Longtime organizer and former Pima County Legal Defender Isabel Garcia starts the conversation off with an assessment of U.S. public knowledge of important historic issues such as the genocide of Indigenous people, slavery, labor, and immigration.
“What do people,” she asks, “know about immigration in this country?” This is the question that guides our conversation that spans decades, even centuries, but ultimately ends up assessing the current state of things under Donald Trump.
“What we allow them to do on the border,” she warns, ”is what they will do to you.”
Isabel is the co-chair of the organization Coalición de Derechos Humanos, and has been on the frontlines of border and immigrant rights since the 1970s. In this conversation, filled with story-telling and biting analysis, Isabel tells listeners how she debated John McCain in the 1990s and schooled Bernie Sanders at the border during his first presidential run.
She also challenges us to “imagine what we can be,” and talks about the coalition they are forming called Defensa y Resistencia, which has a Stop the Kidnapping Campaign that directly confronts current ICE tactics. “We are openly going to protect our neighbors.” Isabel challenges listeners to do just that, by speaking up and plugging in.
