These ‘neighbors from the hood’ saw ICE terrorizing their community—and banded together to fight back

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 I’m just popping in here for a second because firstly, I miss you guys. And secondly, I wanted to apologize for the disruption in our usual programming over the last month. If you guys have been following what we’re doing here at the Real News Network, or if you’ve been following me on social media, then surely you’ve been seeing me running all over the damn country the past month. I mean from going to Philadelphia to cover the beginning of last month’s city workers strike to going to Chicago for the Socialism Conference to New Orleans for the Net Roots Conference and back here in Baltimore to speak at the UAW Convention for the National Organization of Legal Service Workers.

And also, most importantly, I took an emergency trip back home to Southern California to film reports on the fascist assault on immigrant communities and the people who were standing up and fighting back against it. Now, we’ve already released multiple short reports and our first full video report on the Real News YouTube channel, and we’ve got lots more coming your way. So please if you can help us share these reports, make sure that everyone sees them and understands what’s really happening in this country. And today’s episode is actually a crossover that we recorded with Professor David Pumba Lou and the Speaking Out of Place podcast about the ice raids in Southern California. I was truly honored to be part of this conversation alongside Daniela Navin and Jeanette de La Riva, two incredible human beings who are residents of Pasadena, California and who are part of the community defense group, Grupo Altoa.

This is a totally grassroots group formed organically by a collection of neighbors from the hood as they describe it, who all saw the fascist terror spreading in their community and who all decided to stand up band together and do something about it from chasing ice cars out of their town with bullhorns to setting up security brigades so that terrified residents can walk outside and go to the grocery store from providing know your rights information to reclaiming public space, protecting each other, and Rebelliously refusing to just live in fear and stay indoors. These ordinary working people are showing extraordinary bravery, and I’m incredibly grateful to them for speaking so openly and honestly with me when I was filming on the ground in Pasadena and on this podcast. And I’m so incredibly grateful to Professor Pumba Lou for having me, Daniella and Jeanette on the show, and for lifting up their vital, powerful voices. Be sure to follow and subscribe to speaking out of place and follow Grupo Alta Defensa on Instagram. We’ve included links to both in the show notes for this episode. Now, I promise you guys, we are going to be back in action with our regular weekly show very, very soon. We’ve got critical episodes coming your way, so please stay tuned and keep fighting. And without further ado, here’s our crossover podcast with speaking out of place featuring Daniella Navin and Jeanette de la Riva from Grupo Alto Defensa.

David Palumbo-Liu:

Today we speak with Daniela Navin and Jeannette De la Riva, two members of Grupo Auto Defensa, a community organization based in Pasadena, California, which has come about in response to attacks by ice, which have violently disrupted everyday life and led people to form new relations of mutual support and care. We hear their stories of how Trump Lieutenant Steven Miller’s demand that ice arrests 3000 people every day has put unbelievable constraints on hardworking people’s lives. Nevertheless, we also hear how they have invented tactics to challenge these repressive measures. We’re joined by journalist activist Maximilian Alvarez of the Real News Network who grew up in Los Angeles, and comments on the broad networks of resistance cropping up organically to fight fascism. We hope you enjoy this and other episodes please help support speaking out of place by subscribing via our website, speaking out of place.com. Following us on Instagram and following me on blue Sky, you can give me your feedback and suggest people to invite and topics to cover.

Also, please check out my book of the same title published by Haymarket Books, Ian Yata Taylor calls it quote, the exact book we need for the troubled historical moment through which we are living. Thank you all for being on the show. This is such an important topic. It speaks exactly to the purpose of the podcast, which is to get the story out to correct misperceptions and to empower people. So I’m going to ask you three to all introduce yourselves any way you want to introduce yourself and then we’ll into the show. So maybe Daniela, do you want to start?

Daniela Navin:

Sure. Daniela Navin. I’m a resident of Pasadena.

Jeannette De la Riva:

I’m Jeanette de Lava. I’m a resident from Pasadena.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And I’m Maximillian Alvarez. I am the editor in chief and co-executive director of the Real News Network in Baltimore, also born and raised in Orange County, California.

David Palumbo-Liu:

And it’s really thanks to Max that we’re all together because I’ve known Max for a long time and he got me in touch with Daniella and Jeanette. I thought we’d begin by just asking folks, walk us through what Pasadena is to you.

Jeannette De la Riva:

As for me, Pasadena’s, it’s my neighborhood. It’s my own community. I grew up here, I was raised here. My grandparents, they came from Mexico to do a living here. So I got to know almost everybody. Everybody knows me because of my grandparents, my dad. So I’m just going to fight all the way until I need a fight because this is a family to me. Everybody’s important. It doesn’t matter for me what color you are or where are you coming from. It’s like we got to protect one another.

David Palumbo-Liu:

So what have been the threats and the things that have been going down that it put this sense of community into high gear in terms of people getting to know each other and stepping in?

Jeannette De la Riva:

I think more the community came more together for me is like when we started getting those notices. People are getting just swept up by these supposedly ice people that are just covered up from the face. So that’s the thing that made us come out there and start defending everybody that doesn’t want to come out to defend themselves. When this happened for me is when Elizabeth, she started with her horn just going down the street where I live and just yelling out that ice is here. So that’s when I just came out the window and just started telling her like, okay, what’s going on? So she told me. So that’s when I was like, okay, this is not going to happen. Not in our hometown. And I think Daniella felt almost the same way. Daniella?

Daniela Navin:

Yeah, I would say for me in Pasadena, I didn’t grow up in Pasadena. I grew up in El Monte, which is very similar to Pasadena in terms of the demographics and the immigrant community, undocumented status, and also coming from a mixed status family. So I moved to Pasadena probably about around 12 years ago. Where I live is just right above the two 10 freeway and people always think about the Rose Parade, Eddie Van Halen, you think about the Rose Bowl, but above the two 10 freeway, it’s sort of a different vibe, a different community. It’s la asa lives there. It’s just a community where you’re going to find very similar to what I grew up with in Monte. And you had the fires that happened earlier in January, so already we were in a very vulnerable space and the community did come together. I think that was the most encouraging part was the support and the community and the volunteer hours.

One thing that really upset me was there’s a windshields donut up the street from me on Orange Grove and Robles and men dressed up their faces hovered, kidnapped six men that were actually going to go and clean up an Altadena. So the Pasadena Job Center did do a lot of training for the day laborers to help clean up the debris, the trees, and so they were on their way there on the bus stop. And this was about, I want to say about 5 36 in the morning. And so it was so close to where I live that when that happened, just something lit a fire in me that I couldn’t believe that this was happening in our community and in a place where we were still recovering from the fires. That was so devastating. And Jeanette started this with Liz. Liz was our connector, Jeanette and Liz, they knew each other from high school. And for me, I went to the vigils, I went to the protest, I went to city council. I went to something to try to find some sort of where I could take action because with this happening, it was six people. This was on a Wednesday and then on Saturday there’s a park right across from where I lived, Villa Park, there’s a Tamal stand, and they took men from the Tamal stand and also where Liz’s apartment on Marengo, they also took people from her apartment complex.

Wow. So posting on Instagram is not enough. I just didn’t feel like it was actionable. City council, passing city council, that felt like it was nowhere. I changed my route home. I was patrolling on my own before I met Jeanette and Liz and looking for something. And sure enough, I found the tent. I remember I rolled up there on a Friday after work, and then I met Jeanette and I think the tent went up on Tuesday. And so I just started being there, started going to sightings and starting to advocate. I don’t know, just looking for something. And I definitely found it with our little group that we created organically. It all just was put together. I don’t know, we just all meshed well together.

David Palumbo-Liu:

Yeah. You mentioned earlier on, that’s how you two met, right? Is through this particular action. But obviously you’ve been thinking along the same lines for a long time. Max, you grew up in la, right? Tell us a little bit about how this registers with you.

Maximillian Alvarez:

There’s so much there, man, that I’m frankly still processing it. And I’ve been back in Baltimore for two weeks, since I was there in southern California filming for the Real News, including filming with Daniella and Jeanette and everyone at Grupo Alto, the FSA in Pasadena. I’ve been going home practically every year minus some of the COVID years for the last 20 years since I left when I was 18. And there’s so many familiar things and feelings and sights of going home that just always put my body and soul in a different mode. And it’s like a different part of you reawakens when you’re back in the surround that you were raised in. And I still felt that, but I’ll be honest with you, coming home has never felt the way it did a couple of weeks ago. The place that I have always associated with warmth and light and community and just the friendly vibe of Southern California, like I said, it’s not all that was gone, but there was a dark heavy P on everything and you could sense it.

If you’re from there, you can start to notice the differences because on the surface, everything looks the same. But then you start noticing that the parks that are normally filled with kids are so quiet that the food trucks you’re used to seeing, maybe they’re 8, 9, 10, there’s one there if that. It’s details like that. It’s the rings under people’s eye because they’re not sleeping. It’s the heaviness in their voice because this is so different from anything that we’ve really experienced. And I think one of the most striking parts for me was, the example I use is that when it comes to something like climate change, speaking of the fires, which I’ll get to in a minute, our biggest battle with climate change over the years has been convincing ourselves and each other that it’s actually happening. And we’ve never really had a firm footing where everyone could just acknowledge that this thing is happening and we should all deal with it.

I would say to everyone out there, it’s almost a careful what you wish for situation, because I didn’t feel that at home. I didn’t have to convince my friends and my family that this was happening. We all knew it. And there’s something both really I think essential and powerful about that, but also deeply disturbing because you want to convince yourself that it’s a bad dream, that it’s not as bad as it is, that things aren’t changing as rapidly as they are, but they are. And I felt that going home. And I felt that in the communities that we filmed in, these are communities, these are neighborhoods, these are streets, freeways that I grew up in. I got family all over LA and Orange County. I grew up with people who are so much like Daniella, Jeanette, chewy, Liz, all of them. They felt like people I grew up with and went to high school with, which again highlighted just how real this is and how it shook me at the deepest core of who I am to see my people, my home, be taken over by this fascist occupation, this terror campaign.

But at the same time, I’ve never felt an inspiration like I felt seeing what Daniella, Jeanette, and everyone they’re doing, because I felt they’re harnessing the best parts of who they are. The skills that you develop just as a kid and SoCal, whether that be being bilingual, whether that be knowing the streets so well that you can evade ice cars that are trying to follow you or something, or whether it be just your ability to communicate with so many different people at different parts of their life. I saw everyone in Grupo, Alta Defensa harnessing the skills that they had developed as a person, as a southern Californian, as people of mixed races, and put those skills to use for good to fight for their community. And that is an incredible thing. And I think everyone should really take heart and take inspiration from what GPA Alta Defensa is doing.

And the last thing I’ll say about just what this means for our home, Daniella mentioned it, Pasadena specifically, this is an area that was just battered by incredible wildfires. In January. The Eaton fire was blazing through Pasadena while the Palisades fire was blazing just a couple miles away. I saw the burnt out ruins of old businesses and homes. They’re still there. There’s so much debris that’s been cleared, but there’s still so much just ruins of the former Pasadena there. And in fact, so many immigrants were the ones clearing away that debris months after the fire. And now these are the people who are being taken away. These are the people who can’t leave their homes because they’re terrified of getting kidnapped in broad daylight by massed, unidentified armed thugs who no one knows if they’re agents of the state, no one knows if they’re bounty hunters. No one knows if they’re vicious impersonators who are abducting people to kill, rape, whatever. No one knows. And this is the situation that the Trump administration has actively and deliberately created in our homes. And it was just so apparent that the scale of the problem was not being matched by the institutional responses from local government, from unions, nonprofits, but where it is being matched with force, with determination, with creativity is from working people like Jeanette and Daniela and their neighbors. And that is an incredible thing.

David Palumbo-Liu:

Well, that’s such a powerful statement, max and pack, so much information and so many questions I’d like to get to. One is how has your life changed? What kinds of ways are you exactly not able to lead the life that you expected and had been living? And second is exactly Max said, what kinds of skills and tactics and networks and relationships are you building? And I guess third we should get to it at some point is obviously your energy is finite and you’ve been burdened with an awful lot and it can’t be sustainable over the long term. What can we do to help? How can we form a larger network even to make up for the lack of response, if that’s probably the best characterization, if not antagonism that you find from local government and state government? So first of all, again, how has your life changed? What kinds of things have you had to adjust to Second, how are you learning these new skills and deploying them to defend yourself and to advance your community? Let’s start with those two maybe.

Jeannette De la Riva:

I think basically for me, it changed a lot. Usually getting up early in the morning before I go to work, like how Daniella does. We go patrol usually if my kids are up for it, my kids be tagging along too, where everything happens, we start recording taking pictures, and it’s been tiring. It gets tired sometimes. My body just, it takes a lot of energy out just trying to be out there. And I love it. I love being out there. I love standing out there with the group. It’s like a big family that we have that we’re all sticking together. Stuff that I don’t know, Daniela will help me out. Or the other team we have Jesus and Elizabeth, we all just sit in a circle and just talk it out. We have sit down a couple of times and just let it out right there.

I know we had pride a couple of times right there. Let our frustration out. We pass each other information, whatever we don’t know, we just keep in touch with each other. For me, I believe sometimes we want to be in other cities and help them out, but at the same time, we think we won’t make it on time for them. And that’s what frustrates me more and it gets me upset because I have my kids and then seeing others that maybe the other kids may think, oh, it’s my mom or dad coming back home. Am I going to see them again or am I going to see my family again The day, like how Daniella said with wind chills, I knew two people that got picked up and then where Elizabeth stays, I used to stay there long time ago when they told me the people that got picked up there, I knew them.

It broke my heart because the gentleman that got picked up, I knew them for a long time. When I went to ask at his job, he came to work and they told me that he never showed up. It hurt me more to break the news to his own daughter. And when I had to go in there and let her know that her dad never made it to work and that he did got picked up, I cried with her because she was just in tears that her dad just got picked up just like that, out of nowhere. But we’re still standing. We’re trying to stay strong the day, make it by a good day. We’d be having ups and downs. I know we’d be having a lot of people just talking to us, negative stuff, but we still out there that we really not going to let the negative come to us. And I know Daniella has supported me all the way too. She has seen me frustrated sometimes that these people that are masked and then the thing that gets me more upset that we have the officers, that really doesn’t back us up.

I know I had one incident that I did have my first time that I had to chase a Titan truck all the way now to Dina where we had the fires, chasing ’em all the way and almost ran over a worker. So it got me more furious, really, you’re out here trying to just pick up people and you don’t want to tell us who you are or let us know that at least you working for ice. But just going around the whole street just like that and almost hitting innocent people, it’s not fair. And then I want to thank that N left too for always checking up on me when she sees me frustrated when she’s me, just take off and just, I need to breathe. She has been there, even the whole group, and it is been beautiful.

Daniela Navin:

Yeah, I think I definitely have those moments of being very vulnerable. I think also it has me stand in my power more that I can make a difference. And the way that we get through this is with each other. I think that it’s so easy to feel isolated, and that’s how I felt. I felt isolated. I felt frustrated. I felt angry, sad, mad. And like I said, searching for something on my phone as we all do, connected to our phone, trying to find some sense of community and realizing that it’s not on my phone. It’s not. It’s by talking to my neighbors. It’s about meeting people. And I think that’s one thing that has definitely changed for me is checking in on people. I may not know you, but hey, how are you doing when I go to the grocery store? How’s it going? Acknowledging people I think has definitely changed for me.

Checking in with each other more, supporting each other. I may not know you, but we’re all a part of the same struggle. We’re all looking for something. So I think that’s one thing. It’s strengthened community. And I never thought that I would be the person that I would be chasing these men, these mass men and scare shitless, but then there’s something that comes over me is the drive to get in their way. I think that’s one of my motivation is that you’re stopping people from living their lives, but then you get to come into our community and you get to enjoy our community. You get to have coffee, you get to have a haircut, you get to go to work. The amount of people that have stopped us in our corner to tell us that they’re scared to leave and because we’re there, they feel safe, they feel like people are watching their back.

And that’s our little corner. So we’re protecting our corner. We have eyes in our corner, so we know that we have eyes at Villa Park, we have eyes at windshields. We can respond to things. And Jeanette says, our day, what’s changed for me is Jeanette. My day starts early. I patrol in the morning. I wake up early, I get myself ready for work, I patrol, and then after patrol I help set up our little corner and then I go to work. And then after work, I come back to our little corner. So it’s just that we are all just together. And today we didn’t set up our corner, but we met up for coffee. And so it feels like more of a ritual now that when I don’t see Jeanette and when I don’t see Liz or Chewy or other members like Karen and Spencer, it just feels, I don’t know, it just feels strange, but we’re messing each other. What are you up to today? And I think seeing Liz and Jeanette as moms and the care that they have for their kids and still doing this major props to them, I don’t have kids, so for me, they’re struck so thin already, but already their focus and their drive really motivates me to continue to do this.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And Dave, if I can just, I want to underscore a little more for listeners again, who aren’t there, what this looks like, what I saw reporting on this, because on the same day that I got to meet and film with Daniela, Jeanette and everyone at Grupo Defensa, we started that day filming just a couple blocks over at the Pasadena Job Center, and I really want to give them a shout out. They’re doing incredible work and everyone should look them up and support them. So we were there filming a food distribution drive that they are doing every single week, every Friday. This is a drive that they started during COVID. It’s a drive that they picked back up during the fires and now they’re doing them every week. Why? Because so many people are so afraid of leaving their homes that they won’t even go to the grocery store.

They need neighbors, friends, family to go to distribution drives like this. Most of the people I saw there were picking up food for other people because the people they’re picking up food for haven’t left their homes in weeks. That’s what we’re talking about here. I talk to elderly people. I talk to young 20 year olds who are doing everything for their parents, and they’re heartbroken because they’ve never seen their parents so scared in their lives on top of dealing with all the burden of going and doing the shopping and doing everything that needs to be done in the house because you’re the only one who will leave. I heard so many stories of spouses who have to basically come up with a plan to decide which one of us is going to take the risk to leave and what’s going to happen if I get taken.

But we can’t risk both people leaving. These are the decisions that people are making in their homes daily because of the terror that has been unleashed on our community. And I do want to be clear, it is also very true that this is not just happening to Latinos and people who look like Latinos. I’ve been to immigration courts like the one in Santa Ana where you’re also getting folks of East Asian descent. You’re getting Haitian immigrants. It really is a full on assault on immigrants as such. But of course, especially in a place like Southern California that is just so full of different Latinos from different parts of Latin America, and you have a government that’s trying to meet this ghoulish quota from Steven Miller to arrest 3000 people a day, you don’t have that many warrants. You don’t have that many criminals to get. You’re only going to meet that quota by racially profiling people like they are doing in Pasadena, like they did in Santa Ana with Narciso Barranco, a landscaper who’s lived here for over 30 years, was just doing his job.

He’s raised three sons who were all Marines. And then one day a group of armed guys with vests that they bought on Amazon, it looks like just swarm. Don’t announce themselves, chase them, tackle ’em in the middle of an intersection, beat the crap out of them and disappear ’em into a van. For anyone who’s looking at that and saying, oh, that’s so horrible, but that’s not going to happen to me. It could happen to us. So imagine how we feel watching that shit. Imagine how we feel talking to our children and telling them it’s going to be okay, telling my dad that he shouldn’t leave the house without a copy of his passport. That’s what we’re dealing with. And that’s what these incredible women and their neighbors saw happening in their communities, and they were feeling as much fear as all of us are. But they did a heroic thing in saying, we’re going to do something.

David Palumbo-Liu:

We’re

Maximillian Alvarez:

Going to band together and stop this. And whether it’s Elizabeth Castillo grabbing her bullhorn and chasing these unmarked cars, she recognizes them and is telling neighbors, Hey, this is la, that car with the organ plates, that’s la. And then you see that bravery when people like Daniela, Jeanette, Liz, all these folks, when they show that bravery, it brings out bravery and others because then suddenly people are whipping out their phones and they’re holding them up to these fascist kidnappers. That is what I have to really underscore is not only the decision to do something and not wait, but dealing with all this fear to still stand up and be brave and instill bravery in others. That has given me more hope than anything has in a long time.

David Palumbo-Liu:

Yeah. Again, I had two buckets of questions that I want to ask or topics, and I definitely want to end by you both telling us more about your amazing organization. And then Max, maybe you can give us other organizations too, because we have a blog function on the podcast, so you can give me all your links and articles and stuff, and we can always refresh it. So I want that to be like a live resource for all of our listeners to know more about you and other organizations and how we can help as things change. But before we get to that, and something I mentioned earlier on, I’m constantly pissed off, angry, frustrated at the way in which the mainstream media distorts what’s going on either by misrepresenting or just not covering things. So I always give my guests a chance to tell us the truth. Tell us what you think allows for this kind of violence to go on over and over again. How a lot of Americans just are buying the distortions. They hear and listen, and this is a question for all three of you. What kinds of things need to be corrected that are wrong?

Daniela Navin:

I think the notion that if they just done it the right way, I think that’s one of the constant things that I’m seeing online or some of the criticism that I have faced, even with my own family, if they done it the right way, they wouldn’t be in this or criminals. And so I just want to emphasize that the immigration process is long. It’s expensive. It has taken my dad, it has taken my sister who is a DACA recipient. We’re a mixed status family. And so just the notion of that, that if only to dinner the right way, it’s not as easy as what they think. It’s the right way. And so I think if we want to solve immigration, then maybe we need to look at the process. It hasn’t been solved. There has no been major updates. And in my community, all I see are hardworking, hardworking people.

And then you have the notion of we’re the criminals. But then you do have criminals that are in the White House and you have the exoneration of January Sixers, so then it’s two narratives, right? It’s like we criminals, max mentioned that it’s not just Latinos are being targeted. It’s a whole group of people. And so I think just understanding that it’s so complex. There’s history, there’s segregation laws, there’s redlining and why we live in a certain area. So it’s just a little bit more nuanced and it’ll be better. People think about before they say something because to them they’re like, oh, they’re just, they’re criminals. They came here legally, they should be locked up. But this is just a one stop away from grounding you up. I’m not trying to exaggerate here. I’m not trying to say this is Nazi Germany, but the threat of being deported has always existed in our family, and it’s always been this idea that this could happen. But what I’m seeing now, it feels like rapid fire. It could happen to you. It could happen to your city. I never thought this would happen in my backyard, and it took that happening down the street for me to engage with my community in the way that I haven’t engaged with it before.

David Palumbo-Liu:

I thank you so much for that because among the things, you’re absolutely right. If we don’t put the brakes on here, there’s no reason for it not to. And a lot of it is just the sheer exercise of power on anybody. So Jeanette,

Jeannette De la Riva:

I think that Daniella did say mostly everything that I was about to say when they snatch people out their car or breaking their windows or just grabbing them real and just throwing them on the floor. I’ve seen some people have gotten hidden by the batons and everything, and now I think that’s not right. I was like, they’re not doing nothing. They’re just scared of their life. These are humans. What about if that was their family getting taken away and that your family’s getting hidden, what were you going to do? I get mad and I cry, and I was like, you’re hitting this person. When they threw the bombs and everything and I saw it on the news, I was more pissed off. Why are you doing that for? You have kids running, you have elderly people running, especially the gentleman that passed away that he fell off the ladder. I think I forgot his name. Do you remember his name?

Maximillian Alvarez:

Give me one sec. I got this.

Jeannette De la Riva:

There you go. So for him, for losing his life, for just treating these people the wrong way, and it’s not right for them doing all this stuff instead of doing it the right way, how they were saying, or we’re just going to pick up criminals that have done trafficking that have really bad records, and you’re just sweeping up people that are innocent, hard working people. I even have a lot of friends that are scared to come out. I have friends that are gardeners. My daughter’s dad always calling me and letting me know, is everything okay out there? Or I be calling them when this was going on 24 7. We might not be together and everything, but just giving them call. Hey, how are you doing? Are you okay? Just let me know if anything goes by you see a suspicious car, just let me know. But they do need to do the things the right way, not treat everybody like an animal, not.

Daniela Navin:

And just to add what Jeanette was saying, they’re showing up without warrants. They’re showing up and just kidnapping people. I think we as an American should have an expectation that we should be able to walk down the street regardless of the color of our skin, what we do for a living, the language that we speak and not be grabbed off street. Does that expectation of having due process, what is happening to them when they are taken, how long are they taken for? What are the conditions? And I think that people just don’t realize that it’s the lasting trauma of being taken, the impact to the community. We’re always on the defense. We’re always on the stress. I feel like I can’t sleep. We’re restless, we can’t turn it off. We’re just thinking about when is the shit going to hit the fan? If things are quiet, what’s going to happen?

And seeing the other eye sightings. And there was one in the Hollywood at Home Depot today, and then yesterday in Paramount, they took two people. We’re all looking at this and we’re all just wondering, we have our community patrols. We check in with each other. What’s happening? We have a Home Depot in Pasadena. Has it been hit yet? It’s like when, I don’t know. I’ve sometimes at full restless, and it’s hard to try to take that space for yourself because what if something happens? What if I took the morning off and something that I would’ve seen a car? What would’ve happened? And I know Jeanette and I, and even with Liz and Chewy in our group, sometimes it’s just there’s so much and we’re just, I don’t know. Sometimes it’s hard to turn it off sometimes.

David Palumbo-Liu:

Yeah, absolutely. Max?

Maximillian Alvarez:

in terms of correcting the narrative, there’s almost too much to correct because the narrative is so patently false and full of lies and bullshit, and it’s just people are believing it either because their brain has become so addled by the internet or right wing media or in all this conspiracy theory crap or just homegrown plain old racism. Our lives have gotten harder, cost of living has gotten higher. All the sort of economic factors that have made people increasingly more desperate and thus more willing to buy into the kind of fascist grif that Donald Trump is selling. There are myriad of reasons like why people may believe the lies that they’re being fed, but just really drive home some of the basic corrections that Danielle and Jeanette already did beautifully. The people should just be coming in and immigrating the right way and following the process.

This has always been just such a, and David, I know you’ve written whole books on this, so this is going to be nothing new to you, but it’s just always so bonkers that generations of white Americans who just had to walk through Ellis Island and get their tonsils checked can turn around and say, Latinos who have been going through a broken immigration process for 20 years to try to get a damn green card are somehow doing it the wrong way. The perspective is just off the charts that I don’t even know what to do with it. But I went to one of those immigration courts in Santa Ana. I talked to people like Reverend Dr. Jason Cook and Mona Darwish at the Orange County Register. People who are going in there, seeing what’s happening, bearing witness to the crimes that our state is committing in a court of law.

But these are people who are going to their immigration court dates, trying to follow the law, trying to do it the right way. And they may have been doing that for years if not decades. And then suddenly they are walking into a trap. It is a government laid trap where a politically appointed judge is being told from the White House on down, throw as many of these cases out on as many technicalities as you can find, give any excuse you can to essentially put this person in violation. The second they walk out of that courtroom and then they have masked agents waiting there to swarm them, take ’em down like an elevator and whisk ’em into unmarked vans that are parked right outside in the back of the courthouse. That is what is happening. So people who are out here saying, oh, immigrants should be following the law and doing it the right way.

The people administering the law are doing it the wrong way to trap the people like us who are trying to do it the right way. That is what your government is doing. That is what is happening day after day. Family after family is being broken apart through this process that is going so unnoticed because it’s not as dramatic as ice abducting people in the middle of the street, but they’re doing it in immigration courts all over the damn country. And that feeds into the other point. I do not use the term fascist lightly. I use it very deliberately. And if you want to see why, go look up the new ad campaign from the White House of Defend the Homeland, join ice. It is just freak fascist aesthetic you can imagine. And they are telling people that they’re going to get like $50,000 signing bonuses.

You’re going to pay off your student loans if you come join this Gestapo force. And if you look at the posters for it, it is straight out of Nazi Germany. Like Danielle has said, we are not Nazi Germany. We’re not there yet, but we’re sure as shit like heading that direction right now. And it’s got all the aesthetic trappings and a lot of the same factors that societies that devolved into fascism experience. The highlight here, and the point I want to end with is we still have a chance to change that. We’re not there yet, but we are heading there quickly and in pockets of America it’s already there. And that’s what I need people to understand is it can always get worse. It is getting worse after that big beautiful bill passed, it’s going to make ice the largest law enforcement agency in the entire government.

It’s going to be bigger than most countries militaries. And these are again, the people that are being recruited for the purposes of unleashing fascist terror on immigrants. The people who are taking those signing bonuses, signing up for this know damn what they’re signing up for, and a lot of them are hungry for it. And that is where we’re headed right now. And the question is, who’s going to stop ’em? Who’s going to get in their way? And so far, the Democratic Party, sure as shit ain’t doing it. They’re just hoping to play possum and hope things get so bad that they don’t have to do anything to win votes in the midterms. That’s their strategy. So they’ve thrown us overboard and basically said, good luck, hope for the best vote for us in the midterms. So you got that. You’ve got so many other people looking around not knowing where the help is going to come from.

And again, it’s got to come from us. It’s got to come from you banding together with your neighbors, you talking to your union members, you talking to the people in your apartment building, come up with a plan, make sure everyone knows their rights, make sure everyone knows each other so you feel less alone, less vulnerable, because the more alone and vulnerable we are, the easier we are to pick off and they are actively trying to criminalize compassion. I think that’s the last thing I’ll say is that’s how you know this is so morally wrong because as a child, as a basic human being, when you see your fellow man being brutalized in this way, your natural instinct is to help. Your natural instinct is to say, Hey, stop doing violence on this person and to try to intervene to stop the hurt. And this administration is trying to criminalize people’s natural, instinctive, good natured responses to help one another, and they know if they break that they will break us.

And so the most rebellious thing we can do is to not give into that, to lean into the most compassionate parts of your heart, to the parts of your soul that know deep down that all of this is wrong and it cannot go on. We cannot look our children in the face if we don’t say, we did everything we possibly could to stop this. And that is what group defense is doing. That’s what the Pasadena Job Center’s doing. That’s what incredible folks working folks like you and me are doing. And you listening to this can do it too.

David Palumbo-Liu:

You all three have been so powerful in your speaking about all the things that are wrong and all the things that have to be done and the urgency of it. I would like to end with you both talking more about the group of Alta Defensa. Tell us more about what the everyday operations are, how people are working together, because everything I’ve heard so far has given me inspiration to want to do exactly what Max said, and this is the message we have to drive. As Max put it so powerfully to learn from your example and your courageous efforts to be human to other people. As Max said, it’s the bottom line of what we are supposed to be doing, but we have this oppressive government doing everything in its power to make it impossible. Tell us more about your organization and then again, I’ll ask Max to also talk about other organizations and we’ll put up a big blog and all the numbers and stuff like that, but I’d love to take the opportunity that you’re both here. Tell us about what the organization is about, how it got started and how it works.

Jeannette De la Riva:

Well, it started with Liz, everything that we started doing, and then from there she loose when she was going around the street, he was a little puppy lost, just jump in. So he did the same thing. I did the same thing with her, just followed her. We all met up right there, our C, DC, and I just want everybody to know you could do it wherever you are at. Just pick a corner. Don’t be scared from these people because they’re nothing. Liz, if you ever meet her, get to meet her, she’s a tiny little person that she’s out there just chasing them and we’re out there behind her giving her that support. We give a lot of information to the community what they need to do.

Daniela Navin:

We provide resources to the community of know your rights. We also have resources of the different organizations that are around to help legal support, food and that sort of paperwork. And then also what type of vehicles are ice driving? They’re changing their tactics, but what to look out for, and I think the biggest, and Jeanette maybe will agree with me on this one. I think the biggest thing that we’re there for is also all of the rumors, the miscommunication, the panic, the fear that’s spreading, and to stop the fear and provide actual factual, yes, this was ice. No, this was ice. If he hears in the bullhorn, it’s a confirmed ice sighting to dispel those rumors and really the concept adopt a corner came from Angela at the job center and they do adopt a Home Depot where you have a tarp and you’re set up at a Home Depot and you’re watching the day laborers, you’re watching the corners, you’re looking for suspicious vehicles, you’re providing resources to them, your rights. So we took that concept and put it in this corner that’s very vulnerable. There’s a laundromat, there’s LA Tacos, there’s very vulnerable area, and we just adopted that corner. We have eyes on this side, we have eyes on this side, eyes behind us. Jeanette has her car at the ready, so does list Chewy myself. I would say we’re not really an organization where people that live in the area that are just fucking pissed off and just

Jeannette De la Riva:

Trying to protect our people. That’s even Spencer. I think by the time we get in our car, Spencer is already out the driveway in his little, I don’t even know what to call it if it’s a bike motorcycle, but he’s the one that’s already just gone. Last time we went to check on something, I told Daniella, where did he go?

Daniela Navin:

Gone. He was just gone. He has an electric bike, so then he’s able to get to places quicker than us. He’s able to,

He sees something and already he’s on his bike and he has taken off. So we just all live in the area. We all saw that there was an issue that was happening. Liz was the catalyst of giving us a space where we can all join together and just clicked. When we were chasing ice, they kidnapped a mom. I remember two sons and that was devastating. So we took names, we documented cars, how many agents were there. And so from there we got a hint of where they were meeting up and we went and it all fell into place, was driving the tubes on the Bull farm. I was recording and we caught them all in their rendezvous place. We all have the skills, we all bring different things to the table, but it works. And I think what makes it works is that we live in the area, in the media area and we’re just neighbors and we love and care for each other.

I consider Jeanette family now, Liz, chewy, Sandra, our other members, Spencer, Karen. We just become so, so close and it does feel like an act of rebellion because we’re connecting with each other and we’re all come from different walks of life. I would say if he wanted to get involved, Gillon does do webinars and trainings of how to adopt a corner, and you can just go and find a vulnerable area, gain the community’s trust, just stay there, check in with them, provide what to do with ICE comes and to your business and help them with their notices and be a partner to them, an advocate for them. And then it’s just easy as getting your neighbor patrolling. There’s a Home Depot by you, wake up a little bit early in the morning and just patrol around the area. I think the hardest part is just getting out, but when you do it, it feels something small.

But we see the impact in our community. We see people coming out and it was like COVID. No one was coming out. Everyone was too afraid. And seeing people come out, seeing there’s kids at the park now, that gives me the strength to continue the work, but it’s hard. But I think that’s the first step is finding, talking to your neighbors, adopting a foreigner, taking some of the concepts, and it could be whatever you want it to be, and I think there’s no right formula. It could be whatever you want it to be, whatever that looks like, whatever the need is, every community is different, right?

David Palumbo-Liu:

One of the coolest things you said, Daniela, was we’re not an organization. I think because it’s clear from just spending this short time with you and please come back again. It just comes from the heart. You don’t think it to death. It’s just instinctively what you do with neighbors and friends and new family members, and it’s so much what we all need in this feeling of intense violence and suppression and lawlessness as you point out. Max, did you want to add anything before we turn off?

Maximillian Alvarez:

Just really quick because I really want folks to hang on Daniella and Jeanette’s words, but since you asked for some other places that folks can look, I did just want to give a few shout outs. Some of these I have talked with directly, others have been recommended me by a lot of folks. I’ve read up on them, they’re doing great work. But on top of Grupo out the Defensa and the Pasadena Job Center, who we’ve mentioned already, they’re incredible folks at the National Day Labor Organizing Network. They were there in Pasadena when I was there. I talked with Pablo Alvarado. He’s incredible. The Union Del Barrio is also doing really important work and provides, I think a great model for again, how you can effectively unionize your neighborhood, how you can form a union in your community, which essentially means just people standing together and fighting for something together.

And that’s what they’re doing. That’s what Gupta Defense is doing. That’s what you listening can do yourself. There are folks forming rapid response networks and crisis response networks like the Orange County Rapid Response Network. They provide a lot of great information and resources for folks when they are kidnapped by ice. But there are also other more autonomous rapid response networks that are responding to distress calls of ICE in the community. We need community presence on the street so that at the very least, someone can document what is happening at the most. There’s also a really incredible group that I want to shout out is their acronym is Clue. It’s the Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice. So when I was at the Santa Ana courthouse talking to folks like Reverend, Dr. Jason Cook and Reverend Dr. Terry LaPage, these are people of faith leaders who are leading the way in showing how to demonstrate compassion.

And they are going to these immigration courts. They’re not throwing their bodies at these ice agents and stopping them, but they are being a powerful moral force of witness. And I heard all these stories of the ICE agents. They know in the eyes of these pastors that they’re doing something wrong, that they are forsaking their fellow man and they hate being reminded of that, and they get even more violent and they even lash out at the clergy and they clergy keep showing up not just for that purpose, but to more essentially provide comfort for those who are entering this horrible space to provide company for those who are alone and have literally no one else to be with them. That is such a huge gift and a service that folks in Clue are providing. And they’re not the only ones, right? They’re great journalists like Michael Nigro in New York, who is fought to get access to these immigration courts so that he could document what’s happening there.

They’re great LA based and Southern California based journalists and outlets like the two that I’ve gotten to know and want to shout out, which is not to say that they are the only ones but want to give shout outs to La Taco. They’ve been doing incredible social media first reporting that has really actually tangibly benefited people on the ground, but also Sonali Kar, without whom I would not be able to have done so much of the shooting that I did in Pasadena. She’s an independent journalist who has worked at outlets like Yes Magazine and has every reason in the world to be protective and guarded about her contacts, about her subscribers. But she cares about these stories and these people. And she’s saying, Hey, if you’re coming to help, you can have any of my contacts. I’ll take you to them. That is a real journalist.

That is someone who really cares about the work. And to really bring it back to gpa, Alta Defensa, I also wanted to shout out, we’ve mentioned their names, but Jen, Karen Spencer, I want to shout them out too, because these are white neighbors who are showing up with their brown neighbors and standing in solidarity with them using their privilege when they can. Even if that means just showing up and showing that it’s not just a brown person problem. This is our community’s problem. That is really important. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something. And even just showing up is doing a really big something and they are doing that. And I wanted to make sure that folks knew about it. The last thing I’ll say, David, because this connects all the way back to when you and I got to know each other and did our organizing with the Campus Antifascist network during the first Trump administration when we were fighting the fascist Alt-right far right, even openly n people coming to college campuses and delightfully terrorizing the communities there.

We were part of campus communities that were trying to do what RuPaul Defense is doing. We’re saying, no, you’re not going to come into our home and terrorize us and brutalize us. We’re going to stand up for ourselves and we’re going to do it as a community. And what I learned in that period was that the best defense against fascists is like love and numbers. Because if we bind together with that force of light that cannot be broken with their hate, it cannot. I have seen it time and time again, their hatred, their bigotry, their fascism. It breaks on the shores of our solidarity and our strength and our love for one another. But then when we match that with not just a few people who feel that way, but a whole lot of people who feel that way and we outnumber them. And you have scenes like in Boston where this little tiny group of fascists thought they were going to make a statement in protest, and they’re surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of people saying, get the fuck out of our community.

That is how you tell the fascist to get the hell out. You make ’em as small as they really are, and you show them how small they really are. And you do that with community strength and love and solidarity. And that is something that we can all be a part of. And that is what group Alta Defensa is doing. And I saw it firsthand. I went to Villa Park, this park that was a central place for kids, for families. It was like any other park and it had been empty. And what RuPaul to defense did, they didn’t lead some riotous march to the Capitol building. It may not be as dramatic as that, but what I saw was people tentatively coming out afraid at first they weren’t dancing, but they were there. And then within an hour or two, everyone’s out there dancing the kumbia, everyone’s joyously, rebelliously reclaiming their home, their public space, refusing to live in fear.

If you don’t think that’s meaningful, I don’t know what to tell you. You got to check your pulse. I saw it. I saw people’s faces go from terrified to remembering that they belong and feeling like they belong. And finding again that bravery in refusing to be told that you don’t belong and refusing to just accept that we are what this fascist administration says we are. No, we’re not. We are not the worst of the worst. We are not these hardened criminals. We are human beings like you and me, and we have every goddamn right to be here just like you do. We’re trying to make a life for ourselves and our families, and that is the American dream that we still believe in. And in fact, we’re going to fight harder for it than our parents did for us. And it’s up to us. We’re the adults now, and I am following the lead of incredible folks like Danielle and Jeanette, Elizabeth, chewy, everyone there in Pasadena and everyone out there who is fighting the fight in their own way. You guys give me inspiration and I know that if we keep fighting and if we keep fighting together, we can get through this.

David Palumbo-Liu:

Well, I can’t think of a better way to end this program, but as I said, you are all three. Welcome to come back anytime you want. It’s been such an honor to spend time with you and I’ve been inspired and moved and really energized in this world. That’s something that we all lack to different degrees, but you give so generously of your energy that it energizes all of us. So thank you so much. Take care and have a great rest of your day.

Daniela Navin:

Thank you. Bye. Thanks.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Solidarity from Baltimore.

David Palumbo-Liu:

Okay, take care. Bye-bye bye.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank Professor David Pumba Lou and the Speaking out of Place podcast for recording this crossover episode with us. And I want to especially thank Daniella Nian and Jeanette de la Riva from Grupo Alto Defensa in Pasadena, California. And of course, 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.