VOICES: Has the campaign of fear against Latinos in North Carolina awoken a sleeping giant? |
Ding! "Walmart-CH-All clear as of 8:45 AM.”
My phone notified me of the text, one of many I would get as I drove around parts of North Carolina last week looking for immigration enforcement.
I had been trained not too long before at a local church. When I got there, the line moved quickly, two rows of volunteers waiting to be let inside the large church that served as our gathering spot. There were young people excited to do something, and older people who felt they needed to get involved.
At the top of the lines were two young Latina women taking down the names and information of people of all races and ethnicities who wanted to be trained on how to respond to the crackdown by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) patrols that swept across North Carolina last week.
At my training, more than 250 volunteers had shown up to learn how to track and verify rumors of patrols in their neighborhoods, notifying the larger group using their phones.
As fear gripped the Latino community, people of all stripes were eager to do something about it, if only to be the eyes and ears of the country’s mass deportation policy that had come to their backyard in North Carolina. I was one of them, learning how to dispel rumors from my car, input what I saw on my phone, and coordinate with others on locations to make sure they were clear of ICE and CBP so that people could move around........