Al Zone Media.
I conducted interviews for this series in Spanish and French. Then I transcribed them and translated them, and we had voice actors read them. So when you're listening to this, please remember that everything you're hearing in English has recorded another language, and it's through the lens of my translation that you're hearing these people's words. As we always do, we have included the sources for this podcast in the show notes. I've also included a link to prim Ross
Legal aid fundraiser. People would like to help out.
The Deep Party.
Some of us are illegal and some are not wanted. Our work contracts are and we have to move on six hundred and miles to that Mexico bardier. They chase us like our laws and rustlers like these. Goodbye by Roslina Nissr, San Maria.
You all have a name.
When you ride a beggar.
And all I will call you will.
Be the party.
On the twenty eighth day of January nineteen forty eight, a plane took off from Oakland, California. On board with a crew, an Immigration Nationalization Service officer, and twenty eight people who had come to the US to work in the Brasero program. They were being sent to Well CenTra, where they were to be deported to Mexico. The pilot, Frankie Atkinson, had found a job flying DC three's as a civilian after flying the legendarily dangerous Hump route between
India and China in the Second World War. His wife, Bobby, herself the daughter of a migrant mother, was filling in that day as the usual flight attendants weren't available on board with twenty eight passengers, all headed back to Mexico after United States, where they come to work, had decided it didn't need or want them any longer. The plane never landed in El Center. It was overdue for maintenance,
and its left engine caught fire. Then its wing ripped off above Colinger, not so far from the fields where many of them had worked for year after year. The passengers were pulled out of the plane into the sky. Most of them had never flown before. They must have been nervous before they took off, and now the worst
fears were coming true. And those who survived the loss of pressure and being ripped from the cabin, in some cases still strapped to their seats must have had their very worse fears confirmed as they plummeted toward the ground that had only stopped being part of Mexico one hundred years and four days before.
Their bodies or.
Parts of them were scattered through the canyon as the plane slammed into the ground. There weren't enough seats for all the passengers, and so three of them were to sit on their luggage at the back. The plane was over its maximum wake capacity, and that might have been why the white smoke began pouring out of its left engine over Colinger Frankie, the pilot had survived crashes in this time of the Air Force, so hopefully he was able to keep his pastures and crew calm until the
engine burst into flame. Some witnesses reported seeing people jump from the plane after its left wing tore off and began to plummet towards the ground, but it's just as likely that they were pulled out. The plane hit the ground about a mile east of Fresno County Industrial Road camp or incarcerated people were being forced to work. In Mates were immediately dispatched to comb the hills through remains of people aboard the plane. Locals like Red Shoulders his rins.
A plane crashed on rushed up there to join them, and they hoped to help the survivors. On finding none, they began to fight the fire. Around the wreckage, prisoners found luggage, women's shoes, and babies, clothes, them bodies, some of them still in their seats, littered throughout the canyon. Only sixteen sets of remained, whoever identified, including the entire crew in the irons. Guard Bobby, identified by her engagement ring, was pregnant at the time. She was buried with Frankie
in New York. Frankie's co pilot, Martin Ewing, was buried with military honors. Frank Chaffin, the I S Agent, was buried back in Berkeley. The remains of the twenty eight deportees, or whatever had been found of them, were buried on mass in Holy Cross Cemetery in Fresno. Hundreds of local Latino people, most of whom didn't know them, turned up towards to twenty eight coffins, some of which were empty, be interred in the eighty four for a hole in
the ground that was reserved for them. The hole was covered with dirt and eventually with grass, and there they remained without names, without their families being told for three quarters of a century. The next day, The New York Times reported on the story the worst aviation accident in California history. The names, ages, and hometowns of the crew and the ions agent were given, along with quote twenty
eight Mexican agricultural workers. Their lives apparently were unremarkable, and even in death, they didn't deserve the dignity of being mentioned by name. Like people, It's a story that, eighty years later, is only too familiar. The song we upened this episode with was written by an American anti fascist folk musician named Woody Guthrie. Like many of his songs, it's a protest song. It recalls the plane wreck. There's one home recording of him singing it to a tune
that isn't used to sing a song today. It was only uncovered a few months ago. Guthrie has moved to write it when he noticed that in the reporting on the crash none of them migrants who were being deported on the plane were named. He wrote the song as a poem because at a time his Huntington's career had made it hard for him to sing and strum the guitar. Later, a student of Colorado, a and m named Marty Hoffman
set the poem to a Mexican ranchera melody. It didn't become popular as a song until Guthrie's friend Pete Seger began performing get at concerts. Hoffman had played it to him when Sega had visited the campus Ballad club. Guthrie, whose guitar famously carried the slogan this machine Kills Fascists, was in declining health by the time he wrote the poem in nineteen forty eight, and he never lived to
hear it sung. Hoffman, who died by suicide in Red Rock, Arizona, where he was teaching on the Navajo Reservation, died right as Joan Bayez was recording the song in the studio. Today, it's one of Guthrie's best known works, of course, when he wrote the song to his discuss, Guthrie didn't know
the names of the people on the plane. He imagined them in his poem as Juan Maria Rosalita, the sort of people he might meet on any given day as a touring musician who was finally received by working people wherever he went.
I know one a Maria and a.
Rose from the Darien Gap I've also searched in the hills and the mountains the remains of people whose names I don't know eighty years later, So the song resonates with me.
My father's own father. He waited that river.
Other before him have done just the same.
They died in the hills, and they've died in the valley somewhere to heaven without any name.
Goodbye to my one. Good I rose a leader.
Body use me, I mean zusibody else.
You won't have a name.
When you ride the big airfay Ah, they will call you will.
Leader before me.
The twenty five men and three women aboard came to the US to fill labor shortages after World War Two as a result of an agreement between the two states called the Brassero Program. The Mexican government didn't want to lose its whole agricultural workforce and wanted to ensure that workers in the US would send a portion of their wages home, so it held these wages in accounts, which some of them never saw again for years. The Mexican government refused to extend the program to Texas because of
racist violencer. People who entered the program waited months, and when they crossed the border, they were subject to abusive searches, spraying with DDT and in some places zyclon B, same gas used in the gas chambers the Holocaust was used to hose down their clothes. When they got to the US, many of them worked in very poor conditions. Many chose
not to wait and instead crossed without papers. Some farmers hired them for much less than the minimum Bressero program wage and put them to work in worse conditions than the program permitted. Others work their alloted contracts in the program, and they stayed, hoping to make a better life in the USA or to earn some money they could keep
before they went home. Many of them came and went several times returning home until them need to make more money overwhelmed the desire to remain and work their aheedroes or parcels across Mexico. The Mexican government wanted those to travel without a contract to be barred from being hired, and in many case government officials in Mexico accepted bribes to allow worker to enter the program. Just as it
is today, everyone made money apart from the migrants. Barsserro's letters were censored to prevent them asking their families to join them, but nonetheless, a racist panic about undocumented migration began, especially after Frankie and thousands of others return from the
war and the manpower shortage was not so acute. This, combined with demands from the Mexican government, led to Eisenhower eventually adopting a program whose name is a slur to catch, detain, and deport Mexican people to parts of their birth country they'd never been to, far from the border, far from their families and communities. The operation, which focused on rapid deportations and border regions, is often cited as an inspiration
for today's border ratio. Seventy six years after Guthrie wrote his song, very little has changed in the way the legacy media covers migration. Maybe that's why everyone from Dolly Parton to Bob Dylan, Chris Christofferson, will and Jennings, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Bruce Springsteen a sung a version of this song. Here's Johnny Cash describing the song before a TV performance.
Johnny Cash, I understand this is a true story. This from the our album The Highwayman. Johonna Rodriguez was on that album as well. On this song, you understand it is a true story what it got He wrote this about a plane crash, and was it Los Gatos Canyon taken a planeload of Mexicans back after they worked for whatever they could get in this country. It's one of those old stories about Maltreed, man of Aliens.
One of those old stories.
He says, it seems so hopeful in nineteen eighty seven, like we wouldn't be writing anymore because most people could accept that nobody should treat other people like that anyway. That was before country music was entirely dominated by boot liquors. And here I am playing it to you again, eighty years after it was written, because it is still relevant.
Here's Dolly Parton singing it.
My father's own father.
He waited that room.
They took all the money.
He made it his life.
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees.
They rolled the truck too. They took down and down. The airplane caught fire over Lascattos Kenyon, a fireball of lightning that shook all who These dear friends are scattered like drives. The RADIOSI they were just departy. Good night to mind good bye.
I, as a song puts it. The bodies of the workers were scattered like dry leaves across Los Gatos Canyon. The bodies of those twenty eight people, the parts that were recovered, were buried in a mass grave at the Holy Cross Cemetery in Fresno, mark later thanks to a donation with a small plaque calling the Mexican nationals, although one of them was also Spanish. The hard work of finding these people's names was taken up by people not
even alive when that plane crashed. Many of their relatives did not even know they were buried there until Carlos Rascon, the Fresno Diocese director of Cemeteries, and Tim Hernandez, an author and professor at UTL Paso, dedicated themselves to naming them. In twenty thirteen, a new headzone was directed with their
names in the ceremony, which packed the cemetery. Hernandez had found after years of hard work, by locating one of their nephews a copy of El Faro, a local Spanish language newspaper, which provided a list that was more accurate than that in the Fresno County Records Department. It wasn't until September twenty eighth of twenty twenty four, when I just left Primrose and Kimberly and LaaS Blancas that a
proper memorial was built for them in the Canyon. Families traveled from across the US and Mexico to open the memorial. Some of them were funded by Woody Guthrie's grandchildren. The
names of all twenty eight of them were included. They were Miguel Negrette, Alvarez, Cisco, Jamas, Turan, Santiago Garcia, Elisondo, Rosalio Padia, Estrada, Vernabe, Lopez, Garcia, Ramon Perees Gonzalez, Tomas Avigna de Garcia, Salvador Sandoval, Ernandez, Gui, Lupe Ramerez, Lara, Severo, Medina, Lara, Elias, Trujillo, Massias, Jose Rodriguez, Massias, Tomas Padia, Marquez, Luis Lopez, Merdina, Manuel Caldern, Marino,
Luis Queves, Miranda, Martin, Razo, Navarro, Ignacio Perez, Navarro, Roman, Ochoa, Ochoa, Apollonio Ramirez, Placentia, Alberto Carlos Regosa, Gjui, Lupe Ernandez, Rodriguez, Maria Santana Rodriguez, Juan Valenzuela Ruiz, when Ceslao Flores Ruiz, Josse Valdivia Sanchez, Jeesus Mesa, Santos Baldomero, Marcus Torres, Francis c Atkinson, Lillian k Atkinson, Marion h Ewing, and Frank E.
Chaffin. Think about the song an Awful Lot.
The first time I heard it was known a CD compilation of Spanish anarchist songs. The fundamental decency of giving the deceased name, treating them like people, not a human waste, seems so basic, and yet three quarters of century later,
reporting hasn't got any better. A few times in my years of the border, I've searched with people and the remains of people whose names I don't know, just as some of my friends have arited little wooden crosses, some with names and some without, to people who he never got to meet, but somehow still grieve. There are lots of people whose names and faces are Duno who never made it to the USA. They didn't even get an anonymous story. The people who die for the American Green
are totally ignored in the coverage of migration. The real cost of our border externalization, little children and loving parents who have to die so politicians VII the Party can brag about secure borders are completely invisible to most people in this country. Seventy seven years less, one week after Times published its story which are raised and People killed in the Los Gatos Canyon, it published a video. The
video shows Primros lying on the floor in agony. She climbed the wall on the ladder and then fell into the USA. On landing, she broke her leg. The story, just like that story in nineteen forty eight, doesn't name her or Kim. It refers to a group of migrants and calls Primras one woman too fair. The piece did interview other migrants, but as is often the case, and migrants from Africa get the worst treatment of all. The piece and the hundreds of other social media posted a
video from other outlets. Don't tell readers about the persecution and torture. Primrose faced at home about the fact she doesn't know what her father disappeared to and that her whole family is in hiding. It doesn't bother to mention that she and Kim walk for six months to get to the border, that they were kidnapped, robbed and traumatized
on the way. Doesn't even give their names. Unlike the people who died in Los Gatos Canyon, Primrose is here to tell us how it feels to see her pain turned into pai views by outlets with huge global platforms.
Yeah, that's you to be honest. If you now, I'm sure it's embarrassing me because when I was in Texas, like if I made to people, they say, are you not the one will feel done for me? It's like something else because I was not a apie for the person all put me in social media. Even even when I go to the comments, some of the comments were paid and the other people they don't even know what was really happened to me. I was running for my life, but people they just comment whatever they want. So that
video even now, I'm not even happy. Is I know people they make money with my video? Maybe you was supposed the person who posted me was supposionately to close my face or to do something. And a lot of people they even don't know where I am. But because of that video, it went viral. Even in my country. People they were sending messages. That's why the other people they went to my mom and studied torture DA because they taught me about me in country, but because of
that video, they went to disturb my mom. She's not even where I grew up now in the door. She just move. She's somewhere else now. So I don't even know who posted the video, and I think I need to. I don't know what can I say, but I'm very angry with the person who posted the video. Maybe they should maybe asking me, or to find me, or to hide my face and the waste. Kimberly, she was theay my daughter. When you ask her about the video, she cries to be honest, just.
Like those people who died in the plane crash. Promotes yourselves better. I first saw the video of her falling on TikTok. I think I felt like it was shared by the Wall Street Journal, but I haven't been able to locate the post again. Where I saw a friend, someone else saw a way to make it back. It's a kind of extractive reporting that I spent my whole career trying not to replicate. The Times and plenty of other outlets have what they see as high standards of
journalistic objectivity. I don't think it will surprise anyone that I fall afoul of those, which is fine. I don't want to be trying to find the middle ground between someone running for her life and someone trying to make money from her misery. Nonetheless, we have to live in a world where the vast majority of people get their information from outlets who see migrants of stories and a political issue, not as people. We have to live with
the consequences of that. We're seeing them all now every day. This isn't a story about the New York Times. A long time ago, I realized my career wasn't going in the direction that was going to put me on the mastthead of those big newspapers, because I care about people like Primose and Kimberly and not about big newspapers. This is a story about Primos and Kimberly, So let's hear where they left.
Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe, if you don't know, has been ruled by the same party since nineteen eighty, the Zono PF. The ZONOPF has been led for three decades with Robert Mugabi has been the only party to hold the presidency since independence. The opposite only changed hands once when mcgabay's former VP replaced him after mcgaby resigned and a threat of impeachment at a coup. The opposition has taking different forms over time, but never managed to dislodge one party. When it has
got close, it has been met with extreme violence. So I think Primerose knows only too well.
It's not like we just it's a luxury to come to America for biggers. If I wanted to come to America for bigger I would maybe go and apply for the visa. But us is in youth is people who wants to change our country. They don't even make you to find a way to go to make a visa because the Zimbabwe Zee a tough country, especially for US young people, young generation. They can even kill you in Simbabwe.
We can't even protesting for our rights in Simbabwe because we scared for the government is running the candruler which is NPF. We are really scared. I ive people, a lot of people lose a lot of friends. Kidney killed me also in Zimbabwe. They even tortured me, wanted to kill me. So that's why even I don't even know he's Kimbally's father. Since twenty seven, I don't even know where is maybe it's dead, is not even dead. I don't even know where is because he also run away.
Even now is I'm speaking right now, I'm stressed, like I don't even know it's my father. Yeah, I don't even know where he is. Also just so our governments, our Zimbabwe, it's a really tove for us. Yeah, they don't give us time or you don't give us. As a young generation, they think themselves and then they are they are families and the economy there's no even if you go to school, there's no jobs. There's a lot of graduates people staying home. They are vendors, hoodcasts, no jobs. Nothing.
If you want to stay in the in for your rights, they tortured you, killed you, disappear. There's a lot of people will disappear in Zimbabwe just because see your needs to change.
And the Mugabe Zimbabwe experience rapid economic declient hyperinflation at various times. Mcgaby has played with some form of colonial powers, which is reasonable and they quote gay mafia, which is what you get when you have a single manager of state ruling by whim from the moment of liberation until.
Just two years before his death.
Like many in her country, like many people from all over the world, wanted a better future. It was something she and her family had advocated for. Having seen people she loved disappear, never knowing if they were alive or dead, never even getting the closure of a funeral, she decided she couldn't risk leaving Kimberly alone, and so she took her daughter and fled. They fled to South Africa, but violence followed them there.
But especially in South Africa, people are killed with the sonophobia. People are killed, you know, so it's not also even safe for us to stay in South Africa. That's why, especially in me, to be honest, de Jena was not even planned. I was just asking people and when I reached Bras people, they were just talking lets gordless, godless. But I was also following those people. Do I get you? So it's not like we came here for Lajari or for what.
For me.
I just came here for my life. I just ran for my life. I just need my life in my daughter's life, because if I died today, I don't if anybody can look after my daughter, especially when in my country, because things are tough for my mom because my father just disappeared.
What people can't easily travel around the world. Concepts like xenophobia, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, they're not just American issues, the global issues. And that's why we say nobody's free until everybody's free.
We just grew up in a poor family, so but it's tough to be honest. It's a relative.
For me.
I'm not even one hundred percent, Okay, I'm still lots of memories trace. Yeah, and I remember one of my friends, the name was Memory. She died also, we went together, died in Zimbabwe when they kidnaped us for five days. So she just died. Listen to a twenty twenty twenty twenty.
She just died.
Because we were fighting for our future.
Yeah, but.
It's tough.
Yeah, he's me talking to Primerse on that river bank about but why she left South Africa.
I'm just trying. No, it's only me and my daughter.
Yeah.
Was it hard to see a future for her there?
It's very hard.
Explain the situation there when.
Neil the situation where in where the situation for me, it was tough. I just ran away to South Africa and South Africa was not safe. Sosilophobia and uh, they almost kill me and my boyfriend and even my my big father was abusive too, my teprasive because of the politics opposition party. So it was now even in South Africa, I was not safe at all. It was those people. They were like following me and my daughter. So I
spent three months on the road coming here. I leave South Africa, I think fourth of July, till now I'm in Panama. I'm still walking.
That was September.
She finally entered the USA in January, crossing into a very different country than the one she'd set out for. Her story is unique. Every migrant story is, but it's not unusual. You spend as much time talk to migrants as I do, you will learn a lot about the hardships regular people face all over the world. You'll also learn about the dreams people have and how little they really differ. Let's take, for example, the protest we recently
saw in Nepal. Those didn't come as a huge shock because I've met dozens of Nepalese political opposition members.
Here's when I spoke to us.
We sheltered in the porch of Nember our house in Bahjiquito in a rainstorm last September. The little room was filled with sleeping pads and tired bodies. I spent a lot of time there sitting on the floor talking to people. A newt story is one of many I heard just in that one room, from all over the world.
Yeah, because it's not safe in my country. That's why I want to go to the States, because there is right and fredom.
Yeah, what makes it not safe.
In your country? Yeah? There are many political reasons. Yeah, and I am from a different political like call Congress, Okay, I'm from Congress. That's a small member, not a big too man, but opposition party. You know, they one they won the constitution. So yeah, so they think you are Yeah, okay, if.
You wandering how someone come from the mountains in Nepal to a small village in the Panamanian jungle and to be briefly sharing a tiny room with people from Venezuela, Cameroon, China, and Bolivia, all seeking the same thing.
His how I took a plan from Nepal to Dubai. He said there two months, okay. Then after that I went to Qatar. Yeah. From Qatar, I went to Brazil. I stayed in Refusiician for at least two weeks. Then after that I came out from Brazil, took a bus, then traveled for two months, a long time, maybe twenty four hours or twenty five hours. Wow. Then I went to I caught up some friends. They took me to Bolivia. We need to cross to Jungle. But it was small, not a long way. Yeah, it was good. And after
Bolivia I took the ride to bus. I took at least maybe forty eight hours.
In a bus.
Yeah. Wow. Man. Then I went to the border of Peru and there was some boat to take us across, and I went across to Peru, stayed in a hotel that night. Then after that it came out and again rode the bus for twenty six hours to Lima. Then after Lima again twenty six hours to Tulcan. Then after Tiltan, I got a taxi and that taxi was to cross the border to Ecuador. Okay, And so I went to Ecuador in that taxi and they take us in hotel. Stayed for three hours in the hotel. Then at night
again traveling wow. Then again traveled to Colombia. After Colombia, rode another bus and rode to Colombia and Panama border. Okay to Nicoli, Nicoli to Nicoli and we stayed maybe one week in Nicoli. After that, I took a boat to Kapurgana. From Kapurgana, uh, there was some bikes. The pike took us to a camp at the border.
Wow.
We at the camp, I riased nearly at six pm. Then after some people came there and they were responsible to across the border to the Panama.
Yeah.
Then we walked through at nine pm. We walked through. Maybe we walked to till here forty four hours. Wow.
Yeah.
I asked a nuke what he had to say to people in America because he had excellent English, I have this platform to share. He was more than aware of the US dis coursed around migrants, and he said he'd been watching videos about it.
Well, thus everyone is human being. Yeah, yeah, because we have some problems, so we need to leave our country, right.
Yeah.
We need to be kind to each other.
Yeah, we need to be kind. Yeah.
I haven't heard from a nuke since then. I have no idea where he and his friends are or how the journey across three continents ended. So many other migrants, he disappeared for me in the massive humanity heading north. I still think about all the people that haven't heard from. Sometimes I'll see people who look like them and I'll get excited. But if they're in the USA now, they're
probably afraid of going out much. They came all this way, they risked their lives, they saw people die, and now once again the hiding from men in masks with guns. His Rose, young woman from Bolivia. Think about Rose a lot. She was a young mum traveling alone, trying to find a better future for her family and risking her life in the process. She seemed young and happy most of the time, but she had a sort of tiredness in her eyes that really stayed with me after several conversations
we had in Bajjigito. I don't really know why. It just seemed so sad that she was away from her kids, and someone who so obviously was predisposed to joy looked so tired and sad all on her own there. It
felt like her only chance had a better future. She was very open about how hard it all was, but one day I didn't feel like recording, just sitting on the side of the raised walkway and Bahajiquito with her feet in the hot, wet mud, watching people walk by, talking with her like I talked with any other friend about our owns and our families and the election that
was two months away. At that point, she was hanging out with a group of venezuelansin but they must have been separated because they've asked me about her since, just like so many other people, I have no idea where she is. It seems so sad to me that we've made a word where a woman who wants a future for our kids has to risk her life, maybe lose it for all liner just to come here and ask for help and then still be denied, and then if she gets here, to be chased, harried and harassed.
The situation there in Bolivia right now, we're practically economically well, we're in very bad shape. It's kind of like Venezuela, who motivates me to travel is more than anything work because there you can't wor you can't earn enough. You know, you have to work a lot, but they pay you very little, you know, so there's a lot of a lot of poverty. So that's what motivates me to keep going to work in another country, to migrate, because I also have a family, they have children, so that's what
motivates me to go to another country to work. It's a future for them, yes, a better future for them, for my children.
I asked her to share her journey.
How have been just to get this little wet village that welcomes people in the middle of the jungle?
Sal We left Friday morning to go to the jungle. Right, Well, let me explain, honestly, it's not easy. It's very hard because I've seen quite a few people. There are many pregnant women, there are women with children. There are elderly people, there are adults. There are people who come with crutches. There are people who break bones if their feet fall
off the edge. There are people who faint. There are quite a lot of people and have difficult situations because you have to climb a hill which takes at least eight hours. You have to climb. You have to carry your backpack, your food, your clothes, your supplies, everything you need for the journey, your water. So it's very hard, very hard. And you go up up and you arrive at what is the border of Panama with Columbia, which
is called the Flags. You get there and from there you have to go down, down, down, that takes at least another eight hours. You have to go down all day. On Friday, it took us all day. We had to sleep on the side on the edge of a river bank.
More or less.
There were about two hundred of us, if I'm not mistaken, we are about two hundred people, one hundred and fifty two hundred people traveling and sleeping there. We camped two hundred of us. Yes, there are children. There are babies two months old, one month old, three months old, one year old. So there are children, and they are really the ones who suffer the most on this journey. Yes, So that night we slept. The next day, which would be Saturday, we came back again at six in the morning.
We set off walking all day. We had to climb hills. We had to cross rivers that come up to your shoulders, up to your neck. They really come up. There are quite a few rivers. There's mud, there are mountains. There are those rocks that you slip, go and die. There are mountains that you have to climb. Of course, if you don't want to go meet God, you have to climb mountains that are slippery with stones, rocks, And you keep going like that all day downriver walking walking walking.
There are people who got left behind, There are people who came with children. They get stuck, they faint right. It's very hard, it's very difficult, and I know that all of us who immigrated here are doing the same thing. We are not bad people.
We are good people.
We do it for a purpose which is our family, right, our children. We need a good economy to support our family, our children.
But I think I asked for if that was, and kept her going.
Yes, I have a dream to go there because just like everyone else, like every person, I need to get ahead financially to provide for my children, to get ahead. So my dream has always been to be there. You know, I set that goal for myself before, but I didn't think it would be like this, so difficult, and once you're in there, well there's nothing you can do but get out, move forward, get out of there, because you can't go back, you can't retreat. You have to get out.
So my dream is that to provide for my children. I have two sons waiting for me, I have my family and my dad, my brothers. So for that reason we set off to go there. We are still going there.
The American dream is such a nebulous concept. Often it's used as a byword for exceptionalism and the idea that you the US offers a true meritocracy where hard working people can thrive in the marketplace of ideas that isn't true. But dreams don't have to be true, not they have to be that far fetched. Most people come into America no that work hard in the fields, cleaning homes, or
maybe as a lion cook. The hands and knees and backs will do the labor that allows for privileged Americans to still believe in their version of the American dream, the one where millionaires become billionaires. But the chance to work and be paid to speak, and not fear consequences, to be able to feed your kids enough they grow
up healthy and strong. Those are dreams too, the dreams that people are willing to risk their lives for, and dreams that I've seen them chase up and down mountains in the jungle and in the freezing cold and the baking heats of the deserts are mountains of California. But now even those who achieve their humble dreams are in danger of losing them. And tomorrow I want to talk about the end of the American Dream and the beginning of an American nightmare for millions and migrants who are
already here. Every time I heard the various versions that Woody Guthrie song, I think about the friends that made the jungle, who, as a song says, maybe went to heaven without any names.
So before I go, I want to share it whole.
Knowami's American Dream one more time, because I think it's important not to forget what the entire force of the most powerful state in the world has dedicated itself to destroying.
Why am I.
Me me me me me Amia aa Emi Mia.
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for it Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.