We have an especially powerful episode this week about the increasingly desperate situation facing the migrant and refugee caravan that is now spread all the way from Mexico City to Tijuana.
First, we’re joined by three activists who have been building solidarity on both sides of the border. Fermin Valle is a queer Mexican-American activist and a member of the International Socialist Organization (ISO) in Western Massachusetts who recently traveled to Mexico City and met with members of the caravan staying in a local church. Jo Morales is an anti-border activist and writer who has worked for the last three years in solidarity with refugees and Syrian revolutionaries in Greece and the Mediterranean. She is now in Tijuana, where she is documenting the migrant exodus. Claire Douglas is a teacher and member of the ISO in San Diego, where she helped organize a solidarity protest at the border as part of the Migrant and Refugee Solidarity Coalition.
Fermin, Jo and Claire join us for an intense conversation about the horrible choices that caravanistas are facing as they experience deteriorating physical and political conditions — and their urgent hope for an increase in the support that U.S. activists are starting to build.
Then historian and activist Justin Akers Chacón joins us to talk about the Socialist Worker article he recently wrote in response to Angela Nagle’s “The left case against open borders.” Justin is a San Diego-based professor of U.S. History and Chicano Studies. In addition to Radicals in the Barrio, he’s the author of No One is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the U.S.-Mexico Border. In the context of going through what’s wrong (and there’s a lot) with Nagle’s pseudo-left approach, Justin makes the case for why supporting migrants and refugees isn’t just the morally right thing to do, but is also in the interest of working-class people in the U.S. and across the world.
Links for this episode:
Fermin’s Socialist Worker report from Mexico City: “What migrants in the caravan want the world to hear” (http://bit.ly/Vallemigrants)
Alex Wells report on the San Diego border protest (http://bit.ly/bringingsolidarity)
Justin’s response to Angela Nagle: “The case against ‘the case against open borders’” (http://bit.ly/caseagainstnagle)
Also check out Justin’s books Radicals in the Barrio: Magonistas, Socialists, Wobblies, and Communists in the Mexican-American Working Class (http://bit.ly/RadicalsBarrio) and No One is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the U.S.-Mexico Border (http://bit.ly/NoOneIllegal)
Here are some of the organizations and groups organizing support and solidarity for the migrant and refugee caravan:
Pueblo Sin Fronteras (http://bit.ly/PuebloSF)
Al Otro Lado (http://bit.ly/aOLado)
Border Angels (http://bit.ly/BorderAngels)
International Socialist Organization (http://bit.ly/IntlSocOrg)
San Diego Migrant and Refugee Solidarity Coalition (http://bit.ly/SDsolidarity)
Sanctuary Caravan (http://bit.ly/SancCaravan) and labor solidarity call (http://bit.ly/SanctuaryLabor)
Music
The Boy & Sister Alma, “Lizard Eyes” (Dead Sea Captains Remix)
Residente, “La Cátedra”
Shakira, “Me Enamoré”
Chicano Batman, “This Land Is Your Land”
Sam Cooke, “(What A) Wonderful World”
Ozomatli, “Don’t Mess With The Dragon”
