Yes, yes, y'all, welcome to another installment of Civic Cipher. I am your host, rams' Jah, and true to form, we have another special guest in the building, another freedom fighter, another social justice warrior, and someone that I really think needs to get a message to you. Your life is going to be better hearing what she has to say.
Her name is Alexandra Pablos. And let's see. I'll talk a little bit about what I know of you, but you're gonna have to fill in the gaps because I've fortunately, I've been able to meet you a few times, and of course I've been very inspired by you and your message and what you stand for. But so I know that you were born in Mexico and you came here when you were very young.
That's right, baby, baby.
Okay, And I want to say you spent some time in Tucson, right, Okay, you grew up in Tucson. Okay, but you were you did go to California when you first came out of right.
Yeah. So I was in California when I was until I was fourteen fifteen, and then I moved to Tucson.
Okay, Okay, very good. So there are some routes in the West coast of the United States and in Arizona, of course. And you know, I think the way the story goes is you kind of got in some trouble when you were a teenager, and that's kind of been held over your head by the government and policing agencies and things like this. And I don't want to tell too much of the rest of the story because I
really do want to hear it from you. But I think it's very important to tell your story before we get to what you're doing now, Just your story as a human being growing up in those circumstances, and how maybe some of the things, some of these conditions have been used against you or to profile you, or whatever the case is. So just talk a little bit about growing up and kind of how you kind of got started on this path.
Sure, thank you for your kind of words.
Of course.
My name is Alexandra. Folks who know me call me Alee, and I am a community organizer. I do a lot of national work. By work, I mean a lot of storytelling work, a lot of organizing relations because we know that the only way to really change things right is to really shift culture. And by shifting culture, it's by really getting to know one another right and really, you know, having joy and who we are instead of criminalization for example, that might be a new word for folks, and I
can talk a little bit more about that. But I'm a community organized the first and foremost. I'm a storyteller. I share my experience in order for you know, to make space for other folks to be able to share their story. And in the world that we live in, sometimes storytelling is not a thing that happens. I know for myself, as a Mexicana immigrant family, working family, family that comes with a lot of intergenerational trauma, we didn't
we don't do a lot of storytelling. So I found that when I started doing community organizing work after I was incarcerated, I was introduced to Injustices Right, and I was upset and I was angry, and I was like, I need to organize these feelings. So I got introduced to the movement, and I think through the movement, I found the power of storytelling. So I started to share my story, my many many stories, right, because my life
is multiple identities, it's intersectional. I not only care about you know, education or injustices or racial justice or queer justice. I care about all of the things right, humanity rights. So what happened to me a closer, So what happened to me was, honestly, the United States happened to me. You say, like, I got into some trouble, and I'm like, oh,
I got into this country. This infrastructure already built on racism, right, rooted in senophobia, right, fear of people, built on lies right, and what we now see white supremacy built into our peacemakers, right, which is the police. So growing up, I didn't really care about my immigration status until somebody told me I was an illegal person.
Right.
I was a legal permanent resident. My mom is a naturalized citizen. Most of my family was born here. But I have a lot of folks that we're from a mixed status family. That's what you call, right, folks that are not citizens. And I had an opportunity probably at some point to become a citizen. But I also never really needed to write I was a legal permanent resident, which sometimes folks call that a green card. You hear a lot of folks that are documented right or getting DACA.
Those are folks that are also undocumented but have this very short term ambiguous kind of protection right now by Obama, the president, right, And they're DAKA students, so they have permission to work, they have permission to be here. Promise that they won't be deported, right, that they won't be actually haunted, like isis haunting people right now. So you have those folks, right, you have folks that maybe or
state visas. Right. You have folks that have had some sort of legal status but over state or myself right, committed something that to the US government is deportable, right, which minds you in Arizona DUIs are deportable in California that are not, for example, So we live in a in a state one of the high like the most racist. Obviously we know our Pio. We know we come from
the regime of our Pio. And those are the things that inform me, right, racial profiling folks just for being for looking like they might be immigrant folks, migrant folks.
Right, That brings to mind SB ten seventy.
Right, So we come from that. We're still seeing the harms of that.
Right.
People fought, communities fought really hard. I mean, you had ice out there just like you know, doing the same shit that cops have been doing. Right to black communities. We know as in documented people, as people who've been criminalized that you know, like I said, I've been I've been formally incarcerated because of a DUI put in deportation proceedings for things I already went to through the system, right, the criminal justice system, which I can now call the
criminal injustice system. But anyways, when that happened to me, that kind of changed my life. Right, I went, I got picked up on probation. I was on probation. Ice picked me up and I just they were like, oh, you're going to Mexico. I mean, little do they know what they do, because that's you know, they're just jobs. People don't need to really understand the system. They're like oppressing others for right. They have a good job. It's probably the only jobs that have good health care, right
and good benefits. As why all of our people are also cops and those are things we also have to battle. But yeah, so you know, I got I got picked up by ICE and then two years spent in in our backyard. An now we're away from here. There's an immigration center called the Alloyd Detention Center, one of the biggest, one of the nastiest. They're all nasty. They're all literally a threat to autonomy. Right, just because you were deemed and labeled illegal and documented, you can literally be locked
up for no reason, just for that reason. So when I was there, it opened up my eyes to like, holy, there's a whole lot of other injustices happening, right, and it woke me up. Twenty eleven, I began organizing from inside. I was already before that, Like you, I know, you asked me who am I before that? And I was already a teacher. I was already going I had graduated from the U of A. I was doing a lot
of community organizing in the school. I used to be a teacher for the emotionally disabled students, the multiply disabled students, so I was in the special ed department. Words that I feel like are should be more updated, and there probably are. I'm not working in the public schools anymore. So I think I brought those skills naturally when I went inside, right when I had to be there. I
started teaching classes in there. I started, you know, leading all the conversations with the women, translating, interpreting from them, right, like really defending people at the moment, because they we would get we would get offered dirty bloody clothes, underwear like used underwear that was already used I was expected to wear. I fought that because I spoke English, right, people are they were? Actually people inside were like why
are you in here? And I'm like, well, because I'm not a citizen, right and you know so far or whatever. So I started to really see that people that are inside are not people that are doing nothing right. I should not be here either, nobody should be. There was people surviving domestic violence, poverty, right, you know, abuse, all of this stuff. And then I'm then I started to see how bigger it was than us. It was like, oh, this is like that the world governments are doing right.
So then I started to really just yeah, I didn't want to let it go. I came home. I was there for two years and I was only like released. I'm still in deportation proceedings as somebody who's lived here my whole life. And let me not get into the point of like, oh the border cross does and this used to be in Mexico. You know, this is a this is all this indigen is obviously native land, but as also like a Mexican woman, right, and we are
fighting identity crisis as well as generation in general. But as Mexican people were like, you know, Mestizo people were mixed. We have some wine in us too, so we come with that intergenerational trauma. But it's complicated. I've been fighting for nine years now. It's going to be nine years September twentieth when I just picked me up and handcuffed me and didn't let me go for another two years
until we fought to come home. After going through many courts, spending thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars for things. I've already gone through the system that's supposed to just be the system. You're supposed to go through it rehabilitated. We didn't get I didn't get that benefit of the doubt, right, I didn't get to rehabilitate. Yeah. The last thing that happened in my immigration court cases, actually I went through
the last court. I saw a judge and the judge told me to my face, like, you haven't rehabilitated yet. The community turned in over three hundred letters of like character, right, over one hundred and fifty individual letters mad people outside the core right just hala attention, you know, mass attention, national attention. My case were really viral, and they still looked into my eyes and said, like, you deserve that those charges. You deserve what's happening to you, and you
didn't her rehabilitate. So just that hypocrisy, right, because again laws are here for black and brown indigenous people. People are above the law. The cops are here to protect them, right, they take them down peacefully, and they shoot us at just by the color of their skin or how we look, we're a threat. Right. So I started to grapple with those things and just started sharing. I mean I came
out organizing, volunteering, doing what I could. I actually you know, met you, originally doing some just community work, right, because that was important to me. But I started to just get real, real politicized because I understood that the things that I actually also stood by, I think the identities
I led right were criminalized, you know. So yeah, so I think fast forward, I started to share my story maybe three years after being released out of prison, and I just started to share my story and I started to see that, wow, people are receiving it really well. Yes, I have some people that don't like it that. You know, possibly sometimes even some of my own peers, right or maybe cringe that I'm just too unapologetic or just really
open and just complicated and unapologetic about it. And I think, yeah, I think it's been it's been a long journey. But I started to share my story and that's what I became. I became kind of also like doing some writing, right. So I think my organizing work is like around building relation, sharing my story and like building with people and creating
new projects and sustaining ourselves. Is really complicated when you're going through immigration proceedings, Folks sometimes can't work, sometimes you can work. You know, those things are considered, right, those things follow you that you've been criminalized into the criminal justice system. You know, I've been arrested for being at protest right profiled in Virginia doing reproductive justice work in DC.
I was doing that kind of work in the DMV area as well, and like being at protests fighting Ice over there, being arrested, being brought back over here, been asked to turn myself into Ice. Imagine we here you know here today. I don't know if you've heard, but Ice was doing allowing hysterectomies, right, literally taking you know, you know the womb out out of out of migrant
women that were entertained without consent. Right. So those are the people that, like I've had to go in and out repeatedly just because ICE feels like it, right, just because they say they have some risk assessment tools, which are the same tools that like say that people in certain zip codes right in certain neighborhoods are already like
maybe gang related. Right again, that kind of like those algorithms of the cops us right to bring people in to say, oh, you're going to be a risk, right, things that follow peop outside of when they are done with their prison time and they go into probati risk management assessment. Always it is just criminalization from prison to prison to prison pipeline, right, there's like really no true freedom.
So yeah, I think for me, it's just been about talking about those those that state sanctioned violence, that mass incarceration, right, Like that's just huge as that's how we are building the back of the United States right now. Right, we talk about it happened with enslaved people before, it's happening right now with people in prisons. All that free label right,
all the labor. We see the fires in California, all those folks that are out there firing the fires, yet they can't come home and be firefires.
Right.
You will always be a felon, You will always be disposable, you will always be criminalized. And I said, I said, no, I'm nine. I'm going to bring joy int who I am, and I'm going to share, and I'm gonna you know, talk, and I'm going to do the things that I want to do, which is like, you know, transform with my community alongside of my community, right, think of new things, invest in new things, because it doesn't work, we've seen it, right. But I think again we are the people speaking up.
Is a smaller amount of people, right, a smaller percentage, and it's about mass shifting, right. So I think that's why it's super important to bring these conversations to like wider like platforms, right, wider communities, and maybe not so much folks and the movements. Sometimes we preach to our own a lot. Yeah, And you know, mad respects to all the community organizers doing work right now with nonprofits, right,
and they do their part, right. The folks doing electoral work, they do their part is so important to get Trump out, absolutely, but we understand that that, you know, Trump just really put America's dirty laundry, the United States dirty laundry out in the open.
Right.
We've known that we didn't we don't sustain communities that care about support, about care about food and housing. You know that we both met right when we were at hashtag lunch bag right doing you know, giving back community to the community. That's what we do, right. Those are mutual aid groups and that's what we do as well. Right. We make sure that the people that we're organizing with have all of those things. And it's a halliss type
of organizing, right. It's also you know, collectively for us to heal and empower our like you know, agencies together and that's when we're going to really like shift stuff, right. And I think for me it's been important to get people to understand my story because I'm not the only one. Right, people are really scared to become you a citizen still, and so they are at risk or deportation. Everybody who's not a citizen is at risk of deportation no matter what.
You can't be doing anything right if you are if you have a traffic topic and put you in deportation proceedings at this point. So it's really really like wild to see people just I don't know, if you saw Immigration Nation, you got to see that. It's so wild. I was like kind of like, don't see it. I don't want to see trauma porn. But Immigration Nation really like highlights how nasty ice agents are these cops and what they're doing their tactics to literally like follow people
around to arrest them. Seventy or eighty percent of the people they arrest is like collateral, like they were looking for someone else, but everybody else just happened to be undocumented, so they're writing everybody up, building up those bets in the mass incarceration system.
Let me ask you this now, of course I know the answer, but what do you say to someone who says, if you want to come to this country, just do it the right way. Because that's a popular thing, that a popular rebuttal whenever you try to point out these injustices. So if someone were to say to you, just come to this country the right way and there's no problem, what do you say to that?
Oh? Man, Well, first I say, got a lot of work to do. We still got a lot of work to do as organizers and obviously people in general, because if you really really looked into it, you really cared, you really wanted to have an answer for that, because I feel like it's a very lazy answer. I think it would be that there is really no right way. My Diah, my mom's sister, has been waiting for any type of legal legality and it's been over twenty five.
Years exactly right.
You know, we see the racism in who gets to be allowed you have a list of like you know, and also because Mexicans are right next door, we're also like really low priority on any really relieves or like applicants to come and you know, there's like lotteries and all this, like Mexicans Filipinos, right the worst of the worst are of course like not you know, they don't get a lot of lottery tickets or you know, it's really it's really complicated. But it's again, we got to
look into that. We can't just say, oh, do it I legally do it the right way. There is no the right way when literally the system is like is racism itself? Right? When right now we're seeing literally right now we're seeing a lot of white immigrant people getting more permissions to come, right when we're having bands all day, when we literally right now at the border of the United States at Mexico, there's a refugee camp, the worst of these kinds of the world, and we have it.
And of course the administration of the media. Right that's that's right wing, because right wing owns the media. That's why it's important for you to have this radio show, for us to create more programming around this, for us to have our own media centers, to talk about our own and have our own analogus because one day they're going to take off the Wi Fi and we need to make sure we know how to put a radio
radio right literally on the antennas. But right now, literally a refugee camp at the porter people are literally being raped, robbed, hungry, intense in summer intense, right, And we've denied them the human right to ask for asylum. And he and and literally this administration and Trump is above above the law. Right, So people say, I've broken laws? What the fuck? What the what is literally happening? And but we get criminalized, right, I'm disposable. So I think it's a mass shift on
like you know what this is both? Right? Like yeah, like what is this democracy? Who's a part of it? The constitution? Who are these men? Nearly not us? Not people of color, black and brown and indigenous men? You know, So you start really to think like what the heck
is going on? And you start so I think for those people, it's just like, yo, it's time to do some real work, real research, right, And like if you have that much privilege to be such away from communities that you know that you really don't understand why we're where we're at. Right. White people are desperate? Right, White people like clearly why we're begging for fifteen dollars an hour when we know that burgers are fifteen books? Right? Like, if you really like have that privilege, then it is
going to be difficult for those folks to open up. Right. But are we talking to those folks?
Right?
Is that my audience? I can't turn everybody to do, you know what I mean? I got to talk to our people, right, our people that are right? There still are people next my neighborhoods that are calling the police, right, my own people, my own family members that are pro cops or pro ice agents. You feel me like, we got a lot of work to do. The revolution starts at home, met in our communities.
So I want to if you're just tuning in, were our guests today on Civic Cipher is Alejandra Pablos, I want you to talk a little bit about me Hinte and your work with me Hinda Dope.
Mihinte is a Chicken eggs LATINX digital organizing hub, a network of super dope healers, organizers, artists, you know, just activists, advocates, pro black, pro worker, promohad, pro queer, all of these pros right because we need to say them. We need to say them right, and we need to be out loud about it, and we need to bring join all of our identities. So it is an organizing hub. Is my political home, one of many of my political homes, but also one of my favorites, and it's where I've
learned a lot and developed my organizing. But informed by Mihinta right now is doing a fuera Trump campaign. I know that they are obviously, you know, have the voice and the platform for many LATINX people, whether you identify as LATINX or not. You know, the Diaspa Latinidad and brown folks. They're really taking up that space. Somebody has to do it. It's super important and what Trump is one of the biggest campaigns that have going on right now.
I think Mihanta has also just been leading in like culture just culture shifting, really bringing in I was really fortunate enough to you know, I'm a member obviously, and they supported my obviously and organized and led my campaign to come home when I got re arrested. So I talked about earlier twenty eleven and being arrested. I came home after two years and then I got re arrested in March of twenty eighteen. They led my campaign to bring me home. That was because of the arrest in Virginia.
Is that the keep il a free yes campaign? Right?
So, which is what's currently happened, is which is keep me from jail?
Right?
You know, clearly were just a little freedom.
But real quick, I want to say this, if you are, if you have your phone near you, go ahead and type that in hashtag keep alf free k E E p A l E f r ee and just look what comes up. It's it's massive. Yeah, you're a very special person. And obviously this story is resonated with a lot of folks.
So yeah, it's super dope. I have a lot of creative friends, so they made that pop. It was a countdown and everything. So yeah, follow the hashtag. Also follow me on Instagram. Actually just changed my name my Instagram. It's emotional Gangster with a Z instead of an S. I feel like that's easier to say than the one before.
But anyways, well I got I was fortunate enough to come home right after organizing with them, you know, getting released from the nonprofit industrial complex and going straight into a tour okay with them again with me, Hint is a place where we do a lot of culture shifting, a lot of narrative shifting, and we have we do it by cultural relational cultural workers, a lot of a lot of healing, a lot of language justice, a lot of workers. Right, So I got to host a tour
and we got to tour through the country. I think it was around seven or eight maybe no, like nine places, and we filmed, filmed, I hosted, and I interviewed the organizers or the community members doing resistance work. Because at this moment in twenty eighteen, Trump was an office. I mean it still is but he was going hard body on bands on communities on two eighty seven G programs with our which are contracts between ICE and cops to work together to like trap community members and deport them
just for being them. And we started to also that's like, how do we also document our escalations right our Like we're going from knowing our rights, from knowing our power right to we've seen people create body body walls, you know, to stop ICE from getting people. We understand right now we're not in a moment where we're questioning if ICE is needed. We know they need to be abolished because of the terror that they bring in, right, and immigration does not have to be like we don't have to
criminalize the immigration. That's what's happening. Trump is literally criminalizing the right to migrate. So I think it was amazing to do some of the at work. Right. We documented that. We have a bunch of series, So if y'all are listening,
please go to tour dot com. You can also find it on the Mahanta website, but you can go and it's a series, and we have like about they're like five to six minute little short films, super dope meeting folks really talks about the intersections of the police machine, the ice machine, and it's really comprehensive and it's also brings a lot of joy in the organizing and the resilience that we've had to have, right, because I want to just have joy. I don't want to have to
have resilience, right. Resilience is what has to be built for us because we're surviving this, right. But also, you know, our bodies want to rest, right, our bodies ought to want to rest. So I think for me, yeah, Mihantha is just doing amazing work. What what do you like about me?
HINTA, Well, before we get to there, I think it's there's a couple of things that you touched on. And I think that for a lot of folks that deal with you know, immigration and you know, just this narrative that well, if you're born on this side of an imaginary line and you get to do this, and if you're born on that side of an imaginary line, then you don't get to do this, and the sense of entitlement there, I think that it really is a sort
of morally bankrupt position to hold. And I think that you know, especially for people that do migrate into this country. I'm from California, and I've shared that before, and I spent a good amount of my life in Arizona. Now I've seen the world, I've seen the country, but I grew up around Mexican people, and I grew up near Mexico my whole life, and so I've heard a lot
of very Mexican stories. And you know, when you think in terms of like human beings, I think that a very important question to ask yourself is, you know, who has the power to define crime and what motive do
they have to do so? And I think that that's something that's really lost on you know, as I stated those morally bankrupt arguments and positions and perspectives, because you know, because you won some sort of you know, birth location lottery, that it somehow entitles you to more opportunities or entitles other people to less opportunities. I think that that is a narrative that really bears revisiting for a lot of folks, and so I just wanted to make sure that I
stated that before we got too far away from it. Now, there's something that you mentioned to me before. You said that the immigration system targets people with criminal records, but I believe the intention of being able to deport them. Like if you're if you're an immigrant and you have you know, you've made a mistake, you know, twenty years ago or something like that, it's a lot easier to deport you so that you get specifically targeted or singled out.
Can you explain a little bit more about that or any like personal experience with that.
Yeah, well, I mean, so you know, the whole immigration piece, which is like customs, border, patrojans, immigration, and customs enforcement, homeland security, all of those are under the Department of Justice. Ok So there's a really dope podcast right now. I mean it's not that dope, it's okay, but it's called Homeland Insecurity. It actually does a little four part series of like how immigration got started through after the ninety
eleven terrorist attacks. So it's really interesting when you brought up the whole part of the illegality, right, who's empowered to define that? You know? And you know, you know, being in a certain zip code can be illegal, right And in Florida, if you let go of a helium balloon, that's illegal, you know. So I mean there's like so many laws, you know, we can get into that conversation. But I think it is super interesting that we have
to fight back, right. I think that's another reason why I resonate with with people because I kind of say the things that people would they could say. Right. I'm like that, right, I'm like wait, why wait? But you know when I love this argument with my brother all the time and he goes, so you're saying that because cops don't go to jail for killing people, nobody should go to jail for killing people. And I'm like, yeah, there has to be the sense of like what is
the law and like what is it? What's like, you know, what is what we want to like abide by. Right, So we're saying that people should go to jailing, Yeah, everybody should, and if there isn't, then nobody should not that I believe in that. I'm an abolitionist. I think that we need support instead of like caging people, right. And we haven't seen in a United States that does that.
It's we're a for profit, capitalist country, so we don't invest in unabled body people, sick people, right, and we hate we have cent aphobia where we have white supremacy in our in our in our policy. So I think Yeah, I think it's just really important to talk back and to talk about criminalization, to really talk about how we criminalize people, how we we ourselves are policing each other. Right.
And I think that's why again, I do what I do on my social media, and I talk about all these things, and I talk about, for example, you know, even things of like I don't want to shave my legs and I'm going to be completely like hairy, and I'm going to push back on that, and you know, and that's even interesting sometimes too, right, the pushback that you get from your own people. My mother hates it body hair is like, oh my god, you're the nastiest
thing ever. But it's a moment to really talk about why, right, why do we criminalize, Why do we force bodies to be different? Right? Why do people get to be like that's my preference, right when it's like we should be like accepting people at all times. Right. And it's again this capitalistic word world, right, that's forced you know us to like abide by those like beauty standards.
Right.
So I think it's not just you know, the you know, you know this particularly just even just immigration work that I do, Right, it's this more like holistic like and pushback on patriarchy right on, like policing bodies on top people what they need to do, right when literally like this country has no saying that, like you literally have never taken care of people. History has shown us this, right,
Like we are just repeating history itself. Right now, We're getting kids sprayed at march at marches and protests, right, We're seeing cops still being funded. Right. You know, it's an upside down world. Right. You don't see the folks fighting, you know, people who have abortions, the pro lifers. You don't see them trying to shut down ice for literally like stopping women from having babies. Right, shouldn't we have
our babies? Right? So it's very upside down. So I think the important part of like the work that we're doing right now is again that it's like now in a bigger, more awakening, Right, more people are interested in learning. More people are also open to learning. Right, But abolitionists, folks, you know, folks way before me that I've been learning from have been talking about this, right, have been talking
about the whole culture of the prison industrial complex. Right, we hear the nonprofit industrial complex, all these like just to show that there's infrastructures that are allowed to just keep status quo and keep people in poverty, right, keep people like uninformed right not you know, it's in so much trauma that they can't even walk in their power, you know. And that's why we're here, and that's why storytellers like ourselves exist, you know, and it's super important.
So I think for me, my immigration status is unfortunately has become my identity right now. That's this is what I do now, is I talk about my story. I fight, you know, I try to deconstruct and give more and give you know, space for political education, for people to learn through my experience so that this doesn't happen to other folks, to share resources, tools, et cetera. And but I also wish it wasn't right. I also want to do just other right, Like you know, I'm in the
middle of a playwright it's about my experience. I'm working on a podcast it's about immigration and deportation defense work, and we want to like use that podcast and knock on doors to really talk about deportation defense and so. Right, So, like my whole life change because of this huge like barrier my life and like it won't go away right about. You know it's been nine years, you know, ice is still there. People are talking about freeing folks, right. We
have the campaign free them All. Follow that hashtag as well, Freedom All. It's talking about releasing everybody from prisons in jails, right, and they're not doing that, right, They're not They're they're not releasing nobody, especially you would think they wear in COVID. Time to go be you know, to go social distance and stop the spread. Now it's actually incubated it, right
and kept the spread up. So in this place, like we're literally trying to live with COVID like and none other countries where those countries have tried to get rid of it. You know, it's just so it's really insane because again, who gets to be above this pandemic? Rich people, right, Wealthy people that get to be at their house all day long in space, right, we have We see it here in our in our areas, in our streets, unsheltered people policing like going and over there and harassing people
in this moment. Where are they going to go when we literally have not invested in universal housing, right, So talking about things that like people are like what do you mean universal housing? And it's our do to insert these these creations because if we can imagine, then we can create them. These policies that are races were created and imagined by racists. Yeah right, So we need to be the ones doing that and we need to be at the table. So that's why it is important to
do electoral work. It is important to do all the work, the cultural work, organizing, the knocking, the right, the workers, right work, all of it is important and we need everybody to do a piece of it right. It is not enough for you to be at the crib watching TV. TV sucks, Yeah.
Listen to the radio. Fact, So there is something that I do want to talk about. So you mentioned that you know, a big part of your identity is your immigration status, and obviously you're a human being, so you know,
there's much more to your life than that. But that can serve as a beacon to a lot of other folks who are having to deal with those issues, and people like me who I don't deal with that issue personally, but I'm sympathetic to it, you know, as I stated, you know, I kind of spent my whole life around people, A lot of whom have to actually deal with that or have some relatives that have to deal with that. And you know, I want to I want to mention something and just kind of get your thoughts on it.
But you know, uh, when a community is overly policed, it skews everything. It scus the prison population, it scus the data. You know. In other words, if ninety percent of the police are in the bad neighborhood, well it doesn't even have to be the bad neighborhood. I don't even want to start there. Let me let me start over. Okay, how about this. We'll take drugs, right, marijuana. My understanding is that marijuana is used equally roughly by black folks
and by white folks. Right, just to you know, keep it simple here. But if all the police are in black neighborhoods stopping black folks more frequently, you know, again overly policing, then what you're going to get is a lot more black folks in jail, And then you're going to get a lot more data suggesting that because these are the people who are getting arrested, that somehow these people are there's something wrong with these people, and it
ignores the fact that they're just being overly policed. And I think that that can extend to you know, folks in Hispanic primarily Hispanic or Spanish speaking communities in this country, if they're being overly policed, then what you find is people like like we mentioned before, targeting effectively immigrants and sending them or attempting at least to send them to another country or otherwise interfere with what would otherwise be
a normal life. And I think that speaks to again a lot of the racist tendencies of you know, those decadent capitalist pigs, but also.
Also you know, yeah, but the and the fact that you brought up weed right, like marijuana like it's no but even like that, because it's real. That's a thing, but it's a thing in a world. Let me listen, y'all. This is still the thing in a world where people get to have yoga and smoke weed and have weed retreats. And we as black, Indigenous and people of color, that's another term BIPOC. Some BIPOC people are still talking to having this is our language still right, because we are
still criminalized for it, not them. We are, though, right, So even that, and yes, it's very very true, you know, you literally go and look for this and you go criminalize these communities. Right on top of it, the media still makes all the movies, all the crime shows, all the cop shows, right add to that. But yes, that's very true. And also to me my thought when you said that, I was also like, yeah, and also for that, I really need alternatives or I don't really need you
to criminalize anybody. Leave people alone and they want to smoke a little bit over there or something, you know what I'm saying, Like people do that. My thing is like people get so upset over us having some regular basics rights when they literally live in an abolition world already. They don't see cops until they call them, you know
what I'm saying. Their kids don't go to school with no cops at their at their at their schools or no you know, security whatever, metal detectors, right, you know, they don't have cops at their grocery stores, you know. So we can go on and on and on, right, but they have they cross borders, they can go and be residents and citizens in my country easy, right, So like they why why don't people want that for us? This already exists for people, my dude, Like I don't understand, right,
So it's bigger than like can it be done? You know, people always like it's expensive to do things right while we're spending hella billions on and weapons things that don't really help us, right that that's not like you know, fruitful and back into our communities. So those are the things that we're like at the moment where we have to push back and we have to start creating these visions of like this is the world we want. And that's why we say, defund the police, invest in the
things we need. Sure we don't need more cops, right we do, yes, sure fire them because the but also you know we need to not hire anymore, right, how do we shrink the system as well? So I think, you know, the defund police work is just the beginning and we are going to win. We are going to abolish especially the Immigration Customs and Informent Enforcement Entity because it is so new and because we really don't need it, they just built it up for themselves to start, you know,
terrorizing communities. And I don't you know, a whole episode can be talked on just the injustices right of like ICE agents being caught doing you know, raping women like, you know, kidnapping people, trafficking drugs, right, all of the and it it's organized, it's organized right higher you know. So anyways, I don't want to go into that piece, but yeah, recognizing that that we have, all of us as people of color, have a common enemy, right, And that's then a four yeah, which you know is the
fear right, that the fear amongst each other. Right is white supremacy.
Right.
It's these you know, this administration that's literally breaking down any type of support that we've even had, you know. So I think I'm really proud to be an abolitionist in this moment.
Sure. Sure, And speaking of which you mentioned one of earlier you were talking about you were inspired by someone, and I remember that I saw it somewhere maybe you said it to me, but you said Angela Davis was an inspiration of yours. Yeah.
So I mean she's bad. I mean she beat people at a court like they were trying to take her down, and she beat them like I need to beat them at immigration, y'all. I need everybody's support, you know. So she's hell of an inspiration. Absolutely. Also, all of Angela Davis spoke and talks I can just nerd out on
YouTube and just go our body. But I think that I think all of my homies, all my homegirls, are also my inspiration I have, you know, I organize and I build relations with people that share my values, share you know, these identities, share this this transformation of communal work that we're doing. So all of those people are teaching me how to be a better human too. You know,
some people got the Bible super limited. I got community evolving, ever evolving, community non binary, which means it doesn't ever abide by two binaries with it, whether it be female or male, or whether it be like it was bad or good. Write something that even the President Obama started right felons, you know, families not felons, right or like you know, so I always pinning people write daka right people, these kinds of students deserve legalization, but the rest are
are disposable. There's eleven million plus of us that are non citizens, you know. So, I think the fact that people are are opening up these conversations, are fighting back and being like you know what, yeah, even if I haven't had a bad interaction with the police like that, I see that there shouldn't be you know, these deaths, you know, and so forth.
So that's actually what I wanted to touch on. So we've mentioned a lot of things about race, about black and white or hispanic or how do you say LATINX, I like that I do and uh and white and how white people do this and black people do this and Hispanic people do this and so forth. But let's say that you know, the person listening to this right now is white or or black or whatever, which, by the way, if you're just tuning in, today's interview on
Civic Cipher is with Alejandra Ablos. But the question is, what is it that this person, this white person can do to help, you know, change or contribute to, you know, the recentering of the moral arc of the universe or at least of this country. What is it that you would call upon your Caucasian brothers and sisters to do to support you toward this end?
Caucasian people, have you just turned in? I am Alejandra Pablos. I'm a community organizer facing deportation, fighting the policing system in Arizona and nationally and sharing my story one person at a time, And I think for folks you know that are here listening that are not familiar to these issues or these conversations, and especially the white folks. I think it's just really taking this moment for self reflection, right,
the role that your privilege takes. It's really tough to talk about privilege, right, the privilege that we do have, especially white people. It's really tough. I get it. I get it. You don't feel racist, right like you you don't literally go and create policies right that keep unsheltered people on the street, but you also just hop over them, right, And I can you know, make that you know, I
can give examples so far of all those things. So I think it's about actively using your privilege, reflecting on what that is, right, actively using it, and sharing some of that. So I think it's again that moment you really think like, yeah, what are what are my privileges? And I don't need to hoard all these things, right or I don't need to do all these things, And what is my role in the in the liberation and
development of humanity right now? Because as it is it is right now, humanity kind of sucks, especially if Trump gets to define it right. Literally, Trump is the phase of us, all of us as a collective in this country right the way that it is, and like that's what we're showing, you know, So I think that's your people, Like have y'all checked in with each other? Like have y'all talked to each other? Right? So it's just really like,
you know, organize your people and like do better. You know, it's not enough to have a good heart and love people. Cops do that. They have good hearts with their families and they love their families, but they kill people on
the streets. Right, So it's actively really like you know, being in relation with people and doing what you can at least even if you're outside of communities to share that privilege that you have to give back, to give back in not charity, right, but also just like balancing equity.
Absolutely, so reproductive justice to touch on that, how did that become central to your message and what is it that you are hoping for?
Yeah, reproductive justice. I love that. It's so sexy, rolling off my mouth, reproductive justice. But yeah, I think when I first got introduced to that framework, I was like, oh, that's me. I totally live at that at those intersections. So it's very simple. Basically, I was here in Arizona, in Phoenix or in Tucson. I'm sorry. I was working to Habitaugh for Humanity. I had just been released from prison. I'd done two years. I had like I was two years to do a probation coming out. My choice was
already like, you know, locked up all that. They had given me four years of probation for this DUI. Who gets four years of probation for a DUI? And I got a felony for it, like my first one. So already hella racial disparities when white people came in and
did like twenty four hours, you know. But so yeah, I came out, I came out of a prison, and I just was organizing, organizing, right, and I was I knew I had two more years of probation, and I was like, as soon as I leave, I'm gonna go work in DC because I went to go do a campaign and immigration campaign there. So I was like, I'm
gonna leave as soon as I'm off of probation. And I started looking for jobs, and I was just like, you know, I already had been volunteering in a lot of community spaces using my you know, my skills, my you know, my organizing skills, my talking skills. You know, I'm very outgoing, you know, blase, And and I got an opportunity to go work in DC. I started doing border suppression campaign and I also got an opportunity to apply for a reproductive justice organization. The National Latina Institute
for Reproductive Health. Came across me and they were talking about, you know, the Latina Institute is about you know, you know, working with Latinas to have political social economic power. And I'm like, what the fuck is that I want that that you know, political economics, social, yeah, like vice for like autonomy, the right for women to have and to create the lives that they want to have, families or not when they want to insafe community. Sure, and I'm like, what,
that's what I want. And then I'm like and then they're like, and we're also finding the stigma of abortions because abortion is at the forefront of reproductive you know, blah blah blah. And I was like, oh, I've had some Oh my god. And then I just applied. And then I was like, I meant for this job, and sure enough, I applied for it, and literally my story, my you know, my experience being incarcerated because literally, if I'm talking about autonomy over my body, right, what's the
direct threat napolicia, jails, prison and police. I can never be safe as a as a brown undocumented legal permanent resident, or as a black person, right, like you know, you know, literally enforcing black pop forcing black people and kidnapping black people from their countries. Right that that was like the main the birth of reproductive injustice right in the in this in this country. So anyways, I saw this organization, you know, and I was just like, what the this
is all mean? Like this is Obama and you see a bunch of Latina as you see a bunch of people in like blue, and they're like they're sure, and and I just was like, oh, this is my I interviewed and I got the job, and I organized for almost two years in Virginia, and I started to really just learn learn, well what do I mean to share your public, your your your your share, share your your abortion story out loud? How how empowering it was because I never shared it before, and how many women were
doing it. I found out that one in four women have abortions, right people, not all people that have a are women. And so then I was just like oh totally. And I started to just like find so much power within my sharing my story, and then I started to
really understand all of the issues. It wasn't just abortion reproductive justice, right, it was the fact that again there's threats to my autonomy, the fact that either you're immigrant or not, you can actually have like an ability to get a good job, right, Like that actually matters, Like your kids can actually travel if you're undocumented. Like you know, you started to really see like, oh, there's like tiers of like human rights in a sense, right, classes or whatever.
But you're like, wait, but we're like the most powerful country, Like there's no way it's you. It's you, and you start that's that's what you really come at it with. And then you're like, no, actually, it's a systemic if there's more than one hundred and fifty people in poverty, Like, it's not just us, it's systemic, right. And it's like intricate, right. So it's policing, it's lack of education, right, it's taking away you know, our history from books, right, It's it's
from taking jobs out of the community. Right, it's for you know, you know, again over policing places. So and all of that like is a part of like how I've been informed and how young people grow up. So it was really exciting to do reproductive justice, to still be doing reproductive justice work. But that's what that work looks like. It's about making sure that people have access to like going to a hospital, going to the doctors
without fear of the police going there. Right, Like, you have the human right to create families when you want to, right, and and you can't do that, you know, if you think you're going to not be safe when you you know, when you're going to have this, you're going to start this family. We talk a lot about black maternal deaths, right Literally black bodies are literally sterilized as respected, ignored, not listen to and so forth, and women are dying.
So people are choosing not to have babies, you know, So that's pretty world. It's pretty Yeah, we're still begging for fifteen hours an hour, right, you can barely like you know, everything's going up, but your wages are not going up. Like why would I want to have a child here? I can bear to your four miles, you know what I'm saying, Like, so just really understanding that reproactive justice was literally about. It was the threat of you owning and making decision over your body. That was
what people off. Right, That's the root of like people being eriminalize, right, people choosing to have abortions because like, if you don't abide by what the status quo is, right about this idea about what the United States is, which is this like faith pro life in a sense, right like or you know, even in our communities we're very pro anti abortion Latinos, black folks, like we're very still you know. So that's why it's important that we do this work in Spanish too, you know, and so forth.
But I think that's the powerful thing is that we're pushing back on stigma, on taboo, on myths, and people and women, queer folks, trans young folks are talking about it for the first time and actually stepping into their power and being like all that, like, also debunking myths. Right I've had I've had more than one abortion. I can still get pregnant, done it multiple times, right, like,
and I can do it. So debunking these myths, like you know, people have been having abortions, have been you know, reversing pregnancies. People have always not gotten pregnant. Period. Not everybody wants to be up, but that's what the United States wants to tell people, that people have to be parents, so you to produce people so then you can be a part of the economy. And if you don't, if
you're gay, you're going against that, right, you're not producing humans. Right, if you don't get married, you're not like buying into the tax world, you know, and so forth. So you started understanding that it's bigger than you. That's actually like, oh, this is just the way of that that I'm supposed to be information and we're saying that formation getting our own formation.
Absolutely. So another thing, another facet of the work that you do is murals. I've seen you do a lot of murals. What do you think is the benefit to murals? And you know, just explain their role in.
I'm glad. I feel flattered that you think I make murals, but I don't, and I'm always but yes, curating. I wish I was more artsy for real, for real, because I'd be having some bomb designs in my head. But yes, so I work, and I you know, I organize amongst creatives and artists and muralists and painters, and I'm one of one of the organizers in a newly organized, you know, collective that's really creating out the end images and visions and visuals for a world without police, for a world
where people actually thrive and not get killed. So we've been designing a lot of things. And yes, we've been a product a part of some community projects where we organize, for example, the deon Justin Johnson, UH Justice for Dion mural on Seventh Street, and so yeah, So I think for us as as creatives, as community organizers, is about creating the city we want to see. That that includes what's art, what's up? What's up? What's up? What's you know? On the walls? What do we want to see? What
is the messages? What do we want to hear? And I think again you said we need to have our you know, our own because we're being literally censored all the time too as artists, you know. So the community work that we're doing right now is trying to do more community murals. We're trying to finish that Dion Johnson murals. So we're fundraising right now to pay uh Giovanni the
Black artists to come back and finish that mural. I think it's also important to be working within other communities to make sure that we're again putting up the demands of the community. Right right now, we still have seen no justice. Right over one hundred killings just with you know this new mayor in Phoenix, right over one hundred people have died and I think it was like one
hundred and nine cops have killed, not just shot. That's a bigger number, right, And it's all happening right now in the under our noses, right and we're allowing that to happen, right. So I think it's important just for us, not just murals. But we've done a lot of whe Yeah, some wee pacing murals too, but to keep uplifting that right to let make sure that people are not forgetting.
So we have a wheat Pace mural also on fifteenth Street, fifteenth A, I'm sorry, fifteenth A and Polk Street by Van Viuren And that's another deon Johnson wheat Paste that calls out the cops being murders, Blue Lives murder and then the next week. Pace is a dope image created by actually Mexico City artists. It was a tribute to George Floyd. It's super powerful. It's huge and big. So there's a big George Floyd Wheat pace on fifteenth app next to Dion Johnson on Polk Street, and then there's
the Dion Johnson Mural on Seventh Street. So yeah, we're working on definitely doing more big, bigger stuff, more projects. We're working on possibly getting some billboards, but we're also like you know, meeting censorship through that. We want to get some bus ads, you know, But right now we're just building and creating a lot of digital stuff. Did you get to see the the wop image we just created,
I think, so come on, that was like genius. That was definitely you know, something that I worked with another designer to do, right, and it was around you know, switching it back to like you know, the weak police, right, because on that day they actually were threatening the women of some of the community organizations, the director of an anti police org, a brown immigrant woman, and then right like the black Fems from BLM Local Phoenix, Metro right
and really you know, you the cops really organizing and like the white the white ring really like organizing to put threats. So there was a lot of threats and
when there's threats, it's because we're doing something right. Right, So was able to use that you know, wop acronym right to put weak police and put an image of a policeman all scared and these two beautiful black black women, brown women, and it was Cardi and Meg and all over them they had just written like free them all, you know, black lives matter, like all of these dope messages. And again it was giving that vision of like, that's how scared they are because we're so powerful, we're big,
you know, blah blah blah. So I think again, I think the role of artists right now and creators is to to uplift those those visions, right, of a of a of a pro community future, one that doesn't invest in policing and violence and militarization right and and literally disposing of people, one that actually, instead of funding prisons, can fund you know, more rehab centers. Right, We're more,
you know, just care for the elderly. There's no profit in caring for old people, right, and unabled people, so we don't give up about them. That's but that's what we're saying that we want the money and take that money because you know who has that money, more than seven hundred billion. The Phoenix City Police has that and we want to get it from them. They're going to
give us that money. And that's that that's the goal, that's the vision, and that's the mood every day, and that's what we're trying to invite all the folks you know, to get with that, because it's not just about like you know, getting cops to lose their jobs, although that is the goal too, is to shrink the system to not need them to have cops. And your your your fathers, your uncles, y'all, they're not going to be jobless. We're
going to be creating other things. They should also probably go through some heavy unlearning after being cops before we let them work in our community. But the thing is we're going to be creating jobs in new systems. So y'all can go be counselors or some some coaches or some builders or something. You know, there's other things.
Sure, sure, So once again, if you're looking for a champion h with respect to you know, abolishing ice, or if you're looking or a champion with respect to reproductive justice, or you know, just the unfairness that's built into the immigration system, or the criminal justice system, or the way you said it was the criminal injustice system. You know, Alejandra Pablos can certainly be such a champion. Certainly you have been one such champion in my life. I've seen
the work that you've done over the years. A very very much an inspiring person and I'm grateful that you uh took the time to come and hang out with us here on Civic Cipher. But before we go, just know that this show exists for the community. So if you have any questions, you got any topics, anything like that, you can hit Civiccipher dot com or follow us on all social media at Civic Cipher. And also don't forget that this show is also supported by the community, so
you can also donate through the website. Have made it very easy for you to do all that. And before we leave one more time, make sure that you hit your social media so people can keep up with you.
Yes, y'all also get on Instagram Emotional Gangster with the Z not an s. And I'm also on Twitter if y'all want to put me on Twitter, Ali la A l E l A p l e b E should PRIA try to switch them together too. Yeah, so I'm really excited that if folks do follow me, go to the website, keep out. If you dot org, I also
you know, update there. But my social media Instagram is the best way to get connected and to get access to resources and just like this, you know, conversation and this love, this love that I also share.
Absolutely, you're an inspiring person and once again thanks for coming to hang out with us on civic SciTE for be sure to check us out next week, same time, the same channel. And until then, you guys, take care of yourself peace, think