franknews

The Life Work of Senator Rodriguez, Part Two

by Senator Rodriguez

July 12, 2018

This interview with Senator Rodriguez, who represents District 29 in El Paso, was conducted and condensed by frank news. It took place June 28, 2018. This is part one of an ongoing conversation between frank and Senator Rodriguez.

Tatti: We want to clarify the immigration conversation, because what we’re hearing is actually a conflation of lots of issues, and I think it’s detrimental to a real debate about policy.

Sen. Rodriguez: Exactly, you're question earlier was, do you think that there was confusion about the various policies? And the answer is, there is confusion in the American mind. People in any place out of the border, who don't have a sense of what the border is like, what life on the border is like, the reality of border communities, all their impressions of border and border people like myself and immigrants are negative because of the purposeful misinformation that is being put out by politicians and others who are anti-immigrant.

There is no question that there's conflation of refugee versus regular economic immigrants coming in from Mexico or any place else, versus border security with regard to the cartels, human smugglers, the criminal elements, and the category of terrorists.

I think the government has done a disservice to the American public in combining all these issues, and they've done it purposefully.

We never had terrorists come through the Southern border. With regard to the Central American refugees, those are people who the public needs to generally understand are either seeking asylum or are refugees running away from violence or persecution in their countries.

Under our federal laws, long standing policy, international law, anybody who is seeking asylum or refugee status, can legally come up to our ports of entry and legally enter and make an application. They’re supposed to be allowed to be in the country during the period of time that their application winds its way until a final decision. In the meantime when they're here, they're placed with relatives, they’re placed with organizations that care for refugees and people seeking asylum. That's been the long standing policy and process until now. Now we are criminalizing people seeking asylum, everyday I see the headlines, including this morning, of the border patrol stopping people at the middle of the ports of entry, but they have a right to come over and petition, and they’re keeping them from coming over and coming in to petition. Then with the zero tolerance policy under Trump, now separating the children from the mothers, filing criminal charges against the mothers who are seeking asylum status.

In short, the government is criminalizing immigrants who sought to come in here legally. That's what the government is doing under this policy.

With regard to Mexican immigrants, economic immigrants, the long standing migration of Mexicans into this country because of what I said earlier, the demand for labor, what the immigration experts call the push pull factors of economic reality. We need labor? We welcome them in. We don't need them anymore, we push them out.

With respect to whether or not we need comprehensive immigration reform, what do we do with people who have been here without documents for all these years? The estimates have been from 11 to 12 million.

Back when Reagan was in office the estimates were 3 million and President Reagan himself used the word amnesty. We legalized approximately 3 million undocumented immigrants here in this country, most of them Mexicans.

I did some of that work. Pro-bono legalization appeals for some of those who were eligible. A lot of my farm worker clients for example, who have been here without documentation, working for years, paying taxes, contributing to the economy, we got them green cards, permanent legal, permanent resident status.

We have moved from that attitude towards legalization, to a time when amnesty is a bad word for republicans and where we are treating everybody under Trump as a criminal, as a rapist, as a person that should not be tolerated in this country.

All of the rhetoric about immigrants being criminals and harming people and taking jobs away, has caused us to lose sight of doing a humane comprehensive immigration reform that we tried to do several times in the past. The latest one being back in 2006. We did it under Reagan, the Simpson–Mazzoli Act. It was the 1986 immigration reform, what was referred to the Simpson–Mazzoli Act because of the legislators in the senate that passed it.

We've always said that we were going to provide several prongs to comprehensive immigration reform. Legalize the people that are here already, that have paid taxes, that haven't committed crimes, that are contributing to society and of course I always throw in have learned English. Fine. There was the legalization part of it, there was the guest worker part of it to provide permits for workers that were needed by the farmers, by the industry. That was another aspect to it.

The third aspect was to look at our visa system and see what reforms we could make with it. If you are a legal permanent resident, you want to have your parents or your brothers or relatives because our policy on immigration has always been based on family reunification, family ties get priority, now we've gone away from that. The immigration system got so bogged down that they took 10, 20 years for people to bring a relative into the country.

We have gotten away from those because now any discussion about comprehensive immigration reform, even with respect to the dreamers, the republicans don't want to allow them to have citizenship status down the line. That's new. That's something that a lot of people don't pick up on. You guys should emphasize. It used to be that when we talked about comprehensive immigration reform, including republicans on a bipartisan basis, if we were going to do a path to a legalization program we were going to have a path to citizenship. It may take a while, but you were going to be given the opportunity.

Now, the movement on the far right is no citizenship. Why do you suppose that is the case? That is the case because they do not want to give more Latinos the right to vote. The Latinos can make the changes that need to be made in this country.

All of these things are now combined, confused, nobody distinguishes between an asylum seeker or refugee and an economic migrant and a dreamer. Or dare I say, the criminal elements. There's all these people coming over to do us harm, take away our jobs. That is an incredible shift in State policy toward immigrants in this country. We're starting to look no different than Europe that is trying to find ways to keep those economic migrants and refugees from coming into their countries.

The day before yesterday I was over there with the American Federation of Teachers and a lot of different faith organization, Rabbis, Baptists, Catholics, Muslim clerics. We were there for that last Sunday. We're going to go tomorrow. We're coordinating it for New Mexico State Legislators. New Mexico wants to do it's part and they’re bringing doctors and state legislators and Native Americans. A friend of mine who's a state legislator out of Albuquerque, filed a complaint with the United Nations and she wants to come with all of these folks and read it there at the port of entry and then come and do a visit with our Annunciation House over here in El Paso.

What gives me hope is that at these events, we have run into people from Canada, elderly people, people from Florida, from New York, from Alaska. That is what’s heartening.

The change is going to have to come from the people. This government, this new Supreme Court that we have now, is not a place that we can seek solace. It's not a place that we can go and vindicate our rights like we have been used to. Even with conservatives in the court.

Once the new justice gets appointed, of the stripe of Roberts, I'm sorry here young people, but you are going to see some hard times in terms of national policies.

A veering to the right like we have never seen in this country and the way the white nationalist movement is going, and the racists in this country, starting with the President, are going, we may be be looking at past years in Italy, Germany, France and other places where people rose against the different people in this country. Whether your difference is color, whether your difference is your sexual orientation, whether your difference is your religion. I'm painting I know a very black dire scenario, but I'm a student of history, I like politics.

I'm a policy wonk and I know what people have gone through in world history and in this country and what we can expect, if we as people do not rise and assert ourselves.

Finally, your question about Beto and Cruz debating, I don't expect that Cruz is going to want to debate him on the immigration issue. If he does, he's just gonna stay to a very canned message. He files a bill himself to try to keep families from being separated so he can then in the campaign say, I don't support families being separated. Yes, but he supports the President block step and the President is separating families. So he should be held accountable regardless of what he says or what he does. That's my view on Mr. Cruz.

A Rose In Harlem

by frank

November 18, 2018

This interview with the students of The Young Women's Leadership School of East Harlem was conducted and condensed by frank news.

From left to right: LaShay Fernandez, Morgan Carter, Javeria Amir, and Fargana Alden.

Morgan: Right now, we're learning about how to take an issue that we feel passionate about and see how we can impact our local government - legislative, the mayors, governors. To see how we can change the issue, or see if we can get more engagement so people will pay attention. The issue we all picked was sexual assault in schools, from colleges, middle schools, high schools...

Why did you choose that?

Morgan: At first, it was separated for a week. Some people wanted to do education and the other side wanted to do sexual assault. We were debating for a week or two and none of us wanted to do it together, and then eventually we just had to decide - why don't we just put them together? Now we're doing sexual assault in schools. And how education and money affects why we don't have sex ed.

That's amazing.

Javeria: There's this thing that there's enough about raising awareness for it. It's time for us to take action and the way we can take action is contacting our local office members rather than just going for the governor or the president. We're saying oh my god the President's doing this and what are we doing? We know we can't directly affect what the President is doing himself, but we can work at a local level which is what we're going to do now.

Who are your local officials?

Javeria: Our mayor and our city council members. We would start contacting them rather than the governor.

LaShay: We did a whole thing where we sat down with people in our neighborhood or district to look up all our local members and see what they're doing and see if they're good. We looked them up and really tried to see if our representatives are everyman or superman. To see how much of our representation is actually what we want, or actually accurately depicts the people that are there - us.

What's the conversation around sexual assault? What are the things you want to see done and what are the sort of modes of getting those things done?

Morgan: Today we learned about root causes and systemic causes. We're starting in elementary schools and high schools. People have sex ed, but we realized that a lot of the problem is that people don't actually know what counts as sexual assault. No one has consent classes. You can't just start at high school, because by that time a lot of people are already having sex. We said that maybe we could start with 7th and 8th graders and give them sexual education - maybe not assault, but basic knowledge so that later on they can know - this is what we do, this is how this works.

LaShay: It's very hard because since people are so young and it's such a fragile thing even though yeah, you should learn about it, we're also talking about different ways to tackle the situation. Instead of just saying "consent" and just straight talking about sex with 12 year olds, it's using different methods. There's this video that a college made about tea and offering people tea and it's really weird, but it really pushes the message of consent and not forcing people to do what they don't want to do.

It's also hard to figure out how we want to approach certain grades or approach people in general in ways that don't make their parents uncomfortable if their parents have an issue with talking about sexual assault and consent in classes.

Fargana: To add on, some parents don't have a lot of knowledge on sexual assault or how to to keep safe, or they feel uncomfortable talking about it. For us to teach kids at a young age about safe sex and just making sure everyone's using protection, what no means if someone is saying no to sexual intercourse. It's very important for us, and also since we are young teens, it'll be easier to talk to students because we're in the same generation in a way. We would just be considered like their older sister, we'll have that bond if they ever need something, we can help them out.

Are you learning about how to communicate with your representatives directly? How can you make sure your voice is heard outside of the classroom?

Javeria: We haven't gotten to that point yet. We're trying to figure out what part of the issues are we focusing on, what are the factors that are leading to such issues, and once we have those down, then we can go and be like this is what's wrong with our system, and this is what we have to fix. Once we get that correctly done, then we'll be approaching them, but we haven't learned how to do that yet.

Morgan: It's hard because sex ed is like - a lot of parents don't want their kids learning about that and it's not just girls, it's boys that have to learn about it, too. It's kind of hard knowing exactly what we want them to do because it's often a societal thing. It's hard for them to say, oh we want a rule against this. You have to make something specific.

Do you guys feel empowered by the class?

LaShay: Yes, I was just talking to a friend about it today because I think a lot of times we sit in our class, and especially going to TWYLS, we talk about this stuff, like since freshman year we've been talking about this stuff, and it's such a big issue and we always talk about it, but we never talk about what we're going to do about it. And I think sometimes when you're just in your little city, you think this is huge and this is happening in the government and I can't do anything about it.

I think one thing that I've definitely realized in the class is you can do something.

Even if you're starting small, it's a ripple effect. I think that's what the class has really done for me. I can do stuff, even if it's really small, it's important.

Javeria: People talk a lot and they don't do anything about it. We have a social justice club and I feel like that has empowered us in general and then having Generation Citizen - being able to take action now, instead of just talking about it. What should we do? I feel like it's a wonderful opportunity for us to have.

Fargana: In addition, compared to other schools, TYWLS really prepares you. We're really thankful to be offered Generation Citizen because in other schools, again, they would talk about it - or not even, the topic wouldn't even come up in their conversations - it would just be ignored rather than at least being talked about it and seeing different ways how we can help. For us to talk about it and see how we can fight as young teens, it really impacts us.

Can you tell us more about the social justice club?

Javeria: The social justice club is led by Jessica Taylor, our 10th grade global history teacher. In that club, anyone - I think it's mostly high schoolers - can come in the beginning of the year, we focus on an issue and advocate for the issue we think is affecting our community right now. We're in 10th grade and we raised some funds for the Syrian refugees, that was around $500 by doing food sales. It's just the little things we're doing. We're seeing what current issues are affecting the people around us. It's giving back and even though our school doesn't have that much, we're trying to take initiative.

Fargana: We donated a bunch of toiletries to a women's shelter as well. Every year we would do something - I think of it as a main project and then a mini project. So the mini things are some local things - like donate toiletries, donate money, and then our main project is what all of us are mainly focused on and how we can help.

That's amazing. Have you guys learned about civics anywhere other than Generation Citizen?

Morgan: I think some of us learn it at home, but in school, other than government or AP US History, not a lot. I think as a whole, they always push us to change something or if you feel something, talk about it, try to change it so not directly, but I think that we all get encouraged throughout our years of being here to try to change something.

We always give stuff even if we don't have it, we're always just trying - we're always taught say something, do something, don't just watch.

Javeria: Our government class is coming senior year, it's important, but other than that we're not used to having that - what policies are, how they're made. It's senior year and Generation Citizen. For me, even if we're in AP Government, you're getting that in senior year which is a little late, but.

We're teaching our kids too late and Generation Citizen is going to help us. It'll end that battle a little earlier.

How early do you think civics should start?

Javeria: I feel like middle school. They're going into that 9th grade year where they're like we're going to be like high school, and they're already empowered so you might as well give them another boost.

Fargana: Yeah, it would really impact a person if you're starting in middle school. It would be perfect to teach them about the government issues and who's your local representative, what does it mean? Then when you're in high school, as the years go by, you'll have more knowledge. Each grade, we can all come together and create a bond within us and be able to go out and do something. For seniors, since we're capable of doing it, we can continue it in college and teach others that really didn't have this opportunity when we were in high school.

Are any of you about to be 18?

Yes, yes.

Are you planning on voting?

Javeria: Yes! I was going to say that. Us turning 18 - I feel like this is encouraging me at least to vote. That's one of the ways my voice can be heard, so why not? I feel like that's part of the issue. We need to tell them - yeah, voting may seem like your voice is not heard at all, but we're the people and you're one person so we need all the people to make that voice be heard, so vote, please.

Are you excited to vote?

Javeria: Yes, I'm really excited. I've been waiting. I've been waiting to turn 18 so I can vote.

LaShay: I think it's so funny that she's acting like that because my parents don't vote and it's really weird. I'm always like why don't you vote? "Well it's not gonna matter." I'm really glad I took this class because you're influenced by your political socialization - you're influenced by the people that you're around, and you inherit these ideas and you're kind of conditioned to believe this one thing and I think before I came to TYWLS, I kind of did have that mindset of well, I can't make a change, I'm one person. I'm so excited to vote now and it's so weird because before I didn't think it would matter.

Fargana: I don't turn 18 until another year, my parents are immigrants - they're both US citizens - so it's for them, the only main election they worry about is presidential because that's the big one, but I feel like now that I have more knowledge on this, I'm literally waking my mom up early so she can come with me to go vote. Well, for her to vote, I'm just gonna be there making sure she's there.

Morgan: I'm the exact opposite. It's weird because my mom has always been - my mom is the kind of person, even if she doesn't like anybody on the ballot, she'll still vote. She's always told me to pay attention to what's going on and vote. And I was always just like, I don't really care, but I think Generation Citizen has made me really want to do something now because every single thing counts. I kind of wish, like a lot of things, that we would've learned it in middle school.

I think the problem is we underestimate young people. They think they're not old enough to understand it. When a lot of times, the middle schoolers know more than you think they do. Like a lot more. And I think that they need to start encouraging them and teaching them because I feel like 11th graders and 12th graders, we're about to leave, there's no point. I feel like if I would've heard it in 8th grade, maybe I would want to vote more. I can change a lot more things than I thought I could have.

Never underestimate the youth.

The Unlikely Combination of Comedy and Civics

by Caty Borum Chattoo

November 14, 2018

This interview with Caty Borum Chattoo, the Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact (CMSI) and Executive in Residence at the American University School of Communication in Washington, D.C., was conducted and condensed by frank news.

I've worked professionally for a number of years to engage people in serious social issues that matter. Over the years, that work has ranged from a research-based strategic communication approach to efforts focused on narrative and creativity, particularly documentary storytelling and comedy. At this point in my career, my work is deeply focused on understanding the role of creativity and culture in social change – in public engagement and civic practice. Over the years, I’ve worked on topics including environmental justice, H.I.V., reproductive health, global poverty, global development, maternal health, and others.

What I started to notice over the years of doing this work is that, while of course these serious issues require a serious approach, we also need to embrace entertaining and emotional routes to encouraging people to engage with tough topics.

Sometimes I think we risk only talking to ourselves when we believe that things like fact sheets and policy briefs are the only ways that culture progresses to become a more equitable and just place.

With this in mind, my efforts most recently have focused explicitly on the role of creativity, mediated storytelling, documentary storytelling, and comedy. I'll talk about both of those separately. I place creativity and story and culture at the center of efforts for social change because I believe so strongly that if we don't let some light and optimism and entertainment and fun into these issues, we're just going to continue to only talk to people who are already believers, people who already care, people who are already doing things.

We're just not going to move forward if we don't find other ways to communicate about serious social challenges.

Do you think one can avoid screaming into the echo chamber? We are so in control of what we see it's inherently isolating. I do the scroll and see celebrities posting about civic engagement and I always pause and wonder who they're talking to.

I deeply appreciate that question. Part of my own journey about that question began when I looked at my own work. I was doing serious documentary work about some issues and serious strategic communication campaigns to get people to engage in issues like reproductive health and drug use. I sat back and said, "I am really worried that I am now only talking to people like myself," and “like myself” can mean a lot of different things about our own echo chambers. I could say similar educational background, similar perspective within a coastal city, similar socio-economic class, similar race, gender, age.

So, maybe I'm just talking to people who already agree with me. I wanted to dig much deeper. With that guiding question, I am interested in understanding more about how can we engage people who are not already thinking about these issues that matter or perhaps are thinking about these issues in ways that are damaging or harmful. How can we engage people differently?

When we look at documentaries about social issues, they are deep. This are not explanatory talking head documentaries, not true crime documentaries, but documentaries that deeply look at social issues. Generally speaking, those are character-driven narratives, which means they're really telling a human story about one person or several people as a way to illustrate how they're living their lives dealing with x-issue. So x-issue an environmental justice issue or racism or some other form of discrimination.

What we know about storytelling from a research perspective is that when we experience stories, we can be transported into them. We have an emotional experience with those stories, we identify and connect with characters. When we're deeply experiencing a human narrative that's told beautifully, and artfully, and creatively with music and editing and pacing, we have an opportunity to reach people in their emotional selves, which is incredibly important for persuasion and adoption of ideas.

Over the last decade and a half or so, there's been a big movement and an entire professional ecology that's built up around the idea of groups that drive civic practice and community engagement using documentary at the forefront of that work. My forthcoming documentary book is focused on this work and its influence. My book is telling the stories of the movies and the civic engagement groups that work with documentaries at the heart of them. For example, these groups and filmmakers seek out NGOs and organizations and community groups and business groups and leaders who are already thinking about or dealing with an issue in a way from all different vantage points, and this fabric strengthens their movement-building, if you will, with the use of storytelling.

Number two, the preaching beyond the choir question. Many times you reach people differently with this kind of storytelling. We can bypass some of these divides that we have. That's one thing. Storytelling lives as a really particular way that can help us transcend some of what we think of as tribal differences.

Comedy is this unique cultural place where we can meet and find laughter and commonality. There's so much research about comedy that shows what happens when we experience characters that aren't like us. For example, there is research that talks about gay and lesbian characters on television and people who have the least interaction with gay and lesbian characters in real life are the most moved by comedy portrayals that portray them as human.

Comedy is important for social justice engagement as well because when comedians talk about social issues in their work, through sketch, or scripted work, or through satire, or through standup, they invite us in to have a moment of lightness and optimism. There are so many social justice topics where we've communicated almost exclusively based on what I call dire, hopeless, impossible odds for success

When we do that repetitively, we definitely raise the alarm. We raise awareness with the public. But we might be encouraging public disengagement. We might be encouraging people to not be involved in civic practice because it seems so impossible to deal with these issues at all.

For this book I'm writing with my co-author, Lauren Feldman, we focus on comedy and social justice. A lot of what we're writing and thinking about is what happens when social justice groups, civic engagement groups, choose to work with comedy and why did they choose to do it. They do it to open up conversations to topics, to find areas of commonality, and to find areas for hope and optimism and a different kind of emotional response to issues. Comedy is a great cultural unifier and allows us to communicate about social issues that are pretty serious in a different way. But of course, comedy isn't for everything.

What do you view as the baseline responsibilities of the public?

In a really broad sense, the idea is of the public sphere is an underpinning to how democracy functions ideally. The idea is that we have these institutions of power and generally speaking, the most potent institutions of power are state power, or the government, and economic power, or the corporate/business sector. In the midst of that is the role of the people. The role of the people and the role of public discourse, our access to information, our ability to talk with one another, our ability in a public space to talk and deliberate and negotiate social challenges as both an activity we do with one another as citizens, and as people who are practicing civics. That's important. And the voices of the people in that regard are also a check on those very potent forms of institutional power.

If we understand that, then we think of ourselves as publics, not just consumers. We're not just people that are buying things. We're not just people that are passive recipients of information.

We're people as publics – we can be engaged in working with one another for the public good. For common good: getting a stop sign on your street for example. It’s one of the classic examples of this idea, but of course it becomes much more nuanced when we consider more complex social challenges.

So, I would say at a really, really basic level of civic understanding is truly the idea that we are publics with some real power to make collective change.

Our ability to have civil discourse with one another is really important. I would say that is a very basic minimum.

It sounds so obvious, but we're in a moment where we're not even doing that very well. We're not even communicating with one another about our shared values. I think that's incredibly important as a certain basic minimum is just simply the reminder that we're not passive, we're not helpless, but that we must communicate with one another in order to solve our common challenges.

What role does education have in explaining civics and civic responsibility?

I love that question. At the risk of sounding like a real old-school person here, I think it's key. I think it is absolutely fundamental. We must, must, have strong civic practice and civic rights being taught in school.

Even this idea of the public sphere, the role of publics, all of that is actually really meaningful. The digital media age is deeply controlled advertising and brands and we could travel down this slippery slope to imagine that we are simply consumers – that we're just here to buy things and to accept information from brands.

I think civic education has to be taught in schools in a really strong way. The importance and the history of voting and frankly the importance and history of protest. Our country was created from protest. I think that kind of pride and responsibility, communal responsibility in civic practice is needed. But also, the tactical details of how to engage in behaviors like voting also needs to be taught. Let me give you an example.

In 2004, I was working for the TV producer and philanthropist Norman Lear. Norman Lear is also known as the guy who founded People For the American Way and has been a great and vocal supporter of civil engagement, particularly civic engagement for young people, for years.

I was working for Norman at the time as part of a youth civic engagement organization that he founded in 2002 called Declare Yourself. As a backdrop, young people as a cohort are historically are the least likely to register and least likely to vote. Rather than assume that young people were not voting or were going to vote if they cared enough about the issue, we facilitated research that revealed we the most important reason they were not voting, at that time, was because they did not know how to actually register in the first place. In a well-meaning social change effort, if we had created a whole campaign that was focused on motivating young people about issues along, we would have failed. The objective was to register young people to vote.

What we learned, back to your question, was that they actually didn't understand the mechanics of voter registration. By the way, voter registration. Super complicated. Because it differs state by state, as you know. The deadlines differ, whether you can do paper or online differs. If you can do it at the DMV or some other place differs by state. They're turning 18 when they finish high school. They need to learn this in school when they're 16.

That's profoundly important and goes back to the role of education that needs to be involved... education that needs to help young people learn about the institutions of democracy and civic practice. They need to learn about the philosophy of why it matters and how democracy works. They need to learn the tactical realities of how to actually do these things: how to vote, how to be involved in public comment periods, and regulatory actions and so on.

Yes, I think education is incredibly important. I don't think it just starts in middle school and high school, I think we need to do it in college which many of us do.

Research also shows that when young people vote for the first time at 18, they're much more likely to be lifelong voters. Getting them early is really important.

I work with young people, and I love young people. I teach college students and graduate students, and I hear their perspectives all the time. They know so much more about so many things than we Gen-Xers did at their age. But we are not absolved of our responsibility as their educators. We still have to teach how civic practice works and how to do it.

frank news is dedicated to storytelling across all mediums. A space for debate, discussion, and connection between experts and a curious readership. Topics are presented monthly with content delivered daily.

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