Tethered Tales
The panel of experts mid-discussion during the Q&A in the CAA building on Sept. 14. Photo by Erik Estrada.
This story was originally published on September 27, 2017 in Volume 28, Issue 3.
It is 2017 but it feels like we are living in the modern day 1930 with the discrimination that has surfaced against DACA recipients these last few months. While the nation waits for the ultimate decision of the DACA recipient’s statuses, this seems all too familiar to history.
Thursday Sept. 14, Chaffey Community College’s Psych Club hosted a panel focusing on discussing DACA and the current anxieties many students are feeling with the news of the removal of the DACA program. Throughout the hour-long panel discussion the connection between historic and current events kept surfacing. The old saying, “history repeats its self ” has never been more relevant than it is now in 2017.
Moises Rosales, Chaffey Community College’s DREAMer’s Club president recalled a conversation he had with professor, “How do you hide students when an ICE truck comes to campus?” the professor asked. The thought that innocent people will have to hide from the same government that welcomed them into the United States in hopes of one day becoming permanent citizens is a hard concept to fathom.
The word “hide” connects what was happening in the mid 1930s when Jewish people would hide in fear from the Nazis and the fear of what DACA recipients might have to face come March.
Although ICE trucks showing up to campus is highly unlikely, it is not an impossible outcome.
Comparing the Holocaust to the removal of DACA seems a bit extreme, but it is only one of a few ways to make people understand the grievance of this matter.
How about comparing the support the Civil Rights activists had in the 1950s and ‘60s to the amount of supporters DACA recipients have now.
Even though there are thousands of people who support President Tump’s decision to remove the DACA program, there are just as many, if not more, people who support the immigrants and are willing to help them fight for their rights.
The Civil Rights activists were fighting for rights for minorities and the discriminated against. Long before the 1950s and ‘60s people were trying to get rights for African-Americans, which only really began to become noticed when the Civil Rights Movements evolved.
Similarly, immigrants have been facing hardships for decades, but things seemed to be progressing when former President Obama implemented the DACA program in 2012. With the recent decision to have the program removed it seems as though America is going in reverse.
Civil rights activists Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. set the model for other groups and organizations to advance including Black Lives Matter, DREAMers, the LGBTQ+ community and Women’s March Global.