Tag: refugees

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WWS Statement from Los Angeles on the Disappeared and Nationwide Human Rights Violations

A daytime street scene of a community march against ICE raids. A woman holds a young child in the foreground.

Most of us never learned about los desaparecidos from Central America in school, how throughout the 1980s in Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador, American supported militaries disappeared priests, nuns, whole villages who opposed them. Now, four decades later, as vibrant jacarandas bloom purple across the Southland, our cities have become vulnerable to these same United States Federal forces.

As communities resiliently recover from this winter’s devastating fires, as students wrap up the accomplishments of another school year and walk across stages, our friends, neighbors, and family are being pulled from our streets and classrooms, from car washes and fields. As the ongoing genocide in Gaza continues to unfold, our screens have become overwhelmed with images of violence in our streets, schools, and workplaces. 

Women Who Submit stands in unwavering support of our vulnerable Latinx communities and all those being racially profiled by these illegal deportation actions. We stand shoulder to shoulder with these Black and Brown communities and all those being treated inhumanely. We call for the immediate release of those callously disappeared from our neighborhoods and families. Women Who Submit opposes the existence of ICE and the presence of the National Guard and military troops in our city. The presence of these forces legitimizes the illegal and cruel efforts of ICE and escalates violence against those engaged in civil disobedience and other forms of protest.

It is Trump, ICE, Border Patrol and the US military bringing violence and chaos to the people of Los Angeles and of the Americas.

We urge our community to take action. We acknowledge the unique and varied ways people are able to push back and urge you to connect to local efforts in your area. If you have the wherewithal to push back financially, here are some funds and resources to pass along. 

Vecinos Unidos Whittier: Whittier advocates for how to support our immigrant communities

Centro CSO: Grassroots organization based in Boyle Heights

JailSupportLA raises funds to support jailed protestors (Venmo: JailSupportLA)

Clue Justice has a detained immigrant bond fund

GoFundMe for three siblings affected by detention

GoFundMe to bring Diego back to his family

Immigrant Defenders Law Center

Central American Resource Center

Haitian Bridge Alliance

There are growing opportunities for direct action as well. As we head into this summer, we urge you to lean into the community and resist fascism as it rears its head in all of our communities. 

https://www.chirla.org/donatenow/  Organization to advance the human and civil rights of immigrants and refugees. 

https://www.idepsca.org/programs Day labor support

http://stopicealerta.ddns.net/ Report and receive updates on ICE sightings and terror

https://ndlon.org/ National Day Labor Network

https://www.ccijustice.org/carrn find your local rapid response network

https://www.advancingjustice-aajc.orgAsian Americans Advancing Justice

https://ajsocal.org Asian Americans Advancing Justice So Cal

https://www.aclunc.org/home  ACLU Northern California

https://action.aclu.org/give/now ACLU National

https://www.maldef.org Legal support 

Finally, for those in our community personally affected by these raids and acts of terror, know that Women Who Submit supports you, your families, and your loved ones. We see your struggle, and we fight with you. 

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Tsuru for Solidarity

multi-colored folded origami crane on a flat, black surface.

By Noriko Nakada

Read and bear witness. Retweet the tweets. Repost the images. Fold a crane. Fold another. And another.

Remember Sadako, the first story I heard, or read, about folding cranes. A girl who loved to run and play, an innocent victim of nuclear war who got leukemia years after the bombs were dropped. She folded cranes. One thousand and you get your wish. She didn’t make it to a thousand. The cranes she folded didn’t save her.

Fold cranes and attempt to make clean creases, to give energy and thoughts and wishes to children. Innocent victims again. This time they are in cages. This time they are separated from their families. Treated like animals. Criminals.

My sister-in-law folded 1000 cranes for her wedding. I contributed 200 to the cause. She had all 1000 of those gold folded origami cranes and assembled in a beautiful framed tsuri in the shape of the Nakada Kanji. In the rice field.

I once folded cranes at a table at the Deschutes County Fair in Oregon. I think we were protesting death squads in El Salvador, or the murder of a priest in Nicaragua, or the disappeared in Guatemala. Maybe it was later, and we were protesting nuclear weapons testing, or the first Iraq war, or acknowledging the anniversaries of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. I taught nice white folks in Central Oregon who had never met anyone Japanese, who couldn’t believe my dad had been incarcerated as a child during World War II. “Well, that sure doesn’t sound very ‘Merican.”

It was. It is. America is all the truths we hold to be self-evident: the good and the bad. The ugly. We are a country built by people taken by force, built by people brought by force and forced to build this nation. This history is in the bones of the body of our nation.

We are a country who takes Native children from their families. We exclude immigrants from certain countries and embrace immigrants from another. We incarcerate whole families during times of war and turn refugees away and sentence them to death. We drop nuclear weapons on entire cities, take sides in civil wars, go to battle in the name of democracy, fight against communism, ensure our people have access to oil and resources and markets all for America and the pursuit of happiness.

We elect men who enslave, who father enslaved children, who rape, who murder, who who who.

So, today I fold. I teach friends to fold. I teach my daughter to fold and while we fold we think about the ways we can push back against all that is wrong. Push, y’all, and keep pushing. 

Check out Tsuru for Solidarity on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to find ways you can help push back. 


Noriko Nakada HeadshotNoriko Nakada is a public school teacher and the editor of the Breathe and Push column. She writes, blogs, tweets, and parents in Los Angeles. She is committed to writing thought-provoking creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry.

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Breathe and Push: When Survivors Speak, Who Will Listen?

This week in my eighth grade classroom, five different holocaust survivors shared their stories with my English classes.

diverse groups of young people with a survivor

Two of the five survivors made it out of the death camps as young people. The other three were babies, hidden during the war. It took years of research for them to learn their own stories of survival so they could share them with us.

Those three babies were separated from their families. One, became an orphan, and was then adopted by family who had survived by fleeing Europe. Another had been hidden, along with her mother, by an entire village. The third hid with her mother until the end of the war, and then, because of American immigration laws, she was separated from her mother. Her mother immigrated to the United States, and the family this small child was left with kidnapped her. It took over several months for her mother to locate her daughter and reunite with her in America.

Leaving my classroom that day, my heart was burdened by these stories, but I was also buoyed by hope and perspective. Each of these survivors carried endless gratitude for those who helped them: for their rescuers, or the upstanders. They spoke of kindnesses, large and small, and they helped provide much needed perspective about how we treat one another today.

Maybe it was because I had read this editorial by Viet Thanh Nguyen, “Ripping children from parents will shatter America’s soul” the night before, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the survivors’ stories and of the babies and children and their families being torn apart at our borders. I couldn’t stop thinking about the most vulnerable among us. What could I do about the unforgivable lack of humanity our country is showing them?

And then we hear about lost children. Nearly 1,500. This number is unfathomable.

We lose keys.
We lose nickles.
We lose pens.
We do not lose children.

These unconscionable losses, children with mothers who are mourning, siblings still searching, families with so many questions. What do we do?

The president refers to immigrants as animals, and people go crazy.

Nearly 1,500 children are lost. These are not puppies or kittens. These are children. These are daughter and sons, brothers and sisters. What stories will they tell as adults? What will these survivors tell our children of this America?

And the rest of us?
Are we rescuers?
Are we upstanders?
Or have we become the animals?

For opportunities to help immigrant and refugee families, here are seven ways you can help. 

Noriko Nakada headshot in black and whiteNoriko Nakada edits the Breathe and Push column for Women Who Submit. She also writes, blogs, tweets, parents, and teaches middle school in Los Angeles. She is committed to writing thought-provoking creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. Publications include two book-length memoirs: Through Eyes Like Mine and Overdue Apologies, and excerpts, essays, and poetry in Lady Liberty Lit, Catapult, Meridian, Compose, Kartika, Hippocampus, The Rising Phoenix Review, and Linden Avenue.