ABAC student participates in border protests

TIFTON — While many have debated the immigration policies of the Trump administration and voiced their opinions on social media and with close friends and family, few have taken action beyond that.

One ABAC student, Kevin Joachin, has done much more.

Joachin interned with the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights from the beginning of May to the end of June. With the internship, he had the opportunity to travel to Tornillo, Texas, and be a part of protests at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Joachin said that the GLAHR is a grassroots organization that has worked for more than 20 years helping to fight for immigrant and Latino rights in Georgia.

Joachin also spoke of the calls to abolish ICE at the border and the #AbolishICE movement.

“We cannot negotiate with Trump’s administration with the legal power of General Attorney Jeff Sessions to stop family separation only to continue their incarceration in detention centers,” Joachin said. “… How can we use any other message besides #AbolishICE while our community is threatened with the Goodlatte bill and mass deportation?”

While some may think that this movement is extreme, Joachin and many others say they believe it is necessary. He spoke of his time at the border and the experience of seeing buses carrying children past the port of entry.

“They raised their hands against the tinted windows calling for help,” Joachin said. “It was a heartbreaking sight to see. The important message there was that the fight against ICE was organized by our community and fought for people in our community. Latino people showed up from around the U.S. to push for the message #AbolishICE and #FreeOurFutures.”

Joachin was also present at the Standing Rock protesting the Dakota access pipeline in the winter of 2016.

“Standing Rock was a beautiful place,” Joachin said. “I went because I believed in their right to have access to clean water, and I wanted to see what the largest pan-indigenous gathering in the Americas was like. People came from Mexico, Central and South America and from Canada and all around the U.S.”

Joachin was raised by migrant farm workers and lived in Miami, Orlando, and rural areas of both Florida and North Carolina as a young child. His family settled in Tifton when he was around 3.

“My parents migrated to the U.S. for different reasons, but they both came from humble backgrounds in Mexico and Guatemala,” he said. “They were agricultural migrants and lived tough lives here in the U.S. They tell me stories about how they were very underpaid working in agriculture and how they would have to sleep on the floor and eat out of trashcans.”

Joachin said he knows it was not easy for them adjusting to a new country and life, but throughout his life he watched them improve their lives, and his, little by little, with them getting their own apartment, taking English classes and earning their GED from ABAC.

Joachin says he had his first experience with racism when he was only 9 and endured derogatory name-calling and even abuse growing up because he was Hispanic.

He said he also gained a small taste of what his parents’ and many other migrant workers’ lives were like as a teenager working various agricultural jobs during the summer.

“By 15 I was packing and even unloading watermelon buses in Tifton and Ashburn just in time for America’s Fourth of July,” he said. “It was hard work, and there were nights when farmers demanded the working crew to work until 3 in the morning.”

Joachin said through these experiences he gained a sense of belonging and connection to the struggle of people like his parents and the many migrant workers from Jamaica, Haiti, Mexico and Central America he worked with.

“Though I know my community is scapegoated in the Southeast, it gave me a sense of belonging,” he said. “It was a beautiful experience, but it is the hardest work I have ever done and do every summer.”

Although his internship with GLAHR has ended, Joachin said he learned a lot from the experience and plans to stay active.

“Now that my internship with GLAHR is over, I will continue to be a GLAHR member in the popular assembly in Tifton,” he said. “GLAHR gave me important tools to continue activism and to even someday be a community organizer. The most important one I believe is to listen to my community’s needs and know that their needs and rights are not negotiable.”