Undocumented and Unafraid: Stories from the Front Lines of the Fight for Migrant Justice
w/Youth activists Claudia Muñoz and Luis Leon
6:30pm-8:30pm. UW Ethnic Cultural Center, Unity Room, 3931 Brooklyn Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98105.
Claudia Muñoz and Luis Leon, members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance and DreamActivist.org, on a national speaking tour, will be visiting the University of Washington to speak about their cutting edge work around immigration and the use of direct action by undocumented immigrants. Both organizations were recently featured in the June 21st episode of This American Life (listen here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/498/the-one-thing-youre-not-supposed-to-do ).
Claudia Muñoz was born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico until the age of 16. Due to economic hardship and increased drug cartel activity in her hometown of Santa Catarina, Claudia was forced to relocate to Austin, TX with her older sister in 2001. In Texas, Claudia attended high school and eventually college at Prairie View A&M University from where she graduated in 2009. Claudia was involved with in-state tuition fights and other local and national issues affecting her and her community since roughly 2004. In early 2013, Claudia co-founded the Texas Undocumented Youth Alliance, which focuses on fighting deportations and working on other issues that affect the local undocumented community. In 2012, Claudia’s nephew was placed in deportation proceedings. After seeing her own family almost torn apart, Claudia decided to participate in the NIYA infiltration of Calhoun County Jail, where roughly 150 immigrants are housed. During the 19 days that she was detained, Claudia found many issues, including lack of proper medical attention for detainees, intimidation tactics used by ICE and jail officers to get detainees to sign Voluntary Departure, violation of the Morton low-priority memo, among many others. Claudia is non-DACA eligible but was eventually released thanks to community pressure. She now lives in Texas where she continues organizing with the TUYA and NIYA.
Luis Leon was born in Veracruz, Mexico. At 5 years old, his family moved to North Carolina where he lived until finishing high school in 2011. Not able to afford college due to his immigration status, Luis’ family decided that he would go back to México on his own and continue his educational career there. After he received the news that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was passed, he resolved to come back to the US and return to his home. In July of 2013 Luis got the opportunity to be part of the Dream 9. This group of undocumented youths, who had been deported because of their immigration status, attempted to cross the US border demanding to be let in on humanitarian grounds. Along with the rest of the Dream 9, he was detained and spent 15 days in Eloy Detention center. Through the organizing of NIYA and other organizations, he and the rest of the Dream 9 were released and allowed to return to their homes in the United States.
For more information, call 206-543-7946 or e-mail hbcls@uw.edu . Sponsored by the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies; the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity; the UW Diversity Research Institute; UW Latin American and Caribbean Studies; UW Law, Societies and Justice; and UW American Ethnic Studies.
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