BLACK LIVES AND OUR COLLECTIVE FUTURE

Alma Maquitico is the co-director of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Her work has centered on developing initiatives to address rural development, climate change, and human rights. Over the past twenty years, she has provided technical assistance to various grassroots organizations addressing food, agriculture, and ecological sustainability with migrant and refugee communities on the US-Mexico borderlands. Additionally, Alma has helped built grassroots networks to monitor and document human rights violations resulting from immigration enforcement in communities along the US-Mexico border.

Nana Gyamfi is the executive director of BAJI . She received her undergraduate degree from Cornell University and her Juris Doctorate from UCLA School of Law. She brings with her over three decades of service to the Movement for Black liberation, and over twenty years of experience directing Black social justice organizations and networks. Nana is a human rights and criminal defense attorney, a professor in the Pan African Studies Department at the California State University Los Angeles, and radio personality who hosts two popular shows in Los Angeles, CA. She is also the president of
the National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL). As a seasoned organizer and activist, Nana has been involved with and led various local, national, and international social justice organizations for over thirty years.

Arturo Viscara is the International Programs Manager for CHIRLA and joins us from Tapachula, near the Mexico/Guatemala border. A staunch anti-imperialist, he has long organized and worked to reduce the US-led militarization and exploitation of Latin America/the Caribbean and all peoples. Arturo works with asylum seekers in Mexico in order to get them the best information possible on the US asylum and detention systems so they can make the best possible immigration decisions for themselves and their families. The majority of folks he works with are Central American, but also Haitian, Cuban, Mexican, and other asylum seekers. He was born in El Salvador and grew up in the US before moving to Mexico three years ago. He studied law and international relations at Boston University.

Apolonio “Polo” Morales joined CHIRLA in 2014 as political director and transitioned to external affairs director in 2019. A child of undocumented immigrants, Polo has dedicated his life to advancing pro-immigrant policies and changing the anti-immigrant narrative in the United States. A UC Berkeley graduate, he has organized for California Nurses Association/United Steelworkers’ Healthcare Workers Alliance, Contra Costa Interfaith Supporting Community Organization and Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action where he served as interim director. He also served as national immigration organizer for Faith in Action’s Campaign for Citizenship.

Isabel Garcia is the co-chair of the Coalición de Derechos Humanos, a grassroots organization based in Tucson, Arizona, that promotes respect for human and civil rights and fights the militarization of the border region in the American Southwest. She is also a retired legal defender of Pima County, Arizona. Ms. Garcia has been at the forefront of immigrant and refugee rights since 1976. As a lead speaker on behalf of Derechos Humanos, Ms. Garcia holds press conferences and interviews, hosts media crews, leads demonstrations, weekly vigils, symposiums, and marches to draw attention to unjust policies and inhumane treatment of immigrants. She works to counter anti-immigrant hysteria and to change stereotypes and misinformation about immigrants

Elsadig Elsheikh is the Director of the Global Justice Program at the Othering & Belonging Institute, where he oversees the program’s projects on corporate power, food systems, forced migration, inclusiveness index, Islamophobia, and human rights mechanisms; and manages the Shahidi Project, and the Nile Project. Elsadig's research interests focus on the themes and socio-political dynamics related to state and citizenship; race and corporate power; and measuring social policies of exclusion and inclusion.

Originally from South Texas, Arnoldo García is a culture-maker, community organizer, and poet based in Oakland, California. He edited and published "Poets against War & Racism | Poetas contra la guerra y el racismo," a poetry chapbook featuring multinational poets, available at this link PAWR. Arnoldo worked for the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights for over a decade and now works with community-based organizations to train and build intergenerational multiracial leadership for restorative justice. Arnoldo's work has been featured on La Bloga, Poets Responding @PoetryofResistance and in the upcoming book on Oakland's movements for racial justice and Black Lives Matter, Painting the Streets, co-published by EastSide Arts Alliance and Nomadic Press of Oakland. His poetic work is available at: lacarpadelfeo.blogspot.com and artofthecommune.wordpress.com

As a Nigerian woman who was born in New York and raised in London, Catherine Labiran is passionate about advancing human rights through poetry, advocacy, and research.

Catherine strives to infuse her diverse cultural experiences into exhilarating bodies of work enabling them to live lives of their own. She was selected as a winner of SLAMbassadors UK 2010, a winner of 30 Nigeria House, and was conferred the honour of writing the official Olympic Poem for London 2012 as one of London’s “12 Poets for 2012". Her poetry has been translated into several languages for publications across the globe.

Catherine has worked for a number of human rights organizations including the US Human Rights Network, Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) and currently at The Praxis Project. Catherine was selected as a Fellow for People of African Descent by the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights. In 2020, she was named as one of the Most Influential People of African Descent by MIPAD 100.