Tag Archives: open borders

Intro for faculty member who began speaking (off-camera) “... next speaker is an NYU Professor” (CHEERS/applause)

“Thank you all for being here. Do I really need this megaphone? You can’t hear me without this? ... Well, first of all, I want to say how exciting the energy is in this room and (cheers) to underscore how important it is for our President to declare NYU a sanctuary campus. It’s so important symbolically but it’s actually incumbent upon us as students faculty and staff at this university to MAKE this campus a sanctuary campus without (my video begins) waiting for permission. (cheers)”

Video of faculty speech: Of course, they BELIEVE these ALTERNATIVE facts (they have no choice)

Transcription of her speech:

“Right now there are 500,000 unauthorized workers in  New York City. 99.9% of those do not have criminal records, other than committing the crime of having to cross the border without documentation. These unauthorized workers as you’ve heard, time and again, if you bought yesterday at whole foods, if you bought, you know, a garment of some local designer in So Ho or Brooklyn, these are the people who are sewing your garments and picking your  fruit. It’s the reason why you have ENTIRE indigenous communities on Long Island from (? Chapa and Xauacca and D?… ?) picking our vegetables and our fruits. And it’s why we get those vegetables and fruits so cheaply because, indeed, they ARE paid less than you would have to pay a person with documents.

This doesn’t mean that WE can’t, just because Hamilton hasn’t declared this a sanctuary campus, it doesn’t mean that WE CAN’T. I mean, imagine what it would be like if every dorm room, every office, every library, every classroom were OPEN to undocumented workers who are being PERSECUTED by ICE. If we really turned this into a sanctuary, just like Judson Church next door, can you imagine the optics of ICE agents trying to come and remove a mother or a father who’s taking refuge in our university? Can you imagine the optics of  ICE having to storm a university campus to remove these people?

We have a very powerful role we can play, especially in New York City,  where so many, so many of our unauthorized immigrants work and..uh..play, too.

The other thing that’s very, very important to remember, especially, I love the chant, uh, you know, “Education and jobs rather than mass deportation”. But, let’s not kid ourselves. One of the reasons why Trump wants to expand ICE and deportation (and …) that’s his job program. Hiring 10, 00 or 15,000 more ICE workers, that’s the extent of his jobs program. (light laughter) And so we have to, we have to, you know, increasing the military [a ?… after his jobs program] So we need to make this evident. It’s  incumbent upon us, like I said, to be the voice, to be a sanctuary movement beyond whatever happens to may or may not declare.

One of the…we have to remember that sanctuary came into this country as part of the abolition movement. And so sanctuary never saw its role as limited to protecting, you know, the slaves that ran away. They saw their role as (??) the voices of those who have been enslaved. Just as we have to understand our role as very privileged faculty and students and staff (??) the voices of unauthorized workers in our community.

Beyond the DACA students that we have here, who we of course have to  protect, let’s not  forget that DACA  students do still have some authorization. But what about their friends? What about their families? We have to figure out ways of (??) as a united community in the face of this blatant racist law that Donald Trump is trying to enforce.

The other thing that’s very important is, I’m going to get a little nerdy on you all, is when Trump talks about all the jobs that NAFTA destroyed in the United States. What he doesn’t tell you is all the jobs that NAFTA destroyed in Mexico. (applause/cheers) 4 million farms in Mexico were put out of work and when you put a Mexican farm out of work you put generations of workers out of work. Its not just the one farm owner. No. You’re actually setting into motion hundreds of people per farm looking for labor.

And that’s why they’re here, doing that agricultural work; those agricultural jobs. It’s not a coincidence that 11 million Mexican unauthorized workers who are here, came after the passage of NAFTA. Because NAFTA destroyed jobs in that economy, just as it destroyed here. ‘Cause the sole purpose of NAFTA was to lower the cost of labor across the Americas. It did so very successfully. And one of the consequences that we have now had to bring in to our community, people who are willing to do work, jobs that… whose payment has been pushed down.

So, we have to remember that, when NAFTA was negotiated, it negotiated for the free passage of goods. It negotiated the free passage of capital, but what was left out of that dream (??) labor. So that’s what unauthorized workers are doing here, they’re working. Because they can’t find jobs in their country and because the price of labor has been pushed so far down that U.S. citizens can’t afford to reproduce themselves, doing the jobs at that hourly wage.

So, uh, anyway (?) (cheers/applause) We don’t have to communicate. We don’t have to wait for Hamilton to declare this a sanctuary campus and to make it a sanctuary campus. Let’s figure out ways of inviting those unauthorized workers into our class rooms, into our dorms, into our residential campuses, into our offices to share their stories and to, also, find refuge. Thank you.”

I leave you with a few links that convey the warped perspective of the NYU students: “Whose campus, OUR campus.”