‘Kill the bill before it kills us all’: Protesters put their bodies on the line to stop Trump’s ‘Big Disastrous Betrayal Bill’

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we are talking about the fight that is playing out right now in Washington DC over President Donald Trump’s giant spending and tax Bill Senate. Republicans voted this weekend to advance the so-called one big beautiful bill, which will now go back to the House of Representatives. And Trump has publicly demanded and pushed that his party get the bill on his desk to sign by July 4th. Although Trump has since retracted a bit and said it’s not a hard and fast thing, but clearly that’s what he’s pushing for.

Now, you may have seen videos from this past week of peaceful protestors, including people in wheelchairs getting zip tied, arrested, protesting this very bill. As Brett Wilkins reports in common dreams, dozens of peaceful protestors, including people in wheelchairs were arrested inside a US Senate building in Washington, DC on Wednesday, June 25th while protesting Republicans propose cuts to Medicaid spending in the budget reconciliation package facing votes on Capitol Hill in the coming days, the group popular Democracy in Action said that today over 60 people were arrested in the Russell Senate Building rotunda in a powerful act of nonviolent civil disobedience against cuts to essential social programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program or SNAP protesters were zip tied and dragged from the building by police. After demonstrators unfurled three large banners inside the rotunda with messages calling on lawmakers to protect Medicaid and other essential social programs.

One of the banners read quote, Senate Republicans Don’t Kill Us, save Medicaid, the so-called one big beautiful Bill Act being pushed by US. President Donald Trump would slash federal Medicaid spending by billions of dollars introduce work requirements for recipients and impose other conditions that critics say would result in millions of vulnerable people losing their coverage in order to pay for a massive tax cut that would disproportionately benefit wealthy households and corporations. In addition to popular democracy in action groups, including the Service employees, international Union, planned Parenthood, Federation of America, the Debt Collective Standup Alaska Action, North Carolina, Arkansas Community Organizations and American Disabled for Attendant Programs today, or Adapt took part in Wednesday’s protest, which followed similar past actions in defense of Medicaid. Now, as Brett mentioned in that article, these massive cuts to vital and popular public programs like Medicaid are part of a massive systematic overhaul that would overwhelmingly place the burden and the cost of everything on poor and working people to pay for Trump’s massive increases to war in border spending, and to make his giant tax cuts for corporations and the rich from 2017 permanent.

The bill also includes restructuring of the student loan and debt system, imposing much harsher repayment plans on debtors and among other things, it also includes a provision that bars states from imposing any new regulations on artificial intelligence or AI over the next 10 years. So here to talk with us on the show today about what is in this bill, what it will mean for working people, and what working people are doing to fight back before it’s too late are two guests who were there at the Capitol last Wednesday and who were among the dozens arrested for their peaceful act of civil disobedience. As I understand it, they were even sharing a police van together at one point. Lorraine Chavez is an educator, researcher and community leader based in Chicago. She is also herself a student debtor like me, and frankly most people I know. Christine Rodriguez is a legal assistant and student debtor herself from Pasadena, California.

Both Lorraine and Christine came to DC with the Debt Collective, a Union of Debtors, and they join us here today. Thank you both so much for coming on the show today, especially after the week that you have had. I really, really appreciate it. And with all of that context upfront that I just gave for listeners, Lorraine, I wanted to toss it to you. And then Christine, please hop in. Can we start with the action on Wednesday? Like what brought you to dc? What happened over the course of the day? Talk us through it. Give us an on the ground view.

Lorraine Chavez:

Well, I wanted to thank you, first of all for reporting on this very important effort and this protest that we did in dc. I also really want to thank the Debt Collective for all of its amazing work over the years, and I follow them to eliminate all kinds of debt, medical debt, student debt, and to advocate for a jubilee of debt, which I fully support. I came to DC having followed the collective for a number of years, and I came because I personally have student loan debt that I have no capacity to pay. And I also came because of what happened to me with Wells Fargo trying to basically steal my house under the hemp program. That was part of the Obama administration actually, and I was able to refinance my debt after an eight year struggle of Wells Fargo trying to steal my home.

But in my late fifties, 60 years old, I have a new mortgage. It is 2%, which is what we worked out in federal court, but I still have a federal, I have student loan debt with no capacity to pay that. I am a single mother. I put my two kids who are twins both 33 through college, and they did not receive any financial assistance at all from their college professor, father. So it was all on me. So I have no capacity to pay back my own debt, and I know others have all kinds of medical debt. I know there are all kinds of cutbacks coming to the disabled community of which I had been a part of and an advocate for in Chicago. So I didn’t mind getting arrested. I was really thrilled to be with all these other advocates from all over the country.

Christine Rodriguez:

Hello, I’m Christine Rodriguez. Shout out to all the Real News Network listeners out there. My name is Christine, I live in Pasadena. I went to advocate for student loan forgiveness. I graduated from UCLA School of law with the Master’s of Legal Studies last year. And so through me wanting to get a better education, which is a lot of people’s American dream is to, and honestly as our reality is getting a college education and higher education such as a master’s is really the only way to escape poverty for most working class people with a working class background. So I got my Master’s of legal studies from UCLA School of Law, and that ranked up a lot of student debt for me. I have a lot of student debt. I’m about a hundred thousand dollars plus in student debt because of wanting to get a master’s degree. I also still have some student let leftover from when I did my undergrad because I went to Portland State University to get more involved and kind of political activism.

That was a political activist kind of playground at the time right when Trump got elected. So through my undergrad, through my master’s, through wanting to get a better education, I have now indebted myself to student loan debts debt. I am really banking on student loan forgiveness. That’s in some way either a huge student loan debt off my back completely, that is the goal, but some sort of repayment plan that I could pay off my original student payment plan was way above what I could afford monthly. And I’m in the process of trying to see through the public service loan forgiveness program if working at a nonprofit, if that can provide me any kind of loan forgiveness. However, the big disastrous bill that Trump wants to pass, it really intertwines with all of those things that I’ve gone through. Student loan forgiveness, really taking away opportunities for people to have some part of their loan forgiven, but it also infects people in the future who want to get an education and try to get out of poverty.

Increasing the limits of Pell Grants, which Pell Grants definitely helped me when I was in my undergrad to pay for school, make it affordable for me to go to school and still provide me with some extra funding so that I could survive throughout my educational time. In addition, the PSL Forgiveness program for people who work at nonprofits, being able to give you a more affordable student loan forgiveness plan that is also at stake here for any nonprofit in this big disastrous betrayal bill. That’s what we called it, big disastrous Betrayal bill. So all these things that are just interconnected. And then on top of this, all these tax cuts are going to basically allocate for funding for increased military defense, which I live near Los Angeles. I’ve definitely seen a lot heavier military presence along with their police, but specifically federal military, the Marines coming into Los Angeles, all these tax cuts, that’s just where our money is going to go to armed people who want to just lock us up and silence us. So it was given the wonderful opportunity through the debt collective to travel all the way from West coast to very hot and humid Washington dc And I jumped on that opportunity and I’m really glad that I did because now I get to share my story here.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Oh yeah. And again, we appreciate y’all coming on so much and sharing your stories with us, and I have so many questions that I want to follow up on. But I also wanted for listener’s sake just to also add to some of that incredible context that Christine was giving us, and we’ll link to this piece in the show notes along with other resources so that you can dig into what’s in this bill yourself. But this is from Robert Farrington written in Forbes. Just a quick summation that among the key components in this one big beautiful bill that have to do with student loans and student debt, Robert writes quote, for new borrowers who take out student loans after July 1st, 2026, they will only have two options, a new standard plan or an income driven repayment plan called the repayment assistance plan or wrap. Furthermore, new borrowers will face lower student loan borrowing limits and changes to loan types for existing borrowers.

There will be no immediate changes, but between July, 2026 and July, 2028, the income contingent repayment plans, the ICR Pay and Save will be eliminated and borrowers will have to migrate to a modified version of income-based repayment. These changes will have a dramatic effect on both how families pay for college as well as how they repay their existing student loan obligations. So yeah, basically they’re going to be pushing all of us into, I think it’s around 15% income based of your income and that you can maybe get it forgiven after 25 years, I believe is the most recent version that I’ve read. That may change by the time this episode comes out. We will keep you posted for sure, but I wanted to go back around the table and ask Lorraine and Christine if you could, so that first round gave us a real good sense of all the things that brought you out to dc, all these real issues that you I and so many people we know are dealing with on a day-to-day basis that are going to get even harder with the passage of this bill.

So take us to the action itself. Can you tell us more about who was there, the different groups, the different people, like the stories that you were hearing from people who have different concerns about what’s in this bill, but you guys were all physically there sharing that space as a group of shared interests, right? So I want to ask if we could give our listeners more of a sense of what those interests were and who the people were there. Tell us what happened with the protest itself and what led to you both getting arrested among with dozens of others.

Lorraine Chavez:

Well, I’ve been following the debt collective and I was really impressed and amazed at how well everything was organized and how there were people of all ages, all ethnicities, all backgrounds, going through the training together at the Lutheran Church. And it just speaks to the crisis that we have around all debt on all levels and these really horrific policies that are about to or will be passed. And some of the banners that people had, which I fully support, said that people are going to die if these policies are put in place. How are Medicaid recipients going to get medical care? I know that in Chicago we have this incredible resource, which is the Cook County Medical System, and over the years, people with no health insurance have been able to just go there and get treatment. And I had a friend had a broken leg, she had no health insurance, so she was able to be treated, but I’m not sure if these cuts are also going to affect that incredible resource that we have.

I have friends that have come from out of country for emergency operations to Cook County healthcare. So I have no doubt that many people will die as a result of these cutbacks. And we already have in the United States, amongst all of the advanced industrial countries, we have the highest mortality rate. There’s something like 46, 45 advanced industrial countries that have much better longevity rates than we do. So we are in a deep, profound crisis of health in the country, and these cutbacks will drastically increase the death rate of millions of Americans who will be denied access to healthcare.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And what was it? Was this your first time getting arrested? What was it like being there with folks protesting this and then getting arrested for it for your civil disobedience?

Lorraine Chavez:

Well, I personally feel in such kind of a desperate state about all of this that I said, I don’t care if I get arrested. I mean, what else are we going to do? But unfortunately put our bodies on the line. I don’t know. Of course, I’ve written 500 emails to my representatives. I’ve been an advocate myself for the fight for 15 in 2013, marching on the streets of Chicago for blocks and blocks. So I’ve done this before, but I just feel this incredible feeling of desperation right now. And I know there are some Americans if they can afford to, they’re leaving the country because of these attacks on their lives. And so I was happy to stand up with the debt collective.

Christine Rodriguez:

So reflecting back on that whole day, three words come to mind, which is coordinated. This was all very coordinated, planned out game plan down. And then not only us, but it was organized. And when I say organized, it wasn’t just the debt collective, it was Ace, our people who are really advocating for the disabled community. It was the folks from Arkansas’s and met a lot of people from Arkansas’s who are fighting Medicaid and came all the way down to DC so they could advocate to keep their Medicaid intact. There was an artist group, their name leaves my memory right now, but there was a group of, there were mostly younger folks, so that was the young crowd. The artist folks came in to help us. I met some legal observer folks from Washington dc but this organization of not just one organization of the Debt Collective, but a whole coalition of folks who came to focus on their own issues.

I came with the Debt Collective. I feel like we were really holding down the student loan forgiveness advocacy. I came for the Debt Collective, but at our meetup and our training for the day, right in the morning, we’re ready for training. It’s 9:00 AM. Let’s figure out our game plan. Let’s act it out. Let’s have a dress rehearsal. You’re on this team, you’re going to get arrested. Okay, arrest team, you folks go on that side. This is all, it was a coordinated arrest and it was calculated in a way of they gave us the money for our bail because they had done this so many times that they know the system. We say arrest is really, it’s a dramatic citation is what happened because they let us go for $50. We could have done that from the beginning outside of the state building, get all, but again, it was just like a whole very dramatic citation.

But again, it’s why does this need to be so dramatic of us advocating our First Amendment rights to express how much we don’t want the government to go through with this big disastrous plan. So again, it’s organized. And then the last one was, it was very supportive as well. So again, we have this team that’s organized and throughout the whole time, again, we were team getting arrested. This was coordinated. But we also have team of people who are not getting arrested who are outside or still with us throughout this time. They’re following us or they’re outside of the Senate building. When we get arrested, video recording, just kind of seeing, those are a support team. They’re following us in the, I don’t say paddy wagon because paddy wagon sounds really cutesy and it’s a jail transport shelter. I don’t know. I felt like a shelter dog in that van because it’s not just a regular van where you sit down, there’s actually in that space you’re able to jam packed three. There was three people with you, Lorraine, or just one,

Lorraine Chavez:

Three on one side and three on the other.

Christine Rodriguez:

Okay, six. And then there was me and just one girl. And so about eight people. But the point is we are in our own small jail already in that van. It was dc. It’s super hot. I’m from Los Angeles, California. We have the sun, we have fun, we have breeze. But in DC at that time, it was hot, it was humid, it was an unbearable heat. And so all this is going on our coordinated efforts, but throughout this, we’re feeling supported. They’re following us on the way to the process center. When we’re at stoplights, I could see folks from our supportive team just kind of on the sidewalk watching. And then when we get out, finally after I think we get arrested, maybe at one I’m assuming, and I get processed. I’m the third to the last person to get processed. I get out around six 30 and then once I get out, I see my folks at the end of right across the street, they have pizza for us.

They’re clapping, and they had my stuff at the end of the day. So this whole support throughout the day, they paid for a lunch. But yeah, those are three things I’m going to kind of show how that kind of emulates throughout the day. So as I mentioned, we had our training in the beginning we had our team split up, are you going to get arrested? Are you not? We did our dress rehearsal. And then from there, as a team, we all walk over before this as well. We all go around. There’s about maybe 75 of us in a big space under just coordinating our day. And we all go around the room and we introduce ourselves, who we’re coming with and then why we’re here. And then throughout that process, I came in for student loan forgiveness. But just in that introduction round, I had now become a part of other folks who were fighting for Medicaid, fighting to reduce, to not cut the spending for the SNAP program or for the food stamp program.

I was coming in for folks who also were student debtors, but also saw how this can impact just education in general. Eventually, we all walk over as a team to our, we have a hearing at the senate building and we have a packed house and people, the floors are filled, people are standing along the perimeter, they’re making seats where they can, we have cameras every, and then we see more people come in, more people from other organizations. Planned Parenthood was there. They had thought their pretty early, they had a seats kind of set in place. So not only did this also become about Medicaid and snap, but it was also now about reproductive healthcare because now we have those folks on our side. And I met a group of elderly, I call them RAs ladies who just speak Spanish, but they give very TIA vibes.

They were from New Jersey and they came out to support at the press conference. And so our press conference was really just a big rally, I would say, in the Senate building of people giving speeches and giving chance, and really a moment of solidarity for each kind of organization that came to express why we were there, why we were fighting. And so that was a beautiful event. We had dinner at the Senate, we had lunch at the Senate building, and then we wake our way to the rotunda where we’re ready to have our action. And when we get to the rotunda area, there’s already a lot of police presence there. I guess they got word because there’s so many of us at the hearing, they even kind of tried to tell us like, you guys cannot woo you guys. You guys can’t chant. You can’t be too loud.

You could only clap. So kind of in that moment at the press hearing, we could already see they’re trying to keep us quiet in a sense because we were being too loud with our chance and we were giving too many woos once we would say cut the bill. So I think through that, we got our presence known, and so people were already very heavily geared and the Capitol police were really almost waiting for us at the rotunda, definitely at the second floor where we wanted to do our banner drop at the rotunda. There’s a top, and we wanted to drop our banners from the top one. We had two banner teams. Teams, Lorraine and I were on banner team number one. Banner team number two actually had their banner snatched from them pretty early on, so I don’t even think they got to the second floor, but we still had ours.

And so we walked to the rotunda at the second floor just trying to scope out the location. Turns out that location is used for media. That’s where a lot of media press will hold their cameras. And yet it was really packed in there in that very, very small rotunda walkway. Second floor. There’s just wires everywhere, like cameras. And so we are just kind of walking being like, oh, well, so beautiful. Let me take a picture. Let’s take some group pictures. And already police are approaching us and telling us we cannot be in that space because it’s for media, which is like, yes, that’s true, but I didn’t see any signs that said that we couldn’t be there or this is still a public walkway. If anything, this media is really causing a fire hazard perhaps with all their media in that very small space. So we left.

So we kind of had to think of a plan B because that is where we wanted to drop our banner. And so we just decided we have our banner at the time, we could already hear that the demonstration was going on as we’re trying to drop our banner, we could already kind of hear that the plan of people are going to have a din at the bottom. They’re going to have a banner over us. And I think from the videos that I’ve seen already, when people were lying on the floor, banners were being taken away and people were already getting arrested just from, they could see their association with the din. So people were just getting arrested. And at that time, I think we just decided to drop our banner from a staircase from the third floor of a staircase, which went really well because you could see our banner, but immediately our banner gets snatched.

We all raise our hands, and at that time, they actually don’t arrest us. They let us walk away, but we were really eager to grab our banner, which they did, and we walked away and we’re about to take the elevator to go down to see what’s going on at the bottom floor. And with the elevator door opens, it’s already people arrested and cops in the elevator. I guess we can’t use this because our comrades, we got arrested or there’s no more space for us. So we decided to walk to another stairway to exit. I believe we were chanting at the time, we’re probably doing some chants regarding no, don’t cut Medicaid kind of thing. And we see the police already blocking us saying that we can’t go down, but chanting, we’re chanting, they’re blocking us. It’s like, okay, I want to exit the building. And then we’re still chanting, and then it goes from, we cannot go down to them kind of enclosing us in the staircase and then making the decision of, okay, now we’re going to get arrested.

And so they zip tie us. It was me and my buddy for the day. His name was Talon. Talen was a very young, 20-year-old, was very nervous. The day of, we kind of bonded because I could tell he was nervous about the arrest and I kind of gave him an explanation. It’s like I kept saying, coordinated, this is planned. It really just sounds like a very dramatic citation. It’s not going to go on our record, but we just got to, I dunno, go through the motions of getting arrested. They’re going to make it really, really dramatic, which they definitely did. But in the end, it was really just so they could get 50 bucks out of us and make a show out of expressing our first amendment rights. But we get arrested. Me talin, I don’t know, were you there with me on that kind of group as well, Lorraine?

Lorraine Chavez:

I was on the staircase I think with you.

And so as a group, we traveled together. We were also with the Center for Popular Democracy. I should point that out. They were a huge organization with us. And I just wanted to add too that the police were swarming over the place. We were a peaceful group of demonstrators, totally peaceful, exercising our first amendment rights, and even within the holding center where we were, no air conditioning, it looked like a gigantic empty garage. There were fans, but it was excruciatingly hot the whole time. And I counted how many police men and women. There were about 30 of us there, and there were about 25 policemen and women. I mean, it was absurd. And to see dozens and dozens and dozens of police, men and women swarming the Senate building as well, there must’ve been a police man or woman for every single one of us that was there.

It was ridiculous, quite frankly, and also terrifying because we were just there exercising our First Amendment rights about issues that impact all of us. And there was an enormous crowd, enormous group of protestors in wheelchairs and amongst the disabled, and they tried to, I am not sure what I saw, but their hands were tied in front or in back of them. It was a really dangerous situation. I actually had bruises on my wrist until the next day because of the plastic ties were just gripped around my wrist. And I wasn’t even allowed really to drink water. I mean, it was a dangerous situation given the heat and given the fact there was no air conditioning virtually in the police fans, there was no air conditioning at all in the holding center. And here we were simply exercising our first amendment rights for free speech and to protest, which we are allowed to do under the Constitution. So it was really terrifying, honestly, to observe all of that going on around us.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah, I mean, as someone who has covered demonstrations like this and seen just time and time again, how imposing the police are, how brutal the police are, how often officers seem to delight in the pain that they can inflict on people. I’ve seen this firsthand many times. You guys experienced it. I mean, Christine, you mentioned what we’re watching happening in Southern California right now, which that was what our last episode was on talking to folks about the brutality of these ice raids, the brutality and violation of people’s rights with the ways that the police are cracking down on protestors who are trying to say the ice raids are trying to stop them or saying, Hey, it’s wrong for mass armed agents of the state to be ripping people out of their homes, out of their cars and disappearing them and kidnapping them off the street in broad daylight. People who were protesting that are getting beaten, journalists covering that are getting shot in the head with not non-lethal rounds. These are all things we talked about in our last episode, and I’m bringing those threads together because I kind of want to end there in this last round. I know I got to let you both go in a minute, but Christine, you actually made this connection earlier, right?

This bill as the sort of entire package that’s meant to support and provide the funding and taxation for Trump’s agenda in his second administration. So it includes all these different kind of wishlist, grab bag, smash and grab type policies that you can’t help but look at you as part of. They’re not disconnected, right? So what this is going to mean for all of us as student debtors is directly connected to the fact that the very same bill that we’re talking about here is going to provide billions of dollars to hire 10,000 more ICE employees, which would boost the agency’s ranks by like 50%, right? And again, these are the people who are terrorizing the families of immigrants and people who look like me and our families in the places where our families live. There’s a poor man in Santa Ana who was tackled, beaten on camera.

He’s lived here for over 30 years. All three of his kids served in the military. He got beaten and arrested by ice in the same place where my dad walks. I’m terrified about all of this stuff, and I don’t want to belabor the point. The whole point is just that the increase in border militarization in ice, and at the same time that Medicaid and SNAP are being cut, student loan payments are being restructured. I wanted to end with you all kind of tying that together for us. I mean, again, how is this bill going to impact you personally as a student debtor, but also what does it mean to you to see that your future as a student debtor is going to be made more difficult to pay for things like more ice to terrorize our communities and bigger tax cuts for the rich?

Lorraine Chavez:

Well, I need to say that I’ve been a part of the immigration rights movement for decades. And being in Chicago, we are very fortunate to have a governor, governor Pritzker and a mayor, mayor Brandon Johnson, who has declared that they are going to maintain Chicago as a sanctuary city. But I just recently showed up at an arrest, which people are being asked to do in Chicago, to be a witness to arrests of immigrants and to guarantee that they’re not held at some unknown location or just spirited out of the city to some other place. And we just recently in Chicago had a huge immigrant rights mobilization in March. So all of these things are deeply connected. Absolutely. I just wanted to say, yeah, I’m grateful to be in Chicago and Illinois, but I was recently speaking to a woman who works for the city and who is Mexican, and she says, wow, we’re just a haven, a little oasis surrounded by states and leadership in these states in the Midwest that are fully on board with the Trump plan and administration and all of these ways.

But it doesn’t make us as individuals immune from the impact like in the disability community. For example, my niece works in southern Illinois with the disabled community, and one of her jobs was to go around and visit every single home of families of individuals who are receiving money from the government because they are severely disabled. And they started crying after she was visit, they said, well, our $2,000 is being taken away. And finally she was so upset. She said, well, what did you think was going to happen? Right? What did you think was going to happen by your vote? Because all of southern Illinois voted for Trump, not really the cities in Illinois, but definitely southern Illinois, like Charleston. And they said, well, we didn’t know. We just thought that immigrants are taking our jobs. And so we wanted to be protected from that by voting for him.

It’s such also a lack of education because the birth rate has collapsed in the United States. There are no workers who will be able to replenish the US labor force if there are not immigrants. The US birthright collapsed before COVID, so Americans are not having any children at all. So where do we think even imagine the future labor force is going to come from? And we’ve also seen in Illinois too, just recently in the last six to three months or so, we’ve seen about I think like 40,000 new immigrants. So we are a state that is in deep crisis where there’s a massive net out migration because of the jobs crisis here, no jobs. But because of I think Governor Pritzker and governor and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s stance to protecting immigrants, just in the last six months we’ve had, I think about 40,000 Latinos entered the state probably for protection, I’m guessing from what’s going on. So this is a dire crisis on all levels, certainly for immigrants who are being rounded up and deported who’ve been here for decades. And those of us who will not be able to pay our student loans, those of us who will not be able, who are in deep medical crisis and will not have medical care, and I do believe that that is part of the Trump agenda. They don’t care if people die. I mean, there’s a word for it. It’s called macropolitics. And I think that’s exactly the world that we’re in right now.

Christine Rodriguez:

My name is Christine Rodriguez and let the record show that I do not want my student loan forgiveness money to be funding ice. I think about that a lot as ice raids are increasing. I think that was my line when I was introducing myself. I don’t want my student loan money to be funding the ice raids that are happening in my community. My community in Pasadena, just last week, two weeks ago, we experienced two raids within a week, and these raids were within walking distance of my apartment. This happening right in my backyard. And yeah, it’s something that is completely unnecessary, especially when America is stolen land. How can you be illegal on stolen land? How can we arrest Mexicanos when this was Mexico at one point? It’s just a huge waste of money I feel. And this big disastrous bill wants to add more money to that to have more guns, more power, more AI tools to just install violence in our community and to install fear into those who are the most vulnerable.

Yeah, that’s what I think about a lot. And that was a big reason why I wanted to be a part of this action because this bill wants to take away funding for medical services for the poorest and for the most vulnerable and allocate that money to companies who are extremely wealthy already and are just going to get more wealthy and probably more power and more influence on the federal government. And yeah, I think about that a lot. And that’s something that me as an individual, I could choose not to rent hotels from the Marriott, from the Hilton as a way to divest because they’re letting ice agents stay in their hotels. But what can I do when my wages start to get garnished because I don’t want to, or I can’t pay my student loans. My wages will be garnished and that money will still be going to fund bullets and gas for ice agents to continue doing this atrocious work that they’re doing in our communities.

And as we saw with our action that we did earlier this week, there’s a lot of people who are going to suffer if these funding cuts happen. Unfortunately, it’s the opposite. That’s what should be happening. We should be giving more money to Medicaid. We should be giving more money to food stamps. People are barely getting by and this is their one lifeline that could be cut and they’re going to have a lot of suffering. And unfortunately, they’re going to have to maybe do things in their life that they weren’t proud of in order to make and survive because the help that they were receiving would go away. That’s a really big general statement, but when people are desperate to survive, they will do desperate measures and what will happen, the police force that has a lot more money, they’re going to intervene in some way, whether it be disabled, folks in wheelchairs advocating for their rights, they’re going to be easily arrested because they just have the power and the money to do that.

And so it’s a scary place that we’re in, but there’s so many days that we have left to make a change. Every day is a new opportunity to connect with other folks and to get creative in ways that we want to disrupt the system because they truly believe that what is going is wrong and it can’t sustain itself for that long. There’s been a lot of evil things that have happened systematically here in the US and abroad things, and they don’t last for long. Eventually everybody gets sick of it. Even the people in power start to realize maybe they weren’t getting the best end of the deal. And so Trump will gain a lot of, what’s the word I’m looking for? A lot of enemies just from his own selfish acts. Even the, I noticed that the officers that arrest us, a lot of them were new, A lot of them were getting on the spot training.

They had to fill out a form and I could literally see the top officer being like, this is where you sign the paper and you should really check that they have their names here and make sure. So it’s a lot of high turnover from the police force, I’m assuming, because all the stress, they get paid really well is what I’m hearing. But just the amount of stress and what they have to go through on it every day, how does it feel to be a young man to arrest a little old lady who’s protesting for Medicaid that probably doesn’t sit right. That’s going to cause a lot of stress into somebody’s lives. And I think eventually everybody’s going to get sick of the norm and we’re going to have to get a little bit uncomfortable at some times. We’re going to have to get arrested and be in the back of a very hot van, but everyday actions that we can do can really help to pick at a very already weak system. It just takes a lot of collective effort and energy and a lot of your time and effort to make sure you see the change that you want to have in the future.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and in that vein, if I can just throw one more question at you both in the last minute that I got you here, what’s your message to folks out there listening about the different ways they can get involved, why they should get involved, even if they’re not able to make it out to DC and protest and get arrested, I guess, yeah, what do you want to leave folks with about how they can get involved and why they should?

Lorraine Chavez:

What I have personally been doing is attending a bunch of local meetings in Chicago organized coming out of this huge immigration rights meeting that we had in Chicago locally. So we are trying to kind of move forward after that immigrant rights meeting to be coherent as a group and to remain somewhat organized. We had a huge immigration rights march in 2006 and I attended that. And what some of the feedback that we’ve been discussing is that we did not continue to organize as a collective following that ginormous march. I mean, hundreds of thousands of people came to Chicago until the George Floyd rally, the George Floyd murder marches. I think it might’ve been one of the largest marches in US history. So I’m personally committed to doing that moving forward. I am also personally committed to trying to work on the whole question of student debt relief and to work with a contingent of debt collective folks in Chicago who are meeting here in July to try and organize about that.

I should say that the reason I have my student loan debt to such a huge degree is that I am all but doctorate from University of Chicago for my dissertation. And my dissertation was on the entire. I argued that immigration, politics and policies in the United States, as has happened in France, would lead to the breakdown of the political party system and my first advisor, these are all famous people, professor Gary Orfield said to me who I had done a lot of research for building up to him being my dissertation advisor, he said that immigration would never be a major issue in the United States. Then I followed with Professor Michael Dawson, who had no time for me as his career blew up, and he went off to Harvard and Professor Saskia Sasson, supposedly a scholar on immigration, but she said that she just didn’t understand how political parties would make policy and implement them.

So I really tried for something like 10 or 15 years and at that time the fellowships, so I had maximum fellowships, but they never paid more than 10,000, $8,000 a year. And I was raised by a single mother. All of my colleagues from the University of Chicago that I know had parental help, family help everything else to finish their doctorates, something that I did not have. So I am hopeful based on what I see in Chicago and with all of the immigrant rights groups, organizing the Invisible Institute, and of course I’m going to maintain contact primarily with the debt collective here in Chicago as well.

Christine Rodriguez:

So I would recommend three things if somebody wants to get involved. Are you tired of seeing the system fall in front of you? Are you tired of seeing injustice? Step number one, talk to your neighbors. I always say start local and I think an easy way is just talk to your neighbors, especially if you live in a very now predominant immigrant community. We have to watch out for each other because we’re seeing that the police are not going to intervene and help us when there’s ice rates going on. They’re just going to be backup security, and so we need to check on each other. If you go to a spot for me, my local CBS, there’s always some guy selling fruit there, and so I made friends with him. And so it’s more than just talking, but it’s like getting their name, getting their information, an emergency contact number.

If you ever see anything of an ice raid or just kind of danger going on, you can be able to either check in on that person or let somebody who knows them know what’s going on. And also just if you live in an apartment complex, definitely be talking to your neighbors at this point because we want to make sure that we’re communicating with each other because especially if you live in an apartment complex or kind of like a quiet neighborhood, it could be very, very, we don’t talk to each other, but then there’s also things that we always notice. Have you noticed that there’s a lot of police presence going on in the neighborhood? Did you hear about the ice raid that happened down the street? Right. We have to be our own kind of networks, and a lot of that takes just talking to strangers, but neighbors, but also strangers.

Lorraine was a stranger a week ago, and now we’re buddies for life because we had this amazing experience. I feel like, especially in Los Angeles. For me, I’m taught miha, talk to strangers, there’s weirdos out there, blah, blah, blah. And I grew up very guarded and it took me doing education in Portland, Oregon specifically where Portland’s weird and everybody talks to each other just because that I got to learn how to really just talk to strangers again, when I’m going to places, my local market, there’s a lot of people there that I talk to now and just getting information like, Hey, I haven’t seen this guy. Have you heard anything? Have you seen him? Oh, okay, he’s staying home. Okay, that’s good as long as they’re home. Yeah, really talking to strangers who are in the same kind of sphere as you. And what I see you say about that is if you go to an event, if you go to a march, don’t be in your own bubble.

It’s really easy to just stay with your group of friends. I hope your group of friends are really your people, but we also have to mingle with other folks and build connections so that when we run into them another time, we have already had that bond. But also they can let us know about what’s going on in their bubble in their community. So I do encourage people to talk to strangers, maybe don’t go in their van the first time, but definitely talk to strangers and once you kind of see what they’re about, you start to build a network outside and make your network bigger and then collaborate with folks. And then the last thing I would do is definitely be involved in your local politics. If you live in a city, if you live in an unincorporated area, if there’s some sort of city council, if there’s some sort of town hall that you could just sit in, I will preface, it gets really boring sometimes, but sometimes there’s a lot of drama that we miss because maybe we were at home watching TV or watching a reality show.

The real reality show is at your city council meeting, there’s drama there and they’re making big decisions sometimes that you’re like, oh, I didn’t know they were going to install surveillance on the main street. Why didn’t they tell me this? Oh, there’s a lot of money going into the police. That’s interesting to know when we have schools that are being shut down in our community. So I’d say definitely visit your local city council, city town hall, any local thing, try to get tapped in because there’s a lot of information and drama there that’s not advertised and it could cause a little change in your community and it could really push you to be more involved. That definitely happened with me. I went to one city council meeting and I was like, oh, there’s so much going on. And now I’m pretty involved in my local community.

So talk to your neighbors, talk to strangers, get involved in any way. It doesn’t have to be that way, but I’m just saying find a center, find a community group that can connect you to even more things. We know things on our own, but when we get connected to spaces and to people, we get to know about flying out to DC to do a protest and maybe flying out to some other place. But yeah, definitely mingle and get connected with folks and support people on their journey and in the return they’ll support you on your journey.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank our guests, Lorraine Chavez and Christine Rodriguez who were both arrested in Washington DC last week for participating in a peaceful protest against Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill and the devastating impacts that it will have on poor and working people. And I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work that we’re doing at The Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the real new newsletter so you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximilian Alvarez, take care of yourselves. Take care of each other, solidarity forever.