Stay ConnectedCommentary, news and analysis of the U.S. Latino world. Engaging traviesos. A 2019 iHeart Radio Podcast Awards nominee for Best Multicultural Podcast hosted by award-wining journalist Julio Ricardo Varela.
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It is just right over the bridge from the city of Boston, but it (sadly) might as well be invisible in the eyes of many Bostonians and Massachusetts residents. It is the city of Chelsea, and according to several reports, it is has become the state's COVID-19 epicenter. A city this is close to 70% Latino, Chelsea is home to a significant Latin American immigrant population. The crisis has hit the city hard, with rates of positive coronavirus cases per 10,000 people similar to those of New York City. For this special episode of Latino Rebels Radio, host Julio Ricardo Varela talks to Chelsea City Councilor Judith Garcia about what is happening in Chelsea and why.
Featured image: The Beacon St exit on the Tobin Bridge heading north towards Chelsea, MA. (Photo by formulanone/CC BY-SA 2.0)
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A lot is happening in New York during the COVID-19 crisis, and one overlooked issue? Discrimination. In this latest episode of Latino Rebels Radio, host Julio Ricardo Varela welcomes Angela Fernandez, Commissioner of the New York State Division of Human Rights.
Featured image by U.S. Army National Guard Sgt. Amouris Coss/Public Domain
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Recently, Latino Rebels and Latino USA began publishing the weekly Vanguardia America newsletter, created and curated by Phoenix-based journalist James Garcia. In this episode of Latino Rebels Radio, host Julio Ricardo Varela talks to Garcia about the newsletter and also how the COVID-19 crisis is playing out in Arizona.
Featured image: Arizona's Camelback Mountain (Photo by Adrienne Lahr/CC BY 2.0)
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In the last week, immigrant detainees and immigration attorneys have been speaking out about detention conditions during the COVID-19 crisis. Most of these detention centers are run by private prison companies that get contracted by ICE. Besides reports of hunger strikes with male detainees in both Louisiana and Georgia, The Intercept reported about women detainees in the South Louisiana Processing Center protesting conditions. For this Latino Rebels Radio episode, host Julio Ricardo Varela welcomes immigration attorney Mariel Villarreal via phone to discuss what she is seeing in Bay Area detention centers and also what her client told Villarreal last week about an incident at the LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, LA, which was first reported on March 26 by Mother Jones.
Featured image: Screen grab from a video of immigrant women detainees at the LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, LA.
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In this episode of Latino Rebels Radio, host Julio Ricardo Varela welcomes Andrea Nill Sánchez, Executive Director of the AI Now Institute at New York University, to talk about how artificial intelligence is being used (and misused) in immigration enforcement.
Featured imaged via the Department of Homeland Security (Public Domain)
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On Thursday, Latino Rebels published a story from the Southeast Immigrant Rights Network about how immigrant detainees at Richwood Detention Center in Louisiana have gone on hunger strike to protest conditions during the COVID-19 crisis. For this episode of Latino Rebels Radio, host Julio Ricardo Varela welcomes Lorena Quiroz, a Mississippi immigrant rights organizer to talk about the #FreeThemAll movement.
Featured image: Richwood Correctional Center (Public Domain)
TRANSCRIPT OF WHAT F SAYS IN SPANISH
The truth is that we have one request: our freedom. Why? Because of the situation that is happening on a global scale. People are dying from coronavirus. Even in the United States, a world power, a first world power, the hospitals are collapsed. Here we are vulnerable, you understand?
Here for us, if an officer comes in, gives us coronavirus, do you think that for us immigrants, the treatment they’ve given us during this whole time, is an adequate treatment? They’re not going to take a face mask from anyone, from any American, to put it on an immigrant. That means we are going to die. You understand? And ICE doesn’t guarantee us any kind of safety.
What we need, to not go on too long, is our freedom, because this is about humanity. This isn’t about an immigration treaty, this isn’t about a bond, or a parole, or an asylum case. This is about the fact that we are human beings. We aren’t animals.
And everyone is worried, and everyone outside is protecting themselves, and we are vulnerable. Who is protecting us? Who is worried about us? We have families. Mom, dad, siblings, daughters, sons. Our families outside are worried about us.
We’re standing our ground here. We haven’t gone to the dining hall for three days. Right now, in the midst of the repression, I’m guessing it’s the prison that has the televisions turned off. ICE came and told us that the news is all lies. To not believe the news. And right now, I don’t know what time it is. What time is it? At four, three forty in the afternoon, the televisions are still turned off, because since we don’t want to go eat, they’re putting pressure on us by keeping the televisions off, we aren’t taken out to the yard, we’re here in the bunker, walking over here, walking over there, we have nothing else to do.
All the bunkers are like that. Here there are 287 people. That’s how many are here in Richwood. And right now there are 64 of us here. In fact, there are 60 here in this bunker [on hunger strike]. Four people are eating.
Our health up until now is okay. What we don’t want is for the virus to show up and infect us all, and only then to look for a solution. Because what they’re going to do then is they’re going to put us all under quarantine and whoever’s gonna die is gonna die. Because here in this facility they don’t have the means to take care of all of us. Here all they’ve got is four nurses and a doctor who comes once a week.
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The COVID-19 outbreak is unprecedented. How do we begin to process what we are all experiencing? On this episode of Latino Rebels Radio, we welcome Daniel Colón-Ramos, professor of cellular neuroscience at Yale and co-founder of Ciencia PR, to talk about what the science is saying and what we can learn about the pandemic.
Featured image: In this March 19, 2020 photo, the Manhattan Bridge is seen in the background of a flashing sign urging commuters to avoid gatherings, reduce crowding and to wash hands in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)
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For this Latino Rebels Radio episode, we welcome Grecia Lima, the National Political Director for Community Change, to talk about Arizona and electoral politics. Plus, the latest about the COVID-19 crisis in the United States and the new guidelines published Monday evening by the White House and the CDC.
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In the middle of the COVID-19 global crisis, we talk with Nadia Marín-Molina of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON). Recently, NDLON released a ‘Worker and Migrant Justice Response to the Coronavirus’ platform.
Featured image: A cleaning crew works at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
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On Thursday, the Power 4 Puerto Rico Coalition held a press call to discuss an update to #ShowUsYourPRPolicy and why both policy proposals by Democratic presidential candidates Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are "still lacking," according to them. We are sharing the full press call for you to decide.
Featured image by Carlos Giusti, Associated Press
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