Host Mimi Rosenberg, joined by Ken Nash, convenes frontline organizers Megan Ortiz, Angelica, and John Parker for a deep dive into the escalating state repression against immigrant workers in Los Angeles and beyond. From militarized ICE raids at day labor centers to the weaponization of white supremacy and capitalist exploitation, the conversation links the immediate crises to a centuries-long history of ethnic cleansing, colonialism, and labor exploitation in the U.S. The guests expose the bipartisan complicity enabling these attacks, draw parallels to Gaza and other sites of imperial violence, and highlight the central role immigrant labor plays in building and sustaining the economy. They share on-the-ground accounts of resistance—from rapid response networks to boycotts—and call for solidarity across movements, urging listeners to join community defense efforts, support immigrant-led organizing, and confront capitalism’s drive to profit from human suffering.
00:00 Introduction – Immigrant exploitation from the Mexican Repatriation to ICE raids
02:05 Megan Ortiz recounts two ICE raids in one day at Los Angeles day labor centers
10:18 Angelica on student fear, DACA status, and naming U.S. immigration policy as ethnic cleansing
18:44 Linking ethnic cleansing in the U.S. to global colonialism and genocide
25:26 John Parker on genocide definitions, historic parallels, and the necessity of protest
31:42 Building coalitions: Palestine solidarity, labor alliances, and immigrant defense
38:05 Megan on the history of racialized labor exploitation and the skill of day laborers
44:12 Angelica on capitalism’s role in sustaining undocumented labor exploitation
51:03 John Parker on the weaponization of white supremacy from slavery to detention centers
57:48 U.S. imperialism, the Monroe Doctrine, and forced migration
1:02:26 Angelica on resistance strategies, rapid response teams, and community self-defense
1:07:14 Megan on movement entry points and divesting from complicit corporations
1:11:03 Final calls to action: economic solidarity, being loud, building unity to shut it down
1:14:18 Conclusion – Immigrant workers as leaders in the fight for justice and democracy
Rough TRANSCRIPT:
I'm Mimi Rosenberg. And with Ken Nash, we're building bridges, not walls. Building bridges to amplify the voices of those fighting for justice, dignity, and liberation. Today we confront the violent machinery of immigrant exploitation in the From the Mexican repatriation to the bracero program, from ICE raids in our neighborhoods to high-tech surveillance and detention centers,
immigrant communities have been targeted for profit and political gain. And now, in Los Angeles and other blue cities, we're witnessing a new wave of immediate and accentuated repression. Masked ICE agents in rental trucks, militarized raids near MacArthur Park, and the expansion of fear as policy. But communities are fighting back.
We're joined by three powerful voices in that fight. Together, we'll explore how immigrant workers are resisting exploitation, building coalitions, and reclaiming space from the streets to MacArthur Park to the classrooms and job centers where struggle takes root. Angelica is an award-winning ethnic studies educator and immigrant justice organizer in Los Angeles whose work centers youth,
women, women, of the Barrio, and community self-defense against ICE and state violence. John Parker is a longtime organizer with the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice, connecting immigrant defense, labor solidarity, and anti-imperialist struggle.
And Megan Ortiz, an old friend revisited, is the executive director of the IDEPSCA, the Institute for Popular Education, Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California, the largest day laborer and domestic worker organization in California, where she organizes day laborers through popular education and democratic job centers. And I want to begin with Megan.
who when I connected with her said, yep, I was in a raid just the other day. And welcome to all of you. But Megan, get us started so that people can really put a human face and an emotion on what you were immersed in a raid. What does that feel like? What did it look like? What happened to the workers?
And thank you again for joining us. Thank you, Mimi and everyone. And it really is an honor to be in BAI. It's my birth home Pacifica station as a Queens born and bred organizer. You know, last Friday. We had two raves in one day at our day labor center in Van Nuys in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. It was one of the hottest days of the summer, reaching about 100 degrees.
At about 8. 30 in the morning, Border Patrol agents in unmarked vehicles, about a dozen or so, came in and started grabbing people, throwing them on the ground and took about 10 people. Some of them since have been released. So about six total actually ended up being kidnapped from that parking lot in the Home Depot.
That was raid number six. Excuse me, that was raid number five in that particular Home Depot in Van Nuys. But the first one since the alleged restraining order had been filed. Not four hours later, those same agents came back and this time went straight for our day labor center. We have five day labor centers, IREPSCA, Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California,
across the city of Los Angeles. And this has been the day labor center that has been targeted the most. out of all the day labor centers from these raids. They came back a second time and went straight for the casita, as the workers affectionately call the day labor center. That is a resource hub, a place where workers get work, get trained, get support. And they surrounded the Day Labor Center and they surrounded our staff who stood in front of the Day Labor Center to protect those workers that were inside.
What it feels like if you really get to experience the terror of having masked men with tactical gear pointing their weapons at you, while you're asking them for a warrant that they're supposed to have. It is them staring at you in the eyes coldly and ignoring your request for a warrant and saying absolutely nothing. It is watching them reach into a pocket and pull out a canister of tear gas to throw at you and you calling that out in front of your comrades so that others will see it and have a chance to protect themselves as necessary.
It is about having such an awareness of your surroundings because you have literally 30 armed agents surrounding you looking for anyone that they can grab and then watching them then chase the lone worker that was remaining in that Home Depot parking lot that they had taken so many earlier that morning and watching as three agents threw him to the ground and kidnapped him while a dozen LAPD officers stood by doing nothing. So at the beginning, as I said, this is now the sixth raid at that particular day labor center. At this point,
though, our day labor centers have been the sites of about over a dozen raids now. At first, you vacillate between anger and sadness, especially then as you have to navigate with the families looking for their loved ones before they are forced to sign, quote-unquote, voluntary deportation orders or shipped off to an out-of-state concentration camp,
a. k. a. detention center. Yeah. You vacillate between anger and sadness as your company. But right now, it's just anger. Right now,
it's just sheer anger at the continued scale of this, at the blatant ignoring of the restraining order, and also at the very, very clear lack of response from this so-called blue state and blue city. Mm-hmm. Angelica, as I catch my breath listening to this, and it's not as though we haven't experienced it on the East Coast,
but it will never cease to horrify me, and it takes me back forever. to portraits that certainly my own family experienced in Europe, and that was the advent of the Gestapo and the rounding up of people and disappearing them, essentially. But What are you hearing,
Angelica, from students and families, especially women and youth, about the pressures they're facing in this political moment? How are these experiences like shape being their sense of safety and belonging? And it's personal to you if I may also mention that you are a DACA category. Yes. So I think it's important to note that although the Trump administration is
exasperating the deportations and the ethnic cleansing, the structures that he's using have been established by Democrats, have been established for various decades. And so the groups that I'm working with have actually been doing the patrols that you mentioned earlier for decades. We've been resisting for over 500 years. And so as an educator, the last week of school was when the militarization and the expansion of the ice
rates happened in LA. There were actually like military vehicles crossing really close to my school and my students were very aware of that. We were actually taking our finals during that time and students started freaking out. And so all expectations of them being able to focus on during that time went out the window because there were raids less than a mile from my school. A lot of their parents were working. I had students who were telling me that their parents were citizens,
but they were still hiding because they know that they'll take everyone. And so I need to make it really clear, right, that regardless of whether you're a citizen or not, they're taking anyone and everyone. One of our comrades was kidnapped this past weekend. She's a nurse. And regardless of how kind and how loving and how helpful you are to the community,
they don't care. They're willing to take anyone. My students, especially right now, are devastated. Their summer was ruined. Their families have been forever changed. A lot of them have been separated from their family members. And what has been very beautiful to see is that despite all of this pain and the ethnic cleansing that is being carried out in our neighborhood.
Let me stop you. That's a heavy word. Of course, we use that word or should be using it in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Just reference that a little bit more, ethnic cleansing itself. Is that the level that we are out, which is, of course, a form of genocide? Absolutely. And I think it's really important to note that a lot of us were calling it ethnic cleansing in Gaza two years ago,
and folks refused to acknowledge that. And now that folks are starving beyond anything that will actually be reversible, people are now finally comfortable saying that. But what good is it now? Who's going to reverse that now? Millions of people are being starved. They're at category five. Even if we gave them all food from today on out, their bodies have been changed.
Many of them are going to die regardless. So I think that it's important to call things what they are when we see them start, not when we're finishing. Thank you. And so the applicability to you're using it in the context of America, which some people spell America KKK, but we'll let you take it there. The deliberacy with which you've used that and applied it to America.
um america is is that there's there's a deliberacy in in that not only your use but as a policy of ethnic cleansing is that how we are to understand the politics of immigration at this juncture Absolutely. And I want to make it clear, like I am a teacher and I teach history. And so I'm for like for past eight years, I've taught world history and ethnic studies. I'm very well versed in the patterns that come out from fascism and how we get to fascism. You don't wake up one day and then boom, you're in a fascist state.
It's the slow burning frog in that boiling water, right? You don't just throw the frog in the boiling water because it'll jump out. But Our country has a long-standing ethnic cleansing agenda. We've seen this because even, you know, it's insane to me to say that, like, I'm undocumented. I'm Indigenous to this land. like the fact that my existence in my land is criminalized when you have these, you know,
white foreigners who are citizens and you don't even have to go back to the folks that, you know, have been, have been born here. Right. But you have people like Elon Musk who have been able to buy their citizenship. Right.
Because they're white and you have all these instances of history where indigenous people, peoples, indigenous nations existed here and the fact that we're constantly trying to erase them, like that is all connected to what's happening today. The ice raids are not existing in a vacuum. This is a 500 year long game that the American and colonial nations have attempted to just completely wipe out anyone who doesn't fit the narrative of who they assume
whiteness to behold. And we see this even today, like in Terminal Islands right now, there's mass staging. Like right now I'm getting messages about them staging there. And that was used to intern Japanese Americans. Like this idea that we are like in a post-racial society or that we're moving past ethnic cleansing, like we are witnessing colonization over and over again. And we're witnessing it on our phones and people are disgusted.
But the reality is that we need the masses to do more than just speak up. We need more than just retweeting and liking. We need people to be trained. And that's what we're doing with the Community Self-Defense Coalition. We're making sure people get trained so that not only can they recognize fascism, can they recognize when people's rights are being violated, but that they could defend them. And the fact is that all of us have rights under the Constitution,
despite Trump and his allies attempting to remove them in front of our eyes like they did a couple of days ago. It's important for us to be able to defend them because rights are only as good as our ability to defend them. George Floyd had rights. All of our brothers and sisters who've been murdered by the police had rights and those rights were violated. And we have continued to allow them to be violated.
And it's not until people say that's enough that fascist regimes fall. And that's where we're headed. And if we don't stand strong right now, it's going to be much harder to interrupt this fascist regime from strengthening. We see what's happening in DC right now. They're testing it out. They want to see what they can get away with. And it's important for us to, again, to be able to name what it is.
This is ethnic cleansing, right? As Trump is filling the White House with gold-plated everything, he's trying to remove homeless folks, houseless folks from the streets in D. C. Like, this is ethnic cleansing. And if white folks think that they're not going to be impacted because they're white. .
. They are very, very wrong. We know that the imperial boomerang is a thing. Anything you allow the United States to do to other countries, to other peoples, they will turn around and use those systems against you. And I say this as a history teacher. Yeah,
and I think it's really important for us to be aware of that and to be conscious of that because we can't allow this to happen to anyone because it sure as hell will come back and haunt us. We've seen this. I want to bring John Parker into the discussion. John Parker. . .
From your organizing work, what do you see happening in public spaces like MacArthur Park or Koreatown? How are police, ICE, and economic forces converging on immigrant communities? And I should say that John Parker works with the Harriet Tubman Center, not an accidental name or relationship that he has either. to the issue of genocide, of ethnic cleansing and the like. But how do you relate to what Megan and Angelica were just responding to? Yeah, well, Megan and Angelica just took all my stuff and explained it all.
So let me see if I can mansplain it. No, no. But it's so, what it's saying is so important. And the thing about genocide, when Angelica was saying, you know, in 1951, I guess it was,
where Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois brought, charged genocide. That's way back then to the United Nations. And they did it because the definition of genocide, tearing families apart, threatening the lives of children.
Hey, that's it. We got it here, too. And, you know, it makes me think when Megan was talking, I was like, well, are we in Germany with the Nazi government doing things? Are we in Africa with the Belgian Congo, what they did to people? Are we in South Africa? Are we in Gaza with what's going on right now? And it's like,
oh, no, it's here, here in Los Angeles and around the nation, the sanctuary, so-called sanctuary cities and other things like that. It's right here. And
One thing we know is that history teaches us that silence is our biggest enemy. You know, like Angelica was saying, you know, you're doing it to one and you say nothing, then it happens to another, then it happens to you. And so when the Home Depot.
. . Well, it was targeted last Friday in such a horrible attack. Well, you know, that also before that, MacArthur Park was occupied by a military operation terrorizing children. Just things, it's just unimaginable.
But what would have happened if there wasn't a protest? It would have been silence and people wouldn't have known the thing and how angry people are and that people aren't going to tolerate this. So when we had the we recently had a demonstration at MacArthur Park that was that was with folks from the Community Self-Defense Coalition. And the Home Depot Boycott Coalition and other forces and other folks and some clergy and unions and other folks and came there and we had a rally and we exposed it and we had a march and went to Home Depot.
And so what was happening, what they did, it didn't remain silent and people were upset and people wanted, and it related to the community. People were coming around. They want to get involved. They want to get organized. So we know what, what has to be done.
And, and, and, It's interesting how so many people have come together, like in the Palestine movement right now. We're seeing so many people come together. You saw the Jewish Voices for Peace. You saw Not in Our Name, I think it's called, or something,
that thing that was done in New York, Grand Central. And you see Palestinian organizations, Arab organizations, Muslim organizations coming together. And this is really what frightens the hell out of the ruling class right now, Trump and things like that. Not only Trump, it frightens the Democrats, too,
you know, because their their complicity in this immigration struggle is, I mean, Obama. I don't think I think Obama's the level of deportations, formal deportations hasn't been passed. So you see that the Democrats have just enabled this fascist, this fascist projectory. And so when we say, you know, we're Trump, yeah, we hate what Trump's doing. It's fascism and everything like that.
But we also have people who are complicit with it. And the complicity in Los Angeles is the mayor is complicit. The mayor doesn't say, tell LAPD, stop collaborating with ICE. She doesn't do that. She doesn't tell people that you can't wear a mask. A lot of things she could have done. But, you know, these things aren't happening. I mean, Gringrich, the governor, all, they could have done a lot more.
But in actuality, they're complicit. You know, they have these hundred million dollar funds going to militias that are supposed to be frightening pro-Palestinian demonstrators. And what does that do? That just encourages a genocide from L. A. to Gaza.
And we know that. In order to stop these, these, these attacks are common attacks. We have a same enemy and we have to build those links because basically they, you know, they, they will do anything to maximize their profits. And that means wars, imperialist wars and other things. And that comes back and haunts us right back at us.
So we have to, you know, have to make these bridges, these like this program, build the bridges. Yeah. Well, Megan Ortiz and Angelica, in response to what John Parker was saying and what you amplified a bit earlier in the program, now day laborers have always, they've always been treated as expendable.
They're needed, they're used, they're treated, though, as expendable. So, Megan, for example, how does. . . Adipska, help workers understand that long arc of racialized labor exploitation and connect it to their current struggles. And similarly, Angelica, if you could also weigh in and help us trace some of the
historic role of immigrant labor in building the U. S. , which goodness, certainly goes from before, but you know, the Bracetto program today's gig economy. So Megan,
why don't you begin and then Angelica weigh in and let's have this conversation amongst the three of you. Yeah, thank you, Mimi, and thanks, John and Angelica, for laying the groundwork,
because that's exactly where I was going. I think there's a – traditionally, the United States has really used the labor of people from the global south – and has seen it as disposable, right, in terms of using it, spending it, throwing it out,
using it, spending it, and throwing it out. We see this in the very roots of the United States in chattel slavery, which are actually even continued in terms of some of the labor laws right here in the very blue state of California. For example, domestic workers in California working in private households,
house cleaners, nannies, actually continue to be excluded from health and safety protections in the state of California by law as a legacy of chattel slavery in the United States. And we see the federal government attempting to do that with home care workers as well. So I think specifically when you look at day laborers who are only day laborers because of the continued unwillingness of any party. .
. to actually deal with not just comprehensive immigration reform, which is a term that has almost come to mean absolutely nothing at this point, but really in terms of dealing with anyone having the right to work the same way that they allow materials to cross borders, etc. , right?
So day labor is the only reason many of these skilled workers. So first, that's the first thing. Let's get rid of the notion that day laborers are unskilled workers. I don't know how to put up a roof. I do not know how to drywall. And there's a lot of things that they do every day that I and many other people don't do. So a day laborers are day laborers because of the immigration system, because of the fact that there are some who are deemed worthy of being able to
officially work versus those who are not worthy to be able to officially work. But regardless, they're being hired. Right. And they are part and they have always been part of the economy here. I think there's also this notion, unfortunately, that and we've even heard some of the big unions use it. Right.
That undocumented workers are actually bringing the wages down, are causing a lowering of standards in terms of the workforce and workflow. Right. When actually, especially here in Los Angeles, it has actually been day laborers leading the fight on raising the minimum wage, on creating offices to defend that minimum wage and fight back against wage theft, right?
Los Angeles is the wage theft capital literally of the United States, right? So I think this notion that day laborers are disposable because they are seen and stereotyped. . . In a thousand different ways that I'm not going to get into to not repeat those stereotypes, when in fact they're doing the actual opposite. I can tell you,
Eddie, that's got the day laborers across our five day labor centers have a higher minimum wage than the city minimum wage. It's actually the prevailing wage that they use. And it's based on the skill of their labor, because most of them were union workers in their home country. And they were forced to leave their home countries because of United States intervention in their home country and or because of the accelerated natural
disasters, quote unquote, that were created by U. S. operations in their country. So I think that's one of the big notions we need to get rid of. I think also, you know,
to the point that John and Angelica were making about how this is ethnic cleansing, let's not forget that Los Angeles is soon to be the home of both the World Cup and also the Olympics. So what we are seeing here, and as Angelica pointed out, what we are seeing in Washington, D. C. now, right, the National Guard came to Los Angeles first. The Marines came to Los Angeles first. So we were the testing ground.
Right. In terms of how far are we going to allow the federal government to go and literally disappearing. And I'm using that term very intentionally the way that it has been used in Chile and El Salvador. Right. Literally disappearing people from our landscape and actually changing not just the physical landscape of the city,
but the cultural landscape of the city. They want to disappear. Language is one of the ways that the president is actually saying that I should be allowed to violate people's constitutional rights based on what language they speak. So we have to. . .
To John's point, it is very clear that Mayor Bass here and the governor of California, Newsom, are complicit in this because they want California to remain the fourth largest economy of the world, but on the backs of immigrant laborers who they're using disposably and are allowing to be used and then disappeared. Right.
I think to that point, too, it's important for us to know the role that capitalism is playing in this. And the reason that they continue to exploit, the reason that undocumented workers exist in the first place is because of capitalism, because they could easily give people citizenship. If that's the issue, if they want to regulate stuff, they could give people citizenship.
And they don't want to. They want to be able to exploit people. And we've seen. . . corporations use the immigration system to enslave people they will recruit people from mexico and from other countries um get them here have them working an entire season and right before they're about to get paid they call immigration on them
they don't get charged with anything right and now they don't have to pay anyone and so it's also important to note that um Yes, this is racist and it is ethnic cleansing, but they're also lining their pockets with family separation. They're lining their pockets by running these concentration camps. People are making money off of the incarceration and the human trafficking that's happening,
right? When they're sending people to El Salvador, that's human trafficking. People are getting very, very rich off of that. when they're having people be disappeared, a lot of people we can't find, right? Even U. S. citizens who've been deported, these private corporations are making millions of dollars off of this.
And so, yes, it is very racist, but it's also because they want money, because of capitalism. We heard Trump saying that he wants the farmers to essentially be owners of different detention centers so that they could work the. . . the detainees right like they're enslaving people um that is their end goal they can't say it's enslavement and so they're going to criminalize our existence they're going to criminalize our language our skin color or like everything about
us and um the reason they're doing this is because they know that our existence here in this country is necessary and that it's it's just the foundation of this country and without us this country doesn't run We are teachers. And I want to make this clear because a lot of the rhetoric around immigrants is that we are, you know, unskilled.
And like Megan said, we're not unskilled. We're very much needed. But also like in things that are traditionally considered high skilled, like we are in all of those. We are in schools. We're doctors. We're nurses. We're lawyers.
And I think it's important to note that we're everywhere. And you've probably talked to us and you might not have known. It's also important to note that they're scared of us continuing to dominate all types of workplaces and communities. That's why they're trying to defund education. They're trying to make it difficult for people of color, for immigrants, for black folks to to have access to education,
because when we do have access, despite all of the privileges that a lot of folks do have. People are persevering and they're prevailing. And that's something that they don't want to do, because when we folks know the system, we're able to fight for our rights. And despite that being what's best for the entirety of the American people, you have these rich oligarchs who are trying to pit us against each other,
even within the immigrant community. Right. Saying, well, if you have DACA, that means you went to college and you're one of the good ones. But those are unskilled workers and that's not going to work on us. We recognize that all of us are worthy, that all of us are able to live in this country with dignity. This isn't a cake, right? It's not about slices.
That's not how countries work. And that's a false narrative that they're attempting to do so that people get defensive and are saying, well, I can't give this up for my family. That's not how countries work. This is not a pie. We're not splitting a pie up.
And I think that's something important for us to understand and to really contemplate, like, who's putting these ideas in my head and why should I believe them? Because when Trump is giving money to Elon Musk or to Walmart or to Target or to all these huge corporations, nobody's complaining about that. And we need to be really cognizant of who's the actual enemy here.
Who's making it harder for you to pay your grocery bills? Who's making it harder for everything? It's not the immigrants. It's not the teachers on DACA. It's these oligarchs. It's the capitalists. They're the ones who are destroying our environment. They're the ones who are incarcerating people, citizens and non-citizens alike.
They're the ones who are attacking us. And so it's important for us to come together. I just want to let people know you're listening to a special Building Bridges. We'll return to Angelica and John Parker and Megan Ortiz, three frontline organizers challenging the exploitation of immigrant labor and forging grassroots resistance to the xenophobic racist policies of a regime veering towards fascism. This is for my immigrants,
for my immigrants, for my immigrants, for my immigrants, for my immigrants. Bye. Bye. Hello, my name is Alexis Torres Machado. I was raised in Newark, New Jersey ever since I was five years old.
I'm 22 now. When I was just 11, I discovered a truth about my residence. Mama didn't tell me because she didn't want me stressing, but my father started talking and he told me about accident. My mother started panicking like he's too young to handle it. But truly, I don't care because I don't really understand it. Started sinking in, how they have to say This is for my immigrants.
Immigrante, for my immigrants. Well, you know, John Parker, I think we've given you the perfect lead into where Angelica left off. Maybe we should call it Trumpism and the weaponization of white supremacy. Or how does the Trump administration use immigrant scapegoating and white nationalist rhetoric? to build political power and how are those tactics still shaping policy and public
discourse right long history of that of that um exploitation of others you know when um even during slavery and indigenous people and african people were there and even some poor white folks were decided that they wanted to to fight out fight fight against the um the rulers there. And they said, well, what are we going to do? We've got to divide them up. We've got to give some more rights to certain other ones and not the others and
create this idea of whiteness and dehumanization. So we make other people feel like, make other people think like they're animals. They don't deserve any kind of rights. They should be put as slaves and things like that. And it's all the way up to Trump. Trump's talking about his birthright bullshit, talking about people don't have a right to citizenship because they're not born here or something like that.
And that sounds a lot like the Dred Scott case in 1850-something when the former slave came and went to a land where there was no slavery in the U. S. And they were told the Supreme Court said – the Supreme Court does a lot of nasty things, boy – today too but they said no no no no you're um you can be in a state but but you were a slave you're a property you're not a human being you're you're just property and so this kind of same thing is going on and you see like what angelica was saying now they're now they're saying you don't have a right you have you can be a
slave now in these detention centers it's funny that the um Department of Homeland Security even exposed that one of the detention centers was breaking the law because they were making people work over 40 hours. But it's okay that they're only making a dollar a day or less than a dollar a day. And they're called volunteers and the detention centers. So the people who are being forced into these detention centers are forced to work for a dollar a day if they're lucky to get that. And it's just, it's slavery.
They're bringing slavery back and they're dehumanizing people with racism to say these people don't need it. They're criminals. They're this, they're that. Well, We know the biggest criminal in the U. S. today is one who's living in the White House with all those felonies,
but they don't talk about that. So anyway, the police, police brutality, we talk about that too. Police came from the slave patrols, and that was a way of getting slaves, former slaves, into framing them up, and then slave labor started all over again, bring back slavery.
So there's a long history of doing this kind of stuff, but one thing that that we know that this is a way of attacking the whole working class. And this is a good opportunity for solidarity is a good opportunity for workers to see where does this value come from? Where does Elon Musk create the value? Does the captains industry, the white captains industry, do they create the value? No, no, no, no. The value is created by workers who create the products.
They're the ones who create the value, and that happens for workers. But when we see mostly the black and brown workers, too, the exploitation is at a different level. And it's a level that they support with the ideas of dehumanization and things like that. But it's a good way for folks to learn that you're being exploited. Everybody, you're being exploited. Don't.
. . Don't be for the extra exploitation of others because it's going to come back and hit you. So that's another opportunity. And we know that people don't even want to be here if they didn't have to be here. Migrants, immigrants, others, if the U. S. didn't destroy their economies,
flood crops that are cheaper and things like that and make Mexican farmers lose their farms and do all these kinds of things, if that didn't happen, then they wouldn't be over here. They're here now. from that exploitation, from that economic destruction warfare by the U. S. And then they come here exploited,
don't get Social Security benefits, don't get anything, super exploited. And the thanks is we're going to terrorize you. So we're seeing that now much more. And the way they use white supremacy is, It's a trickier thing now. Now they use, like, they'll use black faces to push white supremacy in AFRICOM.
Obama put AFRICOM right into Africa and did all that kind of stuff. Via Regrosa, the mayor of Los Angeles, Via Regrosa, am I saying it right? Via Regrosa, I think it is. Via Regrosa, yeah. So he's gone against all the things that would have benefited others, but also the cultural aspects. And he targeted the murals, beautiful murals that were there by folks of Latin American descent. And he had, oh, they have to be.
. . Paint it over. We have to do that. You see, he's like taking the language. It's like when Africans came here, we didn't ask to be here. We got kidnapped over here. Then they took our language,
they took our culture, and they made a lot of money off of some of the stuff we did. But this is just the historical thing of what's going on. We can't let them allow that, not tell us nothing about this crap about only English or, you know, you can't, you know.
So that's part of the way is fighting back is when we have actions, We show the cultural contributions and proud of those contributions. You know, one of the things that hit me, John, as you were talking actually before, certainly with Megan and Angelica, is,
you know, I believe we're witnessing not only the continued dehumanization and exploitation of immigrant workers, but but a reactivation in many ways for the Trump administration of the Monroe Doctrine in the sense of where Trump's fascist and xenophobic policies, you know, have paved the way for renewed U.
S. military aggression now in Mexico and Venezuela and, and across Latin America, all built on the backs of demonizing immigrants and the nations they come from. And I think that reactivation of the Monroe Doctrine is part of the plan. I don't think intellectually that Trump has the capacity to think this through, but there are the Stephen Millers and others so that the context and the issue What is happening with forced migration and U.
S. imperialism and how it extends to support for Bukele? right, and El Salvador and the Bolsonaros fighting against the Lula government in Brazil. I'm just wondering about your final thoughts on this, Angelica, and certainly Megan as well. Where do we go with this? Is there any sense to kind of thinking of it in that context? worldview that I just mentioned, and of course,
what is to be done, some of which you've been talking about and which John Parker certainly raised. I think it's important to, you know, have dialogue with the people who've been resisting imperialism because we're in the valley of the beast and we have the most to learn from them and from their struggles. It's important for us to understand the histories of this, right?
Nothing that is happening now came with Trump. They're pulling on the legacies of, again, white supremacy and ethnic cleansing that are deeply rooted and are at the heart of our country. And so it's important for us to have dialogues with people who, again, have been resisting imperialism and colonialism for over 500 years.
We need to make sure that we see things the way that they are, right? I think a lot of folks are very nervous about naming the things that are happening. Or you have folks with a little bit of privilege who think that it's not going to happen to them. And we see that folks are being shockingly mistaken. They're being shook and awake. Because you have folks who are Trump supporters who are like, I never thought this was going to happen to me.
They were only going to go after the criminals. They were only going to da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Right. And we know that a lot of us have been saying, like, that's not true. You know, this was rooted in racism, but some folks are finally waking up. And so we need folks to to go to get past that. Right. To get past that shock and to be jolted into action.
We with Union del Barrio. have been collaborating with folks from across the country and learning from each other, learning from our histories. And it's important for us to lean on that so that we can truly understand the folks that are attacking our communities. And it's also important for us to not lose hope Despite their monster of colonialism and imperialism, Black and brown folks have survived.
And we've been thriving, right? And so this is just another one of the things that they're doing. But we need to come together. We need to find our allies and we need to educate each other. We need to fight back. And we see this. I was in a meeting where they were describing how the impact of the big, beautiful bill and these billions of dollars that are going to pour into ICE,
right? And all the infrastructure that they developed against the people in Palestine is going to be used against us here, whether you're an activist or not. But thinking about the resistance here in L. A. and the amounts of agents that they've poured into our streets, and then thinking about the same thing that's been happening in Texas and Arizona,
the key difference in the numbers, because they haven't been able to kidnap as many people here in L. A. or even in all of California, despite their best efforts, despite bringing in the military, despite everything – People are resisting and they're protecting their rights and they're protecting
their community. And that's the difference. And that's why they haven't been able to attack us the way that they've attacked these other states. The key difference is us, that we're not going to let this happen and we can't let this happen. And so I really urge all of you to join your rapid response team, to establish your community self-defense coalitions, to reach out for support,
to reach out for training. But it's going to be up to us. And as far as Trump, The farther that they push, right, the more resistance that they're going to find. And so that's just the reality of it. We're not going to allow people, our families, our neighbors to be taken away. And this is what we do, right? We survive and we're fighting this with love.
We do this work. We're not being paid. Nobody is giving me a $50,000 bonus to go and protect my neighbors. We're doing this because we love each other. And that's why we're going to win. Well, that's not a difficult task for you to pick up on either, Megan. The three of you are three peas in a pod who've been working for decades, really,
now for the working class. And we have to see immigrants as part of the working class who built this country. So your particular thoughts, Megan, as we. . . really thinking about Labor Day and the working class, the role of immigrant and immigrant labor to be protected, to be
our solemn duty to unite with and defend. And, of course, the terrible irony in all of this is that, as I said, disposable seems the right word because on one hand they'll be exploited mercilessly and on the other is used as cannon fodder for the political careerism of racist and xenophobic politicians.
Megan? Yeah, and just, you know, to Angelica's point, you know, all three of us are here not by accident, right?
Our ancestors fought for us to be here. It's the daughter of migrants from Puerto Rico who were pushed out of the island because of Operation Bootstrap. We have to get out of also this mindset of what we call in Spanish the quítate tú, you know, whether it's because if I put myself above you, whether it's falling for these red scare tactics we see against Venezuelans and Cubanos,
whether we see it as sort of the return to 1970 financial policies like in El Salvador that are conditional, right? What it is is really finding your entrance into the movement, right? And there are many places to enter that movement. Whether it is, as Angelica said, joining your local rapid response. If you're jamming the environment, all you have to do is look at,
again, the root causes of migration and its connection to the destruction of our ancestral lands and our home countries. If your jam is international issues, look at who is training the police forces in the United States and what's happening in Gaza, right? If your jam is really much more local on the labor front,
why aren't you hiring day laborers or buying them out for the day? Why are you not divesting from companies like Home Depot who have made a very clear decision, right? to cooperate with federal actions and double down on their right to private property against day laborers, while at the same time allowing armed federal agents to run through their stores and throw people underground to disappear them.
So I think there's many small macro and micro ways to for people to join in and to support. And I think through Union del Barrio, Idebska, the Boycott Home Depot Coalition and the Harriet Tubman Center, we are all attacking it from different angles and all coming together, though, knowing that we have a common enemy and that together,
recognizing that, We're going to win. Let me also just ask you each for a final minute apiece. So we have the defensive strategy. We have the political analysis historically and currently, as I said, you can debate whether we're veering to or whether we're in the midst of fascism. But is there an affirmative position that each one of you has?
wants to express that we must get on the ball with and advocate for. And let's take that, wind up with, for the moment, your thoughts, Megan, and then Angelica and John Parker, you'll take us out,
each one with a minute apiece, for our immigrants, for our labor. Yeah, absolutely. Support your local immigrant community. Buy from them. Not from big companies, especially if you know that they're complicit right now. I think that's the way.
Let's help our immigrant community survive while they live in terror. Both things can be true and we can't let them take away our joy and our ability to fight to be together and united. So I think that's the one thing. If we support one another with our wallets and with our hearts, we're going to get through it. Angelica? Be a witness. Make sure that you show up to schools early.
Be there for your neighbors. Talk to each other. Make sure that they know that they can rely on you. Save a rapid response number on your phone so that you can call them or text them as soon as you see anything. If you see ice, be loud. They are cowards. That's why they're wearing masks.
As soon as you get loud, honk your horn, scream, they'll run away because they know that what they're doing is wrong. Make sure that you're there to protect each other differently. lean on each other let people know that you are an ally be loud as loud as you can because fascism falls when people don't let it happen if you ever saw star wars or the hunger games or any of these shows that people love and you were like i would
join the resistance this is the time okay all of those things are talking about black and brown stories like actual black and brown stories so this is the time for you to actually be the hero for your neighbors and act and do something yes john parker We know from history that our most powerful tool is the tool of unity. So what is to be done? And we've got 30 seconds to tell us, my brother. What is to be done?
Well, we've got to build a consciousness. These paroles that we were talking about, they give us the consciousness to know that we don't need the police. We can protect ourselves, and we're going to build that consciousness. The other thing we've got to do is we know we have the power to shut it down. And to deny them the prophets that they live on. And what we've got to do is come together and make that happen. Well.
What we've heard today is not just a story of labor, it's a story of resistance. Immigrant workers are not disposable. They are builders of this country, leaders in our movements and defenders of democracy. From ethnic studies classrooms to day laborer job centers, from grassroots coalitions to reclaimed parks, the fight against exploitation and scapegoating is alive and growing. And to learn more or support their work, visit adesca.
org, Harriet Tubman Center.org, and follow local campaigns for immigrant justice and community defense. And I believe with the likes of John Parker,
with Angelica, and with our good, renewed friendship of Megan Ortiz, we will win. De viva. Comrades, thank you. And you've been listening to Building Bridges. That's what we do, not walls. And we say stay well and stay strong and fight the good fight for immigrant, for labor, and get organized labor out there in mass to fight for their immigrant siblings. Thanks for listening. I'm Mimi Rosenberg. Thanks my friends.
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