For immigrant women, fighting for some of the standard platforms of the women's movement may feel unthinkable when deportation is staring you in the face every day.
Interpretation
The struggles of immigrant women can overshadow broader women's rights issues when they face the immediate threat of deportation.
This quote by Pramila Jayapal highlights the unique challenges that immigrant women face, emphasizing that their most urgent concerns about safety and stability can often eclipse discussions surrounding women's rights and movements. It calls attention to the intersection of immigration issues and gender equality, suggesting that for many, the fight for rights may seem distant or impossible under the pressure of daily fears of deportation.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of including immigrant women's voices in feminist movements.
Having a strong race lens means you understand racism is threaded through and institutionalized in all of our systems and our very perceptions, threaded through how someone looks at you, treats you, thinks about you and your potential.
If there is one thing that resonates for women, it is that regardless of where we come from or what we look like, we want to be fully recognized for the breadth of our contributions.
I am not a woman on Monday, an immigrant on Tuesday, a worker on Wednesday, and a mom on Thursday, I am all of those things all of the time, and I am going to fight for all of those things all of the time.
Every hour that goes by with family separation policies in effect is another hour that mothers weep thinking of their children, another hour that kids are fearfully wondering where their parents have been taken, another hour that trauma deepens.
So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that Slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interest of the South. So fully am I satisfied of this that I would have cheerfully lost all that I have lost by the war, and have suffered all that I have suffered to have this object attained.
Every American soldier wants as much public support as he can possibly have. That's the soldiers on duty in Iraq, and that's me, as well. We fight better knowing that our people back home support us, back us, and understand what we're doing. It's hugely important.
So I didn't pass. It was the army's decision that they didn't want me to go into the service. They're the boss. I don't want to say no whole lot about it.
Believe me, the drug of freedom is universally potent.
When it comes to racism, discrimination, corruption, public lies, dictatorships, and human rights, you have to take a stand as a reporter because I think our responsibility as journalist is to confront those who are abusing power.
The struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma is a struggle for life and dignity. It is a struggle that encompasses our political, social and economic aspirations.
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