Migrant Workers Honor Their Past, Present and Future

“We’re promoting love in the City of Roses,” said Jose Moreno, director of the Pasadena Community Job Center, outside Pasadena City Hall on Monday evening.

“Especially now, when we see less TV cameras here,” said Moreno, “we know that love and solidarity will keep us through. We know that this recovery and this rebuilding is going to take years, but that’s only if we unite.

“We are all human,” continued Moreno. “We are all roses—Black, Brown, Asian, Palestinian, we’re all human.”

In what was billed as a demonstration of solidarity for the migrant community, and to honor the memory of United Farm Workers founder César Chávez, nearly two hundred Pasadena migrant workers dressed in orange T-shirts gathered at City Hall Monday.

Along with supporters, friends, and City Hall workers, they joyfully heard prayers, danced, sang, marched and celebrated themselves, even as they feared for their safety.

Speakers included State Senator Sasha Renée Pérez, activist Brandon Lamar, Pasadena City Councilmember Rick Cole, and PUSD Board Member Scott Harden. Both Cole and Harden personally thanked the local migrant workers for their continuing service to the Pasadena community.

“Thank you for your work, for your service, and your example,” Cole told the workers in Spanish.

A local band performed from a trailer stage in front of City Hall, as participants formed lines and circles and danced as they chanted, “Solo La Pueblo Salve Al Pueblo (“Only the village can save the village).”

The event was jointly sponsored by the Pasadena Branch NAACP, the National Day Labor Organizing Network (NDLON), Pasadenans Organizing for Progress (POP!), CHIRLA, and the Pasadena Community Job Center.

Members of the Pasadena Job Center were also some of the first community members and groups to respond to the Eaton Fires, cleaning streets and fire areas, and organizing food and clothing giveaways, while the fire was still burning in the hills above Altadena.

State Senator Pérez also spoke at the event, telling the participants that the State Legislature is working on immigrant protections, “especially for students and our youth,” Said Pérez, “We’re looking at assistance that we can provide to folks that are impacted by the fires.”

She pointed out that many local residents are afraid to ask for help from FEMA, in fear that their undocumented relatives may be seized and deported by ICE.

“So,” she continued, “We’re (also) looking at creating a fund that would be for those who are not FEMA aid-eligible, to provide them with cash assistance. We know that there are a number of folks that are eligible for FEMA, but are afraid. This is something that is really critical. We’ve talked to people who are now living in their cars.”

Pérez also noted that many school districts are experiencing state funding issues because of low enrollments.

“Their families are afraid to send them to school because they are afraid of deportations. It’s a very scary time for families.”

According to Pérez, there is currently State legislation so that if immigration personnel are on local school campuses, parents, school staff, students and faculty are immediately notified. She added that even university faculty now fear being deported, even if they have a Green Card.

“This is a very scary time,” Pérez said.

Finally, NDLON founder Pablo Alvarado reminded the crowd 35 years ago that the US created the Temporary Protective Status, for those from war-torn countries or victims of natural disasters, and stopped a a Trump executive order that would have taken deportation protections away from Venezuelan immigrants.

“That order currently protects about a million people right now,” he explained. Thirty-five years ago, said Alvarado, the US was funding a civil war in Nicaragua and El Salvador and in Guatemala. Millions fled to the United States, asking the US government to recognize them as war victims, but the US government refused, said Alvarado, because “that would be accepting complicity.”

So thousands of Salvadorans drove to Washington D.C. to demonstrate in a “love-in.” “Something they had never done before,” he said.

The status that they won back then, would, 35 years later, be benefiting Ukrainian, Afghan, and Syrian war victims, said Alvarado.

“That is what happens when humble people show the way,” he said.