Above: Laura Emiko Soltis is the director of Freedom University, an Atlanta based advocacy school that supports undocumented students in their desire to pursue higher education.

A Fighting Chance

In 1994, California was in the throes of an economic recession, its unemployment rate increasing rapidly as it continued to bleed jobs in once flourishing industries. At the same time, it had the largest population of undocumented residents of any state in the country, already up to 1.3 million and getting larger.

So it wasn’t hard that year for Assemblyman Dick Mountjoy, R-Monrovia, and Republican allies in the state Assembly to find supporters for one of the farthest-reaching pieces of anti-immigrant legislation in the the country’s recent memory.

Proposition 187, also known as the Save our State, or SOS, initiative, banned undocumented immigrants from accessing any public benefits in California, including health care and public education. Had the law not eventually been struck down as unconstitutional, it would have prevented undocumented children from attending K-12 education, and it would have prevented every undocumented student living in California from attending college in the state.

Only seven years after the passing of Proposition 187, California voters would pass a bill giving some undocumented students resident tuition rates. And 10 years after that, Californians would pass the California Dream Act, giving those same students access to state financial aid for college.

In the years following the dismantling of Proposition 187, California transformed into perhaps the most progressive state in the nation on issues of unauthorized immigration, consistently passing legislation to further assimilate and integrate undocumented immigrants. Undocumented people in the state can obtain a valid driver’s license here. Some qualify for public health care. And several California cities have ordinances expressly prohibiting local police from working with federal immigration enforcement authorities.

Community activism

Evolving ideas on community activism

Evolving ideas on community activism

California’s comparatively welcoming policies for undocumented students have not dampened the activism happening among students here.

If anything, activism and organizing for undocumented students at the University of California has expanded in scope since the California Dream Act was passed and President Barack Obama announced Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

There has been a shift in the way undocumented students view their activism, said Vlad Stoicescu-Ghica, a fifth-year political science student and co-chair of Improving Dreams, Equality, Access and Success – or IDEAS – a support and advocacy organization at UCLA for undocumented students.

“A lot of the work before us was focused on school, on education policy,” he said. “Now our focus has become a lot more about what we can do for our families.”

In the last few years, IDEAS activists have begun to look beyond their identities as students, and see themselves more largely as part of an undocumented community, Stoicescu-Ghica said. They partnered with ICE Out of L.A., a community organization working to halt deportations in the city and fight against local and state police cooperation with federal immigration agencies. Some members of IDEAS have even been arrested during protests against deportation.

Students have also begun pushing back against the use of the term “DREAMer,” arguing that it serves only to divide the immigrant community and cast one group as “deserving” of protection while criminalizing others.

That idea has begun to take hold for a greater number of students at the UC – it was a central theme at the UC summit in May on undocumented students, where students from every campus gathered to discuss how the University could improve its access and success within the system.

And it has impacted the way IDEAS advocates for resources on campus, as well.

One of the organization’s largest pushes this year is to pressure UCLA to establish an immigration law clinic like the one that serves UC Berkeley. The Berkeley Immigration Law Clinic provides legal services to students and their families who might also need them, Stoicescu-Ghica said. It’s the family and community components that are particularly important to IDEAS members, since currently their families cannot receive comprehensive legal consultation or services at UCLA.

Still, on-campus resources have remained a large part of IDEAS’ advocacy work. Since Janet Napolitano was appointed president of the University in 2013, undocumented students throughout the UC have consistently applied pressure on her to show her commitment to supporting them. Napolitano had a lot to prove, coming fresh out of a job in which she oversaw record numbers of deportations. Some undocumented students will likely never feel comfortable with her at the head of the system.

At least on the surface, their protests did not go unnoticed. Shortly after her appointment, a council of undocumented student leaders assembled to meet with Napolitano and advise her on their needs and concerns with her position as president.

As a result of those talks, Napolitano allotted $5 million to go toward undocumented student resources across the UC. Each campus received an amount based in part on the number of undocumented students enrolled. About half of the money to each campus was specifically allotted for financial aid, and the other half for programming. It was a one-time allocation meant to last for two years of funding. This is the second year that campuses will have this money, although Napolitano could choose to commit to further funding at the end of this fiscal year.

Undocumented students wait with baited breath for that decision, hoping that it will pave the way for greater resources at the UC – ones that help not only them, but also their families and the whole community.

Story by Natalie Delgadillo

Immigrants’ rights activists look at the transformation of Californians’ views on immigration, and see the possibility of a national shift.

At the very least, they see a reason for optimism in places like Georgia, where the fight has just begun.

Freedom University

Inside of a small blue building in a residential Atlanta neighborhood, a professor stands at the front of a packed room of students, gesturing widely as he discusses the song he has just played for the room – Ozomatli’s “Coming War.”

“This is a call to resist a particular way of thinking about the world,” Ed Lee, professor of debate, says emphatically. “Complicity is a choice.”

The room is packed beyond capacity. About 50 students sit in folding chairs lined up in messy rows, notebooks on their laps, scribbling. A few are leaning against the wall, holding their notebooks in front of them like choir music.

“This is a call to resist a particular way of thinking about the world. Complicity is a choice.” Ed Lee

Every face in the room is alert, focused. Many of these students are new to Freedom University, attending their first semester. Some are returners. All are undocumented and struggling to attend university in the state of Georgia, where they are required to pay out-of-state tuition in addition to being banned from the top five schools in the state.

Susana Ramirez sits straight upright at the very front of the classroom, rapt with attention. This is only her third class at Freedom University, but she shows no trace of shyness or doubt. Nearly every time Lee asks a question, her hand shoots up, ready.

Ramirez is 18 years old. She just graduated from Berkmar high school a few months ago, and despite her strong desire to attend college, she has been unable to enroll in any classes except the ones at Freedom University.

She came to the United States from Colombia when she was 5 years old, following her father who had already immigrated here years before. Until she began the college application process, Ramirez did not know about the ban or the out-of-state tuition requirements for students like her.

When she found out, she felt frustrated and hopeless, resenting the state she had called home for more than a decade. But Freedom University has allowed her to start seeing past that resentment.

“This place gives me hope that college is a possibility for me,” she said.

Immediately after the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia instituted the ban on undocumented students in 2010, a group of professors at the University of Georgia, or UGA, created Freedom University to help undocumented students in the state continue their studies. The founders based the organization on the Freedom Schools of the 1960s civil rights movement, which were alternative schools created to help black students achieve political and social equality.

Many of its original organizers reduced their involvement over time as they got positions teaching at universities out of state.

Freedom University continues to operate now under the guidance of Laura Emiko Soltis, a recent graduate of Emory University with an interdisciplinary doctorate in human rights.

Soltis, her hair in a short bob framing her face, sits in the corner of the classroom intently typing at her computer. Every once in awhile she joins in the classroom debate, or laughs with a surprising loudness when a student makes a joke.

When Soltis first started running the organization in 2013, she worked without pay for 15 months. Even after the organization won a grant that gave her a small salary, she says it’s still difficult for her to make ends meet – she’s probably 20 pounds underweight, she tells me as we sit outside on the steps to talk during a class break. But she remains committed to her students and to the core mission of Freedom University.

“In order for people to reclaim their dignity and use education for action, they have to know where they come from and who they are,” Soltis said. “That’s the grounding pedagogy.”

The school offers three to four classes each semester, taught by a rotating cast of volunteer professors, including professors from top Georgia universities, lawyers and people who hold doctorates in various fields.

Laura Emiko Soltis

Lessons in freedom and fighting for a better future

Lessons in freedom and fighting for a better future

In 2013, Laura Emiko Soltis walked 200 miles in solidarity with farmworkers in South Florida, making their physical struggle as migrant laborers her own.

“Marching with people makes me feel most alive,” she said, thinking back.

Soltis’ lifelong career as an activist has taken her from storming hallways in front of the Emory University president’s office, to living with farmworkers in the fields of South Florida, to her current post as the director of Freedom University, an organization dedicated to educating undocumented students.

She speaks with an authority about activism that belies her slender frame and youthful face, a quiet passion pervading her words. What ultimately fuels her fight though is not fury, but hope.

“You can be angry, and you should be,” she said. “But you have to be able to imagine the alternative, and that’s what you have to work toward.”

As the director of Freedom University, Soltis creates a space for action, planning classes that allow students to use their own experiences as a source of knowledge and empowerment rather than simply teaching state-mandated curricula.

“I want to show them there are many different kinds of knowledge,” Soltis said. “They can shape the world around them, even if it’s bleak and oppressive.”

Soltis’ own life has been a case study in the struggle to take a stand and incite positive change.

“Activism isn’t a spectacle,” she said. “It really sucks if you do it right.”

She learned that lesson as a graduate student, when she – along with six other students – was arrested during a standoff at Emory University for protesting unfair wages for subcontracted cafeteria workers.

That night, Soltis spent 16 hours in DeKalb County Jail, mostly with women of color who were arrested for minor offenses like driving without a license.

“It was a microcosm of everything wrong,” she said.

For her doctoral dissertation, she researched the migrant labor movement in South Florida, living among the farmworkers and getting to know them and their families.

Soltis became involved in the undocumented student movement after those experiences sparked within her a deep commitment to educating and guiding immigrant youth.

“Then it wasn’t about farmworkers 10 hours away, it was about undocumented youth and families in our communities,” Soltis said.

Freedom University was her chance to take what she learned throughout her education as an activist and invest it into her work with students who, like her, are fighting for a better future.

”I love teaching, but using that knowledge to affect the world around you is the most powerful part of Freedom University,” she said. “I want them to practice the world they want, to show the world that what they want is possible.”

Story and photos by Angie Wang

For fall 2015, Freedom University professors are offering courses in speech and debate, mindfulness and meditation and SAT preparation, all on Sundays – often the students’ only day off work. But the instructors’ jobs go beyond their time in the school’s makeshift lecture halls.

Teachers also give students one-on-one attention and help, write letters of recommendation, assist with college applications and otherwise support them in ways that aren’t limited to schoolwork.

“(The teachers) have boundaries, but they’re very faint,” Soltis said. “We are so much more than teachers. We mentor students in a way that’s not on a syllabus.”

“In order for people to reclaim their dignity and use education for action, they have to know where they come from and who they are. That’s the grounding pedagogy.” Laura Emiko Soltis

Soltis also teaches her students about activism, based on what she learned as a student activist organizing contracted laborers at Emory University and working on the farmworker’s movement in South Florida.

Freedom University students don’t need much prompting. Their top priority: pressuring the board of regents to reverse the policy that bars them from the best schools and forces them to pay out-of-state tuition.

In January, four undocumented students from Freedom University were arrested on UGA’s campus for refusing to leave a classroom after the building had closed. It was part of a carefully planned protest, Soltis said, meant to draw media attention to the problem.

“Pictures of the movement so far haven’t really shown visually what the ban is doing,” she said. “How do you represent undocumented status? We came up with the idea of monarch butterfly wings, to show that migration is natural and beautiful. We talked about how we wanted the front-page photo the next day to be of a police officer arresting a butterfly. And it turned out to be exactly what we wanted.”

The board of regents, however, has yet to be convinced. The regents have said they are steadfast in the belief that they did the right thing in raising the barrier for entry for undocumented students.

Regent Thomas Hopkins Jr. said that this issue was something the board of regents “hasn’t dealt with for a while now.” They heard testimony from an undocumented student affected by the ban about two years ago, he said, but it didn’t change their minds.

General public opinion in Georgia has historically been in favor of harsh immigration enforcement policies, both inside and outside the realm of higher education.

Undocumented immigrants do not have federal authorization to live in the United States, and many Georgia students and community members alike feel that they should not take up spots that could otherwise be given to American citizens. That is the grounding logic behind the ban and policies like it.

For The Arch Conservative, a newsmagazine at UGA, the topic of undocumented immigration is a rallying cry.

“If an illegal immigrant were to be admitted to the University of Georgia, it would be at the expense of another student, in all likelihood a citizen,” ArchCon wrote in an editorial last school year. “That outcome would not be just if the word ‘citizen’ means anything at all.”

Paolo Jara-Riveros

'Undocumented, unafraid': bringing activism across borders

'Undocumented, unafraid': bringing activism across borders

Etched into his forearm in large, blocky script are the coordinates of Paolo Jara-Riveros’ home in Lima, Peru.

It’s a tattoo in remembrance of his first home, the place he still carries in his heart even now that he lives half a world away. Jara-Riveros lived in that spacious yellow house with his mother and grandparents in Lima until he was 15 years old, when his mother lost her job as an accountant in Miraflores, an affluent part of the city.

When that happened, Paolo said, she decided to try her luck in the United States, and she brought Paolo with her. They traveled there on a tourist visa and did not go back home when it expired.

The transition was not an easy one for Jara-Riveros, who arrived in the U.S. smack in the middle of high school, knowing just a little bit of English from his private school education in Peru.

But even more difficult to adjust to than his new surroundings was his immigration status – a sudden source of deep shame, thrust upon him from what felt like all directions.

“The first knowledge I had about immigration was in reference to me being ‘an illegal,’” he said. “When people talked about undocumented people like they were criminals, I really took that to heart. It made me believe I was worth less than other people.”

That feeling followed him through his last two years of high school in Alhambra, his five years at a community college in Pasadena and finally his two semesters at Cal Poly Pomona studying hospitality management. After that, Jara-Riveros had had enough.

“I just didn’t want to be undocumented anymore,” he said.

To top it off, his studies in hospitality management at Cal Poly Pomona were unexciting at best, torturous at worst. He wanted to study photography, and he wanted to do it somewhere he could live without the pressure and shame that accompanied his status.

So he set his sights on an arts school in Spain. In order to attend, he would have to go back to Lima and apply for a student visa, meaning that he would likely not be able to gain re-entry to the United States, where his mother lived. And if the visa was denied, he would be stuck in Lima, unable to go to school in Spain or to come back to see his mother in the U.S.

But it was worth the risk for Jara-Riveros, who saw little point in remaining in a country that criminalized his very presence.

Unfortunately, the risk was real and present. About a month after arriving in Lima, Jara-Riveros got word that his visa had been denied.

“I shut myself up in my room and cried the whole day,” Jara-Riveros said in Spanish. “There I was, in Lima, stuck.”

And being stuck in Lima was no small thing for Jara-Riveros, whose situation was complicated by his sexual orientation.

As of today, Jara-Riveros identifies as a gender nonconforming man. He considers himself straight, because he identifies as a man and is attracted to women.

When he was living in Peru, Jara-Riveros was still identifying as a lesbian woman. In a country where the law often does not protect victims of hate crimes and discrimination, his identity created a dangerous situation for him and put his safety at risk.

“In Peru, especially in Lima, queer people, transgender women, women, all get killed there. Police watch and don’t do anything,” Jara-Riveros said.

So when the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, an advocacy organization for undocumented youth, began organizing an initiative to bring back young undocumented students who had been deported or left the country, Jara-Riveros jumped at the chance to join.

“When I started organizing (with NIYA), I had never even heard the words ‘civil disobedience’ before,” he said.

But soon, Jara-Riveros would live out the meaning of those words. Along with a group of 30 other undocumented students and armed with immigration lawyers, Jara-Riveros marched to the U.S.-Mexico border dressed in his cap and gown, demanding to be let through.

He and several other students were arrested and detained, but many eventually were, in fact, let through after being held in detention.

Jara-Riveros is currently in the U.S. under consideration for asylum. Being sent back to Peru would put him in real danger, he said, especially now that he has transitioned to living as a man. In six to 10 years, a court will decide on Jara-Riveros’ case, and could eventually send him back to Lima.

But right now, Jara-Riveros is focused on the moment. His first act of civil disobedience was not his last; in fact, it spurred a drive in him to continue doing activist work for his community.

He is now a member of the Immigrant Youth Coalition in Los Angeles, and recently wrapped up an internship at St. John’s Well Child and Family Center, which offers health services to undocumented transgender individuals.

He no longer feels the kind of shame and stigma he used to feel about his status, he said, and he credits his activist work for that.

“I’ve learned a lot doing this work. The first thing is not to be afraid,” he said. “That’s why we chant that phrase together: undocumented and unafraid.”

Story by Natalie Delgadillo

There do, however, seem to be some signs of a shifting wind.

Neither The Arch Conservative nor the UGA College Republicans would speak to us for this story, in no small part because it has become less and less popular for organizations to identify themselves with these policies. The Arch Conservative went so far as to ask us not to use their name or their stories in our publication.

And it seems some people’s feelings are mixed on the subject. Ronald Cato, a fourth-year political science student and chairman of the College Republicans at Georgia State University – which is not subject to the ban – feels strongly that undocumented individuals should not be considered residents for purposes of tuition. Changing that policy would come at too great a cost to the taxpayers, he said.

“I’m a college student, and I’m always going to be in favor of a free or subsidized college education,” he said. “But we have to recognize that someone has to pay, and that’s usually the taxpayers.”

He also spoke, in no uncertain terms, about the necessity for immigration reform, for decreasing illegal crossing at the border and against the “legalization of illegal immigrants coming over here and gaining citizenship.”

At the same time, he had a very different feeling about the policy that bans undocumented students from the top five universities in the state.

“Let me come out and say, the ban is absurd,” he said. “I am firmly against that policy. We should be allowing everyone to compete. Qualified undocumented students should have a seat at the table.”

Freedom University has been successful in gaining student allies at several Georgia universities. UGA has the Undocumented Student Alliance, which is a large and well-organized group of students advocating for undocumented students on a campus that doesn’t have a single one enrolled.

“Let me come out and say, the ban is absurd. I am firmly against that policy. We should be allowing everyone to compete. Qualified undocumented students should have a seat at the table.” Ronald Cato

And Freedom University has recently achieved a major success with its ally student group at Emory University, called Freedom at Emory University. After a year of pushing administration to make Emory a haven for undocumented students in a state that pushes them away, Freedom University students, in conjunction with Freedom at Emory, have secured a commitment from the university that it will offer private aid to undocumented students who qualify for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

DACA students are now evaluated like any other resident of the United States, said John Leach, director of financial aid at Emory.

“They are considered residents and they are evaluated in a need-blind fashion,” Leach said.

That means that their admission to the school does not depend on their ability to pay. And if they are accepted, 100 percent of their needs as students will be met by the university, using only private money. No state or federal funds can go to help undocumented students attend Emory.

When Emory first instituted the policy, the university enrolled only six DACA students. But it’s possible that number will increase now that funding does not represent such an obstacle for DACA-eligible undocumented students.

“I think the culture here is changing,” Soltis said. “In Georgia, the word ‘illegal’ was super common until last year. Now senators are saying undocumented. We are humanizing excluded people, changing the narrative, making them visible – that is really important,” Soltis said.