Introduction

n Minneapolis this winter, families went into hiding. Federal agents stalked the streets, the drugstores, the bus stops for their next catch. They brought hell.

But Minnesotans have shown us what you do in hell.

You carry a whistle. You patrol your block for ICE, or walk kids to school, or deliver groceries to those who are trapped. Every neighborhood is on a local Signal chat, and upwards of 20,000 people have been trained as legal observers. Volunteers brew tea for the observers, drive home families released from lockup in the middle of the night.

Civil society formed a front, a rapid-response army on the streets and a supportive underground. People who had never organized or demonstrated before took up constructive forms of resistance. Previous waves of protest over the years sometimes felt like marches to nowhere, with no clear entry point for activism. Minnesota has modeled a movement that anyone — everyone — can join.

No movement ever appears from nowhere. It has been seeded by earlier campaigns and by painstaking organizing work. In Minnesota, it was preceded by years of 

multiracial, interfaith coalition building

 and was supported by a robust institutional left that had already developed muscles coordinating among one another and with the grassroots. And it was inextricable from the movement for Black lives.

A decade ago, in 2015, activists held an occupation outside Minneapolis’ Fourth Precinct for more than two weeks after cops killed a 24-year-old Black man named Jamar Clark. The next year, school cafeteria worker Philando Castile was shot point-blank by police during a traffic stop with his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter in the car. When the officer was acquitted, thousands took to the streets, and protesters blocked the interstate. Then, in 2020, Minneapolis police officers murdered George Floyd. The Twin Cities came out first, in force, taking tear gas and rubber bullets; the rest of the country followed.

People faced these atrocities, according to Marcia Howard, president of the teacher chapter of Minneapolis Federation of Educators Local 59, “by actually sitting down and talking to each other — the connections forged from organizations, communities, church homes, neighbors, sitting together and having conversations about how we got to the place we were in.”

“And those conversations, though they were difficult, actually tilled the ground and gave us the opportunity to plant the seed of coalitions that we are now seeing, the tendrils, the growth that has led to the resistance movement,” she told the journalist Luis Feliz Leon in an interview for Hammer & Hope.

Darnella Frazier, who filmed Floyd’s murder, had been one of Howard’s students. The protests pulled Howard into organizing. She ended up spending years at George Floyd Square.

“People do not understand that the current regime has picked the wrong city and the wrong state to fuck with,” she said.

“Operation Metro Surge” was pitched as a horror story starring Somali immigrants, a pornographic right-wing welfare-fraud revenge fantasy against people Trump in December referred to as “garbage.”

But to the country looking on, Trump’s bullshit was completely eclipsed by what happened on the ground. Neighbors wanted to protect neighbors. The lawlessness and violence of the federal agents compelled the participation of tens of thousands of people, including many who do not consider themselves to be activists. Trump officials impugned as terrorists those killed defending their city. In defiance, opposition to ICE continued to grow. In this way, the response in Minneapolis broke through our shared pervasive fear and pierced the veil of invincibility that has emboldened the Trump regime over the catastrophic first year of its return.

The left surely needs to reckon for real with all the ways we’ve truly lost. All the rights and the programs repealed already, all the demands that haven’t amounted to much, the utter fecklessness of Democratic leadership.

But we look to the multiracial Minnesota movement demonstrating a better way to be in this country. People are brave; they will stand up; they want to be a part of it, given the chance. And courage is a magnet. When anyone joins, it draws in others who might have stayed on the sidelines.

“If there’s one big thing every big city could be doing, plant the seed of getting to know your neighbors,” Minneapolis organizer Doran Schrantz told this magazine. “The thing that stops an authoritarian creep is civil society.”

She estimates that a vast majority of the city has gotten involved in some way. “All these people in your mind who you thought were the ones, governor, mayor, philanthropists, elites,” she said. “They literally cannot do it. Only civil society can do it.”

Our thanks to the people and organizations who made it possible for us to publish Issue No. 10:

Ena Alvarado, Billy Brennan, Dana Castillo, Ana Valeria Castillos, Erin Crum, Vicky Fontenelle, Jaime Fuller, Chuck Gonzales, Sandy Byers Harvin, Lameesa Mallic, Shirley Ngozi Nwangwa, Akiba Solomon, Will Tavlin, Eamon Whalen, Allyson Winburn, Critical Minded, and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

Darnella Frazier, who filmed Floyd’s murder, had been one of Howard’s students. The protests pulled the English teacher into organizing. She ended up spending years at George Floyd Square.

“Operation Metro Surge” was pitched as a horror story for Somali immigrants, a pornographic right-wing welfare-fraud revenge fantasy against people Trump in December referred to as “garbage.”

But to the country looking on, Trump’s bullshit was completely eclipsed by what happened on the ground. Neighbors wanted to protect neighbors. The lawlessness and violence of the federal agents compelled the participation of tens of thousands of people, including many who do not consider themselves to be activists. Trump officials impugned those killed defending their city against the federal incursion as terrorists. In defiance, opposition to ICE continued to grow. In this way, the response in Minneapolis broke through our shared pervasive fear and pierced the veil of invincibility that has emboldened the Trump regime over the catastrophic first year of its return.

Our thanks to the people who made it possible for us to publish Issue No. 10:

Minnesota Is the Movement We’ve Been Waiting For

In 1964, Brazil’s military leaders carried out a coup — with the support of the country’s upper classes, the Catholic Church, and the U.S. government — against a moderate social democratic president, establishing a dictatorship that would rule Brazil for the next two decades. The new regime suppressed political rights and freedoms, using censorship, persecution, and torture against its opponents. But even as repression intensified in the late 1960s, left-wing resistance to the dictatorship grew.

Helena and Mauro (both are pseudonyms) were in their early 20s when they joined the resistance in Salvador, the capital city of Bahia state in northeastern Brazil. Both grew up in poor, majority-Black neighborhoods of Salvador, a city known for its rich and lived African cultural heritage but also for its stark racial and social inequality. Helena, a medical student, joined Popular Action, a clandestine Marxist organization with Catholic roots fighting for a socialist revolution via armed struggle and made up mainly of students. Mauro became a member of the banned Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), which opted for a peaceful strategy that included labor activism and grassroots mobilization. In this interview with Hammer & Hope, they recall how they became activists, their experiences of clandestine life, and their commitment to a socialist future.

 Brazil’s military dictatorship began in 1964. Your activism began a few years later as the regime’s repression intensified. What brought you to activism?

 In college, my brother got involved in a left-wing organization and introduced me to the other members. It was the Marxist-Leninist organization Popular Action, which was made up mostly of high school and university students, with very little connection to workers at that time. The organization had strong participation from left-wing Catholics. My brother recommended me for the organization’s medical and nursing students section, and they approached me. I started participating in discussions and then joined and became active.

I have to say that watching how my father exploited his employees at his supermarket and bakery also opened my eyes. He’d often force the workers to sign blank documents surrendering their rights. I saw it and thought it was horrible, but I realized that it wasn’t just him — it was capitalism.

My father, who was white, made racist comments about Black people, too. When he’d turn on the TV and see 

, a successful Black singer, he’d say, “What’s that Black guy doing there?” After seeing Simonal on the TV, he’d go into his room, slam the door hard, and go to sleep. Even today, that question of his haunts me. We kids worked in his market, and he’d tell us, “Whenever you see a Black person, follow them, because they’re going to steal.” He never stopped being racist his whole life. But since he didn’t recognize his kids as Black, he wasn’t racist with us. And this was in Salvador, the largest Black city outside of Africa, in a historically Black neighborhood called Liberdade.

 In 1966, in my neighborhood of Fazenda Grande do Retiro, I started participating in a youth group studying under the leadership of two communist Italian priests, Father Paulo Tonucci and Father Renzo Rossi. These two priests had a very particular method: They’d have us read material from weekly magazines about poverty, unemployment, and inequality in Brazil and then question why those realities existed. Over time, we started questioning our own reality in Fazenda Grande and in the city of Salvador, which by that time was already a metropolis with almost a million inhabitants.

My neighborhood was very poor and made up mostly of Black people. Most of the women were housewives, and the men worked at the cattle, sheep, and pig slaughterhouses in the neighborhood, at the maritime docks, or in commerce; very few worked in industry. The poverty was severe. Even though we were living in a big city, we didn’t have running water. My father bought a donkey to haul water from a stream and built a reservoir to keep rainwater, which partially met our needs. There was no electricity, either — houses were lit by candlelight. At one point, my father bought railroad tracks and made the poles himself to bring electricity to our house.

Everything was really precarious. The streets were dirty, and since there was no public transportation, we’d get really muddy going to school and work. There wasn’t a single person who’d gone to college — nobody! My sister Ana and I were the first in the neighborhood to get into university, back in the early ’70s.

I grew up under the influence of my father. He didn’t have great reading skills — he had only studied through elementary school — but he read the newspapers every day and was naturally a socialist, against the exploitation of poor people. He campaigned for candidates supported by the Communist Party and took us along with him. Because of him, I became a leftist, but I didn’t think about being an activist. My expectation was just to get a job and maybe start a family — the expectation of any young person living in the poor periphery. Right after I left the army at 19, I got my first job as a typist at a civil construction company. This was 1964, but I still didn’t think of myself as an activist.

We were raised as white, even though we were mixed race. Our skin is light, but we have curly and wavy hair. My father could be considered white, but my mother was what you’d call 

 [a Portuguese term for people of mixed white and African or Indigenous ancestry]. I never saw my mother discriminate against Black people. But I heard my father make racist jokes. Starting at 15 or 16, I began to push back against him. More than 80 percent of my friends were Black, and the comments he’d sometimes make about them made me feel bad. It wasn’t easy, because he wouldn’t accept my criticism — he’d raise his voice and sometimes get violent with me. But when I turned 18, I started standing up to him and openly following my antiracist values. And over time, my father got better, too.

 When did you decide that you had to be an activist against the dictatorship?

 1968 was a turning point. I was behind in my studies because I’d gone into the army and then had to work, so I went back to high school at 22 years old. I went to study at Colégio Central, which was the center of student mobilizations in the state of Bahia. I joined the student association and the Brazilian Communist Party cell at the school. I became friends with Carlinhos Marighella, the son of 

, a communist revolutionary of international renown who was considered enemy number one of the regime. He was assassinated by police in São Paulo in 1969.

During 1968, my activity was basically student mobilizations, marches, demonstrations. But in 1969, I stepped back from the student movement, because I went to work at Nitrofértil, a fertilizer business that was part of Petrobras, the giant state-owned oil corporation. I started participating in the movement to rebuild ASPETRO, the association of workers in the petrochemical industry. It was a very weak association at that time — only 13 members among more than 1,000 workers and practically inactive.

Within the Communist Party, I was placed in a clandestine cell made up of workers inside Petrobras. The cell included me, Carlinhos Marighella, Sebastião Couto, Ivan Pugliese, and others. Every two weeks, we’d meet with a party leader we called a “black cap” [an experienced militant acting as a contact with the national organization] to discuss the national situation and the daily reality for workers at Petrobras. Our “black cap” leader was Paulino Vieira, a communist from southern Brazil trained in the former Soviet Union who has since passed away. I got instructions from the party to intensify activism inside ASPETRO to transform it into a union with the legal capacity to represent workers in collective bargaining agreements with Petrobras.

There was a lot of persecution against the labor movement at that time. The unions that remained were mostly run by what we called “pelegos” — right-wing leaders linked to the dictatorship. The powerful bus drivers’ and fare collectors’ union, for example, was led by some guy who didn’t understand anything about unions; the bosses basically put him in charge as president because he’d keep his mouth shut. He did whatever the bosses wanted. The leader of ASPETRO was one of those, too.

But even in that situation, we were able to go on a massive recruitment campaign to transform ASPETRO into a union. When I was fired — about three years after I entered the factory — ASPETRO had 800 members. But the Ministry of Labor, which was under military control, refused to grant us union status.

Not being recognized as a union didn’t tie our hands, though. We ran a strong campaign over wages. To be hired as regular workers, newcomers first had to work as interns for a six-month period and then had to pass a test. Once they passed the test, the volume of work was much greater, and so were the responsibilities — like handling complex machinery — but without proportional salary increases from the minimum wage they received as interns. So we mobilized the interns, and they refused to take that internal exam. This was 1973, when I was already a leader of ASPETRO.

The management called a meeting and said they wanted to know why we were refusing to take this test. Whoever spoke up was fired on the spot. I wasn’t fired because one of the managers recognized me as part of a group that wasn’t being told to take the test and asked me to leave. I would have spoken up and been one of the 15 people who was fired that day, but I was saved temporarily. Later more people were fired for showing opposition to the firings.

 The repression became even more extreme in 1968 with the military’s Institutional Act No. 5 (AI-5), which authorized widespread censorship. Anyone who opposed the regime in any way faced the threat of arrest and torture. What was it like living under that constant threat?

 Even before the risk of arrest, there was censorship of books, films, plays, and music. After the 

 by the dictatorship in 1968, censorship became institutionalized. Even famous artists such as 

 were heavily censored. Radio and TV stations were shut down, and you couldn’t vote for mayor in capital cities, for governor, or for senator. Voting for president had ended after 1964. Basically, we could elect only city council members and representatives to the state and national congresses, and even then from just two parties authorized by the dictatorship, the National Renewal Alliance (ARENA) and the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB). In practice, everything we’d learned from Marxist theory was being confirmed. The escalation of the regime was a response to growing opposition. AI-5 was a response to the intensification of student and artistic resistance to the regime, especially after the assassination of the student 

 during a protest in Rio de Janeiro in March 1968.

We opposed everything that symbolized the regime. I remember that we rooted for Brazil to lose in the 1970 World Cup, even with 

 on the field. I remember we’d get so angry and upset hearing chants of “Brazil, Brazil!” coming from fans in the street.

In 1969, the regime made two disciplines of ideological indoctrination mandatory: moral and civic education and the social and political organization of Brazil. Even at universities, we were forced to study these, but there was no discussion, no debate, nothing. We on the left wouldn’t go; we’d sign the attendance sheet and leave. To ridicule the disciplines, we called them “Forward Brazil.” That was meant to be ironic — that was the slogan of the Brazilian right at the time, appropriated from the 

 of the victorious Brazilian team from the 1970 World Cup.

 Since the early 1960s, Brazilian universities have had a very strong cultural and political life. How did the dictatorship affect that scene?

 The university administrations started heavily discriminating against student associations. If you were a student leader, they would immediately label you as subversive, and you would be placed under intense surveillance. In the medical school, which was an elitist program, it was even worse. So I didn’t formally join the local medical students association.

What I was really part of was Popular Action, a clandestine armed struggle organization. We were connected through national, rather than local, initiatives, like the Araguaia Guerrilla War, a revolutionary movement led by Maoists from the Communist Party of Brazil [PCdoB, a different organization from the Brazilian Communist Party] in rural areas of northern Brazil. I didn’t leave with the guerrillas, but I participated in farewell meetings for activists who were going to fight. Those were moments of intense emotion — we’d say goodbye to people who were going to face very adverse conditions and a high risk of death fighting the military in the Brazilian rain forest.

My main risk was being arrested while trying to recruit people to Popular Action. Our organization was looking for activists to join what we called the people’s war, which would move from the countryside into the city. The military was afraid of our organization. When they caught our members, they usually tortured them and sometimes even killed them. I didn’t think I’d live that long. In 1971, when they started arresting members of my organization in Salvador, the persecution became unbearable. Our leadership proposed getting me a fake ID and transferring me to São Paulo, where I’d work in a textile factory and become a labor activist. But I would have had to drop out of medical school, so I didn’t accept.

My brother did firearms training for armed struggle. I didn’t because I was in the agitation and propaganda section, but I decided to carry a revolver in my purse after my boyfriend Juarez got arrested. It was my father’s revolver, which I took without him knowing. I filed off the serial number to prevent anyone from tracing its origin if I got caught, and I carried it everywhere, even to university. I didn’t think about shooting at the military. My idea was to commit suicide if the police tried to arrest me, because I knew I couldn’t handle electric shocks, waterboarding, and being tortured on the 

 [“parrot’s perch,” a bar to which people were bound upside down], and I didn’t want to denounce my comrades.

Helena looks at Todos os Santos Bay from Salvador’s city center.

 What were the lessons from that period of intense activism in your lives?

 The importance of collective action. Over time, I came to be against any kind of individualistic action. From the student movement on, I believed firmly in collective action of the working class. The experience of the wage campaign at Petrobras was fundamental for that. Nitrofértil was a strategic state-owned company and heavily monitored by the regime. We knew that Petrobras oversaw and investigated the actions of worker leaders. Around 1970 or ’71, Carlinhos Marighella was summarily fired. He had been careful; he knew he had a name linked to his father, who was public enemy number one of the dictatorship and head of the urban armed guerrillas in Brazil. But he ended up being fired outright anyway. The company even told him that if he made a public statement against communism, he’d be rehired. Carlinhos refused.

We kept going, though, and the struggle grew. ASPETRO became stronger, reaching almost a thousand members. We’d hold protests and agitate despite not being able to strike and not having authorization to function as a union. At that point, I was part of ASPETRO’s leadership as treasurer. In 1972, because of our bylaws, we had to hold new elections. At a clandestine meeting of PCB workers at Nitrofértil with our “black cap,” it was decided that I would run for president of the association. Everything we did followed the PCB’s direction. Well, 15 days after that meeting, I was fired from Nitrofértil without cause before the election could take place.

 Was there a leak? Had someone infiltrated the cell at Petrobras?

 Someone infiltrated, yes. Petrobras was keeping watch, and they must have identified me as the PCB candidate and likely next president of ASPETRO. I asked the manager who fired me what the reason for my dismissal was. I hadn’t damaged a single piece of equipment, and I had no absences. He answered: “The company no longer needs your services, but you’ll have all your rights honored. You can go to the human resources department, and we’ll pay you everything you’re owed.” I was the only one fired at that moment.

 At that time, the resistance movement against the dictatorship was divided into two major strategic camps: one that advocated for struggle through peaceful means via mobilization of the working masses, which the Brazilian Communist Party advocated for, and another that advocated for changing the regime through armed struggle via urban or rural guerrilla war, in line with the 

 strategy inspired by the Cuban Revolution and 

 in China. Mauro joined the first group with the peaceful, reformist strategy, while Helena joined an organization that chose armed struggle. Why did you follow different strategies?

 I didn’t believe that struggle through peaceful means would bring the radical changes we needed. The elites wouldn’t make the concessions we needed peacefully, on a silver platter. We’d manage at best to get reforms. On the other hand, we didn’t have the illusion that we students would make the revolution. Our role was more to study, to understand capitalism, to become workers in the factory or in the field, and to join the armed struggle to take power. The people’s war hadn’t really started yet, but it was a certainty for us. My brother and I even offered an area on my father’s property in the interior for guerrilla training.

My boyfriend at the time, Juarez, was a professional student activist with Popular Action. He never finished high school; he’d always fail a subject on purpose and repeat. He had an incredible ability to recruit new members. Everyone in the high school student movement knew him. I was at university at the time I was dating him. I lived with my father in Liberdade, but I rented a room in an old mansion in the center of the city, in the Saúde neighborhood, with money my mother left me after her death in 1968. That’s where I kept my medical books, stored organization materials, and went to study and spend time with Juarez. He lived with an aunt but spent a lot of time there.

One day Juarez went to the city of Petrolina, in the state of Pernambuco, for discussions with high school students there. Before traveling, he invited a Pernambuco activist named Fernando to stay in my room while he was away. Fernando didn’t know it, but he was being hunted by the police. He got arrested in my room. They tore up all my books and organization materials, and they took Fernando back to Pernambuco. The police realized that the room wasn’t Fernando’s own place, so they staked it out, waiting for other people to show up so they could arrest them, too.

I didn’t go to my room that week because Fernando was supposed to be staying there. But Juarez came back from his trip not knowing anything, with a suitcase that belonged to my brother, and inside it a gun that belonged to my father, organization pamphlets, and his clothes. When he arrived and went up the wooden stairs to get to my room, he saw two guys standing at my door. He walked straight past them. The police ignored him. It was the luckiest thing.

He went back to the bus station and called my father’s warehouse, since we didn’t have a phone at home. He said to come and get the suitcase, because the room was all broken into, and he couldn’t get in touch with anyone from the organization. By that point, high school student activists from our organization were also starting to get arrested. He told me he’d sit on a bench at the bus station with the newspaper open, pretending to read it, so he wouldn’t be identified by police. He said, “When you get there, approach me slowly, take the suitcase, and go.” I did exactly as planned. I found him, took the suitcase, put it in my car, and drove back to my father’s house. It was like a scene from the movies.

The meeting was quick, but we had time to arrange another meeting for that same day at 5 p.m. in front of the Barris Public Library. Juarez instructed me to park the car, get out, and walk in front of the library, and if I didn’t see him there, it meant he’d already been arrested — which he was before I arrived. When I didn’t find him at the library, I drove to the house of an activist who connected the organization’s high school and university students — a woman named Cleusa — and told her that Juarez had been arrested. She was quite sad, but she didn’t hesitate to inform other members of the organization who were at risk.

I went back home, returned my brother’s suitcase and my father’s gun — which he didn’t know I’d taken — put Juarez’s clothes in my closet, and went to the house of my college classmate Kátia, an organization sympathizer. I didn’t want to stay at home anymore. I slept there, and the next morning, I went to the Federal University of Bahia to see my brother and tell him about Juarez’s arrest. When I got there, my brother said the police had already been to my father’s house, searched through my things, and torn everything up. My father cried a lot. The police even went to my grandmother Valéria’s house, where they pulled out drawers and threw documents on the floor. My brother brought me money and cigarettes — I smoked like crazy — and told me: “Juarez is in prison. Get a taxi and go to the city of Candeias. Then take a van to the village of Engenho de Baixo and stay there, waiting for news from the organization.”

When I got to Engenho de Baixo, I made up a story for my aunts who lived there that I’d had a fight with my father in Salvador and asked them not to tell anyone I was in town. During the seven days I was there, I slept in the woods, terrified of the military. I ended up getting a rash, and my hair started falling out from stress. But I went back to Salvador after my uncles went to talk to my father and found out there hadn’t been any fight at all, and I’d gotten involved with communists. For days, the police would come to my family’s house in Salvador while I was away. They took my sisters to my college to see if they could find me there. The girls were terrified, but they didn’t tell them where I was.

My father got in contact with Major Leopoldino, the commander of the Barbalho Barracks in Salvador, who had tortured some of my organization comrades. Perhaps because he had close connections to power circles in Salvador, my father managed to guarantee that I could present myself to the military without risk of suffering violence. My father went to the navy military barracks with me when I had to turn myself in.

During the interrogation, I realized they didn’t have much interest in me; they asked about activists above me in Popular Action. They gave me names of people I knew, but I pretended I didn’t know who they were. I even confused them and messed up their investigation in a few cases by saying I knew some of the names they showed me but linked them to other people who weren’t activists. They would say the name of a militant I knew very well, and I would confirm knowing her, while denying knowing anything about her militancy. Sometimes I’d link the same name to a colleague with a similar or identical name who wasn’t an activist. In the end, I wasn’t detained or indicted. I left the barracks with just a simple warning to stay away from communists and not go to anyone’s house or see anyone.

 It has become almost a cliché to talk about the period of military dictatorship and tell the story of Carlos Marighella, who famously said, “I didn’t have time to be afraid.” Unlike Marighella, you spent many years living with the threat of violence and repression. What was the impact of that fear on your lives?

 I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have some fear. We saw arrests; we knew about torture. I was forced to resign from a public job in Barreiras after a powerful rancher in the region, a supporter of the military regime, distributed a letter to residents accusing me of being a communist and, believe it or not, a heavy marijuana user.

He did this after finding out that I was organizing meetings with local residents to discuss the region’s problems. I worked for a state company that took care of livestock health, but in my free time I decided to start community organizations. I had the support of a young City Council member sympathetic to the Communist Party. I had to leave in a hurry to avoid being assassinated, which is what happened to people who were accused of being a communist. Given the state government’s failure to protect me as a public employee, I decided to resign. It was the second time I had to leave a job for political reasons. I’d be fired for labor activism again in the 1980s, when I was an employee of the health surveillance office in Salvador, where I led a strike.

But back in the 1970s, we’d take risks in some situations. For example, on each anniversary of the founding of the PCB, I’d go out with two comrades in my Beetle and drive around the whole city spray-painting “Long live the Brazilian Communist Party.” We’d even go to the petrochemical hub. It was irresponsible.

In meetings and demonstrations, we knew we were sometimes being photographed and watched by informants who infiltrated our demonstrations. When I was arrested for the first time, in 1981, I saw a book with many photographs of me in the possession of the military, all at places where I hadn’t imagined I was being photographed. But there it was in that book.

 Sometimes we saw camera flashes. I remember when a comrade who was serving a jail sentence was taken from the penitentiary to a dentist near Piedade Square; his wife invited me to monitor the operation so that they would know if the military took him somewhere else. We sat on a bench in the square until we saw camera flashes in our direction.

Our fear lessened when the grip of the dictatorship loosened in the late ’70s with the process of “

.” The military regime was still in power, but it was possible to resume activism. That’s what I did, participating in the communists’ takeover of the doctors’ union in Bahia, joining the leadership of the youth movement of the Brazilian Democratic Movement, and doing community medical work at the health clinic run by communist priests in Fazenda Grande. Recently, I got access to some reports from the military regime’s intelligence agency with my name in them. These documents were about the activities of the doctors’ union and the Baian Women’s House, a feminist organization focused on educating women about their legal rights, between 1980 and 1983. So the repression decreased, but surveillance and control by the state’s repressive apparatus didn’t.

 Forty years after the end of the military regime, you’re now retired and grandparents. What do you make of life during those 21 years of the military regime in Brazil?

 In moments of reflection, I find myself surprised to be thinking how good it was to have been born in 1949. But then I think some more and correct myself: Every period of the history of anticapitalist struggle is interesting and vivid.

I remember that in 2016, right after the coup against President Dilma Rousseff — who had been imprisoned and tortured during Brazil’s military dictatorship — most of my medical colleagues took an openly fascist position in support of the coup leader, Michel Temer, and the rising far-right movement that would elect Jair Bolsonaro president. And it all started again, as if we’d taken a huge step backward and were back in 1964. I was once again rejected by medical colleagues, who stopped talking to me because I’m on the left. I found myself in the middle of such basic political discussions, even hilarious ones — people asking me, “How is it possible that you’re still a communist?”

That’s why, after having believed in armed struggle in Brazil, I learned that change must be fed by grassroots work. It’s consciousness that guides the people in a democratic regime. You need to know how to vote at all levels, starting with local parliament and up through national and presidential elections. The struggle continues, and that struggle is fundamentally popular. But it’s not a guerrilla struggle the way we believed during the dictatorship. Today, it’s about participating in the day-to-day life of the working class in our workspaces to elect our union and political representatives. That’s the fundamental struggle, and the remedy is to always struggle.

 The main lesson is that when we’re right, we must struggle bravely, with all our strength. That’s what Helena and I did. We knew that the struggle against the dictatorship was a just struggle, and that there’s no such thing as half measures — doing it when you have some spare time. You have to have dedication. And you can’t be afraid either, because that paralyzes you, you know? We know who our adversary is, so let’s face them. And with each victory, we strengthen ourselves morally. That’s how it was when we managed to pass amnesty in 1979 and the new democratic constitution in 1988.

Helena looks through photographs documenting political gatherings of opposition parties and the Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Salvador during the 1980s. Photographs by Luisa Dörr for Hammer & Hope.

Two Afro-Brazilians Remember the Brave Resistance to a Dictatorship

In November 2025, a few days before the Museum of West African Art was set to officially open, the oba, or king of the historic Benin Kingdom, visited the governor of Edo, the southern Nigerian state that was once a part of the precolonial kingdom. The meeting was supposed to strengthen the bonds between the two parties, which had been tense since the idea for a museum in Benin City, the capital of Edo state, was conceived eight years ago. But during this visit, which was 

 on local television channels, Oba Ewuare II asked for the suspension of MOWAA’s opening and an investigation into whether or not donations meant for a promised Royal Museum had been diverted to the cultural institution. The new governor of Edo state, Monday Okpebholo, agreed.

A day after the meeting, a group of people occupied MOWAA during a preview event to support the oba and protest the museum’s opening. In a 

 released later that day, the museum reminded the public of its status as an independent nonprofit and attributed the demonstrations to ongoing disputes between the previous and current Edo state administrators. But then Okpebholo proceeded to revoke the 

. Then, MOWAA administrators affirmed their respect for the oba as the rightful owner of the Benin Bronzes and reiterated that none of those artifacts were on display. Still, the museum’s opening, scheduled for Nov. 11, was indefinitely postponed.

The delay is just one of many obstacles the institution has faced since 2018, when a consortium of Nigerian stakeholders, royal authorities, and European embassy officials launched plans for a museum to host more than 100 repatriated pieces from the collection of Benin Bronzes. These represent only a fraction of the thousands of metal plaques and sculptures that British soldiers looted from the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin in the 19th century and are now scattered across Western institutions and private homes around the world. Millions of dollars were raised from the Nigerian government and international donors to fund this project, which went through many name changes.

Back in 2021, Oba Ewuare II published a 

 accusing Godwin Obaseki, then the governor of Edo, of attempting to circumvent the royal family while using the monarch’s legacy to raise money. He asserted that it was his right, as heir to the throne, to decide how the treasures would be displayed. It took the Nigerian government two years to respond; when it did, it sided with the oba. The president issued a decree affirming the monarch as the exclusive owner of the returned bronzes. Administrators agreed to recognize the oba’s authority and shift the museum’s focus away from the Benin Bronzes toward West African art more generally. The Edo Museum of West African Art was rebranded as MOWAA to create some distance between the institution and the people of Edo, whose cultural heritage is linked to the oba.

Since the November protests, the parties involved in the museum’s establishment haven’t reached a resolution that would allow the museum to open to the public. The demonstrations have been framed by some people as a reaction to foreign influence and the unresolved issue of restituted art ownership. Others consider it a dispute between the former governor of Edo and the oba. Hammer & Hope spoke with Chika Okeke-Agulu, MOWAA’s senior adviser and a professor of art history at Princeton University, in January 2026 to help make sense of the situation and to better understand the criticisms lodged against the museum. He talked about MOWAA’s original mission, the ongoing debates, and the future of museums in Africa.

 Can you tell us about your involvement with MOWAA and its mission?

 I have been involved with MOWAA from the very beginning, advising both informally and lately formally as a member of the advisory council. Part of what MOWAA seeks to do is the work of cultural heritage. It aims to be an archive, an education institution, an archaeological research institute, a space that establishes conservation resources that do not exist in Nigeria. There have been a lot of misunderstandings about the issues since the really unfortunate incident last November around the opening, even by commentators I thought should know better.

 There has never been an issue with the ownership of the Benin Bronzes that have been returned to Nigeria. The federal government has made it abundantly clear that these objects belong to the Edo kingdom, of which the oba is not just the head but the trustee. The real issue here is about funding MOWAA and funding what should be a royal museum built inside or around the palace. The oba has been asking for a royal museum for years. I know for a fact that a previous state government promised to build a royal museum supported by the Nigerian government. I hope that still happens, because even if all the looted artifacts were returned to Nigeria, there’s not a single museum that can host all 5,000 or so objects, right? The royal museum still needs to be built so that the palace can better display works in its collection. The MOWAA is not there to replace a royal museum in Benin City.

 Can you share your analysis of the November protests?

 A few days before the opening, the oba of Benin visited the governor of the Edo state and demanded that he not allow the opening events to happen. This was on broadcast and local TV. I think the MOWAA underestimated what it meant for the oba to make a public statement of his displeasure. The Edo people who hold the oba in extremely high regard will act on that, so you had young men from Benin take to the streets to effectuate what they heard the oba say.

 How do you think this crisis might be solved?

 The state government and the federal government should convene a forum to support, financially and otherwise, the establishment of a royal museum. Benin City can hold two museums at the same time. In New York, you have the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Bronx Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, and the Whitney. Why shouldn’t Benin City have at least two museums with different mandates?

 Some analysts have criticized MOWAA for accepting European and American funding. In their view, MOWAA was exposed to powerful external and neocolonial influences, to the detriment of local needs. What’s your opinion on this issue?

 There are criticisms of MOWAA that claim the museum is some sort of foreign implant, meant to do the bidding of its international donors. To them, the Europeans on MOWAA’s team and foreign funders determined the institution’s raison d’être. But the museum has been made possible by the work of determined Nigerians who have refused to wait on local funding sources to establish what should be the first of many institutions that the country so direly needs, and without which it cannot meaningfully participate in international artistic and cultural exchange or support research and knowledge production in Nigeria and West Africa. In fact the board of trustees, development council, and advisory board, which are responsible for the museum’s mission and program, are mostly made up of accomplished Nigerians and Africans from diverse professional fields.

When we reduce complex histories and contemporary realities to sound bites and epithets — like “representatives of former colonial powers” — we miss the important work colleagues and scholars in Germany, the U.K., France, and elsewhere have contributed to changing age-old, antagonistic attitudes of European nations and institutions toward the discourse and debates around restitution of looted African art and cultural heritage. Every struggle — whether against slavery, racism, colonization — needs supporters and collaborators from within and outside our imagined communities.

Beyond that, what you also saw in the past few years before the museum opened is a city gearing up for its arrival. New hotels were built, and art studios were established. You also saw the hands-on training of young people who would run the museum — many of them from the Benin City area — by specialists from other parts of Nigeria and from overseas. It was clear that this is a project supporting local expertise.

One of the things that I found really upsetting in the reporting around the crisis is that a lot of it sounded like this is a foreign imposition. I also find it extremely disrespectful to assume that people like me or members of the board have been taken over by colleagues in Europe and do not control the terms of this debate or discussion. What’s the basis of that? The director of the museum is a Nigerian; all the administrative staff are Nigerians; the board of trustees, who have fiduciary responsibility for the museum, are mostly Nigerians, including people from Edo state. As you may know, until March 2025, the crown prince of the Kingdom of Benin, the son of the oba, was on the board of trustees of MOWAA and had been there from the beginning. If that does not say something about the local community believing in the importance of such an institution in Benin City, I don’t know what else would be an indication of that fact.

 Do you have any expectations about when MOWAA might open?

 It’s hard to say, because the federal government has just set up a panel with representatives of Edo state, the Royal Palace of Benin, MOWAA, and a few European countries to come up with a framework to permanently resolve tensions between the museum and the palace. I have no insight into their deliberations so far, but it seems to me that the president and his advisers recognize the roles federal, state, and relevant foreign governments must play in ensuring that the concerns of the palace are addressed while supporting MOWAA.

 Let’s zoom out a bit. Can you talk more generally about restitution — or the return of cultural works to the country of origin — and repatriation — when treasures are given back to the original owners — as it applies to African art?

 I've been speaking and writing about the question of Africa’s looted cultural heritage for decades. We have lots of examples during the 19th century, including the looting of the Kumasi Palace in the Asante Empire and the Dahomey Palace by the French. One of the best known is that of the so-called Benin Bronzes, which were seized in 1897 during the British invasion of the city of Benin.

I’ve often cited the fact that I didn’t get to see a really reasonable number of Benin Bronzes until after my undergraduate education in Nigeria, during my first visit to the British Museum. Growing up as an art history student at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, I had absolutely no access to some of the finest examples of our cultural heritage. The impact of that is both psychological and intellectual. What would European art history training in Europe have been if their museums were looted of their best examples of the Renaissance or the Greco-Roman period? This has been a major reason for me to advocate for the restitution, and where possible repatriation, of Africa’s finest cultural heritage.

I’ve also been very vocal about the need for Africans to also do their own part of the work. What about the art treasures that we have on the continent? How do we, regardless of what Europe and the United States are doing, make sure we are taking care of what we consider important ourselves?

The National Museum in Lagos has by far the largest collection of Ife bronzes and brasses because much of Ife was not looted. My sense is that more than 95 percent of Igbo bronzes from the 9th century to the 10th century are all in Nigeria at the National Museums. There was an Ife exhibition that traveled to the United States and Europe more than a decade ago. It was, by every account, among the finest examples of cultural heritage and art from the medieval period anywhere around the world. Almost all those works came out of Nigeria’s national collection. And yet I don’t remember seeing these Ife bronzes in their glory on exhibition inside Nigeria. This points back to the two issues that I’ve highlighted: Are we taking care of what we have? And are we doing enough work to get back what had been taken from us?

 In addition to restituting and repatriating African art, you have also emphasized the need for a “postcolonial museum.” What do you mean by that?

 In thinking about the postcolonial museum in Africa, we have to think of the museum as a palace rather than a mausoleum of art. Museums were built in the colonial model of a place in which you kept dead or dying things. That’s a source of the alienation that still exists in postcolonial Africa between museums and people, because in West Africa palaces are public spaces where people came to admire architecture, sculpture, theater, dance, and so forth. So how do we rethink the museum in a way that aligns it to the social, cultural life and ethos of Africans?

The oba of Benin’s palace was a museum in the sense that it had the works of the finest artists from the Edo Kingdom, but it was also a public space where the powerful and the ordinary convened for secular rituals, dance performances, and theatrical performances. If you look at palace architecture across West and Central Africa, it was almost always adjacent to the market, which was, in these societies, the de facto public square.

In the case of Benin or Yoruba kingdoms, the palace was not the private property of the king. The king held it in trust of the people. That’s why if you look at the Yoruba, for instance, any time there was an internal crisis, the first thing the rivals did was try to burn the palace, because that’s the soul of the community. The very same way we think about museums as archives, as holders of treasures, as educational, social, and cultural institutions. Once you understand the postcolonial museum along this model, then you can immediately see why it would be a place stakeholders feel that they own, defend, and pay for.

 The people who live in that city or that region, depending on the ambition of the institution. I’m advocating for involving local communities from the get-go and asking: In what ways does this work address the desires, the visions, the needs, of the local community? But at the same time, it has to be run by people who are competent in the business of organizing institutions, making sure you have experts from within the industry to run the place efficiently and effectively.

We need new museums and to rethink the old ones, if possible. The postcolonial museum also ought to exist in the countries that are keeping the loot. Museums that were established during the colonial period and still have the DNA of a colonial museum have to be transformed. Some might not be amenable to this kind of radical transformation. We have to build parallel institutions that will show the way, and hopefully with time, those old museums will either fade or better serve the societies in which they exist.

What we have now is not working. That’s why a lot of museums have little or no patronage in Africa. Go to the National Museum Lagos and find out what the attendance numbers look like. A tiny family museum in Alabama might have more visitors than that entire institution, even with the incredible amount of treasures that it has. The only people you find there are kids from schools, because they are made to go by their teachers, and the occasional tourists who have heard of this museum.

 I want to connect what you’re saying to your scholarship on the intersection between political nationalism in West Africa and the art world. You have pushed for an institution that is sort of ambivalent — working on art but deeply involved in politics. Do you see yourself as a continuation of the various modern African artists you write about, such as Uche Okeke and Demas Nwoko, who connected art, cultural nationalism, and politics?

 Yes, I think so. When I advocate for establishing new museums or revitalizing the old ones, you might as well be thinking about revitalizing or reimagining our political discourse and practice in the postindependence period.

I see a parallel between the conversations around Africa, African postcolonial conditions, and postcolonial politics and the debates we’re having about museums. That’s why those debates cannot happen in the absence or without the participation of the political class. Something that is usually invisible in the way that we talk about museums is the fact that governments, whether municipal, state, or national, are always at the back end of the existence or survival of museums everywhere. Think about taxation policies and whether it’s possible to still have museums without the taxation systems that allow rich people to donate works to museums and get tax write-offs. In countries where you don’t have that, you have a low number of donations to museums, right? There’s a clear relationship between governmental policies and the life of museums.

If you don’t have a political class that is conscious about the politics of culture, the likelihood is that that system will not have developed the right kind of policies to be sympathetic to the work of art and culture in that society. We saw that play out in Benin City just months ago.

A group at the Museum of West African Art watching protesters, Benin City, Nigeria, Nov. 9, 2025. Photograph by Toyin Adedokun/AFP, via Getty Images.

The Future of Museums in West Africa

Alfredo Juarez Zeferino, known as Lelo, is a Mexican farmworker and co-founder of 

, an independent farmworker union in Burlington, Wash. Harsh living and working conditions led Lelo to begin organizing at age 13, and since then he has led several successful campaigns on labor, rent, and migration rights. After ICE arrested him in March, held him for more than three months in detention, and subjected him to a removal order, Lelo decided to self-deport to Mexico. Currently working at his family’s banana farms in Santa Cruz Yucucani, he continues to mobilize against migrant labor exploitation under the H-2A federal visa program while planning his return to the U.S. Hammer & Hope spoke to him on Aug. 11 and 22.

This conversation is being co-published by three leftist magazines: 

 Tell me about your childhood in Mexico. What was life like before moving to the United States?

 I was born in 1999 and grew up in a town called Santa Cruz Yucucani, in the state of Guerrero. For a period, I worked with my grandpa in his cornfields and banana fields. Pretty much everybody here are small little farmers; they grow corn to make tortillas, and they also plant a bit of tomatoes and chili. We don’t have any agricultural companies here, so everybody plants stuff that they need and that’s it. I started before I was 8, helping with small things here and there, until I moved to the U.S. with my parents in 2008. They wanted a better life and to make money to build a house in Mexico in case things don’t work out in the U.S.

What was the experience of leaving Mexico and moving to the United States like for you?

When I got to the U.S., my parents signed me up for school, but I only spoke Mixtec, my native language. I didn’t speak Spanish or English, so it was tough that first year. But I picked things up pretty fast. I got a lot of awards for reading and math and all that. But it wasn’t easy. Being a kid of a farmworker in the States is really hard.

Where did your family first live in the U.S.?

We were mostly in Santa Maria in California and Mount Vernon in Washington, just going back and forth between them. My parents were always working on farms following the berry season. For me and my brother, it was hard because we’d get pulled out of one school and put in another, and then move to a different city again.

At what age did you start working on farms in the U.S.?

I was 13. The wages are really low for farmworkers, and it was tough for my parents to save money. I wanted to help, so I started working in the summer of 2013. In the U.S., farmworker families work really hard in the first few months of the year, because there’s plenty of work, but in the last three months, there’s not much except for some pruning. Those are tough times, so we try to save as much as we can before then.

Do you remember your salary and the work conditions back then?

Honestly, I don’t remember the exact amount, but I remember the conditions: We didn’t get breaks and barely any restroom access. A regular workday meant clocking in at 5:30 in the morning and not leaving until we finished the field or it got really late — 11 or 12 hours of work per day.

How was your experience at school in the U.S. as a farmworker?

Sometimes it was hard to concentrate. Sitting in class, I’d think about my parents working early in the morning until late at night — no breaks, no restrooms, no food. I’d hear classmates talk about weekends with their families or summer trips they took. I didn’t get to experience any of that. It was hard.

When you were working on those farms, where did you live?

We lived in labor camps in company-provided houses for employees. Every family lived in those houses, and all the parents went to work while the kids stayed home and played together. The conditions were really rough — those camps weren’t maintained well, the roofs leaked whenever it rained, and it got very cold since there were no heaters.

Once at work it started pouring. It was really cold, and I began to feel sick. The company didn’t provide proper rain gear, so we were working in regular clothes. We picked berries crawling on our knees, searching between the plants and putting them in buckets. I started feeling really bad. I asked my mom to talk to the supervisor, told him I was feeling sick, and asked to go home. We were living in temporary housing provided by the company, and the fields were just a few minutes away. The supervisor said I could go, but that everyone working in my family would need to turn in their work ID and find a new place to live “because you’re no longer staying with us.” There was nothing I could do, except go back to work and just shut up.

Can you tell us how the first strike started?

 I took my first step in organizing in July 2013. That would have been after I first started working in Burlington, Wash. We had been asking for a price increase on the berries they were paying us. For every pound we pick, the company pays us a certain amount. The previous day, we made so little that we didn’t even reach the state minimum. We thought if we could get at least 3 more cents on the price, we could at least hit the minimum wage. But the company said no. They said, “All of you that aren’t willing to go back to work, we’ll just replace you. We’ll put in machines and replace you. We’ll bring in new workers.”

For all of us who had been working in that field, just remembering all the injustices, at a certain point we needed to do something. I did not know what organizing was. I had no idea what going on strike was, what boycotting meant — none of that. All we knew was that if none of us went back to work, the company could not replace or fire us all at once.

And what happened during the strike? Did you win?

 After the first couple days of the strike, we listed our demands. We wanted breaks, access to restrooms, and lunch time so we could eat. The company agreed to those demands, but within one week it just got rid of the agreement. When that happened, we already had support from 

, a grassroots organization that promotes farmworkers’ rights, food sovereignty, and agroecology through activities like an annual 

 in Olympia, Wash., and an agroecological teaching garden in Bellingham. I’m still very much involved with the organization. We learned from them that the agreement wasn’t our best option — what we really needed was a union contract. So we launched a campaign to establish an independent union and fight for a contract. In 2013, we voted to become a union, and in 2015, the state of Washington officially recognized it. That’s how Familias Unidas por la Justicia was founded.
The main challenge was to keep up the strike to put on as much pressure as possible. That strike lasted about a week. But when we realized that wasn’t enough, we launched a boycott against Häagen-Dazs and Driscoll’s, the company in charge of distributing Sakuma Brothers farm products. We knew that would force the company we worked for to sit down and negotiate a contract with us. In June 2017, after three and a half years of campaigning, which included many strikes and work stoppages, as well as a two-year boycott, we finally got our first union contract. I was part of the bargaining committee; when we received an offer from the employer, we would take it to our union members and ask if they approve it or not. And from there we’ve just been updating the contract with more demands.

And what has been your role in this process?

Since I speak Mixtec, Spanish, and English, for many years my biggest role was translating for folks. When we had presentations, we’d get our co-workers — a lot of them speak Mixtec or Triqui — to tell their stories at churches, universities, parks, wherever we were invited. ​​I’d also help folks in the community with their daily needs, going to hospitals or court. More recently, I’ve also been working on policies and advising.

I have advised state and local representatives and senators on the kind of language they should use when drafting new labor policies. A lot of them want to help, but often the legislation doesn’t actually help us.

In March, the weekend before I was arrested by ICE, I was at our state Capitol, talking to senators and representatives, asking them to pass a policy that would set a statewide cap, the maximum amount a landlord could increase rent. We need to set a cap so families have some predictability: if rent is going up, they know how much and can start preparing for it. That was a big focus earlier this year. When I was in the detention center, I got a newspaper article about it, and the good news was the governor signed it.

, legislation passed in 2019 that blocks the state government, local police, and state patrols from turning personal information over to ICE or Border Patrol.

On the national level, I was representing my union and Community to Community on a coalition to pass a 

. The main goal is to set a new rule so that if you’ve been in the U.S. seven or more years, you could apply for legal status.

You participated in strikes, led a very effective boycott, helped establish an association, created a union contract, and then moved forward with rent and migration-related legislation. Have you been targeted for your activism?

Very early on, in 2013, the biggest threat, not just for my family but for all the workers, was that companies would call ICE on us.

There’s also a nonprofit called Save Family Farming that’s funded by a large farm corporation, and whatever small thing we do, they publish stuff online against it. For example, 

 that we have access to paid overtime, rest breaks, or even restrooms.

Since 2019, I’d been serving on an immigration advisory board for the Bellingham mayor. In 2025, after the new mayor came in, a rule was passed to shut our meetings down. The new administration really didn’t like how our community had gained access and influence with the government. And more recently, in March 2022, striking tulip workers were threatened by their employer. But as soon as those threats were made public through a video the workers made, the company quickly started negotiating with the group of workers. Around 100 farmworkers were on strike, and they selected seven representatives to negotiate on their behalf. Within a week or two, they reached an agreement.

They had gone on strike because the company didn’t provide clean restrooms or enough drinking water and didn’t pay overtime. I had worked at that company for many years and helped the workers organize. When the threat of calling law enforcement or deportation popped up again, we knew how to deal with it.

No, currently they just have a work agreement, but if something happens or the company starts breaking those rules again, we could see another big strike or boycott and really push for a union contract.

Can you associate with the union Familias Unidas por la Justicia individually, as a rural worker from a particular farm, or do you have to be part of the local farmworkers’ association first?

The only place we have our union contract is with one company, the one we went out on strike against back in 2013. Our rules are very easy and clear. If you want to work under the union contract, all you have to do is fill out a union membership card at the company where we have the union contract. You become a union member, and we give you a membership card. If anything happens — if a supervisor starts to get aggressive, if anyone tries to fire you and you don’t want to speak to them alone — you can just call us. The phone numbers are on the back of the card. We have folks who speak multiple languages, Mixtec, Triqui, English, Spanish. There are a lot of benefits to being a member and having that representation.

In 2015, you filed a lawsuit against the local police in Bellingham for racial profiling. Can you describe what happened?

One day in the summer of 2015, I drove me and my friends to a party in Bellingham, around 30 minutes from my house in Mount Vernon. But the place was closed, and we decided to go home. On the way home, I inadvertently went the wrong way on a one-way street. A cop pulled me over. I was 15 and did not have a driver’s license, so I told him I was 18, hoping to just get a ticket. But when I said I was 18, the cop started asking a series of questions about my nationality and legal status. After I answered all his questions, he went inside his car and made a call. In just a few minutes, Border Patrol showed up, and the cop gave them all my information. The same cop then told the Border Patrol agents, “I can give this guy a ticket and let him go, or I can take him to our jail and from there see more about his background. Or the third option: You guys can take him.” And the Border Patrol said, “Oh, we’ll take him.” But by the time I got to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, my union and other organizations had already started calling Border Patrol for my release. My parents showed up, and I was released. After that, I got a lawyer, and we filed a racial-profiling complaint against the Bellingham Police Department. Years after, we settled.

 Your arrest took place the year before Trump was elected. What happened after he was sworn in for his first term?

It was hard and scary. There was a big fear that by filing the lawsuit, I could end up being deported. But I just couldn’t back down. We wanted to set an example for others who were victims of racial profiling. At that time, we did not have any state laws that prohibited communication between the local police and Border Patrol; the Keep Washington Working Act passed in 2019.

I was not threatened directly, but all the stuff that was happening around me and all the actions and the protests I was doing definitely felt like I could be targeted anytime.

 How did that situation change under Biden?

During Biden’s presidency, we wanted to bring law enforcement and our community together to make our community safer. I attended multiple city police department meetings and spoke about issues that exist in the community. We also grew very close with the sheriff’s department.

The fear that folks are feeling now is exactly what we did not want. Now our communities are afraid to ask for help because they don’t know if police could call ICE on them. As we saw Trump promising mass deportation, our team started meeting with multiple county sheriffs to ask them what they would do if they were asked to cooperate with ICE. The response that we got was very positive: They weren’t going to cooperate in rounding people up.

Even if those sheriffs and police don’t cooperate, ICE could just go in and pick people up, though. So starting in January 2025 we worked to set up rapid response teams. They’re all over the country now, made up of small groups of volunteers who have papers and are not at risk of getting deported. We have a whole team set up so that if they see ICE, they can move in quickly, record everything, ask for warrants, and provide whatever support is needed to the folks getting detained and their families, including legal assistance. We didn’t let fear stop us from organizing and protecting our community.

After Trump started intensifying the deportations, how did that impact your activism and your daily life?

The routine was the same — I was just more cautious. In March and April, I would usually be working picking tulips, but this season I decided to step aside and focus more on helping our community. When ICE detained me on March 25, I was working to gather more support for a 

 that would allow Washington’s Department of Health and the attorney general’s office to go into private detention facilities, including the Northwest detention center in Tacoma, and do inspections to see if appropriate food and medical care, for example, were provided. The law passed and was signed by the governor on May 12.

The GEO Group won a preliminary injunction partially blocking a 

 that stipulated the Department of Health would oversee health and safety conditions in that detention center. But a federal appeals court just 

 that Washington has the right to do inspections within state limits. That’s something I wanted to focus on, pushing for inspections and holding ICE and GEO Group, the for-profit company in charge of the Northwest detention center, accountable.

 Did you contribute to the new legislation as a member of Familias Unidas por la Justicia?

 I’m very close with the union leadership, but I felt I could do a lot more as an active member than being on the board itself or part of the committee. Besides helping to mobilize the workers, I help the leadership take notes and explain the laws in Spanish or Mixtec.

 Can you tell us about what happened on March 25 when ICE detained you again?

Around 7:10 a.m. I left my house in Mount Vernon to drop off my partner, who was working picking the tulips in Burlington. Just a few minutes later, I was pulled over by an unmarked vehicle. The agent walked to the car, and I saw ICE on the front of his vest. He asked me to identify myself. As I was taking my driver’s license out of my wallet, I kept asking him why he pulled me over. He responded by asking me to step out of the vehicle. I told him to first give me a reason or show me a warrant. That’s when he shattered the window with a small gadget and put his hand inside the car.

My partner started crying, and at that point I knew they weren’t going to just let me go. So I opened the car door, and one of the agents quickly grabbed my driver’s license from my hand. I raised my hands up, and they put me against my car and handcuffed me. I think the operation had three or four vehicles with five or six agents in total.

 That seems to be a massive operation to arrest someone who’s not involved in any criminal activity. Did you feel that you were being watched the days before?

In the days before my detention, I definitely saw some cars that were very suspicious just in how tinted the windows were. But again, I had no criminal history that justified ICE watching me. I had no reason to hide.

Hammer & Hope

Contributions

Forum

Introduction

Forum

Introduction

Issue

10

Minnesota Is the Movement We’ve Been Waiting For

Issue

10

Two Afro-Brazilians Remember the Brave Resistance to a Dictatorship

Issue

10

The Future of Museums in West Africa

Issue

8

This Labor Leader Is Still Organizing After ICE Detention, But From Mexico

Issue

7

It Feels Like Hell on Earth, but Another World Is Possible

Issue

6

Why Is Beyoncé a Political Symbol in Brazil?

Issue

8

Military Coups and the Struggle for Power in Africa’s Sahel Region

Issue

6

Thank You

Issue

9

War at Home

Issue

6

White Supremacy Is Apocalyptic for Everyone

Issue

7

Thank You

Issue

6

South Africa’s Black Working Class Opposes the Land Reform Law That Led Donald Trump to Give White People Refugee Status

Issue

8

Our National Nightmare

Issue

3

A Palestine Resource Guide

Issue

5

Thank You

Issue

4

Atlantic Crossings

Issue

3

This Is America’s War on Palestinians as Much as Israel’s

Issue

4

Thank You

Issue

3

“You Cannot Profit Off Our People’s Blood and Think Students Will Not Come for Your Money”

Issue

4

Gaza, the Democrats, and How to Fix Our Wretched Politics

Issue

5

Elections Matter, but We Need More Than the Ballot Box to Achieve Collective Liberation

Issue

4

What Comes Next for the Palestinian Youth Movement

Issue

3

Thank You

Issue

3

Anti-Arab Racism and the U.S. and Israeli War Machines

Issue

5

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