Co-published by The American Prospect
In California, the potential impact of workplace raids is enormous. Of the nation’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, over 2.6 million live in this state – almost one in every 10 California workers is undocumented.
A photo essay by Joanne Kim.
Co-published by Newsweek
California citizens have declared they will defy the federal government to protect the estimated 2.6 million undocumented immigrants woven into the state’s civic, economic and spiritual life. Here the nationwide wave of resistance to President Donald Trump has become a tsunami.
Last Friday, the Sheriff of Sacramento County, Scott Jones, announced that he would host a community forum with Thomas Homan, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
A new series exploring how, despite California’s resistance to Donald Trump, white nationalism and extremism are alive and well in the nation’s most diverse state.
Video of protests against the Trump administration’s travel ban.
Anti-immigration decrees marked the first week of a shock-and-awe rollout of Trump initiatives to build a 1,900-mile wall along the border with Mexico, to cut off federal funds to “sanctuary cities” and to ban refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Three-quarters of Californians oppose mass deportation measures of the kind that President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for.
More than any other place, California is well positioned to push back against the agenda of the incoming president. In a special series, Capital & Main examines why and how the Golden State will both lead the resistance to Donald Trump and continue to advance progressive ideas and policies.
For the past two decades, California has been at the cutting edge of social and economic change in America. Now, with Donald Trump about to enter the Oval Office, the Golden State is poised to take on a new role: leader of the anti-Trump resistance.
Over the next four years these California leaders will be in the forefront of opposing the Trump administration on immigration, the environment, labor rights and other issues.
More than any other place, California is well positioned to push back against the agenda of the incoming president. In this special series, Capital & Main examines why and how the Golden State will both lead the resistance to Donald Trump and continue to advance progressive ideas and policies.
President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t yet sworn his oath of office, but his announced policies have already thrown a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meeting into pandemonium. BY LEIGHTON WOODHOUSE
Yesterday was International Migrants Day, the date the United Nations has designated to affirm and celebrate the human right of migrants to relocate in search of a better life.
Maria Elena Durazo knows about immigrant workers, labor and civil rights. She has headed up the hospitality union UNITE HERE’s Immigration, Civil Rights, and Diversity program since 2014.
Devin Browne’s short-subject film Hotel Arizona debuted in Los Angeles October 13 at the Highland Theater in Highland Park. The 22-minute story is about a young woman who, with her mother, runs a hotel where migrants stay, and who devises a way to “Yelp” the smugglers who bring people across the border and rip them off—or worse.
Immigration has never been more in the national spotlight, with Republican presidential candidates histrionically claiming most of those who cross the Mexican border are rapists and murderers, while calling for everything from mass deportations to the building of a massive wall with Mexico. Politicians and citizens are also debating how best to deal with Syrian refugees fleeing their war-torn country.
But there’s a border story the majority of Americans are not hearing about.
Over the last two years, more than 100,000 unaccompanied minors — from those under 18 years old to as young as 6 — have crossed the border trying to escape the violence that plagues their home countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. You won’t find this mass exodus mentioned in stump speeches or discussed by pundits on the 24/7 news channels.
Herself the daughter of Cuban refugees, CalArts teacher/playwright Marissa Chibas is trying to do something about that.
The story of Mary and Joseph leaving their small town for Bethlehem has spawned dramatizations, poems, carols and a lot more since it was first told in the late First Century CE. The Latin American enactment, called Las Posadas, runs for nine nights, from December 16 through Christmas Eve. Each night families make a procession through their communities, walking from one house to another, begging for space for the holy couple and a birthing place for the baby Jesus. At every home they are turned away – until one family welcomes these poor wayfarers, usually with warm drinks and sweets.
The festival reenacts the ancient commandment from the Jewish tradition that we should welcome the stranger, the foreigner, the immigrant – because at one time we were all newcomers to this land.
Most Americans have forgotten this and have instead become very fearful after the November Paris attacks. Even while 9,000 refugees from Syria,
» Read more about: Immigration Crisis: The Strangers Are Us »
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This is an encore posting from our State of Inequality series
(Andy Warner’s comics have appeared in many places, including Slate, Medium, American Public Media, Symbolia, KQED, popsci.com and for the United Nations Refugee and Works Agency.)
Nearly a decade ago, L.A. labor leader María Elena Durazo organized the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, a national caravan that brought immigrants and their supporters around the country to Washington, D.C., to push for immigration reform. In the ensuing years, there has been much talk but no action on extending legal protections to the country’s millions of undocumented immigrants.
All that changed yesterday, when President Barack Obama announced that he would sign an executive order granting temporary protection to as many as 5 million immigrants. Advocates were elated, while critics sharpened their knives and prepared for a PR counteroffensive.
Capital & Main spoke by phone with Ms. Durazo this morning shortly after she arrived in Las Vegas to join the President as he signs the executive order into law.
Capital & Main: What do you think of President Obama’s executive order granting temporary protection to undocumented immigrants?
» Read more about: Immigration Advocate María Elena Durazo on Obama’s Executive Order »
