1/14/24
By Rosey Vogan
Sunday was the 2nd full day of presentations at the Workshop for Justice Conference.
Started the day with “Necessity and Vision” panel discussion with John Washington, Todd Miller, Guillermo Jones, and Julia Neusner. Very informative as they talked about open borders and how that means different things to different people. We hear it in the news all the time that the borders are open when in reality nothing could be further from the truth. The border is closed, the people entering are presenting themselves at the wall or ports of entry to Border Patrol and asking for asylum. BP will leave them sitting out in the mountains in freezing temps for days at a time before bringing them in, and the people, many with babies and small children, just wait until they come for them. Humanitarian groups such as Humane Borders, the Samaritans and No More Deaths are taking food, water, blankets, coats out to prevent them from dying while they wait. They provide what medical aid they can and in emergencies will drive severe cases to the BP station.
Personally believe that this is an intentional act on part of the BP not to pick people up in bad weather conditions. It doesn’t reflect directly on them if people die by the wall as it would if they died at the BP stations.
The next presentation was a panel discussing “Immigration Activism in the Context of the 2024 Election & Other Divisive Issues” with Jennifer Babaie, Crystal Sandoval and Josh Rubin. We all had the opportunity to share our concerns.
After lunch, breakout sessions were held on Communicating Our Message Effectively.
How to Write an Op-Ed - Jim Hertling
Engaging the Press - Laurie Cantillo
Effective Presentations was lead by Sue-Ann DiVito and myself.
We ended the conference by Looking to the Future - Brainstorming Session.
History of Witnessing, Techniques for Witnessing and Where and How to Apply those Techniques Going Forward was facilitated by Joshua RubIn. We broke up into 4 groups and reported back and amazingly all 4 groups had the same recommendations.
A large group photo was taken and I’m looking forward to seeing it. We then met at the Agave Cafe for supper. We were all feeling energized to keep witnessing and working to make changes for our brothers and sisters coming from all over the world in search of a safe place to raise their families.