Luna’s ‘neighborhood Guards’ Against Ice Raids

Guzmán explained that the federal government is “kidnapping individuals even when they show up in court.” In response, LUNA is developing this program, which has three pillars: “household, self-defense, and education and learning preparation.”

LUNA’s Three-Pillar Program

And pertaining to family strategies, the objective is to supply families with the tools to have every little thing prepared in case of one or both parents being removed, “where the youngsters go, or with whom, and where they remain.”

Latinos United for a New America (LUNA), a grassroots company in San Jose, is taking its primary steps toward organizing what it calls “neighborhood guards” in feedback to the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant crackdown.

LUNA has a workplace in La Placita Tropicana, yet according to Guzmán and Manrique, it’s not practical and also dangerous to convene with lots of people there, for the obvious factor that La Tropicana is well-known as a Latino hangout.

Community Guardians Defined

The Neighborhood Guardians will be “generally the community itself. We wish to enlighten people to develop a support network that enables us to secure ourselves,” Yurina Guzmán, one of LUNA’s neighborhood organizers, told Peninsula 360 Press.

Latinos Unidos por una Nueva América (LUNA), established in 2013 by protestor Salvador “Chava” Bustamante, to name a few, aims to organize the Latino community in the South Bay to establish strategies to better respond to raids by ICE (Migration and Traditions Enforcement), the government migration enforcement agency.

Building a Network of Support

Manrique additionally said that Latinos have actually various other allied motions such as SURJ (Show Up for Racial Justice), an organization comprised of “thousands of white individuals working for racial and economic justice,” as they specify themselves. SURJ has chapters or affiliates in the Bay Area, and its purpose is to aid individuals of color in their struggles for equal rights.

This story belongs to “Aquí Estamos/Here We Stand,” a collective coverage job of American Neighborhood Media and ethnic/community information outlets statewide tracking exactly how current White Residence plans are influencing Californians, especially in country areas, and how citizens are responding.

Community Leaders as First Defense

Gabriel Manrique, one more LUNA neighborhood organizer, revealed that the objective is to “establish area leaders, because the neighborhood is the very first line of defense: they are the ones who report when they see a suspicious automobile or individual” in their communities.

“No, due to the fact that someone might even state, ‘If I say I remain in a self-defense team, they might even arrest me,'” Guzmán claimed, clearing up that they make use of the term to provide Latinos the opportunity to look for protection and shelter as citizens with lawful rights.