‘You are our voice’

 
Editor’s note: Maru Mora Villalpando is a mother and leader of the immigrant rights movement. She has been targeted for deportation because of her activities defending undocumented immigrants held in inhumane private deportation prisons. Here are some comments from Maru after attending the president’s State of the Union address in Washington, D.C.
“When Senator Cantwell’s office called me and invited me to join the State of the Union address in Washington, DC, I felt it was my opportunity to show Trump himself that we are not going to get intimidated, we are going to continue working. People in detention called me throughout the day and told me, “We cannot be there. But you have been the voice. We have selected you.”
“[At the address] it was easy to see how he [Trump] was pitting people against each other, low-income workers of either brown, Black communities, white communities, but also scapegoating my community, immigrant communities. It was really shocking to me to see how he utilized people’s tragedies to blame my community, my immigrant community, for those tragedies.
“Even though the majority of people there were clapping for him, I knew that people outside would not agree with them.”
(Some material for this statement is from Democracy, Now!)