Try and carpool, try and shove into cars as best you can, just so that we don't have a mile long.
Line of cars.
We have trash bags, we have gloves, we have things that we're bringing up there, so what we have cars that you can get all of that out of.
Once we pull over. We're also setting up a couple of pop ups.
Hocumba, California, is a tiny town. You've probably never heard of it. It's actually really charming. There's a hot spring and a gorgeous hotel, a few stores selling our drinkets, that kind of thing. There's a lovely lake fed by
the spring. And on this Sunday morning, there are about fifty people outside an old petrol station, nervously pounding bottles of water, applying sunscreen, and getting ready to head out of the desert to clear up the ad hoc migrant camp that has held as many as fifteen hundred people out in the open when Title forty two ended and Border patrol made no plans to keep them anywhere. It was a diverse bunch of people hidden beneath sun hats.
There's an Australian film producer who was at a conference in Orlando and booked a fly over a grad student painter. The folks who were in the Hookumber hotel who organize this whole thing, they're friends from the hospitality industry in San Diego. There were students and mums and dads and about the entire population of this tiny desert town. There were also two former International Aid workers who are in a tower where you can look at the desert, which
is actually a much cooler thing than it sounds. And there's also a museum of boulders right next to it. You should proably check them out during the area. I spent the day helping out in Neucumber after the refugees, some of them in handcuffs, had been taken by private contractors to be processed by CBP's Office of Field Operations. We met at a petrol station in the middle of town. The space where the pumps should be was filled with tons, and I do mean tons of bottled water, masks, hand
sanitized and other necessary supplies. When I'd arrived the night before, around ten pm, the eerie green and yellow lights reflecting from the roof had lit up palace of water like some kind of giant lava lamp, and driving across the desert, the town looked like it was glowing. The town certainly has had a bit of a glow up in the
last few years. Three business partners purchased their Cumber hot Springs hotel down in the mouth property that had once been a glamorous desert resort, and they've been restoring the place for nearly two years. Inadvertently, they also purchased a lot of land and a few other rundown buildings in a town that were sold as a lot with the hotel. It was in one of these buildings, the old gas station, that they set up a de facto mutual aid hubbo
almost overnight. The hotel's not finished yet, and they probably didn't make much progress on it during the week when they were feeding more than a thousand people in the desert. The town's lake, fed by a natural spring an old bath house used to be attractions. Today the bathhouse's roof has fallen off, but it still makes a pretty cool concert venue, and the whole town offers commanding views of the border wall, which sadly is only a couple of
one hundred yards from the main street. When I arrived in Houcumber, everything was close. The mini Mark was sold out, the hotel was still being worked on, and the hotel kitchen was churning out food for volunteers at the clean up effort. I asked Marissa, one of the volunteers I met that day, about her first impressions on arriving at a meeting point.
I was incredibly impressed by what the people of hu Kumba and the hotel group of individuals that have organized this, Like I couldn't believe seeing their donation depot in that old car wash, just to how well organized everything was, and that they provided so much for the volunteers, and the just the level of love and compassion and was. Yeah, it was an amazing opportunity to be part of, very humbling.
I've been there since late the night before after visiting border crossings in California and Arizona, and Jeff, one of the co owners a hotel, can you let me put up my truck in some desert behind his house.
Now.
I'm a person who enjoys sleeping outside, and I do it as often as I can. I try and camp police a month. But that night I was cold even underneath my down blanket, and I couldn't help but think of how desperate it must have been to spend nearly a week out there with nothing but in my last base blanket and some thorny bushes to keep you warm. It's certainly not the welcome that one would expect from their richest nation on Earth, which had three years to repair.
For the day, Title forty two ended to get a bit of background out of town. I spoke to Natalie.
So the previous owner bought it at an auction, and I don't think that the previous owner didn't realize how much she was getting, and he kind of just like neglected a bunch of it, you know. And then he was older, and so he finally sold off the hotel. He thought he was just buying the hotel, but he buying all the land as well. So they when they bought the hotel, they acquired all their land. And they're actually putting money into it and fixing and everything up, which is really wonderful.
The hotel in Lake and hot Spring really are wonderful. But the scene that had played out there on the eleventh of May with anything but within a short period of time, more than a thousand people of all ages and nationalities will be held in the open desert and left defend large for themselves. I let Natalie describe the space there in.
There's lots of cactuses everywhere, so there's environmental like a watch out where you're walking that it's hot. It's hot in mid day and really cold at night. Because it's the high desert, there can be gusts of wind that can just take over, get dust in your eyes, your hair, everything's just you're just filthy and lack of food.
I mean, there's no resources. You're in the middle of nowhere.
I talked to a lot of the volunteers, many of whom have been in the desert for me yet week. It'd first been made aware of the impending humanitarian crisis late on Thursday night, but one of the people working on the renovation of the Hot Springs Hotel got a call about it. Within a few hours, the hotel, zwners and all this stuff were running what became very nearly the only source of food, shelter, and water for more than a thousand people trapped and held in the desert
by CBP. I spoke to Sam, another volunteer, to get sensor response. Now, Sam is a kind of guy who just looks like he's a home in the desert. His Wi brim hat, boots, and long cleeved shirt and pants told me he spent plenty of days under the baking sign out here. And his redness with an isoproble alcohol spray disinfect people's boots after walking in an area that was likely covered in human shit told me he'd been around one or two situations like this in the past.
I spent a great deal of my life as his second career, working for in developmental relief logistics in Southeast Asia, mainly working with large age organizations for example World Food Program, Doctors without Borders, shild units, many many differrom that place things.
In the context of that kind of experience. It's easy to understand why people come to the United States, but I asked Sam to put the situation here into perspective for me. It's understandable that folks came to the US, but why to a tiny desert town of five hundred people.
These people were radically unprepared for what they were going to go through because they were sold a bill of goods by coyotes on the other side about what was going to happen to them. You understand. So they had really no idea what they were getting into at all, and so there was not anything in the way of life threatening situations for any of those people in any
meaningful way, a great deal of discomfort. It could have turned very badly if these people here had not stepped up, because the border patrol was completely overwhelmed, and so there was never that bad of a situation here compared to what I have seen in other places in the past.
A sound pointed out the migrants were now gone, but we were still surrounded by times of supplies. But at the time there was no way of knowing the scope or scale of the need. People reacted as best they could.
Actually it was overkilled, but you had no way of knowing right at the time. There's just no way to know. How do you know ahead of time? You always ask for as much as you can get, because why would you not. I mean, you never know what. You don't know how many of them with babies that are on the other side of the wall right now might be zero, might be five hundred.
You have no idea, you know, before anyone knew how if this was going to end, or really what even was going on, dozens of people across the county decided to help. One of them was Katie. Here she is describing some of the volunteers she worked alongside.
There was a hard hodgepodge of people and as volunteers and leading it were some of the owners of a hotel out there, and that was the main organizers. But who showed up were people from the town, people that I knew and recognized. There was some really devout, like they're twenty four hours a day, and then there was some coming in and out. But I met people from all over the county, and most of them answered the call through Instagram of the hotel.
All those volunteers called their friends, who called their friends, who gradually coordinated response. Natalie first became aware of this, as many volunteers did, through an Instagram post by Melissa and another the three co owners of the Combo Hotel on Thursday night, just as title forty two was ending.
Natalie saw the post and decided to help. At first, she wanted to leave right then at one am as soon as she'd seen the post, but after consulting her family, she decided to make her own post, asking for people to bring supplies that were needed. Soon she was overwhelmed by the response.
Yeah, I mean immediately, even at one in the morning, I was getting messages because I posted it.
That's when I posted the.
Story, I immediately got messages from front say I'll bring a blanket over.
What's your address.
Yeah, everyone just kind of rallied and started bringing supplies over, collecting money as well. Some friends started collecting money and then bought stuff and brought loads of food and things to my house.
Her husband and ferried the supplies to Akomba, where they were joined by donations from all over the county in the old petrol station. Like Natalie, Katie also saw a post and immediately felt compelled to help. She called a friend and some members of her family instead about raising funds and buying supplies.
So I met my friend at a cafe and in that in the meantime, and I don't know how much of this is really important. So in the meantime, I text my mother and my two sisters who live on the East coast, and just it was late at night for them, and I just said, I would love for you to send prayers, because that's something that I believe in. I believe in prayer or intention and thought reality, and some of it was just because I felt so touched,
like praying for the community that I love too. And the next thing, I know, like my venmo was blowing up and there was one thousand dollars in my venmo sent from my family members. And so by the time my friend arrived, we were like, let's go and we filled our car with Amazingly, we found like organic, there's grocery outlet, right, so we found organic soup for you know, dollars something a can, and we spent a few hundred dollars.
And the next morning we met early and we stopped in El Cone on the way and we spent all the rest on We went to three or four thrift stores and bought every blanket and hat and baby carrier. Because we have both focused on motherhood in our careers.
I asked the people I spoke to about a week later how the experience had impacted them.
It was overwhelming, just the the way the community really came around and supported the people in Hukumba that were trying to help. You know, after we finished cleaning up, when we're back at the gas station, the Amazon driver was delivering like I think he delivered three hundred and fifty boxes and so we had to open them up and sort them and it was there was so much food. I think that it was insane amount of food, and
it was awesome. It was really cool just to see how many people stabbed up and donated.
I like some of the people I saw in Santa Cedro. Natalie, Katie, Sam and Marissa are not part of an NGO or a mutual aid collective. They're just people who wanted to help, and that describes most of the people in Ucumber, although some of them did have previous and regular volunteer experience with excellent groups like Border Kindness. I asked Katie to reflect on the mutual aid approach and the absence of massive, multimillion dollar organizations. Yeah, wasn't there, right.
No, they weren't there. We were told that the Red Cross couldn't come unless Border Patrol called, and Border Patrol told us that they weren't allowed to call the Red Cross.
Yeah, that's a pretty standard.
The one institution that did show support to people in Hucumber was one that you might not expect, given the support for this cruel immigration policy by almost all the Democrats in DC. But things are different when you can see the results of these policies with your own eyes. Perhaps that's why I didn't see a single elected official in my entire week at the border. But one person I missed whoever one mentioned, was a lady who worked
for California Senator Steve Pidia. I won't name her as I don't have her permission, but hopefully one dayssume we'll be able to interview her. I'll let Katie describe the role this woman played.
There was someone from Steve Padilla's team, and that's the woman I rode with.
And.
She was incredible. Her brother in law is the chef at the hotel, so I think, I mean, she might have came anyway, but she came faster and there was true connection, and she stood up to the border patrol and said, you know, said we're allowed. We're here on behalf of this senator. So I mean I saw some like had had like arguments about our right to be there, and most of us didn't. Weren't paying attention to that.
We're paying attention to the people that we were, you know, around and no one that was out there what didn't believe that we should be out there and that more help should be out there.
Sadly, part of that familiarity with the system this woman brought to the team also meant a familiarity with the cruel and arbitrary nature of it. Katie says that they had to organize for that as well.
So my friend and I we ended up writing in her truck, so in Steve Padia's Senator Padia's assistant truck. So we had the opportunity to ask some questions that probably everyone out there wanted to know, including the migrants, And it was like, what will happen in what's the process from here? And how do you know that these
people are being tended to? And I literally heard her on the phone getting as many bodies on the ground to start going to those centers where they're being taken to make sure that they were that that we would follow them through the entire process as best possible, monitoring their well well cared for, that they were well cared for, as well cared for as possible in a system and
a process like that. Yeah, yeah, but she literally said they're going to be busted off and putt in cages and that they would do their best to make sure that that no one was split up, and that everyone was fed, showered, and they weren't allowed to bring anything with them, So a lot of the cleanup was all of the things that everyone donated that had to be left behind, including some of the stuffed animals.
For all the volunteers I spoke to, the chance to be of service was empowering. Here's Natalie discussing that, Yeah.
I mean, well, like and so many times do you like feel overwhelmed with like so much suffering in this world, and like what can one person do?
You know?
And so it did feel good that to actually see an immediate impact, like I'm doing this and this is a result, because sometimes you can just get discouraged, you know, like we're just one person.
What can we really do and can we really make an impact?
And just seeing that and being able to see directly how that one person can impact, you.
Know, can rally.
Like just seeing how my friends came together, you know, went shopping, bought things, gathered money, collected money. You know, my really good friend Sam, she went to her local bar after she collected a bunch of money, went and
dropped stuff supplies off at my house. She was just down at her local bar and just chatting with them and like, oh, what did you do today, And so she told them, oh, I collected money and I bought supplies and the people She ended up collecting about two hundred more dollars at the bar from people hearing her story. And so then the next day she went and bought more supplies and she actually ended up driving them out herself. She ended up doing like three trips just from her
own talking to people and collecting. So just like the little impact that, you know, everyone just kind of coming together and making a difference.
Santa Sedro, a pretty diverse range of San Diegan's came to help. On the first night. I personally left at about one in the morning, after spending almost two hours trying to leave but needing to get charged phones back to their owners by loudly in Spanish and French, then English describing the backgrounds on the phone or the color of their case. It wasn't a great system, and by the weekend, Cabra and others had seen that more help an organization was needed and they decided to plan a response.
Here's cable describing how they prepared for that.
Abe. I'll just grabs, you know, I was paying attention to people I knew who were doing and what supplies they were saying was needed. The particular store near me has like a wall of travel size like these giant times where you can basically just scoop out one hundred deodorant, hands and to paste and things like that.
CAPA met up with some other members of a local mutual aid group. I'll make sure to include donation links for all the groups I've mentioned at the end of this series, so please make sure to listen right through to the end.
I met up with him and he had just received a bunch of donations through through mutually networks, so we we know even more of a travel size I got some Truth Truth hygiene kits and deodorant and UH and and a bunch of friends and papers because because the kids that are between the walls don't really have actually do unfortunately, so so that those were those wren really fast, and so we got a whole bunch of bands of all those kinds of supplies, and then we just done of the break from there.
By the time they arrived, various organizations had organized areas along the wall for different kinds of aid to be passed through. Everything clothes to food, to medical supplies and toilet paper was piled up, given.
Out the relations and you know, organizing toilet paper, food, everything like that, and people just come up to the wall and if their family needed something, they would just kind of going to it or ask us if we were able to, you know, if there was a common language there. So yeah, we just kind of, you know,
gave things as people needed them. I know that I helped give out some of the friends and times of paper and those were all those were tons of kids all came running over from the whole, all the parts of the camp when they heard that there was there were toys being given out, So that was it was. It was heartbreaking, but it was also you know, it made me smile to see them smile.
And the smile because of the need to use c BP one and of course they need to stay in touch with families back home. There was a conn in an overwhelming demand for phone charging. News reporters took phones back to charge in their cars. Some people bought charge bricks and power strips, and mutual aid groups wrote names on the back of the phones using painter's tape and sharpie so they wouldn't get separated from their owners. By the second day it was a better system, but on
the first day it was chaos. I let Kber, who spent a whole day charging phones, described the system that volunteers came up with to mitigate that chaos a little bit.
And obviously they couldn't charge their phones if they're just in this kind of desert gap between between the walls that doesn't have any kind of romanies or anything. So we had a system where they would passive phone through and we had we went, we would put a piece of tape on it with their name and give them a piece of tape with their name the same name, and then they would give us that if they came back to give us the tape back, and we would match their names and phone and and that was It
worked well enough. I mean, it was still an extraordinarily chaotic process. I mean we had we always had at least one hundred phones on our side of the wallet at a given time, and and some people had you know,
some people have chargers, some people didn't. Some people had Android or Samsung or all the iPhones, and some people had well adaptors, and some people didn't have the wallet ac adapters, so we kind of had to every phone that came through was we had to find a way to get it, you know, basically chained into the set of generators that we had, which was do we have power strips and we have to write cables and and and we have space on those cables and and I think it was it was a bit of a puzzle
the whole time. The only part of it that really overwhelmed me was we did overload. Someone brought a bunch of h USBC power strips and we blew out one of them, and so there was now eight phones attacked that they had to find new spaces for. I was I was just frustrated by the situation. And in addition that refer to that I think particularly whatever.
Happened to it, it was chaos, but it was a good natured chaos. Over several days that migrants would attained in the open with no shelter an inadequate sanitation, just about two miles from the discount mall where you can buy cheap Ralpherend's shirts if that's your jam. People showed
up in ever increasing numbers. The American Friends Service Committee helped organize volunteers into groups to distribute food, package up wet white snacks, medicines, give out tarps, and do just about anything else that they could or anything else that they could fit to ziploc bags that could be passed through gaps in the wall.
At least.
People who had been immigrants themselves or who were the children of immigrants were notably numerous, and the volunteers I spent to one of them with.
My name is Lon Chai.
I'm part of Asian Soliday Collective grass with organization here in San Diego.
I've been I've been coming over here since yesterday.
I came here around five six yesterday, and then I came back through here this morning and been here since. I got home at twelve last night and woke up, dropped my kid off, and came right back with more supplies. I've been reaching out to family, friends and community to help donate supplies and things.
Like that, food, whatever, whatever they may have.
And I've pretty much been driving around city and collecting from from folks that can't make it so I could bring it down here myself.
So that's what I've been doing.
LUNCHI explained to me why it was so important to show up my community.
I'm pretty sure they they they're sympathetic to this because I'm coming from I'm a first generation Cambodian American here in the US, and when my parents and my family fled their country, they went through this as well. So somebody somewhere came and provided to support, provided to aid the donations.
For them to be able to to make it.
To America to crossover, and and able to to to provide out here for for me growing up out here.
You know.
So it's just I just sympathize with it, with the whole thing. I mean, I mean everybody should should should feel the same way because somewhere down the line, our families went through similar situations. If you're not an indigenous then then then your family somewhere down down to history went through the same thing.
So you know that everybody should have a heart for this and be able.
To come down here and and and and donate or donate their time or supplies whatever the case may be, you know, come out in help.
He also explained why he feels it's important to encourage empathy for refugees.
Well, it's it's you have to you have to.
You have to be keep in mind, there's there's this families out here, there's this young children, there's babies. I mean, it takes a lot for for for a mother to pick up her infant child and to leave where she's
coming from. So that just says a lot about where what's going on, where she's come, for her to trek and to go through this, to sit out here and coll and stuff, because if she would rather endure her endure this and take the risk and the chances that means where she's coming from is not as you know, if she's willing to take that risk.
Later that night, I saw an Afghan family come to help the other Afghan families. Their kids talk to other Afghan kids separated by the border war. They passed crayons through the wall and coloring books, and the little daughter asked her dad if she could give her watch to the Afghan girl being held in the camp. Her dad said, of course, I don't record or photograph people's children, certainly not without asking, And I wasn't about to interrupt them,
but it was a very sweet moment. The father of the family had worked in the Army Corps of Engineers. He'd been to the border before to build this section of the wall. I didn't really need to ask him how it felt to see folks stuck behind it, but it said a lot that he and his family had taken the time to drive down, buy bags and supplies and then come face to face with the people who
needed them and hand them out. Like dozens of other folks, they tried to pass whatever they could through little gaps in the war to make someone's day a little bit brighter. Another volunteer who we heard from yesterday came from a local group called Pana. Hermira had been at the wall since five in the morning and it was getting on
for five pm when we spoke. I normally ask people what they ate for breakfast, just to tune in the volume levels on the recorder a bit, but I'm going to include it this time, just so you can see how long her day had been and how hard she've been working.
Okay, do you know what do you want me say? Second?
I mean, you have a breakfast again.
I don't remember anymore French shast FRESD shosts, but my name is Harmira Yusafi and I'm with a partnership for the Advancement of New Americans PANA, or an organization in San Diego that fights for the full inclusion of refugees and those who come from refugee producing countries.
We spoke about the emergency that had kept her hair all day.
So in terms of this morning, I mean I was. I was very concerned because there was an asylum seeker who had an emergency and was rushed out of this place. Where now, like for example, where we are at right now, is people who are being detained and the most inhumane
way possible. This is going against TBP's own protocols and policies as to how they're being detained with No they're not giving them food, they're not giving them bathrooms, they're not giving them basic basic things that they need to survive. And so that's why the community is out here today to do that.
Sadly, not everyone who showed up at the makeshift detention facility. We're showing up in solidarity. Local anti migrant activists and blogger Roger Ogden showed up.
Now.
Ogden might be familiar to some listeners due to his attempts to host he called a Patriot picnic and his advocacy for the removal of the historic murals in Chicken on A Park often organized gatherings in the park in twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen, and they resulted in a huge and overwhelming community response to defend the park, and this time Olden decided to keep to himself, but Natalie ran into some people who weren't quite as shy about their opinions.
You know, a lot of the people in the community are you know, lower income. You know, they are struggling in their own struggle on their and so I know, you know, maybe I don't know, it's like for those people, I don't know, like, yeah, it's hard.
I don't know.
I mean, towards the end, like when I was walking to my car, this man, this man in a car like pulled up and he's like, excuse me, what's going on over there? And I was like, Oh, we're gathering
you know, somepplies for the asylum seekers. And then I you know, like, if you're from here, you kind of if you're in Hookumba, you kind of already knew what was going on, and so him asking me that, I was kind of like, m and then he just started laying into I've had illegals, you know, have broken into my house a few times.
Why are you supporting illegals?
And I'm like, we're trying to, let like make sure that people don't die, and he just kept going off on me, and so he you know, the whole.
All the talking points that people have about not.
Allowing people to seek asylum here, and so I just walked away.
Maurica didn't run into the same kind of vocal opposition, but she said in her conversations and attempts to process everything she'd seen, she ran into some of the sort of need JC responses. So people can only really make about immigration when they haven't looked the cruelty that they're advocating for in the face.
It took me a little while to kind of work through just how I felt about it on an emotional, maybe a spiritual level.
You know.
I spoke with family and friends about it, about my experience, and and it's it's difficult to I found it difficult to explain my experience because I don't know that somebody can really truly understand that unless they've actually been out there and done it themselves, because the arguments or or they're kind of debate, so to speak, what they would come back at me with when I was sharing that is, but we don't have enough food or housing to be
able to support that many people coming in. And I'm like, but we just had so many people and so much money put out there to help in a very short amount of time. Look how many donations were donated, how much money was contributed in a short amount of time from not that many people. I'm like, obviously we do have the money, Obviously we do have the food, So where's the where's the breakdown? Like, is it our system
that just doesn't allow for that happened? I don't know, and that that's where like I don't I don't understand it enough.
But I feel like.
It just made me realize that I don't know that anybody that I spoke to afterward really understands it enough, either because their arguments or they're a defense and what they tried to share on the opposite side of me going out there and supporting just felt like it was just something to say, you know, and like what they what they hear from the general media out there, and they also don't really they can't quite grasp it, so they're just kind of throwing something out there I guess
is what it felt like.
Kaiba also ran into some less and charitable San Diegans, this time down the sant Asiedra.
Yeah, so, I guess my first part it is why they might have or how they might have found us there, which is there's a a local news organization San Diego called Harisai, which is kind of a I would describe as a local equivalent of something like one American News, which is really unfortunate because we already have more American
news here. Uh, but they are are pretty well known for kind of a lot of like misinformation, kind of scared mondering about and has people immigrants, vaccines and and all that sort of sort of thing, but with kind of a local news sort of aesthetic to it. And they were, as far as I could tell, they were really the only ident of able media that were there
throughout the day. I read articles eventually that made me realize there were other reporters there that they were identifying themselves the way that Hasy was, but they sided it was one cameraman just shooting b role, I guess, and he walking to all the different parts of the wall and like all the different sort of stations for aid and like trying to really trying to get as many faces as possible they could.
Kind of have that.
That's like what he was doing. Everyone who I was around, I was I was kind of you know, oriented mostly with kind of the like sort of like anartists between people. And you know, when they saw the lame aside track, they were like, okay, when it's their masking, you know, and I killing in ninety five with me so where and I am I don't you know, slightly identifying logo on my struct shirt which I take over so that you know, that image wouldn't show up Now.
Kus I have drifted further and further right since twenty twenty. Along with their relatively miniscule viewership. These days, they engage in fake news culture war stuff, like repeating the recent false accusations that Target was making tuckable swimming costumes for kids, or labeling everyone in the asylum process illegal immigrants. It's
sadly pretty standard for writing news organizations now. Kayle thinks that some of the people who saw footage on k USI, or perhaps found the location posted on Obten's blog, came down to the border.
Like several hours later. That's like when we started to see people you know, kind of went buy and and and we could tell that they weren't volunteers, because like when people who are like playing people who weren't even necessarily voluneer, which weren't buy and so like, hey, I just heard watching on. I brought a piace of water and they bring it the water and then they drive away. But the people who are doing who are like cute where I think, you know, kind of do some kind
of intimidation where you know, they wouldn't approach directly. They would just kind of get out of their exceptionally large estuvies and and just kind of just kind of watch and they would kind of, you know, get a little bit closer at a time, and then you know a little bit closer and kind of whispered to each other and you know, pointed things, and you know, it's just kind of that they were just watching, and you know, they got post enough that I could read their shirts,
and and the shirts had a slogan that's associated with a Christian nationalism slogan, so as this whole family is kind of kind of sad that the kids were wearing the shirts too, and and so I kind of yah, I figured out that that's what was going on. And
I never talked to them. I didn't approach them, but I stood when I was, you know, something to get close with this or I kind of positioned myself in between the rest of the volunteers and in this group and and just kind of you know, didn't really start at them, just kind of looked at them and and just made it clear with my body language that I, like I knew, you know, they were doing like they weren't you know, they weren't doing any kind of secret
agent thing or whatever, like they were being really really obvious. And I would just you know, stood and position myself in a way that I pated that you know, I know what you're doing, and you're not going to get close. You're not going to interfere with you know, what we're doing here. You're not going to contact to any wine
or you thrill anyone or whateveryone did. And eventually one of the people who is either volunteer or work for, like one of the engineers, can definitely tell there's something going on, so she went over and had a conversation with them that I couldn't hear, and eventually they decided to move, and I think she was just kind of trying to be diplomatic, but just sort of like asked them if they wanted to help, and if they don't want to help, and you know, yeah, go be somewhere else,
I suppose, And and it was I mean, the sort of one amusing part of people like that was that they apparently complained to this person about me because they said that I had been watching them and I was I was racially profiling them because they were white. And I realized now that this is an aroundous interview, but just for the listeners, I am very very white myself.
I think it's important when we discuss volunteering to honor how hard this kind of experience could be on people. Obviously, the trauma is associated with seeing people brutalized by the state and capital. It's not the same as being brutalized by state and capital yourself. But that doesn't mean it's easy. I asked Nathlete to reflect a little on children's toys we found in the shelter when we were cleaning up the camp, like.
As a mom, like I have my own children, and it just really it was emotional. It's like it's just like I'm like, who's who? What child was playing with this? You know here in this space, and you know that no child should be ever in, you know, an encampment like that or it just no one should be living outside, no one should be doing that. But also it's like kind of like the humanity in a way like that.
You know, even a child's going to play wherever child's going to play, and like that little toy of little hopefully it brought that kid some joy in that moment, you know, if it was there a little piece of home or someone gave it to him or what, you know, it was yeah, the reality, it was like it was like a person, you know, like a little artifact of someone who was actually there.
You know, like it was a little more tangible than you know, a sock.
You know, that's not that's not I'm not think you know who wore that sock? But thin give who who was playing with that doy? You know?
Was it a little boy, a little girl? Hold? Were they did they bring up home? Are they missing it? When they?
When I saw they have that, she needed people to clean up. It was like, Okay, I took a day off of work and went out there and just felt overwhelming almost. I mean, just one day of me working out there was really emotional. I can't imagine how you know, Melissa and all the people that were on the ground just dealing with it, and I know they're just struggling a little bit and just processing it all has been really hard, you know, really hard. It's just just just
how how privileged we are. You know, like no one leaves their country because they want to. They leave because they have to, but they feel like they have to. And you know, it's I mean, it's respecting and honoring and understanding the privilege that you're in and not taking for granted because it's very easy to both.
Katie Marisa said they don't really identify as political and that they wanted to be there as people. Sometimes often politics can become a complicated game of numbers and statistics. But it's important to remember that what this is really about is organizing in such a way that we can take care of one another, and that the most important politics of war is the politics of feeding hungry people and maybe bringing a sad child of stuffed animal. Here's Katie talking about the community response.
I think I'm a really compassionate person and I'm not very political in the sense that like I don't really participate. My life in my community's life is solution oriented. So I saw like that on a large scale, the like when people come together, we create solutions when and you don't wait for someone like the government to show up
and fix it, because then people will die. Yeah, you know, I mean that's the reality is if that community didn't activate, there would have been a lot of dead people in the desert.
Katie shared with me that she's been having a difficult time, feeling guilty for not having the language skills to do more and questing her own worthiness to be their helping But in the end, she said she felt that what she'd done was right and important. I'll leave you with her thoughts and tomorrow I'll be back to talk about the people who put everyone in this situation in the first place, the Department of Homeland Security.
I think an important thing is like so many times we hear about things and we say, isn't that awful, and we kind of shut down because we don't feel empowered or we don't know how to help. And literally a smile makes a difference, a feeling of like I see you and you belong on this planet makes a difference. And you know, little kids packing up canned goods and
fruit snacks for other little kids. They didn't see those kids, but when the adults said they're going to be so happy to get that package, they felt like they made a difference. And those little girls are gonna grow up and not be afraid to step up and make a difference. I think a lot of people think like they can't do enough, so they don't do anything. And if we all just do a little bit or what you can, then I think we would see a very large impact.
Hakamba is a town of five hundred and they just fed thousands, house thousands, closed thousands, hugged and welcomed thousands of human beings. And those people in that town don't have much excess, and they made a difference.
And I was.
Proud to be a part of that community in a way that I'm on the fringe of it, and it made me want to be even more a part of it. My feelings an intuition about that town, we're confirmed by watching the simplest action make an incredible impact on real lives and real people, and that this isn't demographics it's real bodies that have breating hearts and breathe and we all share the same air in the same water, and we're all connected. And when you make one little drip
in the bucket, it actually does make a difference. And I think that stops us sometimes when we think what we have isn't enough to give, but when someone has nothing, what you have is more than what they can imagine.
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, Updated monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Thanks for listening.