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Neighboring in Militarized Communities
221 Plays24 days ago
Sandra Maria Van Opstal is joined by Pastor Julio Hernández to share stories from the ground in Chicago and Washington, DC. They also discuss ways that the church and Christians can be good neighbors and work together toward collective liberation.
Want to have more conversations like this with other CCD practitioners? Check out CCDA’s Immigration Network and listen to our conversation with Pastor Carlos Rincon of LA, wherever you get your podcasts! Make plans to join us at the CCDA Conference this November at ccda.org/conference.
Sandra Maria Van Opstal, a second-generation Latina, is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Chasing Justice, a movement led by people of color to mobilize a lifestyle of faith and justice. She is an international speaker, author, and activist, recognized for her courageous work in pursuing justice and disrupting oppressive systems within the church. As a global prophetic voice and an active community member on the west side of Chicago, Sandra’s initiatives in holistic justice equip communities around the world to practice biblical solidarity and mutuality within various social and cultural locations.
The Congregation Action Network (CAN) is a grassroots coalition of faith communities committed to defending the rights and dignity of immigrants and refugees through collective action for housing, healthcare, education, food, and legal protections. Rev. Julio Hernández, Executive Director of CAN, is a Baptist pastor with over 20 years of ministry experience in cross-cultural missions and outreach. A son of Salvadoran immigrants, his faith and heritage ground his passion for justice and his commitment to ensuring all people are treated with dignity and compassion.
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Organizations and resources mentioned in the episodes:
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the CCDA podcast. My name is Sandra Van Opsel from Chicago and I've been a part of CCDA for a minute. I'm your host for this episode and today I'm joined by a very special guest Julio Hernandez from DC.
City Challenges in DC and Chicago
00:00:22
Speaker
Today we'll be having a conversation about what's going on in both of our cities, both DC and Chicago. and the recent escalation of military and police force, and sharing stories of what it's like on the ground and confronting the false narratives about our city. So I'm so excited to have you today, Julio. Thank you for coming.
00:00:39
Speaker
Can
Insights on Diversity in DC
00:00:40
Speaker
you share a little bit about your community, where you work, what you do there? Yeah. My name is Julio Hernandez, and I am the executive director of an organization called the Congregation Action Network.
00:00:52
Speaker
And we organize interfaith communities of faith to speak up for the rights of immigrants. We serve as a bridge between impacted community and communities that care. And but here just offering a line of hope.
00:01:07
Speaker
It's been awful in the the recent history here in our city, really beautiful city of Washington, D.C., very diverse. I say to people that one of our cultural ways of greeting each other in Spanish is you say, hi, what's your name?
00:01:22
Speaker
And where are you from? Which sometimes in other parts of the United States is not always like that. I've been in different cities where like, yeah, we're all Puerto Rican here or we're all Mexican here. So it's really beautiful here to the diversity of the Latin American population.
00:01:37
Speaker
And because we're in the capital, we have also people that are ambassadors. you know So You know, my local high school here near my home, the ambassador's child, Bolivia, attends the local public high school.
00:01:49
Speaker
So
True Stories vs. Media Narratives
00:01:50
Speaker
it's a neat place where the world really literally meets each other and is in relationship. And it's very diverse. And I just, also our trees are very diverse. We have really bad allergies here. Yeah, that happens when I go to D.C.
00:02:07
Speaker
I hear you there. I've been D.C. many times. And the way you just described it is... is exactly how I experienced it, but maybe haven't put words to it. It's like the world is meeting there and you can feel both the community nature as well as the power all at the same time because it is, you know, it's it is our nation's capital. And so, and one of the things I love about the work that we do with CCDA is that even though we may have this national organization and and connection, we all are working and living in our local space.
00:02:39
Speaker
And I, I think it's important for people from within that space to share the story of that space. You know, there's these kind of stories that are being told about what's happening in D.C. or watching the news and L.A. and Chicago. and and and And we're all calling each other in the CCDA family saying, hey, what's going on on the ground there? Like, for real, is it that bad?
00:02:59
Speaker
what does this look like? I'm seeing these videos and can you share more with me? And so I'm here in Chicago. Let me say that first. I'm here in Chicago. I'm on Chicago's West side. um i live in Humboldt Park. I congregate in Lawndale.
00:03:11
Speaker
I've done ministry both with students and churches and I'm as an activist here on the broader West side of Chicago. And though our city's Latina population is Mexican, my neighborhood's population is Puerto Rican.
00:03:26
Speaker
And I myself am neither Mexican or Puerto Rican. I'm Colombian Argentine. And so that description you gave of DC, I was like, oh yeah, it's it's this experience of like work together. We're connected, but we're also distinct and different. and But we hold one another's story so that we can do work together. So that's where I'm at here in Chicago. I'm If you hear sirens and lawnmowers and chickens, that's me over here.
00:03:48
Speaker
But tell me a little bit about the way militarization has shown up in your community and how it's affecting your community.
Militarization and Police Presence
00:03:54
Speaker
You know, we we had a wedding just recently. my my My father-in-law, my late father-in-law, was the founder of the Arabic Baptist Church in America.
00:04:02
Speaker
And we were at an Arab wedding. One side of the family was Egyptian. The other side was Syrian-Palestinian. Because we had people from all over the country come to this wedding.
00:04:13
Speaker
And they would ask us, is it really that bad? Are people losing their jobs? Because there is a big, ah what I found Just in general, as an American culture, is a big lack of trust.
00:04:27
Speaker
ah what What is true? what is And so people are relying on relationships to understand what's really happening. And it is true. I mean, one of my friends who just had twins lost her job. She got a doctorate and was working in USID. And you're talking about very specific careers that have been eliminated overnight.
00:04:47
Speaker
So now they have the question to ask what happens to our home? you know What happens to where do we live? you know Overnight, our neighbors are changing. People are moving out.
00:04:57
Speaker
We're seeing over it you know weekends, moving vans in our neighborhood, people leaving. It's just this mass change, a big shift in in in the D.C.
00:05:10
Speaker
residential life. On top of that, we have the occupation. People don't understand how policed DC is already. you know you If you live in, ah in let's say, you know Kansas, you might have your county police.
00:05:24
Speaker
But how many times do you interact with park police? How many times do you interact with Amtrak police? And something new we experienced on the ground is now there is people people wearing sunglasses.
00:05:35
Speaker
aren't people with a patch and a vest that says IRS police. Did you all know that there was an IRS police? I mean, it just blows your mind of the militarization that's happening on our so in their society.
00:05:49
Speaker
And D.C. is, um I don't know what ah other to say, but ground zero of this militarization police state that is being developed all over the United States.
00:06:01
Speaker
For example, Amtrak police. It's something that we've seen on the ground. Heavily armed. I mean, when I go to the metro, when I go to work, I live in Virginia. I used to ride my bicycle to work. I don't anymore because of the danger of being a brown person out in public.
00:06:15
Speaker
It's much more dangerous, so I'm taking public transportation more. But where I make my my stop and change over to the next metro line, my stop is in the Pentagon.
00:06:26
Speaker
There we have soldiers with scopes and rifles and bulletproof vests walking the metro. I feel like ah back in El Salvador, we were seeing machine guns on every corner.
00:06:39
Speaker
It's just, you know, i was talking to a a Nigerian in our community. He said, I feel like I'm back in my country, the way that things are looking. It's completely awful. I mean, I was telling my wife, I was driving yesterday and I saw, so this is something you don't often see is White men who have bulletproof vests on every corner of the street.
00:07:00
Speaker
And told my wife, my body started to react. My heartbeat increased. ah Oh my goodness, am I driving into ah trap, right? You know, with this, the Supreme Court ruling that allows racial profiling now.
00:07:14
Speaker
Oh my gosh, yes. So your job, your language, the color of your skin, you know, now we're all in danger. doesn't matter if you have papers or not. There was a raid yesterday
Community Response in Chicago
00:07:24
Speaker
morning in a restaurant.
00:07:26
Speaker
And the officer that came into the restaurant had the picture of everybody, even citizens. I need you to understand this, who those who are listening. What right do law enforcement have to have our pictures in a raid?
00:07:40
Speaker
my like we're We're in this moment where it's very dangerous, and the worker said, Everybody was on the schedule that day was Latin American. We didn't have any of our Caucasian co-workers, any of our black co-workers. We were all brown people working that day.
00:07:53
Speaker
When the raid happened, our servers, our hosts were all of Latin American descent, brown-skinned people. And when the police came, had every single person's picture. So you i don't know if you remember that when Bukele, the president of El Salvador, where my family is from, when he came to meet with the president, he said, I will take citizens.
00:08:14
Speaker
So something that we've been saying here in DC, and we're working really hard to do, is to say that we are all in danger, even our brown and our black float. So we need to work together in this.
00:08:25
Speaker
Let's not be enemies in this moment. Let's work together. Because we ah very we're very close. We're on the tip of this precipice. We're going to start outsourcing our jail system. We're already outsourcing immigration detention.
00:08:39
Speaker
So even when I talk to the community, There is no word in Spanish for rendition. That is sending people to third countries. Right. For detention.
00:08:50
Speaker
Thank you so much for sharing what you shared, not only about your neighbors, but about the way that your community is looking to work together. i think here in Chicago, we're feeling that same impulse and invitation to figure out how to work together in a new way.
00:09:04
Speaker
So we had a ah gathering together. A few Mondays ago at our daily plaza, at our city's plaza, and it was called Faith Over Fear. And i encourage you guys, we can put it in the show notes, but I encourage you guys to take a look at it, where clergy from different faith backgrounds came together in prayer and in rally to tell the administration that we do not want tanks or military presence in Chicago the way that we've seen in LA and DC.
00:09:32
Speaker
that we are choosing to speak what we know is true about our city, ask for the help we know we need, and to reject the help we know we don't need. It's not help at all. you know it's It's damaging.
00:09:44
Speaker
And what I found so beautiful in that moment was having been in Chicago my whole life. ive I grew up here. I've been here my whole life. And desiring and looking for moments where Black and brown communities would work together in a new way, where people of different faith expressions would work together in a new way, though we hold difference, but working together for the flourishing of our communities, I think it just felt so hard to do in in many ways in the past.
00:10:11
Speaker
And one of our kind of lead clergy activists, Father Flager from the South Side, who leads at a Catholic church, he just he said, I've never seen Chicago clergy organized across faith so that we are right now.
00:10:25
Speaker
And I thought, you know what, that's true. I haven't seen that either. And I think it's because out of sheer desperation, we know we don't agree on everything. and we even had some really crucial, hard conversations about what our goals were as an interfaith clergy.
00:10:39
Speaker
And we're still having them when we meet weekly. But what we know is true is that if we don't work together, can't win. Mm-hmm. we don't work together, we can't win. And so there's too much at stake right now for all of our communities that are marginalized with this administration to not say and do something together.
00:10:59
Speaker
And so we agreed on some basic principles that we wanted to so look after. And part of that was to not make the militarization of our cities solely about immigration. Though, as some of our sisters said in that meeting, it impacts the Latina and immigrant community in distinct and unique ways at this moment in time, it will ultimately, as you said, Julio, affect all of us.
00:11:22
Speaker
It will affect all of us because military presence in any city is dangerous to any marginalized person. and And what will it do to our young black and brown men and women? What will it do to our immigrant neighbors who who have status but are vulnerable in their status?
00:11:38
Speaker
And then what does it do to anyone after the Supreme Court made that ruling? I was like, what is going to happen around here?
Parallels with Historical Events
00:11:44
Speaker
I called my family members. I said, carry your passport with you everywhere you go. And it reminded me of points in our history all over the world where people had to carry identification in order to feel like they could potentially be safe if they had gotten caught. And, you know, I can tell stories, I'm sure you could tell stories of many things that have happened in our cities and nationally of like U.S. citizens being taken and then not being let out of incarceration and detention or being or just disappearing.
00:12:14
Speaker
Yeah. which is Which is what I wanted to share with you when you're talking about, you're like, when we talk about our home countries, for those of us that are Latino, Latina, and have like ah recent connection, you know, my parents came from Latin America, they came to Chicago, and they fell in love, and voila, here I am.
00:12:30
Speaker
But we we just went this summer to Argentina to visit family with my kids, and we went to the Casa Rosada, the presidential ah plaza, the palace, and we saw the monument where the women and to weep and to pray and to protest for all that disappeared in their country.
00:12:51
Speaker
And the way that the government was able to overreach the way they did with no due process and then people just disappeared, never to be heard from again.
00:13:02
Speaker
and And it was so sobering because I'm like, we're experiencing that right now. And in some respects for me as a community leader and as a national leader, I was also like, no one seems to be noticing that we're disappearing. That's right.
00:13:16
Speaker
Like, I don't hear a a national public outcry about immigrants that are disappearing in our country. No. And it made me sad and it made me angry. made me lots of things because I'm an Enneagram 8. It made me lots of feelings.
00:13:30
Speaker
In that moment when we came back, I've been paying attention more to that particular story. Like the fact that the people that are were detained in in Florida, we now have like two-thirds of the population that were detained in Alcatraz.
00:13:48
Speaker
you know, quote unquote, that are, that are unaccounted for. There's no record of them anymore. Yes. 1200 people disappeared overnight and no one's saying anything. So I just want to put that out there and say like, Hey, if we could just pause this moment and say, this is historical. Yeah.
00:14:03
Speaker
And I don't hear an outcry. So the imagery that the president used, what he titled the Chicago Apocalypse, right? I don't even know how to say it. It is of ah the the heart of darkness.
00:14:17
Speaker
that That's the book. Apocalypse Now was the movie. The imagery that's being used yeah or or even defend the homeland language. We're talking about a moment in history where there is no more shame.
00:14:29
Speaker
So what I've been saying is really what we're experiencing is an apocalypse. If we understand the Greek term in the biblical sense, not the final battle sense that our imagination has been dominated in the Christian world, but the sense of this unveiling.
00:14:45
Speaker
yeah I've been telling people, yeah a democratic administration built the jails in which the following republic administration held held the children. Now, if you are not haunted by the cries of those children,
00:14:57
Speaker
that you haven't been listening. So what is happening now is not so much a new reality, but it is an unveiling of reality that is. the children there There are 70 children put on a plane that were going to be shipped off a few weeks ago back to Guatemala. On there, there was a 10-year-old girl who was abused in her country and fled to America, was living safely in a shelter.
00:15:19
Speaker
And now they want to shepherd back. They said on that plane, kids were throwing up because of the fear of thinking about returning to their home. A couple weeks ago, i had a call from a law firm that said our lawyers can't work anymore because the secondary trauma that they're experiencing.
00:15:36
Speaker
We have hundreds of people disappeared here in D.C., and we can't file habeas corpus because there is no corpus. There is no body from which we can file a case. This is what really makes me angry. All these Christians are talking about, we want to stop child trafficking.
00:15:52
Speaker
Well, you should be up in arms right now. going to advocate for these children because you're being hypocrites right now. You should be, with all your might, being here for these children who are being trafficked.
00:16:06
Speaker
We have people disappearing in the system. We have a child that in the morning he said goodbye to his father. On his way to soccer practice, he noticed his car was in the driveway, or not in the parking lot of his apartments.
00:16:18
Speaker
And that's when we found out that all we know is he disappeared. And the only reason we knew is because this child went out and the car was gone. And here is the piece of this whole pie that we're not processing.
00:16:30
Speaker
It used to be common practice. We could ask law enforcement for their name and their badge number. Right. That no longer is requirement. They're masked. What is that to say that people can't buy? You can go on Amazon and buy one of these vests with a sticker on it.
00:16:45
Speaker
What's to say that someone is not able to just on the vigilante squads pick up people? and And I think that what you're describing in story and what we are seeing on TikTok, on Instagram, in the news, like all the places, wherever we get our, but whatever whatever we get our news on, we what we see in image and and and what we hear in story is this idea of the militarization of communities.
00:17:12
Speaker
And just so we're clear on what that, what we're saying with that is, we're referring, it's referring to the adoption of military style tactics and equipment and mindset, all those things, like we're at war with our own citizens by domestic law enforcement.
00:17:28
Speaker
Right. And all of the people that are deputized, because i think what you're speaking to is also I've heard like people are like, oh, the IRS is being deputized. and All these people are being deputized to go out there and do whatever they want. And so we can't even tell who is doing what. And
Military Tactics in Law Enforcement
00:17:42
Speaker
if we speak out what I've what I have experienced here is that if you speak out, they're using military style tactics to address your voice, like just you speaking out. So we have a ah group of parents and family members and clergy that meet at our Here at our Broadview Detention Center in Illinois, it's just outside of the city, like two steps outside of the city. So it's where a lot of people go when they're detained in the city of Chicago.
00:18:09
Speaker
And as these ICE raids have been happening, people are not able to get information. They go to Broadview to like take people their, know, heart medication or to check in or like figure out what to do with their child who was left on the street when they were taken from them. Because that's what's happening. Our children are just being left there on the sidewalk as their parents are being taken away.
00:18:27
Speaker
with no regard to what's going to happen to the safety ah that child who's left there. So they go to the Broadview Detention Center and they're trying to get information. And in that, then they bring their friends. Now their friends are protesting, they're raising their voices. and And then clergy are coming and elected officials are coming to try to get information because that that person happens to be in their district, right? So it could be an elder person or ah a ah state senator or representative that's trying to get information. No one's letting them in.
00:18:54
Speaker
And so we were on a call the other day and i have have not gone myself because what I heard was that as the presence has been increasing, and we're not talking about hundreds of people, we're talking about dozens of people trying to get information or medical attention to their loved ones that they're throwing tear gas at them and pelleting them with rubbbel rubber bullets and now people are getting severely injured. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
00:19:19
Speaker
And I've seen the videos and I've talked to people who are there. And so I know that it's a response that is disproportionate to the the chanting or the singing or the praying or whatever it is they're doing in front of in front of the cars.
00:19:33
Speaker
And so I think that's that's one of the things I think we want you to hear in this conversation we're having is it's it is that this terrible, evil thing is happening in our eyes, in our seeing,
00:19:46
Speaker
And we have the power to do something about it. And it's distinct because of the way that our government is handling this. The militarization, employing military tactics against civilians, mothers, daughters, sons, grandchildren, you know, and because of all of the civil rights implications that are happening without due process, with the people disappearing, with wrongful detention of citizens and It's a moment in time where we we can have two conversations. One is like at the intellectual level about the fact that our democracy is crumbling, which is important to have that conversation.
00:20:27
Speaker
But I'm going to guess that you and i who you are, like in our neighborhoods, I'm just trying to get through today and the news that came to my desk today and that's on my phone right now. Like, I need to be there for these people. I need to get them the resources they need. And so it is imperative, I think, people hear our invitation to do their part in this. you know, it's like, we need help because so some of us are dealing with day-to-day things and need the partnership.
00:20:53
Speaker
for you to show up in places where you can tell a different story, where you can use your voice. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how communities are showing up for each other.
Community Support and Generosity
00:21:03
Speaker
And I want to do this in two categories.
00:21:05
Speaker
Not because I think there are only two categories, because this is how i think about it. One is like, how do we neighbor well? That's CCDA. It's like, how do you show up for your literal neighbor and but ones around you? And if you're in a nice, posh suburb somewhere, you know, i just want to have news for you. There are people that are vulnerable right around you. ah So open your eyes next time you pass by Home Depot and you will see.
00:21:27
Speaker
What do you do for your neighbor? How are people showing up for their neighbor? And then the other category we can talk about when we're done with that is like, how do we show up in advocacy? Those are two different categories for me.
00:21:37
Speaker
So how we neighbor well? What are you seeing? I used to help one of my friends. He used to have a ministry called the Latino Lighthouse where there different types of neighboring things like provide food food for the community.
00:21:49
Speaker
One thing he did was would do taco tours in the southern part of our county, which is the most ethnic part. And we had people from the north come. And one time was sitting next to a woman and she said to me,
00:22:01
Speaker
Why should I come? I'm not in use here. but they don't want me here. And I looked her and was like what are you talking about? What makes me think that, right? And as we're going through these restaurants, some of them are historic restaurants that have been here decades.
00:22:15
Speaker
We have a very old Salvadoran restaurant here that is since the 80s, has been serving here. And she had never been. one thing as Christians, you know, Jesus chose to walk to Samaria Take time, Christians. This is something that CCA does well, is is practice going across metaphorical train tracks.
00:22:36
Speaker
Find those lines of division and cross the street and get to know your neighbor. We're looking at the disillusion of state-run social services.
00:22:49
Speaker
So churches right now at this moment, all over the country, we need to prepare. Churches need start building clinics. We need to start preparing food banks in massive ways. Transform your church grounds to massive gardens for the community because there's going to be a lot of pain.
00:23:05
Speaker
um We're already feeling it right now. So I got a phone call. 35 families at the end of this month can't pay their rent because they have ah half of their income has been has been disappeared. Can you imagine if half your income disappeared overnight?
00:23:19
Speaker
What would that be like for you? Now put yourself in those shoes. You know, one thing that bugs me is we have a lot of churches thinking in a wealth mindset, but we churches thinking, what is it like to just survive?
00:23:34
Speaker
You know what? What's it like? Have you been to a laundromat, Christians, listening to this? Just see how much it costs to dry your clothes. We are being gouged, literally quartered right now. No longer nickel and dime because nickel and dimes do nothing anymore.
00:23:51
Speaker
We're being dollar billed. I encourage you all, go to a laundromat and do a week's worth of laundry. And just save the bills and and then ask yourself, if I'm earning minimum wage, what is it like for me to wash my clothes on a weekly basis? yeah So churches, maybe start building honest laundromats that don't gouge the poor.
00:24:11
Speaker
Churches, start thinking and asking your poor neighbors, what is it that is necessary for them to live? Yeah, I think when we think about our neighboring, those ideas you've given are so creative. When we think about our neighboring, it it it often boils down to having the eyes to see, like putting ourselves in places of proximity to understand the reality and responding with acts of, really we're talking about acts of compassion and relief.
00:24:41
Speaker
which is different than the stuff we'll talk to it about in a second, but I think they are very important. I'm in the justice space all the time, advocacy and activism, and primarily with people under 35. And what I'm always, because I'm the old lady, I'm the Thea, my auntie, so I try to remind them as like,
00:24:57
Speaker
You can't look at a generation that came before you that didn't do the activism but did the generosity and poo-poo them if you yourself are not giving radically and generously. Because you cannot be a person of justice and spend half your income on a rooftop drinking cocktails. You just can't.
00:25:12
Speaker
And so therefore, like, what does it look like to practice ridiculous generosity in this moment in time? If you're going to boycott Disney or Netflix or Amazon or whatever, don't just boycott it. Like, stop giving them the money and use that $17.99 or $21.99 and move that into a different fund that's specifically for migrants or Gaza or something else, you know?
00:25:34
Speaker
And so we've been thinking about that as a family. Like, let's imagine you're tithing. I don't think a lot of people do. That's what I see on the the the the data tells me not a lot of people even give 10% anymore. Let's pretend you are. What would it look like to give 12% this year? And that 2% goes specifically to a particular cause your family is going to pray for and give to radically.
00:25:53
Speaker
A friend of mine the other day, she works for ah a relief agency that works with refugees. She just put on her Instagram, hey, there's a family in Houston that needs groceries and the government or whatever aid they're getting is only $100 a hundred dollars ah month.
00:26:06
Speaker
ah Nobody can buy groceries for $100 a month. Who wants to give? And like within minutes, she had raised some money through her friends. And I'm sure those people felt are really, you know, like, good about what they had done. And they should because they responded. They opened their hearts, you know?
00:26:21
Speaker
And to me, that opens your heart to more things. Like, well, what else can I do? I did something, but that didn't feel like enough. What else could I do? So I think actually money is a big issue in the neighboring piece. I think that we would neighbor better if we spent less and we And we took seriously our consumption as Americans. And so I want to put that as as a piece. like, what do we do with our money matters to our neighbors.
00:26:46
Speaker
Off of what you said, it's like helping people to buy groceries, helping people to pay rent, um churches taking up a specific fund, ah planting a garden, using your space, your resources, using your space while sharing, driving people to appointments so that they're not vulnerable on the buses.
00:27:01
Speaker
Please check your four o one k please check your retirement accounts, those of you that have the privilege of having one, because i'm goingnna I'm going to tell you for sure that if you invest in the top five, you're going to be in private prisons because you have to actually divest away from it in most of your funds in order not to contribute it. So Posting on Instagram and ranting on Facebook is totally fine. But if you're also contributing to those things with your with your consumption, with your investment, and with your lack of giving, then you can't ask the government to do something you're not willing to do. you know So I think that's one area I just want to like kind of emphasize in what you said is another couple of things i've seen I'm seeing is like one neighbor just sent out a community. We we belong to a black club.
00:27:46
Speaker
So whoever your block club is, your book club, your block club, your small group, whoever that is, an email that's like, here are the Instagram sites to follow. Here are the te the them the the things to text to follow, like what's happening with ICE in your neighborhood.
00:28:03
Speaker
And then here's how you report an ICE sighting. in your community. And so it was just a very short email with some bullet points of like, here's what you could do. Because if you're not vulnerable, you may not be thinking, oh, I should be prepared.
00:28:17
Speaker
But yeah we all should be prepared. We should know how to use our phone the camera on our phone. We should know how to text. you know We should know how to to capture video and and i mean and to report these things. I think that's another thing.
00:28:28
Speaker
And then another cool thing I heard of, which I'm sure I think you guys are doing in DC, maybe we got the idea from you, but is these walking school buses. So there's neighbors that are walking children to school in like communities for parents who cannot leave their homes because they're vulnerable and in particular times when we see like a presence of ice or things like that.
00:28:52
Speaker
And so those are just really cool ideas that you can do with your time, with your money, with your influence, you know, with your whatever kind of platform you have to like help a neighbor out to do something.
00:29:04
Speaker
i mean, call a friend. You know, I had a friend call me. don't know if you've had this, julia but like not text me, but call me. And I picked it up because I hadn't talked to them in ah in a like a minute, though we talk on DMs.
00:29:19
Speaker
And she said, I just wanted to check in with you. She's from Atlanta. She said, i just I see what's happening in Chicago. I just wanted to check in with you and see if you're okay. I said, thank you so much. Nobody ever checks in on a pastor. Nobody ever checks in on us.
00:29:33
Speaker
I so appreciate that. i um about it's I'm not okay, but I'm hanging in there. And and my spouse was like, oh, who was that? And I told them, I was like, oh, wow, someone called you and checked in with So check in on your leaders because we're carrying more than just our own family stuff. We're carrying typically dozens of other people that we love. I would say just even a phone call really helps to support the work that we're doing. So
History of Advocacy and Legal Action
00:30:00
Speaker
Julio, what about advocacy?
00:30:02
Speaker
What about the systemic level? What are some things we can do? Well, if one, I could begin historical innovation, that if we ground ourselves in history, that it might help us to think about, imagine what could be now.
00:30:17
Speaker
That's good. And if I could situate us as a country to remember the Underground Railroad, that we moved people to freedom. I can bike 15 minutes away from me, was the most lucrative enslavement corporation there was in the world.
00:30:32
Speaker
But also near me, there was underground railroad homes. And dc is also ah one of the places where the underground railroad during the 80s, the civil wars in Central America, there's a reason why in the world...
00:30:47
Speaker
right The three biggest populations of Salvadorans are in the capital of El Salvador, San Salvador, Los Angeles, and D.C. is number two. Churches in D.C. provide a sanctuary for families.
00:31:01
Speaker
I encourage faith leaders, Christian communities, to explore the history. Something that happened that ah at that time, too, was that the American Baptist, there's a lawsuit, ABC versus Thorogood in Supreme Court, where the American Baptist and the coalition with other groups sued,
00:31:18
Speaker
Because at that time, if you were from El Salvador or Guatemala, they blankedly said, no, you couldn't apply that to asylum in the United States or you couldn't be a refugee. They won that case.
00:31:30
Speaker
And that is what inspired TPS, temporary protection status. Now, sadly, that was just a bandaid. But my hope is that Christian communities can recapture this history, right? We were not just only working civil rights.
00:31:43
Speaker
We all hear about Martin Luther King. I even talked to some American Baptist faith leaders. I formerly was ah serving in the Baptist church. And this history is not even told in the Baptist church.
00:31:55
Speaker
the The radical legal advocacy. Right now, quite frankly, the political will is broken. We haven't seen, in general, ah but the political will to make change for this.
00:32:09
Speaker
If you all don't understand H.R. 1, I encourage you sit down and read it. DHS now receives more funding than the military of Russia. Only China U.S. spend more money than DHS.
00:32:22
Speaker
We're talking, we're funding and an organization that is completely lawless. There is impunity. There is no accountability.
00:32:33
Speaker
In H.R. 1, we're talking about the rolling back of the Flores Agreement. These are agreements that were made to protect children. They're basic as providing water for a child. A child can only be in detention 24 hours. With H.R. 1, that is rolled back.
00:32:47
Speaker
right We're looking at the the indefinite detention of families. The only reason we're not doing that the moment is because those detention centers are not built. In Newark, we're looking at a detention of 50,000 people. In Texas, they're building family detention.
00:33:01
Speaker
What I'm calling for is for the church to reconnect with its historical roots The history of the Marino sisters who were killed in El Salvador, 70,000 people were killed there, but it wasn't until those four sisters were killed, white women, that we we in America started to ask the question, why are we spending money in a system that's so brutalized in El Salvador?
00:33:25
Speaker
You know, I did a project where I i interviewed victims of torture. And this was during the Iraq War when the the images Abu Ghraib were coming out. They said everything that you see in those pictures was already done in Central America during civil wars.
00:33:38
Speaker
And they were taught to them by the Americans at Fort Benning. And I'm speaking to you as a pastor. I don't understand our Christian body in this country that blanketly accepts torture as a form of a practice, a legitimate form. We have lost our morality and our consciousness as a country.
00:33:58
Speaker
Honestly, I'm speechless at the moment because we sent people to be tortured in El Salvador, 238 Venezuelans. In there was Kilma Abrega Garcia. If you haven't seen the Time article, honestly, I can only see the first picture because it's too personal.
00:34:13
Speaker
Yeah. We gave $14 million dollars to El Salvador to torture 238 people. If we're thinking of just economics, is that a good use of our money? Yeah. Yeah, and that's that's ah that's an entire other, literally it's an entire other podcast on the economics of militarization and the economics. Like, what is this doing to our economy right now when we're spending $6 billion dollars sending arms to another country or when we're spending whatever we're spending to do what we're doing, you know? I think...
00:34:44
Speaker
every time I see the figures, like, and I, I, like, i I read the articles and I'm like, what are we doing? I'm left in the same place. So CCDA, you know, you had two pastors on the, on the, on the podcast with you today. And I, you're lucky we didn't preach or talk theology and all that other stuff. We're talking as neighbors. That's what we're talking about. Cause we have other whole expertises, you know, but I think we wanted to come to you today as neighbors because it does, it does leave me very sad.
00:35:09
Speaker
Like it really, if I could just share with you, it leaves me like, not surprised, but so deeply saddened that we we cannot seem to learn.
00:35:21
Speaker
That we speak about a God of peace and yet we promote and sanction and fund war in every way, domestic and international.
00:35:36
Speaker
That we think that peace can be brought through war And that we say we want to love our neighbor and we want to spread the gospel around the world to the number top three countries that we're sending missionaries and mission trips to every summer are the top three countries we are traumatizing and abusing in our own country. I don't understand that.
00:35:59
Speaker
And the only place it leaves me is like, what kind of fear and bondage must we be living in spiritually to do this? Yep. Or even depersonalization. like Yeah.
00:36:13
Speaker
And what will happen to us in the future, what will happen to not just our children as, you know, migrant communities and Latino communities, but but what will happen to an entire generation that comes after when they know that they sat through that and did absolutely nothing. In the same way that I tell people all the time, like, the reason America is so sick in their soul It's because they they had to imagine that it was theologically possible to imagine a world where people were not fully human because of the color of their skin.
00:36:49
Speaker
And then make them commodities. And then abuse every community of color that came after that. Mm-hmm. And take from communities. And that the the act, as Mark Charles says in and Soong Chan in their Unsettling Truths, the act of committing genocide and enslavement and abuse and evil on people for generations and generations and centuries has so perverted our souls.
00:37:17
Speaker
and our imagination. that To even begin to unpack that and say, yes, we did that and it's true would be so traumatic for privileged that they don't have the courage to do it. they don't they they Their fear won't let them go there.
00:37:32
Speaker
and i And that's the only reason I'm like, okay, i can i can I can stay in this and I can keep saying the same thing because I see you're traumatized too. But I'm sure you do this, Julio, too. It's like sometimes I get home and I'm like,
00:37:44
Speaker
I just throw myself on the floor or on the couch or on the bed and I just start crying. Like, God, where are you? yeah And how long? And where the hell are your people?
00:37:56
Speaker
Like, where are they? Doing what? Singing songs? yeah Writing books? I think the reason I am committed to do this work within CCDA, within the work we do with Chasing Justice, is because I want people to be liberated.
00:38:13
Speaker
I want us to know God and to follow God and to understand God. And our actions right now show that we really don't.
00:38:24
Speaker
And I know it's all of us, but I'm saying, The collective we. In that vein, John Sobrino says that, he's a theologian ah in from Spain, but in El Salvador, and he says that we've lost ways to be human.
00:38:38
Speaker
So when we live in the civilization of the poor, the majority of the world, we learn how to be human again. i say it's time and time again, the most generous are the poorest people.
00:38:51
Speaker
So in our network, there's a ah way that we communicate with faith leaders. And I got a phone call from 30 families that are going hungry. They said, we have no more food. We haven't eaten in a week.
00:39:01
Speaker
We don't know what to do. One of the poorest churches our network brought enough food for two weeks. They bought beans, rice, maseca, and queso blanco. they They knew the neighborhood so well, they knew what streets to go down to go and into this neighborhood that it was very secluded in the city.
00:39:20
Speaker
Over and over again, the poor, the people who have to live under the heel of empire are the most human among us. Yeah, and i think the statement that you made, you know, we have to learn how to be human, the the quote that you talked about, I think that is why doing something is important because i don't think we're gonna think our way into our humanity.
The Role of Churches and Neighboring Well
00:39:43
Speaker
I think we're gonna walk our way towards our humanity, like walk together and walk with God towards our humanity. And I think some of the ideas that we've already given that I hope you all share with one another as you process this, it's like, how do we show up for our neighbors?
00:39:57
Speaker
with our finances, with our presence, with our with help, with with prayer. You know, we haven't talked a lot about prayer, but definitely we need to be praying. We need to be praying for lots of things. I'm assuming we're praying while we're marching. I can share with you in around prayer. we We're starting something in UNDC. We're calling the prayer guard.
00:40:15
Speaker
you understand our drift, what we're saying. So oftentimes as faith leaders, we're asked to show up in collars, investments. But we're not asked to lead the work. So we're doing as faith leaders, we're going to go in different parts, every part of the city, every corner, and march toward the center.
00:40:32
Speaker
Different days we're marching in different parts of the city, just praying and walking and praying for our city as as a ah call out to God for liberation, for freedom, for peace, for protection for our people.
00:40:45
Speaker
And in hope that those walls will fall, you know, and hope that the the things that are keeping us apart from our liberation will fall. I mean, we think about things like, you know, whether we boycott something, you know, which I think is very important. I think just so you know, divestment and boycott historically has also been incredibly ah effective when people do it together. So I see that particularly in a younger generation, like they're like divesting and boycotting particular brands or organizations because organizations where where where it hurts them financially, it's going to, people are going to begin to listen. That's how we got things like all all the things we have now, like socially responsible funds and, you know, electric cars and all the things that are happening now we got because people said we won't spend our money there.
00:41:31
Speaker
I think those things are effective. And the other thing I think they do is they teach our families and our communities how to live in a way that's oriented towards the poor. So it's kind of like, I don't know, will these companies, like will Amazon really care that I haven't, or Walmart really care I haven't seen them in 20 years? I don't know.
00:41:47
Speaker
But my children, my neighbors, the people that we mentor are seeing that when you live in a way that is oriented towards the poor, you the things that oppress the poor, you orient yourself away from those things.
00:42:01
Speaker
And so why can't we shop there? Why can't we just go through the drive-thru? Why can't I buy it here? Why do we have to do take it the complicated route? ah Why can't I stream what I want? You know, it's because we're trying to become more human.
00:42:15
Speaker
We're trying to say our orientation is not ourselves or our comfort or our privilege or our convenience because our neighbors don't live under that. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And for many of us in CCDA, we don't live under that kind of privilege or comfort or convenience.
00:42:30
Speaker
And so we're not going to vote with our dollars to do something that is going to actually impact us in negative ways. So I think that the actions that we're asking you guys to do, it's also because I think like prayer, those things change us from the inside as well, from the inside out and from the outside in. I think they're spiritual disciplines. So I think boycott is a spiritual discipline.
00:42:52
Speaker
yeah I think marching is a spiritual discipline. I think giving until it hurts is a spiritual discipline. And we're inviting people to do that because we think it will actually reorient us towards the things of God.
00:43:06
Speaker
So wanted to close by asking you this question. How do you see the CCDA philosophy at work in your community? So whatever comes to mind when you think of the CCA eight philosophy, because, you know, we all have our favorite one of the principles. So yeah which one do you think you see at work in your community?
00:43:23
Speaker
it's hard to say the one that's the one that stands out the most, but probably like you said, reconciliation terms of relationships, we are more interfaith. Now we are hearing the voice of each other in new ways that we hadn't before.
00:43:41
Speaker
You know, i was invited to pray in, in the only food desert in DC. Out of the speakers, I was only two of us were not black. and And it's funny because i in the talk, I said, the reason I can say we can be in relationship together is because I've lived it.
00:43:58
Speaker
I lived at Star Bethlehem Church of God in Christ, a black church. I lived there for a summer. I worked in Anacostia before it was cool to go there.
00:44:11
Speaker
I learned to make grits when I would work. My brother and I used to volunteer at Third Street Church of God for breakfast there. Once a week, we'd go and make breakfast. I learned how to make grits. And the all the ladies in the front row lifted up their hands when I said I i knew how to cook grits.
00:44:26
Speaker
So I can say I see in this moment new possibilities for relationship that were not as available before. Yeah. Yeah. it's it's, it's interesting that you said it's kind of full circle to where we started. and so I'm going I'm going to share that one as well. There, there are probably many more could, hopefully we're applying all of them, you know, but I think,
00:44:49
Speaker
Some of us in the in the Chicago area have been working for a couple decades now on like, what does it look like for Black and brown communities to work together? And it's not to say there aren't Native or Asian communities here in the city too, but on the West side, it's like either you're Mexican or you're Black, you know, and maybe Puerto Rican if you're on the Northwest side. But what does it look like for us to work together so that It's not just Black pastors showing up for ah police brutality or violence or of incarceration topics and not just Latinos showing up for immigration. You know how that goes in your cities?
00:45:20
Speaker
What does it look like to actually make invitations to one another that are culturally important? heard? Because sometimes people say, hey, you didn't show up to either community. And it's like, well, we didn't hear and ask.
00:45:32
Speaker
And so how do we understand that is not actually an issue of racism, but an issue of a cultural difference that we need to navigate and and learn and deepen. um What does it look like to truly understand how language impacts what we do, like whether things are bilingual or not? That's huge for us here in Chicago.
00:45:48
Speaker
Yeah. And so where where we've been working on these things and they've been hard, um like horde, horde conversations. And when 2020 hit, it was like the text messages were floating and were like, ooh, did that just get sent to me by my friend and ah the other person? Then 2020, you know, 2018, 17, when children were being ah separated from their parents and all the text spreads started flowing back and forth. And i was like, ooh, do I have to say that to my friend? So, but we did the work.
00:46:16
Speaker
And so, Now I'm seeing the fruit of that work. And I think that's possible in CCDA. So you're listening to this podcast probably because you're a part of our community. I think CCDA has decades of experience collectively having hard conversations across not just white and black and white and Latino, but Asian, black, Latino, black, you know, like, and in the city of Chicago, i always tell people in the city of Chicago is at least at least 68% BIPOC, at least, depending on where you make the mark the lines, you know?
00:46:50
Speaker
And if all of us were to show up every time something affected any one of us, we would always win. but we don't. And so what does that having an imagination for a collective liberation and flourishing look like for us?
00:47:02
Speaker
I think we could do that. I have so much hope for CCDA. I'm like, I think this is the place where we've been moving towards it slowly, not because it's popular or because it's generationally ah expected, but because we have the work done to have the actual heart conversations that need to be had so that we can show up a new way. So I appreciate that you shared that because That's actually my longing is like, man, this isn't a, incarceration isn't about one community. It's about all of our communities because the root of ah that incarceral system is is also found in detention.
00:47:37
Speaker
And the militarization of our communities is what we're talking about here. And so i don't know if you want to leave leave the community with any closing words. that's That'll be my closing word. But if you want to leave the community with any closing words, things you want them to know or or you want us to do.
00:47:51
Speaker
Well, the word did come back to me. It's tradition to innovation. Ooh. And thinking about what is it that we did in the past that will inspire us towards the future. That's great.
00:48:02
Speaker
I encourage you to be in touch with United We Dream, ah the National Immigration Project, Detention Watch, Borderlands Ministry. Those orgs are doing some wonderful work, getting us informed of what's happening.
00:48:15
Speaker
The American Immigration Council, Nainengupta, If you haven't heard her speak yet, I encourage you to listen to her. She spoke to our clergy group, and I'm still quoting her today in the streets, what she said to us.
00:48:27
Speaker
And because I'm speaking to Christians as a pastor, I want to encourage us to really ground ourselves in what what does it practically mean to believe theologically that everyone's made an image of God?
00:48:39
Speaker
Do we really believe that in our deepest of hearts? Because God does. God sees us all as human beings, His creations. I hope that there's Border Patrol listening to this. I hope that there is people who support the sort current administration and ask that you be transformed by this theological concept Because Jesus lived in a way that was radically different because he believed that in his inner being, it was part of his life.
00:49:12
Speaker
That when he saw his people, he saw... people that were made in the image of God, no matter their gender, no matter their color, their skin, or economic level, and that Jesus spent the time with those who were most vulnerable.
00:49:25
Speaker
So may we as faith communities reflect this Jesus, and that we may learn from Jesus who had to flee when he was an infant to Egypt. And what I tell people is that for me is an inspiration that one day the oppressor will be the place of safety for those who are being oppressed.
00:49:42
Speaker
that the tradition of the midwives who had the lie to Pharaoh ah about what they were doing, may that be an inspiration, that that was a liber liberative moment that impacted the life of Jesus.
00:49:56
Speaker
And at the end of the day, hope that we're not just Christians by word, but by deed as well. Amen. Thank you for that. That's a word, a whole word. Thank you.
00:50:08
Speaker
Thank you. And thank you for listening, y'all, to the CCDA podcast. And thank you, Julio, for joining us today. If you want to learn more about CCDA and how you can get involved, check the show notes out on this episode. And He ah gave us a lot of places to follow, so we'll be putting those in the show notes. Make sure you look at those.
00:50:25
Speaker
Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is produced by Sarah Callen in association with k Christina Fore, and we will be back soon with another episode featuring CCDA practitioners who are committed seeing people and communities experience God's shalom.
00:50:43
Speaker
you time.