, and it's inadequate. I had a woman
Speaker 4: that I was helping give medical care to whose ankles
Speaker 4: were swollen from a steroid that she was given that
Speaker 4: she should not have been given and that she had
Speaker 4: a bad reaction to. And yeah, that's just been their
Speaker 4: reality traveling here and trying to get here. On top
Speaker 4: of that, I think that speaking of medical issues and
Speaker 4: speaking on what you were saying earlier about the threats
Speaker 4: of becoming undocumented, the threats of you know, being forced
Speaker 4: to stay in these camps. There's even fear of having
Speaker 4: a medical emergency. So like when EMS comes out, when
Speaker 4: we call nine to one one or Border patrol calls
Speaker 4: nine one one, right, they're not like working in connection
Speaker 4: with Border Patrol. They're just going to a hospital as
Speaker 4: if it was you know, someone house person on the
Speaker 4: street going to the hospital. And so they end up there,
Speaker 4: and if they're not given the proper information to get
Speaker 4: a court tape, to finish their asylum process and to
Speaker 4: really like be submitted properly into the country, they are
Speaker 4: at risk of becoming undocumented. And I think that fear
Speaker 4: has spread among people, and I've definitely noticed personally that
Speaker 4: there is fear to have nine to one call to
Speaker 4: be taken away in an ambulance because they fear, you know,
Speaker 4: becoming undocumented or being.
Speaker 2: At risk or separated.
Speaker 4: Separated has been a big thing because if they end
Speaker 4: up having their process either take longer or just be
Speaker 4: stuck in the hospital or whatever it may be, they're
Speaker 4: away from their family, they have to go through a
Speaker 4: different process. They're not processed that at the detention center
Speaker 4: is the same way or at the same time. So
Speaker 4: it's just it's a it's a there's a lot of
Speaker 4: fear and I think that's led to a lot of
Speaker 4: unnecessary harm. And we do our best in terms of
Speaker 4: medical care, but there's you know, we're limited. We you know,
Speaker 4: it's over the counter, it's you know, it's we can't
Speaker 4: do much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's a street medicine really yeah exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like we have some doctors and nurses and other qualified
Speaker 2: medical people come and help, but they don't have the
Speaker 2: diagnostic tools that they need. Right, Like today we had
Speaker 2: somebody who had clearly some high issues and like the
Speaker 2: best we can do is say, this person needs to
Speaker 2: go to hospital. But then in this case they were
Speaker 2: able to take the person's partners. Sometimes they won't take
Speaker 2: the person's partner. Sometimes the person could be separated from
Speaker 2: their children, and so they're obviously very afraid of that.
Speaker 2: And to compound that, I think like the release that
Speaker 2: they're not released in the way they had proviously been released,
Speaker 2: that they're dumped onto the street at certain transit centers, right,
Speaker 2: and then again it falls onto volunteers nonprofits to help
Speaker 2: them get to where they're going to go. The scale
Speaker 2: of the mutual aid operation is really impressive, and it's
Speaker 2: something that I don't think is is like we don't
Speaker 2: talk about enough. People don't really understand it, So could
Speaker 2: maybe we just start like literally what we do every
Speaker 2: day in a day. We havevolity here every day.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, One thing I forgot to mention is I
Speaker 3: am here every single day now full time, ten plus
Speaker 3: hours a day. It's eight days a week. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: every day we wake up. I wake up around like
Speaker 3: six am, and we try to get to the first camp,
Speaker 3: which is down the street from where I'm staying, around
Speaker 3: seven thirty or eight o'clock in the morning. And the
Speaker 3: previous night we have loaded the van up with peanut
Speaker 3: butter and jelly sandwiches because they have a good hold,
Speaker 3: you don't need to keep them really refrigerated much or
Speaker 3: you know, the YadA YadA, and so it's just peb
Speaker 3: and j's water and fruit and we give them each
Speaker 3: one at least sometimes more if we have the capability,
Speaker 3: and then we another person who is also here full
Speaker 3: time will hit another camp on their way because it's
Speaker 3: on their way to meet up at a central location
Speaker 3: we call the Youth Center or the YC, where all
Speaker 3: of our donations end up, whether it's clothes, blankets, food items,
Speaker 3: non perishables, perishables. We have a fridge and in that place.
Speaker 3: Once we get there, we'll assess what we need to
Speaker 3: do is do we need to make more food? Do
Speaker 3: we have enough to go feed the third camp, which
Speaker 3: we call one seven seven, which is all the way
Speaker 3: in Boulevard a little outside of Hakamba, And if we
Speaker 3: have enough, we'll just hit we'll leave and hit that
Speaker 3: spot and then come back and start dinner. And in
Speaker 3: the meanwhile, we have a lot of volunteers that will
Speaker 3: show up and make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because
Speaker 3: that is our easy go to staple. It's quick to
Speaker 3: give out. It's you know, not a whole lot of
Speaker 3: prep time to make you know, five hundred sandwiches, which
Speaker 3: seems like a lot, but we've gone through probably tens
Speaker 3: of thousand sandwiches by this point.
Speaker 2: So he gave out a thousand PB andjs today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we ran out like today, I gave out everything
Speaker 3: and there was even people where like the two we
Speaker 3: got everybody in the line, which was I think I
Speaker 3: think that was around three sixty. No, no, it was
Speaker 3: three sixty when we did account and so in the morning, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and we ran out and but we had two. So
Speaker 3: like a lot of the times, especially the micros that
Speaker 3: have been there multiple days, they'll jump in. There's like
Speaker 3: always two people or three people that are like, I'm
Speaker 3: here to help Kurdish people, our amazing help and are
Speaker 3: always willing to step up. But yeah, this morning at
Speaker 3: Willow one of the camps, we had two guys that
Speaker 3: were kind of controlling the line and helping keep them back,
Speaker 3: and one of them like send them to us one
Speaker 3: at a time. And at the very end of it,
Speaker 3: I had nothing for them, and I was like going
Speaker 3: to hook them up with a couple of sandwiches and
Speaker 3: a little like everybody who helps, I'll cook them up
Speaker 3: with a couple of extra sandwiches or food items or
Speaker 3: water or cigarettes even And uh, yeah, I had nothing
Speaker 3: for them except for kids sandwiches or kid sandwiches kid packs.
Speaker 3: So we make these little sand which bags full of
Speaker 3: like different candies and you know, granola bars and things
Speaker 3: that kids would like to eat and give them a
Speaker 3: lot of nutrition and stuff.
Speaker 1: So I just gave them extra.
Speaker 3: That and once other migrants saw me giving those things
Speaker 3: out that I had been holding and telling other people, no,
Speaker 3: these are for kids, then everybody swarmed and it was
Speaker 3: just like, okay, well, I'm giving all the kid whoever's there,
Speaker 3: whoever's arm is there, They're getting you know, a kid's pack,
Speaker 3: and got rid of literally all of our food. And
Speaker 3: I think we put in like twelve plus cases of water,
Speaker 3: forty packs, and they were all gone except for maybe
Speaker 3: like ten or fifteen waters.
Speaker 1: It was one of the more dire mornings.
Speaker 3: That we've had, especially Yeah, at these camps.
Speaker 4: I know that three p sixty was the number that
Speaker 4: you guys got in the morning, but I believe that
Speaker 4: by the time that we were working in the evening,
Speaker 4: at least when I was doing medical check, the number
Speaker 4: that I was getting told either around the camp or
Speaker 4: from Border Patrol was five hundred at Willows So and
Speaker 4: this is you know, these are numbers that even Border
Speaker 4: Patrol is like freaking out over. They are, you know,
Speaker 4: worried because they can't deal with this quantity of people
Speaker 4: and keep them processing while there's still a consistent flow.
Speaker 4: And that's you know, it puts a lot of strain
Speaker 4: on us because, like you were saying, we're running out
Speaker 4: of food. We don't have enough to feed five hundred people.
Speaker 4: You know, every day, even though we're just doing you know,
Speaker 4: two meals, a breakfast and as best we can a dinner,
Speaker 4: and trying to make sure that dinner is a hot
Speaker 4: meal because it is frigid out here. I slept in
Speaker 4: my van and I kept having to wake up to
Speaker 4: try and warm up and do something to keep myself
Speaker 4: from freezing. And I, you know, I can only imagine
Speaker 4: what it's like for them with what minimal equipment they have.
Speaker 4: Some of them don't even have tents. So it has
Speaker 4: been a lot. I know that today, running medical, I've
Speaker 4: seen a lot of people with colds, and I am
Speaker 4: suspicious that that perhaps there is COVID running around, that
Speaker 4: perhaps there is, you know something, there's definitely something, some
Speaker 4: kind of very severe illness. Going through the camps and
Speaker 4: being in this freezing cold is not helping anyone's immune system.
Speaker 4: And on top of that, I've seen broken fingers and
Speaker 4: some other stuff. And that's that's been my today. Yeah,
Speaker 4: has been treating that and then helping out with dinner,
Speaker 4: which I will say I tried a little bit of
Speaker 4: the lentils and rice, and I can say we are
Speaker 4: feeding them well.
Speaker 1: It is delicious, delicious food. Thank you.
Speaker 4: Sam Schultz, an amazing cook and an amazing helper for
Speaker 4: us making sure that we, you know, are able to
Speaker 4: do this for like you were saying, for a long time,
Speaker 4: you know, this was put on uh, you know, one
Speaker 4: family of locals to really yeah, one family of Quakers
Speaker 4: to really take care of these people day in and
Speaker 4: day out. And it wasn't until you came here and
Speaker 4: we're able to actually like be here full time that
Speaker 4: there was even just an extra hand around. And you know, right,
Speaker 4: volunteers are here during the week. But the reality is
Speaker 4: is we are all still stuck at work, we all
Speaker 4: still live in this healthscape. We're all still stuck grinding
Speaker 4: those gears and making ends meet. And so coming out
Speaker 4: here for a lot of us is you know, like
Speaker 4: for me, is a weekend task. It's you know, it's
Speaker 4: what we can do. It's what we have the ability
Speaker 4: and the time and the gas money for. And on
Speaker 4: top of that, a lot of us spent a lot
Speaker 4: of our own money. I know that I've spent like
Speaker 4: at least a grand and a half on just like
Speaker 4: supplies for these runs, on supplies for whatever I can.
Speaker 4: And you know, sometimes we get we're able to get
Speaker 4: reimbursed by our mutual aids, and sometimes the money runs
Speaker 4: dry and we just, you know, we need a lot
Speaker 4: of support out here that we don't have, that we
Speaker 4: don't get And I feel like we really felt that
Speaker 4: today running out of food.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was bleak today. And of course the thing is,
Speaker 2: like we can feed five hundred people and do this
Speaker 2: gargantuane effort, and then we have to feed the same
Speaker 2: number tomorrow. And like if we clear out us that
Speaker 2: we on top of like those of us who are
Speaker 2: able to go out to do medicals, to do feeds,
Speaker 2: sometimes some of us go out and construct shelters or
Speaker 2: to check that there aren't people who are sick and
Speaker 2: the shelters who aren't getting care that they need, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. Like you said, people have to cook, right,
Speaker 2: people have to make pbdas people have to resupply our
Speaker 2: stuff and drive it up from San Diego, which is
Speaker 2: an hour and fifteen minutes away. Like it's a gargantuine
Speaker 2: effort that it's exclusively taken on by volunteers, and like
Speaker 2: a relatively small group of volunteers considering the scale of
Speaker 2: the task at hand. I wonder like if you would
Speaker 2: like talk about your volunteering experience a little bit, because
Speaker 2: I think it's been great. Like it's a very diverse
Speaker 2: group of people. We've had so many We have the
Speaker 2: Schultz family who are Quakers, who are amazing, who have
Speaker 2: been like spearheading this since the start. We have like
Speaker 2: obviously a lot of anarchist people, and a lot of
Speaker 2: people from various migrant advocacy and aid groups. Uh that's
Speaker 2: what we had the Black Panthers the other day. And
Speaker 2: it's probably a ton of people I'm missing.
Speaker 3: But yeah, in church groups, church careers, I mean, the
Speaker 3: whole the y C was kind of given to us
Speaker 3: and I think now we're renting it to my knowledge,
Speaker 3: but that was given to us by the what's the
Speaker 3: Church of Methodist Church here in Hukumba. And then there's
Speaker 3: a group of Mormons and they're just kind of unaffiliated
Speaker 3: from the church in a way, like they're not There
Speaker 3: was just a family that saw the need and some
Speaker 3: of the elders were helping load up the beans that
Speaker 3: they made the other day. You know from the house
Speaker 3: that the lady that makes it, and then another lady,
Speaker 3: Mormon lady makes us these roles and we'll just like
Speaker 3: give us like hundreds and hundreds of bread rolls, which
Speaker 3: everybody loves, even the volunteers.
Speaker 1: I've been eating the bread home made rolls. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: super good.
Speaker 3: So that Yeah, like you said, mutual ad groups, anarchists,
Speaker 3: just individuals. Random people will show up they heard it.
Speaker 3: We had a couple of people show up that heard
Speaker 3: it on National, NPR, KPBS, and you know, then they
Speaker 3: orgs border kindness. I'll look, Gelato will come out here
Speaker 3: and send volunteers and whatnot. But it's hard to really
Speaker 3: rely on volunteers. Like we have a sign up sheet
Speaker 3: and everything so we can kind of gauge what the
Speaker 3: day is going to be like.
Speaker 1: But sometimes people don't show up, and.
Speaker 3: Sometimes especially around the holiday times, it gets really thin
Speaker 3: because everybody's got their own lives and things to do.
Speaker 3: And but yeah, I mean I started volunteering just on
Speaker 3: my weekends when I was working full time at my
Speaker 3: dead end job back at home in San Diego, and
Speaker 3: I would you know, saw the need. I was down
Speaker 3: at Whiskey eight in San di Sidro pretty much every
Speaker 3: day after work and.
Speaker 1: On the weekends.
Speaker 3: And then when they started doing street releases at IRIS
Speaker 3: station in San Diego. I would just be there full
Speaker 3: time and on my weekends, just be there until in
Speaker 3: death and Haitian Bridge started showing up and kind of
Speaker 3: took in Detention Resistance and they kind of took over
Speaker 3: that scene, and so the need was like, oh, Jakamba
Speaker 3: needs help, so I just would come. After that, I
Speaker 3: just started coming out here every weekend from I would
Speaker 3: get off on a Thursday at like two pm, take
Speaker 3: care of my cats at home for a second, then
Speaker 3: drive out, help out whatever I could by the time
Speaker 3: I got here, spend the night somehow either I never
Speaker 3: had to sleep in my car, but I would be
Speaker 3: ready to, and then I have some friends here that
Speaker 3: would put me up for the night and stay Thursday
Speaker 3: night to Friday, work all day Friday and all day
Speaker 3: Saturday until I had to go home because I worked
Speaker 3: at five am on Sunday. And then all that week
Speaker 3: I would just be at wait going down after work.
Speaker 3: And so I haven't had a day off since this
Speaker 3: really started. I mean, I think I got the flu
Speaker 3: for a week five days right am. I had a
Speaker 3: fever four or five fucking days in a row, which
Speaker 3: is horrible, but so not really a day off.
Speaker 1: Technically, but yeah.
Speaker 3: And then I since I had been coming out here
Speaker 3: every weekend and dedicating my time to Hukumba and had
Speaker 3: so many ties with like the locals and I know,
Speaker 3: the people who own the hotel out here that we
Speaker 3: are currently at, and just you know, showed face and
Speaker 3: it showed a strong worth work ethic, I guess to
Speaker 3: help feed these people, and the passion of you know,
Speaker 3: and the amount of care that I gave and attention
Speaker 3: to these people and listening to them and the Schultz
Speaker 3: family who are like the main on the ground people.
Speaker 3: Since day one, We're like, yeah, this this person needs
Speaker 3: to be out here. We want to have all out
Speaker 3: here full time and all Lochlado got a grant to
Speaker 3: UH to basically fund that, and so once that money
Speaker 3: came through, I just took a sabbatical from my nine
Speaker 3: to five and I was like, peace, I got more
Speaker 3: important things.
Speaker 1: Do you think give Jeff Bezos more money? You know?
Speaker 1: So he needs more yachts clearly?
Speaker 2: Yeah, clearly?
Speaker 1: Yeah and more space trips you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah.
Speaker 3: So ever since then, I've just you know, I'm lucky
Speaker 3: enough to have that, and you know, showed that, you know,
Speaker 3: dedication to where I can be out here, and I
Speaker 3: honestly like some people may think like, oh, because I'm
Speaker 3: getting paid, I'm a boss or I'm a lead, and
Speaker 3: like to me, it's like, no, we're all leading and
Speaker 3: I'm still just doing the same work. I'm just now
Speaker 3: able to be here well on payroll forty eight hours
Speaker 3: a week, but in reality it's ten hour days, eight
Speaker 3: days a week.
Speaker 2: It's all the time. And like, yeah, I think it's
Speaker 2: really important that people know actually that we have a
Speaker 2: very veryverque group. It's not like everybody is necessarily like
Speaker 2: committed to horizontal organizing is a bill and endule, but
Speaker 2: that's how we operate and it works really well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially Sam and the Quakers, they're very good at
Speaker 3: listening to the American Friends Society.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it works so well. Like when I was
Speaker 2: just thinking the other day, I was out here and
Speaker 2: it was the day before the holiday, and first of all,
Speaker 2: we had this moment where this lady pulled up and
Speaker 2: she was like, hey, who's in charge. We were all
Speaker 2: like everyone's in charge, and the lady was like what
Speaker 2: how does that? How did you then? But then like
Speaker 2: another time, we had a bit of a crisis we
Speaker 2: ran out of balls when we're trying to feed people,
Speaker 2: and like one of us came up with yeah, and
Speaker 2: the ziplock back yeah we made. So we were like,
Speaker 2: we didn't have bowls, we had sandwiches, So we gave
Speaker 2: them a sandwich and then took the zip block back
Speaker 2: back and filled it with beans. And like, you know,
Speaker 2: it wasn't the person who'd been here for the longest
Speaker 2: or done the most sessions, but it was a great
Speaker 2: idea and it got us out of a difficult situation.
Speaker 2: And like, I think, because we organize with respect for
Speaker 2: each other, we can listen to each other and incorporate
Speaker 2: those ideas. And you had something to say.
Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, I just I want to highlight the community
Speaker 4: that I've seen built here. I know that in terms
Speaker 4: of nine hich organizing, I I personally have seen you know,
Speaker 4: everyone step up and lead, even people who are there
Speaker 4: their first day. Right if there is a task to
Speaker 4: be done and they say they know how to do
Speaker 4: it and they have a good idea, they're leading it,
Speaker 4: They're spearheading it. There is you know, there's no second
Speaker 4: guessing or egos that I've seen, at least not to
Speaker 4: such a degree that it's been harmful, and I think
Speaker 4: that that has given us a lot of power and
Speaker 4: has allowed sort of our creativity to get us through this.
Speaker 4: I think it's a testament to what non hierarchical organizing
Speaker 4: means and how you know, lack of hierarchy and lack
Speaker 4: of a dedicated leader doesn't mean a lack of leadership.
Speaker 4: I think it falls on all of us to lead.
Speaker 4: It falls on all of us to bring what we
Speaker 4: know to the table, whether that be from the experience
Speaker 4: that we've had coming here and working here and knowing
Speaker 4: the details and the minutia of what's going on specifically
Speaker 4: here in Hakumba with this project, or what we bring
Speaker 4: to the table from our past experiences. And I think
Speaker 4: that that has really beautifully coalesced into a really efficient
Speaker 4: system as best as we can do, as best as
Speaker 4: we can manage. You know, we've really made do and
Speaker 4: kept people alive in a huge way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think kept people alive is right, Like
Speaker 2: if if I don't know how this would have gone
Speaker 2: down if we weren't here, because I don't know if
Speaker 2: they would have kept doing it, but certainly more people
Speaker 2: would have been very unwell or passed away like, I
Speaker 2: think we can all think of a different medical emergency
Speaker 2: where we've had to intervene to stop it getting much worse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like just last week, I think, did you come
Speaker 3: out the day after something rained on all of us
Speaker 3: and there was like a heavy downpour.
Speaker 1: We weren't even ready.
Speaker 3: We thought it was, oh, it might be like a
Speaker 3: little drizzle or it might be light rain here, and
Speaker 3: they're scattered. But then we set up and we're cooking
Speaker 3: and getting ready for to do lunch or after breakfast
Speaker 3: and getting ready to do our dinner and stuff, and
Speaker 3: it just started downpouring on us. And I was driving
Speaker 3: and I told you, oh, yeah, you showed up that
Speaker 3: day and literally like we inter as we got to
Speaker 3: we were like, oh fuck, we got to like move now.
Speaker 3: So we just got all the ponchos that we had
Speaker 3: a bunch of ponchos, got them all in the car,
Speaker 3: drove to the first camp that we had fed that morning,
Speaker 3: and we're just started handing out ponchos as the rain's
Speaker 3: coming down. They're walking in as you know, the coyotes
Speaker 3: dropped them off and that's a long hike had the
Speaker 3: Moon camp from where they end up to where they
Speaker 3: break in the wall is thirty minute.
Speaker 1: Walk, yeah, so or so.
Speaker 3: And so they are arriving in the pouring rain, their
Speaker 3: socks are getting wet. It is super cold, especially at
Speaker 3: Moon because of the location. It's just ridiculously cold, and
Speaker 3: that's like case for hypothermia. And we're there to you know,
Speaker 3: to stop them from getting so wet. We're giving them
Speaker 3: trash bags for their bags, ponchos for their being their persons.
Speaker 3: I remember seeing this little girl, she must have been
Speaker 3: like five or six. And then we had cardboard and
Speaker 3: because we didn't think it was going to be so
Speaker 3: pouring before we when we loaded up the van and
Speaker 3: we had cardboard to keep you know, the ground drive
Speaker 3: for them to like lay on in their tents or whatever.
Speaker 3: And people took the cardboard out of the van and
Speaker 3: we're like blocking the rain and shielding this little child
Speaker 3: from getting wet, you know. And it's super windy at
Speaker 3: Moon too, at that camp. It's the location. It gets
Speaker 3: a lot of the the wind from uh whatever that passes, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it comes up from Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think anything you said, which we should probably touch on,
Speaker 2: it's like perhaps it's because of the way we organize,
Speaker 2: because we don't have like strict rolls jobs or low
Speaker 2: leadership things. But like you'd mentioned it before, but like
Speaker 2: nine times out of ten, we end up doing things
Speaker 2: with people know people right, Like the other day, I know,
Speaker 2: like a Kurdish guy and I set up a ton
Speaker 2: of tents, Colombian dude, and I built this amazing shelter
Speaker 2: and it wasn't for hit and his family, it was
Speaker 2: for anyone who needed it.
Speaker 4: I definitely have seen that sort of collaboration with the migrants,
Speaker 4: and I feel like it doesn't feel like charity. It
Speaker 4: feels like mutual aid. And on top of that, when
Speaker 4: I'm hearing from them, you know they you know, they're
Speaker 4: helping us out. But then on top of that, they're saying,
Speaker 4: I'm going to get processed and I'm coming back, I'm helping,
Speaker 4: and I'm have you been in touch with anyone who
Speaker 4: is who has come back yet?
Speaker 2: Well? Yeah.
Speaker 3: Actually, like early on in IRIS, when I was doing IRIS,
Speaker 3: there was like a few people that were staying a
Speaker 3: few days before they traveled onward and they just wanted
Speaker 3: to be around and help. There was also a dude
Speaker 3: we just called him Columbia because he was from Columbia,
Speaker 3: it's kind of that nickname stuck and he stuck around.
Speaker 3: I mean he got sponsored by pretty much loosely sponsored
Speaker 3: by one of the organizers that was helping out of
Speaker 3: Wa and he stuck around. He came out to Ukumba
Speaker 3: a bunch of times. He killed it on everything he did,
Speaker 3: cooking dishes, whatever, you know, cleaning up whatever. He just
Speaker 3: he just saw that need. And yeah, I mean I've
Speaker 3: been in contact with a couple of people that said
Speaker 3: they would come out, and you know, I don't pressure them.
Speaker 3: I don't and a A I wanted pressure them to
Speaker 3: come out because they came here for you know, better
Speaker 3: life and all that. But at the same time, it's
Speaker 3: just hard to get back to some people because I've
Speaker 3: given them brought to way too many Kurdish people to
Speaker 3: get back to everyone on WhatsApp and that's you know,
Speaker 3: I got signal, I got regular text.
Speaker 1: And then whatsappened That kind of gets buried.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, there was some Afghan folks out here in September.
Speaker 2: A few Afghan folks who would come out. I think
Speaker 2: they had arrived either in May or but perhaps earlier.
Speaker 2: But there were some afcron folks who came out and
Speaker 2: we're able to help us. Of course, like it's great
Speaker 2: because we don't all have all the languages we need
Speaker 2: and we don't have all the skills we need, and
Speaker 2: so the more people we can incorporate, even if temporarily
Speaker 2: well they're here, then like the better we can help people,
Speaker 2: right right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, I mean, but I think definitely
Speaker 3: the the the vibe is there that they want to
Speaker 3: come help. And yeah, like the other day I was feeding.
Speaker 3: We're doing a hot dinner and we set up and everything,
Speaker 3: and then all these Kurdish people because I you know,
Speaker 3: will wear this caffee like a like a scuff yeah,
Speaker 3: with the scarf that that you gave me, uh all
Speaker 3: the way from Comishla, and so they recognize it.
Speaker 1: And then I know the saying is bji.
Speaker 3: Kredistan when you know you're from Turkey, oh you Kurdish
Speaker 3: because most of the people from Turkey are Kurdish, not
Speaker 3: all the most, And so you know, we'll start talking
Speaker 3: and then you know, they get all excited and then
Speaker 3: they would just want to help, you know. And I
Speaker 3: think even regardless of if I said that or not,
Speaker 3: or had the scarf on, they would still just want
Speaker 3: to help.
Speaker 1: Remember one time I was surrounded.
Speaker 3: It was just me serving one of the things, because
Speaker 3: we'll serve multiple things water like a soup, and then
Speaker 3: a rice or a bread or whatever, and then maybe
Speaker 3: some hand wipes or something, and so we just had
Speaker 3: it was just me in the middle, surrounded my Kurdish people,
Speaker 3: and I remember the dude next to me.
Speaker 1: It was just like someone videotape.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we Krittish people help really well, tell the world,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then like even yeah, when we're not doing food,
Speaker 2: So it's like guys will often come up to me
Speaker 2: and be like, hey, do you have bin bags? We'd
Speaker 2: like to clean up. We'd like it's a mess here
Speaker 2: and we'd like to clean up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're unloading every time I'm loading, Like that's its
Speaker 3: cellphone charging station. I want, Like it doesn't matter, you
Speaker 3: know what nationality. Someone is there to help, They're like, oh,
Speaker 3: can I grab the table? Can I do this? How
Speaker 3: can I plug this in? A lot of times are
Speaker 3: plugging and I'm like, no, I got this a certain way.
Speaker 3: I like to plug this all in that makes sense
Speaker 3: and relatively high risk activity. I don't want any electrocution or.
Speaker 2: Like the other day I was chopping some stuff with
Speaker 2: an axe and guy wanted to help, and I was say,
Speaker 2: look if I hurt myself and I can get to hospital.
Speaker 2: If you hurt yourself, it's going to be a rough.
Speaker 3: That could have been a stick it out.
Speaker 1: He might purpose hurt himself at.
Speaker 2: That point he had his whole family. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 2: we build shelters, and like, some people are really good
Speaker 2: at that, and they're good at tying knots, and they're
Speaker 2: good at seeing things at three D and some people
Speaker 2: are not. So like, often just get a team of
Speaker 2: people who can help, and then you'll get a team
Speaker 2: of people who need shelter. So we'll just career to
Speaker 2: round building shelters for people. And it's fun. Like it
Speaker 2: can't I'm sure it's not a very stimulating environment out there,
Speaker 2: you know. So being engaged in a talk, completing stuff
Speaker 2: and helping people, I'm sure he's rewarding.
Speaker 3: Or like, yeah, even tonight we had a dude from
Speaker 3: Turkey who just like was holding his head. Tia one
Speaker 3: of our local residents. She lives around here. Medically, she's
Speaker 3: doesn't have a whole lot of medical experience other.
Speaker 1: Than being a mother or a grandmother.
Speaker 3: And working in as a pharmacy tech and knowing a
Speaker 3: little bit about it and learning and being super badass.
Speaker 3: She came to me and she's like, look, this guy
Speaker 3: has a headache, he's a migraine and he has medication
Speaker 3: from TV. So this is obviously like an ongoing situation.
Speaker 3: And my eyes were her just from all the smoke, yeah,
Speaker 3: the fires that they were starting in the area, and
Speaker 3: he's just sitting there holding his head, clearly, just absolutely miserable.
Speaker 3: So she took him in her car just to like
Speaker 3: give some heater and to warm them up and to
Speaker 3: try to make him feel better, get him away from
Speaker 3: the smoke. And she's like, yo, we got to get
Speaker 3: this guy. He's here traveling alone from Turkey. He doesn't
Speaker 3: have anybody. So we went and found some more and
Speaker 3: I think he was Kurdish as well. We went and
Speaker 3: found another Turkish person or Kurdish person from Turkey, and
Speaker 3: I grabbed this person and I was like, hey, I
Speaker 3: have somebody here who has a gnarly migraine and they
Speaker 3: just they need their heir alone.
Speaker 1: They don't have shelter they need.
Speaker 3: And so this guy came over and talked to him
Speaker 3: and was like look, I got we got a tent
Speaker 3: over here, come camp with us. Like that's the kind
Speaker 3: of shit that we have to deal with, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, Just like the migrants will like getting
Speaker 3: a migrant to help another migrant, you know, it's just
Speaker 3: like it's community. That's what like mutual aid is about.
Speaker 4: I think that and that specific situation, I had been
Speaker 4: talking to the group that took him in. I'd been
Speaker 4: talking with them and chatting with him, and I sat
Speaker 4: by the fire with them just talking about you know,
Speaker 4: what was your experience like, and trying to get warm
Speaker 4: because God, it's cold out there, even for us volunteers,
Speaker 4: and you know, we're far away from the fires, and
Speaker 4: it's really hard because you know, this road is cleared
Speaker 4: and so there's you know, there's no warmth out there
Speaker 4: by where they have to stand to get food. But
Speaker 4: what I what I wanted to highlight was that because
Speaker 4: we are interacting with these people as equals, because we
Speaker 4: are coming here and seeing them as people, and we
Speaker 4: spend the time to talk with them and to build
Speaker 4: commune with them, we can build those connections which allow
Speaker 4: people like the gentleman with the migraine to you know,
Speaker 4: be taken in and to have you know, basically a
Speaker 4: temporary family while he's there and make sure that he's
Speaker 4: taken care of. And that's I think something that really
Speaker 4: highlights the strength of this type of organization and this
Speaker 4: type of work, type of you know, the way that
Speaker 4: our politics, the way that our ideals really shine in
Speaker 4: this kind of setting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's right. Like I've been around a lot of
Speaker 2: humanitarian crises and you know, refuse situations, and I think
Speaker 2: we're doing it really excellent. Do you have a stectually
Speaker 2: Given the minimal funding and and sort of scale of
Speaker 2: access to resources we have, we could do a lot
Speaker 2: more if we had a lot more money, but we don't.
Speaker 3: You know, we're cooking on like a fucking burners us. Yeah, bro,
Speaker 3: we took up to a propaneting that's made out of
Speaker 3: an old cag that's just like if you turn it
Speaker 3: on wrong and let the gas bleed, you will blow
Speaker 3: yourself up. So it's just like like Sam shuw is
Speaker 3: you know, responsible for everybody at the youth center where
Speaker 3: we do stuff. So he doesn't really like other people cooking,
Speaker 3: does it. I mean, even though I know how to
Speaker 3: do it, He's like doesn't even like me doing it
Speaker 3: because he's responsible for me if anything were to happen.
Speaker 3: So it's like our capacity is super limited. We don't
Speaker 3: have enough burners, we don't have enough containers. We have
Speaker 3: a couple one really nice like locking containers that hold
Speaker 3: hot food and keep the food hot, but not enough
Speaker 3: to serve upwards of six hundred people at all three camps,
Speaker 3: and not enough vans, like it would be ideal, like
Speaker 3: in my situation to send a van that has charging
Speaker 3: capabilities to charge everybody's cell phone, to feed everybody, to
Speaker 3: give them water and all their needs, blankets, medical to
Speaker 3: each camp all at once.
Speaker 1: Instead of us driving, it's.
Speaker 3: Cooking a massive amount of food of the UTH center
Speaker 3: and hoping we have enough to hit all three camps.
Speaker 3: Because the numbers we can try to call border patrol
Speaker 3: offices and get numbers, but the numbers are always a
Speaker 3: little skewed or just off, you know, or sometimes lately
Speaker 3: they have just been straight up not giving us the
Speaker 3: fucking numbers, like being dicks, especially uh Campo Border Patrol Office,
Speaker 3: which because we deal with two different Campo takes care
Speaker 3: of the Boulevard open air detention site and then the boulevard.
Speaker 3: Border Patrol takes care of the willows.
Speaker 1: In the moon camp in a kumba and.
Speaker 3: Straight up the boulevard Port of Patrol called Campo Nazis.
Speaker 3: Like they treat their employees like Nats. They're just Nazis,
Speaker 3: and I've seen it in fact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, like we have to interact with board
Speaker 2: Patrol a lot to get people the help that they need, right,
Speaker 2: but like, yeah, they're definitely some cases where like there
Speaker 2: have been certain people who are much like they they
Speaker 2: the agent I spoke to today for a Border Pol agent,
Speaker 2: he was very accommodating. He took the person who was
Speaker 2: in medical distress and their partner, He drove them himself
Speaker 2: to where they could be ms and ensure that the
Speaker 2: pretunity they go to hospital, Like I don't have a
Speaker 2: whole lot of knowledge what happened afterwards that we don't have.
Speaker 2: We're not entitled to their private medical information and not
Speaker 2: should we be. But like other times, it could be
Speaker 2: much harder. So it's just luck of the drawer, right,
Speaker 2: Like we there's so much we don't control, I guess, yeah,
Speaker 2: and like we don't know exactly, Like we can't control
Speaker 2: who goes when, who has the highest level of knee
Speaker 2: you know, like constantly people will be coming up to
Speaker 2: me and being like, hey, like today I was warming
Speaker 2: up milk for babies in my camping stuff, right, and
Speaker 2: it was three or four babies, and they were like,
Speaker 2: do you think they'll take us first? We have babies,
Speaker 2: And like I think most of the people there would
Speaker 2: rather give up their space and let that baby go
Speaker 2: out because no one wants to see a fucking baby
Speaker 2: shivering out there like it's fucked, it's terrible, but we
Speaker 2: don't know, and we can't tell you and we can't
Speaker 2: help you, and so like a lot of that stuff's
Speaker 2: outside of our control. But the stuff that's within our control,
Speaker 2: I think we've done a really good job of I
Speaker 2: wonder like if people are listening. I think I just
Speaker 2: want to convey that we're all just weird, like a
Speaker 2: group of like we're not like Ragca extremely like Motley Crewe,
Speaker 2: and but we're really doing excellent work. I think if
Speaker 2: it may blow our trumpet, but like if people want
Speaker 2: to come and help, first of all, I would like
Speaker 2: you probably can. People think that they can't, they don't
Speaker 2: have anything useful, Like I promise you do, Like if
Speaker 2: you can, if you can like lift a ladle or
Speaker 2: like a palette of water bottles, or drive a vehicle, or.
Speaker 3: Multiple multiple languages, sometimes it's like yeah you want or
Speaker 3: even just right, or even just one language other than English,
Speaker 3: because I mean even some people speak perfectly English out there,
Speaker 3: and so just going out there and paying attention to them,
Speaker 3: even if you don't have the capacity to cook food
Speaker 3: or to serve food or whatever, if you can go
Speaker 3: talk to people and you're sociable and you can make
Speaker 3: connections and listen to their needs. And you know, there's
Speaker 3: Google Translate, there's we have a list of translators, like
Speaker 3: a form with numbers, so if you have a language barrier,
Speaker 3: you can just call start calling down the line of
Speaker 3: numbers of Mandarin or this language or that language, and
Speaker 3: you can get I got a hold of somebody one
Speaker 3: time for Mandarin to figure out how many days they
Speaker 3: had been there, and it was like called a couple
Speaker 3: of people, first no answer, and then finally someone picked up,
Speaker 3: and so it's yeah, you know, anybody, there's always you
Speaker 3: could always find something. Honestly, one thing that I make doing,
Speaker 3: which when I first started coming out here, we had
Speaker 3: a little bit more volunteers, especially I was coming out
Speaker 3: on the weekends, when weekends typically we have more volunteers
Speaker 3: because people have jobs in the weekdays, and week days
Speaker 3: we have less. But I was when I first started
Speaker 3: coming out to Hookumba on the weekends, I started bringing
Speaker 3: my guitar and my bongos and my you know, different instruments, tambourines,
Speaker 3: and I we gave out all the instruments to the
Speaker 3: migrants at night while we were giving them dinner to
Speaker 3: they were around the campfire and so that they can
Speaker 3: play and enjoy themselves and lift their spirits and so
Speaker 3: like that would be rad to have somebody on spot
Speaker 3: all the time with a guitar and like jamming with
Speaker 3: the migrants and lifting their spirits because it's they're miserable.
Speaker 3: And one dude from Muzbekistan once sold me. Spoke really
Speaker 3: good English, and in fact he told me about there's
Speaker 3: like commercials and so he.
Speaker 1: Worked at like a center where they send people over here.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like he was on the call center or whatever
Speaker 3: for it or something like that.
Speaker 1: But well, I was like, well, like how was it?
Speaker 3: Like I he was like, honestly, we're just bored. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they're just waiting and at that time, like the weights
Speaker 3: were like four or five days. You know, it changes,
Speaker 3: it vary as it goes from two to three to
Speaker 3: four or five, and the dissensions and sometimes they get
Speaker 3: out the same day if they're lucky. But yeah, it
Speaker 3: was just we're bored and we're just waiting and they're anxious,
Speaker 3: and which also just tears at their spirit while they're
Speaker 3: you know, their first day in America, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, Yeah, like welcome to America, sleeping with jesseet.
Speaker 2: It's like just above freezing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and here's no blankets, no structures, no anything, no food,
Speaker 3: no water. If your lucky, Border patrol will bring crackers
Speaker 3: and water for not enough people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and yeah, a bunch of US waiters turn up
Speaker 2: with blankets and that's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And I know that even if it's you know, I
Speaker 4: try and include other people. But even just like I
Speaker 4: go out there with my guitar sometimes and there's a
Speaker 4: lull and or we're waiting to pack up or whatever,
Speaker 4: and I'll be playing and I think the little moments
Speaker 4: like that mean everything for these folks. And I know
Speaker 4: that I've you know, I'll bring up that I have,
Speaker 4: you know, on a day that I don't have my guitar,
Speaker 4: I'll bring up that I play it and the migrants
Speaker 4: will be all excited, wanting me to bring it out
Speaker 4: or wanting me to to you know, whatever the activity
Speaker 4: may be, just to to stimulate, you know, their minds
Speaker 4: a little bit. I mean, this is it's it's really
Speaker 4: bleak and being there for for days, for just stuck
Speaker 4: in the desert with nothing to do, right, And I
Speaker 4: mean sometimes, you know, I've seen a soccer ball out
Speaker 4: there that the kids play with, and that's that's so
Speaker 4: heartwight warming. Things like that that really, you know, we
Speaker 4: want these people to feel like they can still be
Speaker 4: in community with each other like they're not. And I
Speaker 4: feel like things like that really.
Speaker 1: Help to.
Speaker 4: Repair that sense of desperation, because right now, with the
Speaker 4: level of desperation, we do see a lot of fighting
Speaker 4: for some applies, a lot of fighting for resources because
Speaker 4: it's it's hard. It's hard out there. People want to
Speaker 4: make sure that their kids have blankets. People are so
Speaker 4: cold they can't sleep, And I feel like things that
Speaker 4: bring them together, activities that really make them feel like
Speaker 4: a community out there and help us feel in community
Speaker 4: with them, allows us to have a more cohesive relationship
Speaker 4: and allows things to go more smoothly. And I think it's,
Speaker 4: you know, in some cases, more important than the supplies themselves,
Speaker 4: because it makes sure that they go to the right places.
Speaker 4: It helps us triage, it helps us, you know, it's
Speaker 4: its own tool for survival.
Speaker 3: It could distract them from their suffering, you know, if
Speaker 3: they can have an ounce of joy, you know, and
Speaker 3: this horrible condition, in these horrible conditions, that it'll distract
Speaker 3: them enough to smile and to laugh and to not
Speaker 3: be miserable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a normal moment. Yeah. So I wonder
Speaker 2: if people want to help, what are the ways that
Speaker 2: they can help.
Speaker 3: Ways it can help are are coming out here directly,
Speaker 3: hands on the ground.
Speaker 1: Money donating money.
Speaker 3: Is another huge need because a lot of the supplies
Speaker 3: that we need cost money.
Speaker 1: We need a new kitchen, we need, you know, a.
Speaker 3: Dishwashing station because we're currently just dumping all of our
Speaker 3: dish washing water into a lawn that has a small drain. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and yeah, a Loolato is one organization that takes money
Speaker 3: that you can donate to. Border Kindness is another one. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I know, Detention Resistance is out here. A lot the
Speaker 3: most direct way to is would be donating directly to
Speaker 3: Sam Schultz himself. So yeah, and just you know, following
Speaker 3: those same organizations, they're a free shit. Color Active is
Speaker 3: another one. They mostly focus on W eight. But this
Speaker 3: is all related, right, Like I we had this man
Speaker 3: from Turkey who came with his dog Bom bomb or
Speaker 3: bam bam like he said flintstones, but they say bomb bomb,
Speaker 3: I guess. And he was stuck in one of the camps,
Speaker 3: and so you know, we like took his dog because
Speaker 3: he was not going to be taken from the camp.
Speaker 3: He spent the night alone because they had enough room
Speaker 3: for him. They's like, they don't know how to process
Speaker 3: a fucking dog, I guess. So we took his dog
Speaker 3: for him and so he could get processed. And once
Speaker 3: he ended up out of detention at Central, which is
Speaker 3: where they released them, we reunited his dog with him.
Speaker 3: Very emotional on both sides of the separation.
Speaker 1: And the reuniting. So you know, there's all these organizations.
Speaker 3: You can you know, volunteer down in Central at the
Speaker 3: when they release you can you know there's and so yeah,
Speaker 3: but following all these accounts sharing the stories, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean on your social media, be it Twitter,
Speaker 3: all re call it the other thing or you know, Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 3: whatever your media is. Discord YadA YadA.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think even sharing my stories is really powerful.
Speaker 2: People could translate, they can reach out, they want to
Speaker 2: do that. I looked up the r L it's for
Speaker 2: border Kindness. It's link tr dot e e slash border Kindness,
Speaker 2: and for it's altlado a l O t r O
Speaker 2: l a d o dot org slash donate And.
Speaker 1: They pay me to be out here, so please don't
Speaker 1: it to them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, help them and border kindas. Jackie and James
Speaker 3: are great, They're always out here.
Speaker 1: It's either one is wonderful.
Speaker 4: I also wanted to highlight the lovely mutual aid groups
Speaker 4: that do a lot of work. There's not as many
Speaker 4: of them directly putting their efforts out here, but I
Speaker 4: know that they have helped me work out here and
Speaker 4: make sure that I have the funds I need to,
Speaker 4: you know, do little store runs that are necessary on
Speaker 4: a on a moment's notice at times because we we
Speaker 4: run out of something and we can't wait for a
Speaker 4: bulk order supply and the you know, there there are
Speaker 4: these mutual aid groups. You know, they they put in
Speaker 4: the work to reimburse folks when we do things like that,
Speaker 4: when we have to go make runs because we can't
Speaker 4: bulk order, we can't do it the most efficient way
Speaker 4: because we have a need right now. And that has
Speaker 4: saved us in a lot of different moments, especially I
Speaker 4: used to volunteer down at W eight in Sandy Cidro
Speaker 4: and that was the primary way that we got resources
Speaker 4: was through these mutual aid groups who who fundraised and
Speaker 4: and I yeah, I just wanted to highlight them and
Speaker 4: highlight the So there's the Rose Cute Collective. I know
Speaker 4: that they do a lot of fundraising. I know that
Speaker 4: you were saying free Ship, Free Shit Collective. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 4: there's a few Freestore SD Yeah, there's a there's a
Speaker 4: few different ones who you know, their funds help keep
Speaker 4: us running, especially in the hardest of times right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we're all broke.
Speaker 4: We're so broke, we have no money, have any money.
Speaker 3: I'm on the migrant diet because I'm broke, and I'm
Speaker 3: just eating the food that we feed them when there's leftovers.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we've been a lot of peb and j
Speaker 2: and beans help us, help us feed ourselves and that
Speaker 2: was wonderful. Thank you so much. Yeah, everyone listening to
Speaker 2: you do.
Speaker 1: Name, thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and come down here. If someone came from San
Speaker 2: Francisco in May, come back, Like there are places you
Speaker 2: can stay are in the desert if you want to
Speaker 2: come and help. But even if you have language skills
Speaker 2: like we there were so many ways you can help.
Speaker 4: Come down. I've always had a place to stay, even
Speaker 4: though I like, like of all I've I've always been
Speaker 4: ready to sleep in my van, but always had a
Speaker 4: spot to say, come down. It's you know, it's worth it.
Speaker 4: It's there's a vortex that's not coming they called the
Speaker 4: locals call it, call it of vortex. You know. You
Speaker 4: you come here and it's like every past lifetime has
Speaker 4: has been here and you're destined to be here. There's
Speaker 4: something special about this town and I've really fallen in
Speaker 4: love with it since coming.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I hope we'll be boogum. It would mean
Speaker 2: a lot to me if like we could do something
Speaker 2: cool and like further support something that's very important to
Speaker 2: me and I think very important for the world.
Speaker 1: Totally. It's sick.
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