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Month: December 2021

Celebrating a Wave of 2021 Community Wins!

Posted on by Cris Batista

In 2021, Mijente saw a wave of wins that were possible because you! The organizers and volunteers, advocates and activists that pushed for justice made space for community victories. These flowers are yours, and we want to celebrate the wins with you.

The start of the year found us in the final sprint of our Georgia con Ganas campaign, an effort of Mijente PAC and GLAHR Action Network to knock every Latino door in the State of Georgia and win the Senate — flanked by phone calls, mailers, text messages, and digital organizing.

Our Electoral Efforts to Get the Goods 

For 8 weeks, through a diverse, multi-racial coalition and a kick-ass canvassing program lead by GAN organizers, we engaged the Latino electorate one door and one conversation at a time. We knocked on every Latino door in the state, and contributed to massive Latinx early voter turnout, unlike the state had ever seen before. And we won the Senate. 

And though our celebrations were briefly interrupted (by the insurrectionist storming of the capital that same day), we pushed forward knowing that the fight was just beginning. 

We have always said that the Fuera Trump campaign to block Trump from a second term was not about choosing a savior, but instead picking a target who we would push on our demands for racial, economic, climate, and gender justice.   

Grassroots Organizing with Co-Governance 

In the summer, Mijente began working with elected officials in co-governance, ensuring they listen to their constituents, not corporate lobbyists, to push forward policies that benefit our communities. We held our first “Serve the People Exchange” to share lessons and explore questions about the dialectical relationship between contra and desde el estado organizing work.

The office of Vice Mayor Carlos Garcia (Phoenix, District 8) and the office of Councilwoman Lane Santa Cruz (Tucson, Ward 1) hosted our hub organizations Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) and Siembra NC. 

From Georgia to Massachusetts to New York,  we got down to the grassroots level to create real, local change. In November elections across the country we helped: 

  • Elect pro-Black and pro-Latinx city council members in Atlanta
  • Elect 3 Mijente members to Boston City Council, almost 25% of the entire council: Julia Mejía, Kendra Hicks, and Richard Arroyo
  • Elected Mijente member Tiffany Cabán to city council to continue spearheading a campaign to permanently close down the deadly prison on Rikers Island

Demanding Justice Far Beyond “Immigration Reform” 

That’s why we began our 100 Day campaign of Eyes on ICE, to make clear to the Biden Administration and new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) leadership that undoing Trump’s immigration policies were not enough. They would have to go further in dismantling the immigration caging and deportation machine in order to secure the rights and wellbeing of immigrants in the US. 

We collaborated with 78 different organizations to host 30 Truth and Accountability forums, with participation from 48 states & Mexico. We documented 150 testimonies speaking to the specific reasons why deportations must stop, ICE must be dismantled, and how to go about doing it.

Next, we focused on the Prosecutorial Discretion Memo (PD Memo), the document that guides Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on who they can arrest, detain, and prioritize for deportation. We know that directing an intervention strategy towards this policy could critically limit the power of ICE agents. A win on the PD Memo dramatically reduces deportations, ends family separation, and keeps our communities safe.    

Then in the fall of 2021, DHS released its PD Memo policy for how ICE will conduct immigration enforcement in our communities – and we learned of our wins. By removing categorial criminal convictions as a basis for deportation, the memo reflects the hard-won efforts of organizers and advocates to shift towards more protections of the last 10 years. 

With this, there is space for organizers to stay in the fight. Now, the guidelines can be used as a tool by organizers to stop our community members from being deported and make sure that local ICE offices and ICE agents follow their own guidelines.

In November, we started supporting cases of detained individuals for release under the new guidelines, including Marvin Reyes who was freed from two years in detention on December 8th 2021. People like Marvin Reyes have the chance to return home, because past criminal convictions can no longer be used to make someone a priority for deportation. We’ve also helped set up a framework to protect workers and tenants from being retaliated against when they speak up about workplace abuse or landlord issues. 

 Building the Next Generation of Organizers to Win 

This year we also tapped into the power our neighborhoods already have: each other. 

With your help, we are increasing our organizing capacity across the country by jumpstarting our 6-month Latinx Organizing Fellowship to train community members and organizers in political education, power mapping, campaigns, facilitation, and base-building. 

This is just the beginning of a multi-year strategy to continue changing the political landscape and deliver our peoples’ demands.

We will continue in our commitment to building Latinx political and social power that impacts the daily experiences of our gente. These huge wins were only possible because of Mijente members, local community organizers, volunteers, and donors. We’re grateful to you for your support, and look forward to throwing down with you in 2022 and beyond.

New Year & New Fights, Same Mijente Principles of Unity

Posted on by Cris Batista

Mijente is saying farewell to 2021 with our head and hearts full of possibility. As we look forward to a new year in 2022, we know it will bring a fresh set of political and social challenges and collective community care opportunities. In all of it, we remain in the fight for justice and transformative change for our gente. 

All of our efforts are grounded in our Principios of Unity. We strive to feel pride and confidence in our communities’ ability to not just survive, but thrive and bring about tangible change. The seven principios of Mijente serve as a guide for our work, our movement, and our members. In sharing them with you here, we mean to inspire more hope in a future free from oppression.

 “Hope is essential to any political struggle for radical change when the overall social climate promotes disillusionment and despair.”

bell hooks

Principio 1 

We are Latinx and Chicanx people that are part of movements for justice and self-determination for all people.

We must cultivate a space that is multi-generational, multi-racial, multi-cultural — where we don’t conflate our experience but understand how oppression and exploitation is linked. This means that we are pro-Black, pro-indígena, pro-worker, pro-mujer, pro-lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer, and pro-migrant. We hold all of those identities and our unity against shared oppressions is central to our vision for change.

Principio 2

Transformative change requires more from us, not just more of us.

We work towards strengthening infrastructure and movement around us with the belief that demographics are not destiny. Even as the Latinx and Chicanx community grows, the progressive change we need is not a given. Both external and internal factors threaten it. We see our liberation as bound to Black Liberation, Indigenous sovereignty, economic and climate justice and other liberation movements.

Principio 3

We are creating a leaderful space that is accountable, transparent, and continues evolving.

We are committed to having honest, courageous conversations, so that we can develop and make room for new and seasoned leaders to continue evolving our political home. To say it simply: we need more not less leadership. That’s why we seek to lift up all the different forms of leadership people bring to justice work. We strive for a leader-full space, in which we hold ourselves and each other accountable, share information and resources, listen and implement input. 

Principio 4

We organize people, technology and resources to get the goods.

We believe in the power of and are committed to organizing. And our foundational approach to change is through organizing, by bringing together people and sustaining collective efforts to achieve change. Our communities and organizing efforts can and should harness the possibilities of new technology. But we will never lose the power of in-real-life connections. We are open to experimenting new ways to create digital and physical space for Latinxs to connect and build with each other.

Principio 5

We are loyal to our ultimate goal of achieving el buen vivir and self-determining our future, not to singular tactics, strategies, or dogma. 

We understand that there needs to be a multiplicity of strategies and tactics to get El Buen Vivir. It includes doing and showing up in work sin (without), contra (against), and desde (from) the state. Our work must improve the lives of our gente. This may mean long-term strategies that set up the opportunities for organizing or for future wins, even if they are not our full, ultimate goal. As individuals and organizationally we will work in different fields and formations as parts of a multi-pronged strategy.

Principio 6

We don’t throw each other away. 

Everyone is capable of being harmful and of being harmed. We believe in principled struggle, and that as disagreements arise conversation and resolution is critical. Conflict is inevitable and necessary for honest discourse and unity across differences. We commit to building a space that can hold disagreement can lead to greater accountability, resilience and antifragility.

Principio 7  

We acknowledge and value that part of the work is to recover, unlearn, and remember.

Like all colonized people, we hold the double consciousness of what we have been told versus what we know to be true. We value authenticity and a holistic view of the labor of pursuing justice and building power. Recognizing that we all have work to do on our own healing is important. Part of this is unlearning lies we’ve been told, remembering who our people are and where we come from, and living the legacy of radical love, resistance, and resilience of our ancestors. 

As we prepare for what’s to come, we hope you join us en la lucha por El Buen Vivir in 2022 and beyond.

Safer Communities Without ICE: Our 2021 Big Wins

Posted on by Cris Batista

This has been a year of big wins for the #NoTechforICE campaign.

Today we’re celebrating the fact that ICE has been cut off from accessing the utilities data of 171 million people. This step forward blocks ICE from using personal information to surveil, arrest, detain and deport our community members. This is just the first step. We will continue demanding an end to the practice of data broker corporations like LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters selling sensitive personal data, a practice that endangers us all regardless of status.

Looking Ahead to 2022

On Utility Data

First, we’re calling on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to investigate data brokers for using this utility data, originally shared by consumers to access essential services, for the purpose of arrests and deportations.

This win would not have been possible if it wasn’t for the fierce organizing and activism by immigrant rights organizers, borderlands communities, students, legal scholars, librarians, and justice-minded investors. Over the past two years, this diverse set of groups have brought the fight to ICE — and the tech companies that sell them our data — to demand an end to the human rights abuses. 

On Sanctuary Cities

Next, we’re bringing it to your city! For years we have sounded the alarm that ICE is setting up infrastructure that uses technology at an unprecedented scale, locally and nationally. As ICE looks to data brokers and other tech companies to circumvent local sanctuary protections, we will fight back. And you can join us in building the path towards real digital sanctuary. As we ring in the new year, we invite you to reach out if you are interested in doing new work in your city or municipality to target digital ICE surveillance.

The Wins of 2021

The Students

Nationwide, law students have been organizing to demand that their law schools end contracts with LexisNexis & Westlaw (a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters). Many demanded schools provide research tools that don’t come at the expense of migrant lives and community safety. Students at Seattle University Law School began sounding the alarm about the hypocritical contracts with the two companies. Then, they took part with Mijente and End the Contract Coalition in nationwide protests during a week of action. As a result, the law school implemented steps to increase transparency around the contracts and offer alternatives. These small wins are steps in the right direction towards ending the contracts altogether.

The Libraries

In April 2021, the LexisNexis corporation signed a $22.1 million contract with ICE. This contract stands to provide the agency access to billions of public and private data. Generated from sources like cell subscription plans, bankruptcy records, credit history and more, one goal of the contract is for the company to “assist the ICE mission of conducting criminal investigations”. This October, the Library at the Lake Washington Institute of Technology became the first library in the country to cancel their contract with LexisNexis because of their contracts with ICE.

The Borderlands

In an attempt to rebrand their approach to the border wall as a “gentler” and “smarter” alternative, the Biden administration is creating a digital and virtual wall. This wall that uses surveillance technologies like drones, biometric data collecting, and mobile phone hacking. And it is just as deadly in its targeting of migrants and communities at the Southwest border. Organizers and activists in these communities are fighting back. They are exposing the multi-million dollar contracts that come at the expense of much needed community services and aid. The Rio Grande Valley No Border Wall Movement collaborated with Mijente and Just Futures Law to release our recent report.

You can more about the impacts of the Deadly Digital Wall in the report: here

The Investors

This summer, a majority of the independent shareholders with stock in the Thomson Reuters’ corporation voted in favor of a proposal to review the company’s contracts with ICE.  For over a decade, Thomson Reuters’ has been working with ICE. What does this mean? They have been providing the software agents use to target and track community members, citing “impartiality” as a principled business practice. As a result, their contracts with ICE have only grown in size over the years. But now investors are starting to push back. Now, they’re demanding a framework to address the serious human rights risks and abuses that come with data brokering.

The Deportation Defense Movement

Finally, we want to give a big shout out to the organizers and activists standing with us. In the fight against deportations, our members and partners have been taking to the streets to demand justice. During a protest outside of Thomson Reuters NY office, organizers shared the connections between data brokering and deportations. We will keep organizing until #NoTechforICE becomes the reality.

“[ICE] relies on tech and data companies that sell them our data, and help analyze our information to make deportations and raids brutally efficient. Thomson Reuters CLEAR program is one of the main ways that ICE and Palantir have access to our private information.”

Vero Bayetti, Mijente member sharing during the action (pictured below)

These Immigrants Organized & Won $17 Million from a For-Profit Detention Center

Posted on by Cris Batista

As of late October, a ruling by a federal judge set a new precedent for private detention centers in Washington.

GEO Group, the company that runs the Northwest ICE Processing Center for immigrants, must pay people who are detained and working in the facility the state’s minimum wage. 

Here’s the story on how our compas from La Resistencia, an organization composed of community leaders who’ve personally been impacted by ICE, worked with immigrants inside the detention center to help make this happen.

A leader inside the detention center speaking up about the conditions of the kitchen in the detention center.

Thanks to the organizing efforts of our compas and the courage of our gente inside who spoke out, thousands of people who were locked up in the Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWDC) are now eligible for back pay in a multi-million dollar class action lawsuit. The GEO group will have to start paying working detainees $13.69 an hour, which is Washington state’s minimum wage.

The GEO group has exploited thousands of gente detained at its Tacoma, WA facility by having them perform all kinds of cleaning tasks and upkeep for the facility — preparing meals, cleaning toilets, washing floors. For a full day’s work at the for-profit detention center they are paid only $1 per day.

Team of La Resistencia protesting at NWDC

La Resistencia is an organization made up of community leaders who’ve been detained or have had a loved one detained by ICE. Their purpose is to do everything in their power to shut down the Northwest ICE Processing Center. In 2014 they helped organize the first hunger strike by working directly with the people detained. La Resistencia advocated and sounded the alarm on the demands of those on strike: better food and pay. Since then, gente detained have endured meals that often include rotten food made in kitchens infested with rats and the exploitative $1 a day wage.

Since then, La Resistencia has been there, working with people on the inside to tell their stories, expose the harm inflicted on them, and provide a platform for their demands. They launched a hotline to expand their reach and to help people get released and returned to their families.

Gente detained, sharing photos of the weekly food menu, exposing the low-quality food items.

After years of this work, the team at La Resistencia has learned how to develop relationships with immigrants who are detained and word of their work has spread. They’ve earned trust in the community. They’ve supported many other hunger strikes to improve conditions in the detention center. They’ve helped countless others obtain release. They’ve worked with the loved ones of those detained, lawyers, elected officials and so many others to expose the harms of the detention center and advocate for its closure.

They’ve taken thousands of calls on their hotline and plan to continue taking them. The relationships developed and the trust granted gave them vital information and evidence from inside the detention center for years. It’s these very relationships and information sharing that helped build the case against the multi-billion dollar company, GEO.

SOS action organized by gente detained at NWDC in April 2020.
SOS action organized by gente detained at NWDC in April 2020.

Maru Mora Villapando, leader of La Resistencia, wanted this to be clear to everyone who learned their part of the story: “It was the people who were detained who helped build the case. They risked being deported and retaliation for speaking up.” 

At Mijente, we believe prisons, detention centers – whatever you want to call them – shouldn’t exist. We want to see an end to human cages and to the criminalization of our gente. As we fight to make this happen, whether that be preventing deportations of our gente one case at a time or helping shut down detention centers, it is vital that we track wins that set large-scale, new precedents in the country. These bright spots can become future organizing targets and wins. 

Arianna Genis is Director of Local Partnerships at Mijente. She is a xicana organizer, digital strategist, and storyteller. Find her on Twitter at @AriannaGenis