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Bio: Maria Huerta
July 19, 2012
Maria Huerta, 65, was born in Mexico and has lived in the United States for 35 years. She has lived in California for the last 15 years with her 4 children. She works with the organization Mujeres Unidas y Activas, Women United and Active, where she fights for the rights of domestic workers and the empowerment of women for the last 13 years, including as the president of the organization’s Board of Directors. As an undocumented immigrant she has also been a long-time community organizer instrumental in building support for the California Bill of Rights Campaign. She is a powerful speaker and has facilitated know-your-rights presentations and workshops on domestic violence, sexual assault, and immigrant rights. She is coming out and speaking about her life because she is tired of hiding and of seeing the abuses that immigrant communities face. Her inspiration for participating on the bus tour is the hope that her actions will lead to people knowing more about the lives of undocumented immigrants, even if she has to risk deportation. While on the bus, Maria has participated in two direct actions, one in Birmingham, Alabama, where she risked arrest interrupting author of SB 1070 Kris Kobach’s testimony at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she was arrested during a peaceful protest for blocking the street.
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Bio: Alejandro Guizar
July 19, 2012
Alejandro Guizar, 19, was born in Sinaloa, Mexico, and came to the United States with his father at the age of 9. He has lived in Knoxville, Tennessee for 10 years, and graduated from Hardin Valley Academy high school. While he attended school he was in the wrestling team, and was a respected sportsman. He has continued his education, and is currently studying biology in college. His inspiration to study is his mother, who is a micro biologist in Mexico. He wants to join the army, and be part of first-response teams during outbreaks or bio-medical emergencies. He is also an organizer advocating for the rights of immigrants in Tennessee, and has co-founded a youth organization in the state called the Unknowns Working to be Known, which will continue to work for undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows “and show those who oppose us who we are. We are human beings, and we are not going anywhere.”
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Bio: Andres Gallegos
July 19, 2012
Andres Gallegos was born in Denver, Colorado, but has lived in Los Angeles, California most of his life. He describes himself as coming from a union family, growing up around working people. His mom and his grandfather were born in L.A., and his mother was involved in the Chicano movement, which “laid a big seed in my brain about what it means to be working class, people of color in a big urban city where all you do is get jailed and beaten by police, or thrown into an institution,” he explains. While he lived there, he worked doing union organizing as a hotel service employee. It was around this time that he decided to come out to his co-workers as queer, learning that “there is hope that can be gained by overcoming fear.” This is the sprit that he carries with him on the bus. He has also lived in Chicago, where he worked with a queer organization focused on queer and transgender youth of color. When he is not on the road with the No Papers No Fear riders, he lives back in Los Angeles. He is considering attending law school, and one day wants to open a community-based, community-owned, affordable Laundromat, that can also serve as a space for meetings.
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Bio: Jorge Torres
July 19, 2012
Jorge Torres was born in Ecuador, where he had his first experience seeing inequality, particularly in the way indigenous people in his town were treated. He began organizing with indigenous people since he was 12 years old. He came to the United States at the age of 16 with his parents, and has lived here for 15 years. He lived undocumented for 9 years of his life, during which he learned about the frustration of lacking access to school, work, and travel. He began to organize with Comunidad Latina en Acción, a community organization that works against wage-theft, provides educational and leadership opportunities, and is dedicated to community empowerment. He was able to regularize his immigration status three years ago, but continues to organize with immigrant communities. He continues to work with Comunidad Latina en Acción, has done community radio, and makes films and documentaries relating to migrants and social justice. Regarding his involvement on the No Papers No Fear Ride, he says that “this is something that is making history, and a story that needs to be told, and we need to be able to say and document these moments with our own media.”
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Bio: Perla Farias
July 19, 2012
Perla Farias is a journalism and justice studies major at Arizona State University, traveling as part of the media crew of the No Papers No Fear ride. She has lived in Arizona for 10 years, but was born in California. She has seen at least two of her family members deported, her aunt and godmother. She says, “I’ve seen deportation affect my family, and its breaking us apart. If someone in our family is missing a piece of them, mom or husband, then the rest of us aren’t complete.” She also finds her inspiration to address social justice issues in her experience as a Chicana woman who has had direct experiences of patriarchy and racism. She remembers being young and her friends being bothered by her speaking Spanish and being told that women had specific roles of servitude. Her participation on the bus tour as an opportunity to document a historic moment through a Chicana lens and to do service for her community. She lives and creates art in Phoenix with her husband, DJ Portugal, who is also the designer of the art painted on the bus.
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Bio: Daniela Cruz
July 19, 2012
Daniela Cruz has lived in Phoenix for 10 years, although she was born in Mexico city. She traveled to the United States with her mother two days before her 11th birthday. Although it took her some time, she eventually began feeling that Arizona was her home. She grew up noticing fear of immigration and police by her family. One year, when her mother heard that Sheriff Joe Arpaio was going to be around her school, she stopped driving Daniela there, did not let her go outside, and almost made her change schools. Four years ago her brother’s partner was arrested for a minor traffic violation. He had a 3 week-old daughter. In September 2010 she began to get involved in the passage of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. Although she stepped away from organizing for a few months, she came back by participating in the first civil disobedience by undocumented students to take place in Phoenix, Arizona. She participated because she was tired of seeing her community scared and hiding, and believes organizing is the best way to fight against that fear. She is on the bus for the same reason, she explains, “if you organize your community, people don’t have to get deported, families don’t have to be separated.”
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Bio: Nadia Sol Ireri Unzueta Carrasco
July 19, 2012
N. Sol Ireri Unzueta Carrasco has been living in Chicago, IL for 18 years, since coming to the US at the age of 7 in 1994 with her family. At the age of 25 Ireri works as a part time grant writer, amateur horticulturist, and with the Immigrant Youth Justice League, a chicago based undocumented youth led organization. “I am riding the bus because I refuse to keep on limiting myself by the unjust laws that refuse to see my humanity and recognize that undocumented immigrants are as much a part of the community as everyone else. ”
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Bio: Angel Alvarez
July 19, 2012
Angel Alvarez is 23-years-old, a self-identified undocu-queer, and currently lives in Phoenix, AZ. He has been in the United States since he was one year old. He has been involved in his community for many years, and is currently a part of Puente Human Rights Movement, 3rdSpace (a collective of queer migrants and people of color working on social justice issues in Phoenix), and the Association for Joterias Arts, Activism, and Scholarship. In 2010, he moved to New Mexico to go to college and get away from SB1070 and Arizona’s climate of hate; he was detained in NM and put in ICE custody. He is currently fighting deportation, after recently being released from immigrant detention. After this experience made him realize that Arizona had spread throughout the country, he returned to Phoenix to organize and defend his family and community. He says, “I have experienced family separation and I don’t want anyone else to ever go through that. That’s why I’m on the bus.”
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Bio: Julio Cesar Sanchez
July 19, 2012
Julio Cesar Sanchez lives in Chicago, IL and has been living in the U.S. for nine years. He came to the U.S. at the age of 15 with his mother after his parents’ divorce, despite a difficult border crossing. His mother sought to reunite with her family here and get away from a domestic violence situation. He faced discrimination and bullying when he first arrived in Texas at school, and, while living in Florida, was put in jail for driving without a license. These experiences made him decide to take action for his community. He now organizes with the immigrant community in Chicago teaching people their rights. He says, “I’m riding the Undocubus to show myself, my family, and everyone else that is dealing with the same struggle I am that we can make a change. I believe it is time to end our fear.”
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Bio: Maria Jesus "Marichu" Rodriguez
July 19, 2012
Maria Jesus Rodriguez has lived in Phoenix for the past 17 years. In Tijuana, she worked as a social worker doing chronic disease prevention, but after not being able to find work, she brought her three children here to be closer to family and have more opportunities. Keeping her family together, though, is not so straightforward in Arizona’s anti-immigrant climate: after her brother was picked up for a minor traffic violation in 2010, he was pressured to sign a self-deportation order while in Arpaio’s jail, and so is now separated from his U.S. citizen children and grandchildren. She currently works at a tire shop, and as a know-your-rights educator and community health promoter with Puente Arizona. “An informed community is an armed community,” she says. “It’s time for our community to be brave and lose our fear and come out of the shadows. We are fighting for lives with dignity and justice and to be treated like human beings.”
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