Hello. These days I have been getting a lot of questions about how to best show up for folks in our community as the crisis with ICE deepens across our country. I have decided to make a one pager and try to update it every week with new ideas to help people get started or get involved with activism. These are certainly not the only ideas but they are a few of mine. Thanks for your patience.
JANUARY 28
THINGS TO REMEMBER:
Organizing is a slow process that requires patience. You don’t have to do everything at once, in fact, you may not be able to. Activism is a muscle. Build it!
Please take care to not ask organizations to center your desire to help so it gets in the way of the actual work to support our neighbors
IDEAS FOR THIS WEEK:
Educate Yourself and Support HB9, The Immigrant Safety Act:
This week has been extraordinarily painful as we watch the events in Minnesota unfold. We want to help. It’s important to observe that we don’t have the same kind of federal operation in New Mexico. Our streets are not occupied. But we do have a very insidious ICE detention problem. We have a chance over the next couple weeks to show up and fight ice in a way that is different from Minnesota but equally radical: the Immigrant Safety Act:
Learn what HB9 is and isn’t. It’s not an outright ban on ICE detention!
Check out 505omatic’s coverage! (Awesome local news org if you don’t already know!-- check them out and subscribe)
Educate yourself about just how much private ICE detention sucks in New Mexico
Call or email your state legislators demanding they support HB9
Support the organizations that make this bill happen. New Mexicans may not know about Innovation Law Lab but they are critical to the work to end private detention in New Mexico.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION THIS WEEK:
Most people have been asking how they can show up and get trained to witness ICE on the streets. There are trainings being planned locally and a network coming together but it is slow business getting folks organized. My suggestion now is to avail yourself of any online training you can find and then keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities to plug in here while the city-wide strategy comes together. There isn’t one coherent network yet and the strategy isn't centralized yet. While ICE is surely in our state, there is nothing remotely resembling what we are seeing in other cities so we can’t transpose those community responses onto our own community… yet. Get educated, create a network with your homies so you can communicate as folks learn what is happening locally.