‘Hands Off’ protesters encouraged to join Lane County Immigrant Defense Network

Presenter: At the Hands Off! rally at Eugene City Hall April 5, a call to join the Lane County Immigrant Defense Network. Kriscia Rivas:

Kriscia Rivas (Lane County Immigrant Defense Network): Hi, everyone. My name is Kriscia. Just to give a brief introduction, I am a daughter of immigrants. My parents migrated to the U.S. from El Salvador in the ’80s.

For those of you that may not know: El Salvador suffered a war in the ‘80s, which unfolded when the Salvadoran government, backed by the U.S., attacked civilians during a peaceful protest in 1977. As many as 75,000 civilians were murdered by U.S.-supplied bullets and bombs.

[00:00:46] To say that my parents simply migrated, as if it were a calm, seasonal shift—like sparrows flying south for the winter—is a deep disservice. They didn’t just migrate. They survived war. They fled a homeland scarred by the brutality of poverty. They watched their friends die beside them as U.S. soldiers opened fire on a crowd of university students.

[00:01:11] Calling it simple migration erases the terror, the sheer will to live. They didn’t move—they escaped. They didn’t leave—they lost everything just to stay alive. Their story is not unique. I’ve heard many stories describing the vitality, the strength required of immigrants to leave everything behind and journey to an entirely new and scary place through impassable borders just to survive, to give their children better lives, to work night and day, to salir adelante, to press forward, to live.

[00:01:45] I’ve also heard countless stories about families being torn apart, children being forcibly separated from their parents, displaced in a world that doesn’t think they belong; mothers clutching photos of the children they may never see again; university students being punished, and even deported, for peacefully protesting genocide.

[00:02:07] We are here to say: Not anymore. We can’t sit around and watch this happen to our loved ones, our neighbors, our friends. So we’ve created the Lane County Immigrant Defense Network to protect the people this system tries to disappear.

[00:02:28] We aren’t just reacting. We are organizing. We are building a support team, a rapid response network that can respond as quickly as possible to immigration actions from this administration that impact our community.

[00:02:42] Some calls to action for the future include a rally on April 12 at the old Federal Building at noon. We’ll have a mass day of community outreach as well that everyone can join on April 19 and we have an organizing meeting on April 23 at First Christian Church.

[00:02:56] We believe in a future where families stay together, where communities feel safe, and where borders don’t define us. If you believe in that future too, then we need you to be a part of this movement as well. Thank you.

[00:03:14] Presenter: That’s Kriscia Rivas from the Lane County Immigrant Defense Network. Links to an online signup form are available at linktr.ee/PSLEugene or check out the Immigrant Defense Toolkit, at tinyURL.com/ ImmigrantDefenseToolkit.

Field recordings by Todd Boyle for KEPW 97.3, Eugene PeaceWorks Community Radio.