Yesterday I had an incredible conversation with a table full of Latinos and one Anglo brother. My brother-in-law (future) had his bachelor party and we all met at Dave and Buster’s. It was a table of 20 people from Erik’s life. There were some amazing people gathered. There was a couple that used to be migrant workers picking crops. One day when the wife was sick, she told her husband, “I can’t do it anymore.” He went back to school and became a teacher. Then she went back to school and became a teacher too. They both are teachers now in a ghetto school teaching poor kids. That was amazing.
Then I met a saxophone player/high school teacher. His school’s graduating class is made up of about 1/4 undocumented immigrants with 4.0 grade point averages. There was a story of one girl who is from Guatemala and she came crying in his class room b/c she can no longer go to school because colleges and universities can no longer accept undocumented students b/c of the new laws passed. There was nothing he could do. How can we help these kids that don’t have a future after high school, but have worked so hard?
Then another of Erik’s friends works as a teacher in a juvenile detention center. He just returned to El Salvador to visit his family. At the table we talked about how surprised we are that the Americans are surprised at the soldiers in Iraq abusing prisoners, when we ourselves know people tortured by American trained Salvadoran soldiers at the School of the Americas.
Invest.
Agitate.
