Since I started this at school, it only makes sense to include some of the highlights from my last weeks here. Now that I have turned in my final paper as an undergraduate, I have a few spare moments.
Two Wednesdays ago, my favorite class, Latino/a Migration, co-hosted a community forum on immigration and border issues. We've had a sister class all semester who were the other half of the co-host: Life on the Hyphen. They get the cool name, which has made me jealous all semester, but we speak English and are not Literary and Cultural Studies, which gives us infinite points. Both classes had worked in research groups to study some aspect of migration within Williamsburg; a group from both classes had gone to the US-Mexico Border over spring break.
Our professors put together the forum so that the people who had traveled to the border could present the projects they had done based on their experiences. As the other groups interviewed community members, we invited them to the forum.
We hoped to spark dialogue in the Williamsburg community about immigration -- the city does a good job at making people invisible, and while there is some safety in staying hidden, there is also a problem in allowing part of your population to be an invisible people, especially when they are a vulnerable people.
The thing that got me was that only the border groups presented. That placed the focus of the forum far away, in Arizona and Mexico, rather than right here in the 'burg. Maybe I'm too impatient and eventually, if this class happens again, they'll be ready to say what they find about Williamsburg. Maybe this only needs to spark a dialogue, and starting far away can help do just that. Also, I don't know who attended this forum: whether we were speaking to people already knowledgeable in this area, or if we were opening people's minds.
Conclusion of my life: I want to know more and see what happens from here.
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