I met so many people [where] if you had [had] a lawyer at that moment, your life wouldn’t be in peril right now. I remember meeting this guy in a migrant shelter in Mexico called “Hermanos en el Camino,” which is along the train going north, “La Bestia.” He was the only other out gay man there, and he couldn’t leave the shelter because that was the only place he could get HIV medication.
I knew that people who were going to be denied health care based on some part of their identity could qualify for asylum — and that this person, if he had had a good attorney in the United States before he was deported, could have won his asylum case. But he didn’t, and now I don’t think he’s alive anymore.
So [I decided] to pursue tangible skills to offer to this movement. Because even though I’m not a migrant, I’m not a person who is being terrorized by the immigration–border security complex, I can provide something tangible.
The position I found with Make the Road was in the workers’ unit, and I was really inspired by that model of not only providing services but also connecting people to organizing. And if the people who are being targeted are the people who need to be involved in organizing, if they can’t pay rent, because their boss doesn’t pay them and their landlord is harassing them, and they’re afraid of their family being torn apart, then how can we expect that person to have a political voice?
That [framework] helped me move from a deportation defense kind of practice into a worker practice — thinking, how can we improve people’s lives so they can be political agents? And also, the only kind of attorney I ever wanted to be was one who was connected to organizing.
Auteur: David Orkin
