Talking Housing on "Enfoque Latino'

From writing and presenting our grant proposal to finding panelists, organizing and promoting our event, and securing last-minute logistics, my partner Ian and I have been working for almost 6 months on our GIP event, "The Housing Crisis: Why Affordable Cities Start in Your Backyard." On Thursday, with our event fast approaching, we had the opportunity as part of our promotional push to discuss our event KPFK with Ruben Tapia, the host of "Enfoque Latino." In Spanish! Luis Cabrales, my boss at Inquilinos Unidos (Tenants United) and an invaluable part of our event, had set the interview up a couple of weeks earlier, and since that time the notion of going on public radio in front of potentially thousands of listeners in Spanish had been nagging at the back of my mind.

Ian and I showed up at the KPFK building at around 9:30 for our 10 pm interview, and upon entering, we could immediately feel the family the family atmosphere that seemed to accompany the recording of nighttime Spanish talk radio. While "Nuestra Voz" (the previous program) was being taped, Ruben (an older Latino man with a deep, rich voice and a white beard), guests, and radio staff were hanging out in the common room, sharing snacks, and chatting in Spanish. The five-year-old running carefree through the halls of the radio station" seemed to highlight my own nervousness as I reviewed my notes and prepared for the interview.

I was shaking a little as I walked into the booth, and though I'd like to say that after my first answer ("gracias por invitarnos") I just let myself go and enjoyed it, the truth is I was kind of edge for the entirety of the interview. There were a couple of misconjugated verbs, and at one point Ruben asked me whether I had lost any friends in the course of my housing advocacy work. Thinking he was seriously overestimating the stakes of my work, I answered no—after all I hadn't had to testify against a childhood friend or beat up a family member after they betrayed me. Turned out he was just asking whether anyone I knew had been displaced by rising rents, to which I sheepishly answered yes. All in all, though, I think the interview went really well, and I'm extremely glad to have had the experience. I'm looking forward to seeing the fruits of 6 months of labor at my event in 2 days!

Reyna Grande and the Human Side of Immigration

Recently, renowned Mexican-born author Reyna Grande came to speak to the Poly community and Partnership for Success! about her experiences coming to the U.S. and assimilating into American society as child, growing up and finding her voice in America, and then rediscovering her own Mexican roots. Shortly after her father left her family's home in Iguala, Guerrero to find work, Grande came to America at just 9 years old as an undocumented immigrant. In a society where English was the default language, Grande initially struggled to find her place, even being forced by an elementary school teacher to sit in the back of the room by herself during class discussions. She explained the trauma of not being able to express herself during the Spanish-language portion of her presentation. She explained that as she began to master English, enrolling at Pasadena City College and eventually transferring to UC Santa Cruz to study creative writing, her knowledge of Spanish—her first language—was what suffered. In fact, her most recent novel, A Dream Called Home, was originally written in English, and she is working laboriously to translate it into Spanish as she herself relearns the language.

With the current wave of xenophobia directed toward immigrants, especially Mexican immigrants, Grande's story could not be more timely. Just in the last two weeks, President Trump has made multiple threats to completely close the southern border, seemingly without any consideration of the extensive economic—but more importantly human—repercussions of such a drastic action. Hundreds of thousands cross the Mexican-American border each day, and like Reyna Grande, they all have stories to tell. Their reasons for crossing include business, seeing family, going vacation, taking care of legal business, and so much more, and our current discourse risks making this an issue of inflated numbers and fear-stoking anecdotes rather than real people's lives. Beyond expressing her own story, Reyna Grande's work as an Mexican immigrant author is invaluable in our current political climate, and voices like hers must not only be heard, but amplified.