Episode 78, 53 min listen
This week, we'll hear three different voices from my home state of South Carolina. Listen in as we hear from Laura Hornby with Welcome English Language Learners of Greenville and Interface Ministries, Matt Rollins of First Baptist Greenville, and Dulce López from the South Carolina ACLU. Each of these individuals personally lives out their commitment to loving their immigrant neighbors, providing pathways and opportunities for others to join them and act as well.
AUDIO PLAYER
You can access this episode wherever you listen to podcasts via our pod.link.
ADDITIONAL REFERENCES
Learn more about the organization Laura Hornby mentioned:
- Interface Ministries
- Learn more, volunteer, or support the iFace work in Greenville, SC
- Learn more about, support, or join the We Choose Welcome Community
Learn more about the organizations that Matt Rollins mentioned:
- Learn more about or worship with the First Baptist Church of Greenville, SC.
- Learn about or worship with the First Haitian Evangelical Wesleyan Church in Greenville, S.C.
Learn more about the South Carolina ACLU and join and support their work to protect immigrants' rights.
INTERVIEWEES' BIOs
Laura Hornby
Laura Hornby was born in Mexico, raised in rural west Tennessee, and now calls South Carolina home. She lives with her family in the Upstate, where refugee and immigrant friends have become an important part of her life. These relationships have also drawn her into advocating for common-sense immigration reform. She enjoys adventuring with her kids, getting to know her neighbors, and learning how to bake, paint, and garden.
Matt Rollins
Matt is the Minister of Community Engagement at First Baptist Greenville, where he has been on staff since 2003. A Greenville native, he has been married to his high school sweetheart, Rolyn, for 28 years, and they have three children - Jack (22, Furman '97), Celie Ann (19), a sophomore at Furman, and Lucy (15). While his three favorite hobbies - basketball, reading, and crossword puzzles - have not changed since high school, serving God and the Greenville community and being with his family are the most important things in his life
Dulce J. López
Dulce J. López is a passionate immigrant rights advocate, strategist, and community-builder based in South Carolina. She currently serves as the inaugural Immigrant Rights Advocacy Strategist at the ACLU of South Carolina, where she leads statewide rapid response efforts, Know Your Rights outreach, and coalition building to protect and empower immigrant communities. She brings her lived experiences to build trust, amplify the voices of others, and inspire action rooted in justice and dignity.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
-Introduction
Laura Hornby 00:00
People have different stories, and maybe that's the first thing to for people to understand, is that there is no one immigrant story, and whatever you think you know about somebody's reason for being here would only ever be a facet of the thousands of stories and reasons that have brought people from other parts of the world, here to the United States and here to Greenville, specifically, I see a lot of my American peers who think that everyone who's come chose to come, or came for some sort of like economic opportunity. And that is one story. People do choose to come for economic opportunity, and I firmly believe they should have the right and ability to do that. And also, there are people whose hearts are still in their home countries, who did not choose to leave, who were uprooted and forced to leave, and they are here, loving Greenville too, and investing in our community too.
Ame Sanders 01:16
This is the State of Inclusion Podcast, where we explore topics at the intersection of equity, inclusion, and community. In each episode, we meet people who are changing their communities for the better, and we discover actions that each of us can take to improve our own communities. I'm Ame Sanders, welcome.
Ame Sanders 01:40
In our last episode, we heard from Emmanuel Gomez Gonzalez with Siembra North Carolina. Siembra is an immigrants’ rights and advocacy organization. This week, we'll hear three different voices from my home state of South Carolina. The stories these individuals will share, like Emmanuel’s story, are emblematic of the ways that we can speak up and step up for our immigrant neighbors. Each of these individuals acts personally to live out their commitment to loving their neighbor, and they also provide pathways and opportunities for others to join them and act as well. Listen in as we hear from Laura Hornby with Welcome English Language Learners of Greenville and Interface Ministries. We'll also hear from Matt Rollins of First Baptist Greenville, and as well Dulce López from the South Carolina ACLU.
-Interview with Laura Hornby
So today, we're happy to welcome Laura Hornby. Laura, thank you for joining me today on the podcast.
Laura Hornby 02:45
I'm so grateful to be here. Thank you, Ame.
Ame Sanders 02:48
So Laura, tell me a little bit about the work you do and about your organization.
Laura Hornby 02:53
Yeah, thanks. I work for a national organization. It's a Christian nonprofit called Interface Ministries. So, interface as in those connections, right? We interface with international people who move into local communities across the US for various reasons, the majority of our work nationally actually centers on welcoming international students who come to the United States to study either as graduate or undergraduate students, and so we work to connect local volunteers through their churches, usually with international students who are interested in in having American friendships as they complete their course of study here, but in Greenville and in a few other cities, we've also pivoted to offer programs to a wider range of international neighbors, and my work here in Greenville focuses on our refugee community. So our cornerstone program is called WELL, or Welcoming English Language Learners, and we provide daytime English classes for refugee women. That program has existed in some form since 2017, and I've been the director since 2022. So, we've served women who come through the refugee program and are resettled to the area, and then are looking to learn or to improve their English skills. And this past school year, we also expanded into a really, really small English class for immigrant neighbors as well, so, people who didn't necessarily come through the refugee program, but are here and are interested in learning English as well.
Ame Sanders 04:42
Can you tell me a little bit about what brought you to this work?
Laura Hornby 04:47
Yes, it was entirely by accident. I am a nurse by training. I worked as a pediatric nurse for seven years and at PRISMA Health before that. And in 2017 and 18. The global refugee crisis was really becoming something that the world was aware of. So the number of people who've been forcibly displaced from their homes, I think, has doubled in the last, I don't know, 10 years, and it keeps increasing year over year over year, until there are now over 123 million people worldwide who have been forcibly displaced from their homes, and a certain number of those qualify as refugees. That's the highest number in recorded history, including immediately following World War II. So there's something that's happening all over the world, and I think that's important for us to understand immigration here in the United States, that it's actually part of a much, much bigger scenario. But that just came on my radar through several different routes, including my sister, who did an internship in Washington, DC, working with refugees. And then she actually is the one who came back to Greenville and said, you know, there are refugees here in Greenville. And I had had no idea, so I became involved as a volunteer with one of the resettlement agencies. So a refugee comes in, their case is assigned to a nonprofit organization who are then responsible for the logistics of finding them housing, employment, and education. I also became involved with a separate ministry that was providing these English classes for refugee women, not as a teacher, because I'm not an English teacher, I'm a nurse, but I was just providing childcare on my days off and covid happened and interrupted most things, as you know, but covid coincided with the initial closure of the refugee program during President Trump's first administration. And so for four years, three years at least, there were really no new refugees coming. And so the classes had become really small, because, as you would expect and hope, the women who had been coming after being in the classes for three, four, or five years, they didn't need English class anymore. They became independent and were working and driving, bought houses, and so we only had just these very few students left in 2021 when the director of the program moved to North Carolina, and there were like, three or four students and three or four volunteers, and the director of the program came to each of the volunteers, including me, and said, we're going to need somebody to just run this. You know, it's so small, but it still needs somebody to kind of head it up and be the contact person. Would you do it? And all four of us, including me, said no. But just a few weeks before that happened, I had actually moved with my family into the neighborhood, and so I now live a block away from there, and so I was really close. And so the director showed up at my front door one day with the key in her hand, and she said, if you guys are going to keep meeting, somebody at least has to unlock the door, and you live a block away, so here you go, and she drops the keys in my hand, and that's how I became the director of this program, which a few short weeks after she left, started to grow again, because refugees started to enter the United States again. And we've quickly found that the previous director had had correctly identified this niche of students, of a potential student who is typically a wife and a mom in a newly resettled family, and often because of multiple reasons, the husbands and the families go to work very quickly, and then the older children are enrolled in school very quickly, and then the women are left at home with the work of homemaking and with the young children who aren't old enough to go to school yet. And there really are not English classes outside of our program that really meet their needs in terms of transportation, childcare, daytime classes at low cost or free, and that also provide a sense of of community, because we often say at our classes that English learning happens and it's important, but it's actually the community piece that matters more, and so it kind of grew unexpectedly. We went from four students to 12 in 2022, and then from 12 to 24, and then from 24 to 50. This past school year, we served 57 women and 30 children from, I think, 15 different unique ethnic groups from around the world, and we came under the umbrella of Interface Ministries in 2023, and it's been a great fit. So sometimes I still look around and I'm like, how did this happen? This was not in my life plan, but I love it so much.
Ame Sanders 09:55
So you've given up nursing to do this.
Laura Hornby 10:00
Yeah, I still have my nursing license. I got certified in public health, and so there are a lot of intersections and ways that that background knowledge helps me kind of meet some of those needs outside of English class, like we talked about. But yeah, I'm no longer working in the medical field, and I do this full-time.
Ame Sanders 10:15
Now. You've alluded to this already, but it sounds like you've seen a lot of changes over the years that you've been doing this. Can you comment just a little bit on the kinds of changes that you've seen and the environment that you see now?
Laura Hornby 10:29
Yeah, I think of two different sorts of categories of change over time. One is in the populations that we serve, and that just happens, sort of naturally. There are a lot of factors that go into decisions about which groups of people are resettled to the United States overall, and then where they go once they're here. And so what started as two, pretty much just two populations of people who are refugees from Myanmar and from Congo, has really diversified over the past 10 years to, like I said, 15 different groups. So it's expanded in that sense. And then the second type of change over time has been in the number of people admitted. So, prior to 2016, the refugee admissions program itself really was not a political or controversial program. It had bipartisan support from the administrations dating back to Jimmy Carter, and the president in each administration, each year gets to set the cap, the maximum number for people who are admitted. And you can look at there's trends. It goes up and down, but is maintained by administrations from both parties, until President Trump closed it, essentially closed it, in 2016, and so then it remained closed. It reopened for this window from 2021 to January, 20th of this year, and has since closed again. So the flow, the type, the places people come from, and then whether they're able to actually come at all, are the two big changes. And then public opinion about the whole thing has shifted, obviously, to where it also had a general kind of bipartisan support from the public, until 2015, 16, and 17, when it became this sort of hot-button issue. So people sometimes will, especially now recently, have commented on it being a brave thing for me, for our volunteers to be engaged with this work and with this population. And I usually tell people, well, it wasn't. it diidn’t feel particularly brave when I started. It has gotten harder in some ways, and there are factors that we have to think about now that I never anticipated having to think about. But I'm here. I'm not going anywhere.
Ame Sanders 12:58
Being brave, with that, I just want to clarify, because you have concerns or fears of the family or your political bravery, or what kind of bravery are you talking about?
Laura Hornby 13:12
I think when people say that, they well, they probably mean a few different things. But well yeah, and so this depends on the asker, maybe, as to where they anticipate there being risk. I think usually people mean that it's, it's, you know, to work with a population against whom a lot of public opinion has sort of turned. So it might not be a very popular or very well understood work among my American peers or neighbors. For me, I think that doesn't bother me at all. The place that requires a little bit of courage sometimes is just walking with people who are now unsafe, potentially in a place that they came to for safety and just the way our lives have become intertwined, where my kids lives have become intertwined with theirs, I think there's an aspect of, I don't know, just of commitment that is required to keep showing up in a place that feels like it's getting harder and harder, not for me personally, but for the people whose lives matter to me. I don't know if that makes sense.
Ame Sanders 14:27
It makes perfect sense. And the other thing that your comments all remind me of is how important it is for people to realize how many different people have come into our community to find safety and security and community and home, and where, as you've said, where they all came from, and how they're making their way in, you know, little Greenville, for example, Greenville is not so little anymore, but still pretty small, comparatively speaking, and yet we have this beautiful community of people who have chosen to make their homes for themselves and their families here,
Laura Hornby 15:06
And they love Greenville, and they love the United States for all the same reasons that you and I appreciate it, right? They all love how green Greenville is. That's something people comment on all the time. There's so many trees. It's so beautiful. In the vast majority of cases, my students would tell you that people here in general have been very friendly to them and very kind. And again, they're fleeing persecution. To by definition be a refugee, you have to have proven versus the United States, or versus the United Nations, and then to the United States that you have a credible fear of persecution in your home country. And so they appreciate the freedoms and the rights and the privileges that any American does, and they value America because of that, and they want its good and the good of the communities that they've become part of.
Ame Sanders 16:02
You've already kind of taken us into a little bit of the relationships that you have with these families. But maybe, is there a story or something that comes to mind when you think about the work that you do and why it's so important?
Laura Hornby 16:19
Yeah, there's a million. It's so hard to pick one story, but typically, throughout the school year, twice a week, we're gathering with about 20 American volunteers and 40 to 50 women who have had this shared experience of being resettled as refugees. And they come from not just a diverse background in terms of places, but also in terms of their life experiences. So we have women who are college graduates, who were working professionals in their home countries before they were suddenly forced to take up their whole life and leave and many of them, most of them, spent an intervening number of years, from 7 to 15 to 20 to 30 years in a refugee camp in this kind of intermediate holding area before being resettled here to Greenville. We have other women who had never been to school, who never learned to read or write, even in their first language. And so one story that comes to mind is the lady for whom that was true. She is just this really incredible and efficient homemaker, mom to her five children, cook, and caterer. She's got so many gifts, and she is pre-literate, so she never learned to read or write, and had never been to school. And so she had been registered by some volunteers to come to our class for the first time two years ago, and they called me the day before her friends did, and said she's so afraid she doesn't want to come because she's never been to school before, and she just is really, really not sure that she's going to be able to make it, you know. But I was able to encourage them to then encourage her to say, You're not going to be the only one for whom this is true. First, our classes are broken up into different levels. We've got women who are learning at the same level that you are, that she will be. And so she did the bravest thing, and she came that first day, and she did not stop smiling the whole time or for the weeks thereafter, and even before she learned any other English words, she knew how to say thank you, and so she would just walk down the hallways smiling and saying, Thank you, thank you. Thank you to every person that she passed. And when I stop and think about, I mean, she's probably 50 years old, and that was the first time she had ever been in in a formal educational environment like to her English classes, is school, and it's the first school she's ever been to, and she has brought so much life and light and laughter and delight to our program, We wouldn't be the same place without her. I just can't really comprehend the courage that it would have taken for her to show up that first day. You know, I think about that a lot, but I'm infinitely grateful that she did. Yeah, that's one story.
Ame Sanders 19:37
Oh, thank you for sharing that. So, Laura, in addition to your work with IFace, I know you do some other things in the community and nationally, in particular, around advocacy. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how you see people across the country getting involved in this issue?
Laura Hornby 19:54
Yeah, thanks. I also work a few hours a week for a National grassroots advocacy network called We Choose Welcome, and it's a grassroots network in that it's a bunch of people across the country who are just everyday citizens, but who are wanting to be engaged, equipped, and educated on issues that affect their immigrant neighbors. So there are just a few of us who are staff members, and we do local kind of grassroots network building in our own communities, and then a lot of national communications on social media and through our email newsletter. Our goal is eventually our long term goal would be bipartisan immigration reform, and we think that's important, because all of these issues that are impacting the immigrant neighbors that we love in our own communities have a local aspect, and they also have a national facet to them. Immigration is one of the places where I think you see the most immediate impacts of national-level decisions on your next-door neighbor. You know, a lot of a lot of other issues that are so important kind of trickle down over time, but we've gotten to the state where we are in terms of immigration in the United States, because it's been a generation or more since we had any sort of meaningful additions or edits to our immigration laws, and the world has changed significantly in that time, so we need to update those laws, and we choose welcome again works to just equip Everyday advocates. It tends to be women, often women of faith, although that's not a prerequisite at all, to engage their representatives on these issues, on behalf of their immigrant neighbors.
Ame Sanders 21:51
So people can look in their local community to see if they can find a We Choose Welcome Network in their area and join that if they feel that this is the right fit.
Laura Hornby 22:01
Starting place is actually our national, we've got a website and an Instagram page, and you can connect with us there, and then we put out advocacy tools relatively frequently. We have a new one called: Dear America. Is this what we wanted? Which just encourages people to pick up the phone and to let their representatives know that while Americans do want a functional immigration system, and it's a safe and secure border and immigration reform what we do not want, and I really believe this is true for the majority of Americans, and you can see it in new polling numbers. You know, 62% of Americans now don't agree with the current way the administration is handling immigration. What we do not want is contributing members of our communities being arrested off the streets by masked individuals, right? And we have to say that out loud if we think it's ever going to change. So yeah, you can connect with us nationally, and then through that, it sort of trickles down into local communities.
Ame Sanders 23:01
Thank you for sharing that as well, and I take away a lot of lessons from what you've already said, but it leads me to another question, which is, what do you wish that people in our community understood about the local immigrant and refugee community?
Laura Hornby 23:17
So it's a really big umbrella, right? And people have different stories, and maybe that's the first thing to for people to understand, is that there is no one immigrant story, and whatever you think you know about somebody's reason for being here would only ever be a facet of the thousands of stories and reasons that have brought people from other parts of the world here to the United States and here to Greenville, specifically. Since so much of my work is focused with the refugee population and then also with those who are here seeking asylum, both of which have to match the same standard eventually, of proving credible fear of persecution in their home countries. I see a lot of my American peers who think that everyone who's come chose to come or came for some sort of economic opportunity, and that is one story. People do choose to come for economic opportunity, and I firmly believe they should have the right ability to do that. And also, there are people whose hearts are still in their home countries, who did not choose to leave, who were uprooted and forced to leave, and they are here, loving Greenville too, and investing in our community too, and now that they're here across the board, all of my students would tell you that their hopes and dreams are not necessarily for themselves in terms of a lot of success or advancement or anything, but they have dreams. Things for their children and their children. They dream for their children of integrating into the American community and giving back and contributing. We've got one dad who will tell you his primary goal in life right now is to raise his four daughters to be American taxpayers one day. So yeah, the diversity of backgrounds and the diversity of reasons that people have for coming, and then the depth of commitment and love that those people generally have for this place, and that's something that we share in common, right? If, we love our own communities, I think sometimes people think that that means we have to protect them from anything new or from anyone new. But what would it look like to actually be brought together by a shared love for this community and then to work mutually for its good? I think there's a lot of opportunity there that we often miss.
Ame Sanders 26:01
Thank you so much for joining me today.
Thanks for having me.
-Interview with Matt Rollins
Matt Rollins 26:08
My name is Matt Rollins. I'm the Minister of community engagement at First Baptist Greenville, and I've been on staff at the church for a long time, but I've been in this role of the outward facing Minister of Missions and Partnerships and Community Engagement for almost three years. Our journey to wanting to intentionally be a welcoming space for immigrants, for refugees, for anyone who is being impacted by policy or feeling anxious or scared about the current climate probably started, you know, decades ago, and with other issues such as being proactive or on the more progressive front of having women in leadership at our church. We had women as deacons in the 70s, which was at the forefront, as far as Baptists are concerned, Southern Baptists is concerned. And, we were ordaining women to ministry in the 80s, and pretty soon left the Southern Baptist Convention in the mid to late 90s. And from that point on, we really felt a lot freer to be the Baptists that we felt we were being called to be here in Greenville. And that led us to, quite frankly, be more open-minded and welcoming on other issues as well, and to really be more proactive than reactive. And so by the time we get to the current decade, wanting to be a safe and welcoming space for immigrant families, refugee families, or families who were unsure of their status, or even maybe they are sure, but they still don't feel welcome.
It was a natural outflow of some of those earlier conversations and decisions that we had already made for us to say, yes, we want to be allies in this conversation as well over the last few years, I wanted to make sure that we were at least being seen as a potential ally to different organizations. I would reach out and say, Hey, First Baptist is here. We have some really compassionate people who are church members. And we have space. If you ever need space, maybe it's to fill out naturalization forms. And in a larger space, we have a large fellowship hall. I was offering things like that to organizations like the Hispanic Alliance, staying in contact with Lutheran Services of Carolinas, and beginning a relationship with World Relief. Again, I was very pleased at how smoothly all of that was going and it was because of some of the earlier tough decisions we had made and stances that we had made on more social justice issues.
So we currently have a really fantastic relationship and partnership with a local Haitian American church. It's called First Haitian Evangelical Wesleyan, and it's in Fountain Inn, and we are now in the process of forming a joint committee between our two churches that will begin meeting in a few weeks, and we're just going to meet to talk and try to figure out what it's going to look like to be partners and allies to each other and walk together here in the Upstate. And a lot of that will be as an ally to a church that is operating in in scary times and with lots of anxiety because of some of the immigration policies that have shifted and become more intensified in the last few months. But it did not start that way.
We first heard of this church through one of our church members, Sarah Mansbach, who is passionate about literacy and has been working diligently for over 15 years in Haiti, off and on, through an organization that she founded called Partners in Literacy Haiti. And she's been there numerous times. And we have helped fund some book centers in Haiti through her organization. But when it became too dangerous for her to go down there a few years ago, she turned her attention to First Haitian Evangelical Wesleyan in Fountain Inn and then she emailed me and said, Hey, Matt, remember when you used to help me with some book centers down in Haiti? Well, I can't go down there anymore, but we've got potential for another book center at a Haitian American church here in the Upstate. And she introduced us to, or me to, the leadership there.
We hosted something for them one evening in our parlor, and it looked like it was the blossoming of a normal intra-congregational partnership. We had them, then they had us over for lunch one afternoon. But as some of the policies around immigrants here in the upstate have tightened and become a little more confusing and a little more intense, we have started to meet with them as allies, in addition to partners, because we want to make sure they know that we're in their corner. We want to make sure that all of their rights are observed and also that when they are on our campus, that they are safe and free and welcome, and that we will make sure, to the best of our abilities, that all their rights are observed by law enforcement.
That also kind of dovetails with our Baptist denomination, which is, as I mentioned earlier, we're not with the Southern Baptist Convention anymore, but we are with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. In January or February, when sensitive spaces were identified as locations where ICE or immigration officials could come in without a warrant, our denomination sued to have that change paused, and one there was a stay, so that our churches, in our denomination, again, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, our houses of worship remain a sensitive space, and a warrant is required for any law enforcement to come in to seek someone that they are wanting to know if there are any immigrants or undocumented people. And that's not to say that we are in the business of hiding or anything like that, but we want to make sure that in our space, all rights will be observed, and they've got every chance they can to exist here without fear. So we were able to share that with them, and we've hosted a few events. We've hosted a baptism for them. We had them over for a lunch celebration recently, and we also hosted an expo for them, and they prepared some delicious food for us as well.
In addition, we hosted an immigration and faith justice workshop in May, and part of that workshop was to interview their pastor, and I asked their pastor questions about what it was like to pastor and shepherd an anxious flock, what was going on in the pastoral care ministry that he and his staff or volunteers In their ministry that is different than it was maybe a year ago. And we got a lot of good pastoral insight into pastoral concerns that, quite frankly, at a very affluent white Baptist Church, I'm not having to deal with those in pastoral meetings. I'm not having to give pastoral counseling and guidance, or listen to people who are looking over their shoulder wondering if the next person to tap them on the shoulder is going to be an agent or someone wanting to see their documentation, whether those people are here on a valid or legal visa or not, or documented or not. The anxiety in that house of worship and that faith community is elevated, and he is, as their pastor, probably dealing with it on a personal level as well. But, also having to be there and help carry the burden for his congregants in a way that he probably hadn't had to in a long time, and in a way that I've never had to as well in my 21 years on staff at First Baptist
Ame Sanders 36:02
So Matt, what do you see has been the benefit of this commitment to inclusion and welcoming that has happened in your church, not just with immigration but over time? How have you seen that change your church and your members?
Matt Rollins 36:21
Yes, good question. I love that angle, and we have benefited just by knowing them and getting to know them and getting outside of our bubble. So anytime we can get outside of our bubble, at First Baptist is a blessing and a gift, and our friends at First Haitian have offered that to us. We have a lot of our church is just now hearing about the partnership. It's been in development stages for a few months, and now we have an official joint committee that is going to be meeting in a few months. But up until that it's really just been getting together with them, and having sharing a meal, which you can't get more Baptist-y or church-y than sharing stories around a meal. And hearing things that they are they're celebrating.
You know, we already know that they're all a little on edge, maybe, but hearing what they're elevating and what they're excited about was fun for me, personally. One time, we passed around little slips of paper, and we said, What are you hoping to see develop with our partnership between our two churches and the issue of status, or documented status, was not really on there as much as I thought it really was. We want to get to know each other. We'd love to have some shared prayer time. We want to get our youth experiencing events and youth trips together, and let's have more good food together, and so that was really great to see as well. And also, the prospect of our children and youth getting to know them has our youth staff and our children's staff kind of excited as well, because what a what a gift to the children, to not only learn about how another a church of a different denomination and a different size operates, and how they do their ministries, but to actually participate with them and exchange culture on the fantastic and wise levels of children's ministry and youth ministry. We're excited about that as well.
-Interview with Dulce López
Ame Sanders 38:50
So we'd like to welcome Dulce. López. Dulce is the Immigrants’ Rights Advocacy Strategist with the South Carolina ACLU. Welcome Dulce.
Dulce López 39:01
Thank you, Ame, thank you for this space.
Ame Sanders 39:03
I am so excited that the ACLU has created your role. Tell me about your role at the ACLU.
Dulce López 39:05
So I am also excited about this role, not because I have it, but it's because this role is the first of its kind at the South Carolina ACLU. So my role is immigrant rights advocacy strategist, and this is a role that seeks to support immigrant rights in the state of South Carolina. It is not something that we have seen before, someone that is dedicated specifically to supporting immigrants. And my role is to build and coordinate statewide strategies to protect and uplift communities. So this can be done through coalitions, rapid response efforts, and just advocacy in general. Without obviously forgetting to center the voices of those who are most affected.
Ame Sanders 40:00
You said this is an interesting and important role, and it makes me sort of wonder, what makes you choose to do this work?
Dulce López 40:07
Well, I am an immigrant myself, so this work is simply personal to me. My family is mixed status, so they're also affected. My neighbors, my friends. I think that this work should not just pertain immigrants, though. It should pertain to everyone. Everyone should care about these issues. Immigrants’ rights are human rights. We see this with our neighbors, with our friends, people in our communities who drive our economy, our culture, our lives. There are caretakers, business owners, entrepreneurs, or doctors. So I think when our community is being attacked, it shouldn't just be an issue of immigrants, it should be an issue of all the community in general that we should be concerned about these attacks.
Ame Sanders 40:58
So what are some of the things that you and the ACLU team hope to accomplish across South Carolina in the coming months, in line with this new position that they've created?
Dulce López 41:10
The main thing that we hope to accomplish is to build coalitions. We believe that there is power in community. So there are a lot of advocates throughout the state who are pushing to protect immigrant rights. There is no doubt about that. One example, of course, is Village Engage, who are uplifting faith leaders who want to make a change and want to lead with compassion and love. However, you know, the issue is that people are not well-connected. Sometimes people work in silos, and that work is not uplifted. So our main goal right now is to build coalitions so that people and their work are uplifted. One of the things that we're also focusing on is getting rid of harmful policies like 287(g). Som 287(g) is an agreement between local law enforcement and immigration to carry out immigration policies and enforcement. These policies are super harmful to our community. Our community lives in fear. They don't report crime anymore, but also it wastes a lot of taxpayers’ dollars because our local enforcement should not be carrying out these policies. They should be focusing on keeping our community safe and not carrying out immigration enforcement. Additionally, we are working on building rapid response networks where we support our community, we bring resources to them, and we react in the face of adversity, such as the Ladsen raid or the raid at the West Union restaurant, where these two instances were reported as criminal investigations. But from what we saw from it, it was immigrant people who were out, either enjoying themselves out for one weekend, or it was workers who were in the middle of cooking a meal for someone else, and they were taken from their employment. They were taken from their place of enjoyment. And this was just masked as a criminal investigation, but the reality of it was that people were taken from a place they did not expect to find, law enforcement, immigration, immigration law enforcement. And then the other thing we want to work on, of course, is the, well, we said, the 287(g), the rapid response and the coalitions. That's the most important for us right now to build that community power amongst the people who want to make an impact for immigrants.
Ame Sanders 43:34
I know you've been an activist for a while, but it must be incredible to have the power of the ACLU behind you now, not just in South Carolina, but nationally as well, because I know we all benefit from the work that the ACLU does on behalf of our rights, all of our rights, both in South Carolina and nationally. And I'm thinking specifically of the work around protecting birthright citizenship.
Dulce López 44:01
Yes, so one of the reasons why I decided to work for the ACLU was because of the large-scale impact that I think I can make in my community. Prior to working for the ACLU, I was working for South Carolina Legal Services, so I was already seeing firsthand the lack of access to resources in the community. It was very rewarding doing my job for almost five years at South Carolina Legal Services, but with the ACLU, I saw an opportunity to advocate freely without restrictions for the community and to offer them resources that I couldn't have otherwise offered. The ACLU is doing amazing work here in South Carolina, but also nationally and in other states like you mentioned. One of the things that they're right now working on is birthright citizenship, and how this presidency doesn't believe that a person born in the US is a US, legal citizen. When that's basically what. It says it in our constitution. So when we see these types of things, we shouldn't just worry about, you know, immigrants and the first or second generation citizens. We should worry about our country as a whole, because these types of policies or legislation that the President is trying to enact really are harmful for all of us. Because right now, it's birthright citizenship, but later on, it'll be something else. And who says that it will not be like, you know, right now, he's saying five years, but who says it's not going to be 100 years or 150 years that you have to prove your connection to this country? So I think we should all be concerned about what is going on.
Ame Sanders 45:48
Being able to take legal action is critical as well. So it gives an additional, I would say, power to your advocacy and action work that is difficult to match anywhere else. So that's for sure, a benefit. The ACLU has a lot of resources for allies and immigrants in our community. What are some of the kinds of resources that the ACLU might have for us to help us be better allies?
Dulce López 46:16
Yes. So the ACLU does have a lot of resources, and we're working on creating more resources. So one of the things you or any of the allies want to reach out to for are, Know Your Rights trainings. We have materials in English, Spanish, and other languages. We also have a legal observer program training, where we essentially train people on how to be there as an ally. Let's say at a protest or rally, they can show up for the community and take notes as far as, like, what are the things going on? Like, sometimes we see that there are violations of people's First Amendment rights. So those are important, that legal observers show up and share with the ACLU these violations, so we see what is the pattern, and what is it that we can do legally. And then, finally, we also work with other organizations, so we have access to referring people to other resources. And that's important, because when there is a gap in access to resources, we should be able to cover that in some way or capacity. So there are a lot of things that we're also working on. Like I mentioned, we're working on creating a Rapid Response Network, and then coming soon, we will hopefully have an emergency preparedness guide for immigrants so that they can know what to do in case of an emergency. So there are many things in the works as well.
Ame Sanders 47:41
Those are great resources for us to be aware of. So for those of us who are like me, who want to just be better allies and better support our immigrant neighbors, do you have any advice for us, things we should do, or even things we shouldn't do?
Dulce López 47:56
Yes, I want to say that even for non-allies, because sometimes we find ourselves in the position that we're advocates and we're directly affected. So we see it from our personal experience, and then those who are not even affected. What we need to learn to do is to listen to the people. Listen to those most impacted, the immigrant workers, our waiters, our parents, our youth, our business owners, all of them know how this is impacting them the most. So what we can do is listen to them and their stories so that we know how to show up for them. Because we cannot just show up if we don't know what is it that they need, right? And then after that, after listening to them, showing up. You know, actually in person, physically to these things, so that there is the visual of we're in this together. And then also, like, sometimes people cannot show up in person, physically, because of work, physical restrictions, transportation, or whatnot. But you can show up in other ways. It can be like helping someone fill out a form, helping someone with money. Sometimes it's, you know, it sounds bad to say it, but like some organizations, even like the ACLU, need money to support the work that we do, and there are different ways to show up. It can be through money, through sharing a post on social media, to talking to your Senator, to sending a letter, to sending a postcard. It's an infinite amount of things that you can do to show up as an ally.
Ame Sanders 49:31
Thank you for those ideas, and of course, for the important reminder to listen first and become aware of what the community we want to support really needs, and what can be beneficial for them. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you want to mention?
Dulce López 49:47
I want to share how you know, even as an immigrant myself, that I taught myself English, so you know, I see it firsthand, and this is super important to me. But sometimes for other people who haven't experienced what an immigrant is like in the US need a reminder that Immigrant Justice is about all of us, because immigrants are our neighbors, our teachers, our restaurant owners, and this is a place that we all seek to call home, and when we do that, we hope that you know these policies are welcoming to us. So I just invite everyone to think critically about their neighbors, and just not even critically, but more compassionately about those who walk around us and are part of our communities. And when you think about the work that they're doing, the laughs, the joy, the food, the economy that they're contributing to think about the policies that are harming them in their lives, and they're keeping them from feeling like they're welcome in this country. We need to think about that and see, how is it that we can support our neighbors and be compassionate and have some empathy, because that's really what we need. We just need compassion and empathy.
Ame Sanders 51:07
Thank you, Dulce. Thank you so much for joining me.
Dulce López 51:08
Thank you. Thank you, Ame.
-Conclusion
Ame Sanders 51:10
In our last episode, Emanuel reminded us that if immigration justice is important to you, then act now. Don't wait. The individuals and organizations we featured in these two episodes, allies in action, have shown us ways to step up, and they have truly modeled what it means to be a neighbor and friend to immigrants and refugees in our community. Whether that is joining an ICE watch, teaching English, providing childcare on your day off, advocating for change, joining with others as part of a coalition, or simply being a good neighbor, there are many opportunities to speak up and step up for our immigrant neighbors. The most important thing we can take away in this work is just how important it is to respectfully listen to the needs of the immigrant community and then step up to meet those needs with empathy and compassion. Then, we just might be surprised to find we have more in common than we imagine. After all, as Laura reminded us, no matter where we came from, we all call this beautiful shared community home.
This has been the State of Inclusion Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, the best compliment for our work is your willingness to share the podcast or discuss these ideas with others. If you'd like to hear more about the practice of building an inclusive and equitable community, head over to theinclusivecommunity.com and sign up for our newsletter.
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Thanks so much for listening and join us again next time.
CONTRIBUTORS
Guest: Laura Hornby, Matt Rollins, Dulce López
Host: Ame Sanders
Social Media and Marketing Coordinator: Kayla Nelson
Podcast Coordinator: Emma Winiski
Sound: Uros Nikolic