THE OCTOBER CRISIS 1970

The lasting legacy of the 1970 FLQ manifesto

Researcher Jean-Philippe Warren says the manifesto had a lasting impact on ordinary Quebecers

CBC Radio · Posted: Oct 13, 2020 

Two Carleton University students hold signs on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Oct. 16, 1970 to show support for the Front de Liberation du Quebec. (Canadian Press)


Ideas53:58

The lasting legacy of the 1970 FLQ manifesto


By October of 1970, the Front de libération du Québec didn't have a lot to show for its seven year campaign of terror. But at the height of the October Crisis, the FLQ did succeed in one lasting achievement: its manifesto was broadcast across the country on the public broadcaster's airwaves.

The words in that document had more lasting power than the hundreds of bombs that had been the FLQ calling card since 1963, says Jean-Philippe Warren, research chair for the study of Quebec at Concordia University in Montreal.

CBC Digital Archives: What is the FLQ?

"The manifesto was part of that new coming of age of the Quebec nation where people were saying, 'Well, you know, we can express ourselves the way we want to express ourselves, the way we usually express ourselves. This is who we are and we should not be ashamed of who we are,'" he said. 

From bombing to political kidnappings

The FLQ was pushing a radical vision of Quebec: one that was independent from anglophone Canada and which rejected the capitalist order.

But seven years of robberies and bombings had landed dozens of its members in jail without bringing them any closer to their stated goals. So in October 1970, they switched tactics from bombing to political kidnappings. They first abducted British Trade Commissioner James Cross and then Quebec Deputy Premier Pierre Laporte.

In exchange for the release of Cross, the abductors issued a list of demands. They were looking for the release of jailed FLQ members, bars of gold and safe passage to either Algeria or Cuba, along with a laundry list of other requests.

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau faces reporters in Ottawa on Dec. 3, 1970, months after the kidnapping of British diplomat James Cross, telling them that Cross's final release is in the "final stages." (Canadian Press)

One by one, government officials rejected the demands, but they did cede on one point. The kidnappers had created a manifesto that laid out the FLQ's beliefs and vision for the transformation of Quebec. They wanted the document to be published and broadcast for the world to hear.

At first officials balked, fearing it would be giving terrorists a platform. But eventually they relented, and on Oct. 8, the manifesto was read on Radio-Canada by announcer Gaetan Montreuil.


FLQ manifesto read on-air
50 years ago
11:26Manifesto read on-air in Montreal on Radio-Canada during the October Crisis. (Note: Footage in French only.) 11:26

The text was steeped in quasi-Marxist ideology of class struggle. But it was delivered in a plain, direct language aimed at ordinary working class Quebecers. The FLQ wanted their audience to recognize themselves as the victims in a struggle for liberation. While the manifesto was delivered in French, it was peppered with English terms.

"The Front de libération du Québec wants total independence for Quebecers, united in a free society and purged for good of the clique of voracious sharks, the patronizing 'big bosses' and their henchmen who have made Quebec their private hunting ground for 'cheap labour' and unscrupulous exploitation," Montreuil read in French.

Concordia University's Warren says that use of English was strategic.

"Part of it is that these expressions are the ones that Quebecers usually use in ordinary life, in their day to day lives in the 60s. So they were not talking about les patrons, they were talking about the 'big boss' to emphasize the fact that people who controlled the finance, people who control the economy were Anglophone," Warren said, adding that the effect of this can't be underestimated.

Engaging with ordinary folk on big societal issues, he said, and doing it in their own language was still a pretty revolutionary idea in Quebec in 1970.
Coming of age for Quebec

"[It] was a time when Quebecers were seeking to see themselves differently," Warren said. "Prior to the 1960s, Quebecers were under the impression that they were never good enough. They were not speaking French properly. They were uneducated."

CBC Digital Archives: Francophone caller supports FLQ manifesto

Quebec playwright Robert Lepage included passages from the manifesto in his autobiographical play 887. He says the document is a significant piece of Quebec cultural history that still has power today.

Quebec playwright, actor, film director and stage director Robert Lepage says the FLQ manifesto is a significant piece of the province's cultural history. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

"There was a kind of a poetry reading a couple of years ago where it was read by an actor who just acted it out the way it was written, and it's an amazing, amazing script. When you take the time to get into character and you do it, whether you like the ideas or not, it's an amazing piece of writing," said Lepage.

He says the manifesto tapped directly into the hearts of ordinary people and that that was really the FLQ's great victory. He says no one really remembers the details of the manifesto, but they remember how they felt hearing those words.

"The FLQ later said...we at least achieved something in that we managed to have a small patriot in every household that evening," Lepage said. "It was a patriot that walked into the houses and then into the apartments of Quebec people, who spoke for them."

This episode was produced by Geoff Turner and Jessica Linzey, with help from Matthew Lazin-Ryder.

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The Demands of the FLQ

 

FLQ communiqué,

 Released to the public October 6, 1970

 The representative of Great Britain in Quebec, Mr J. Cross, is in the hands of the Front de liberation du Quebec. 

Here are the conditions that the ruling authorities must fulfil in order to save the life of the representative of the ancient racist and colonialist British system. 

1. They must see to it that the repressive police forces do not commit the monstrous error of attempting to jeopardize the success of the operation by conducting searches, investigations, raids, arrests by any other means. 

2. The political manifesto which the Front de liberation du Quebec will address to the ruling authorities must appear in full on the front page of all the principal newspapers in Quebec. The ruling authorities, after consulting with the latter, must make public the list of Quebec newspapers agreeing to publish our manifesto. But it should be quite clear that all Quebec regions must be covered. Furthermore, this manifesto must be read in full and commented upon by the political prisoners before their departure during a programme, the length of which will have to be at least thirty minutes, to be televised live or pre-recorded between 8 and 11 PM on Radio-Canada and its affiliated stations in the province. 

3. Liberation of political prisoners: Cyriaque Delisle, Edmond Guenette and François Schirm, Serge Demers, Marcel Faulkner, Gérard Laquerre, Robert Levesque, Réal Mathieu, and Claude Simard; Pierre-Paul Geoffroy, Michel Loriot, Pierre Demers, Gabriel Hudon, Robert Hudon, Marc-André Gagné, François Lanctot, Claude Morency, and André Roy; Pierre Boucher and André Ouellette (recently re-arrested by the police of Drapeau-the-Dog). Wives and children of the political prisoners must be allowed to join them if they so desire. Furthermore, political prisoners André Lessard, Pierre Marcil, and Réjean Tremblay, presently out on bail, must be allowed to join their patriotic comrades and leave Quebec if they so desire. 

4. A plane must be made available to the patriotic political prisoners for their transport to either Cuba or Algeria, once an official agreement has been reached with one of these two countries. Furthermore, they must be allowed to be accompanied by their respective lawyers and by at least two political reporters of two French Quebec dailies. 

5. During a meeting attended by the Lapalme boys and the Postmaster-General - or a representative - the latter must promise to reinstate them. The reinstatement promise must take into account the standards and conditions already secured by the revolutionary workers of Lapalme prior to the breaking off of negotiations. This meeting must be held within forty-eight hours after the release of this communiqué and must be open to newsmen,

 6. A voluntary tax of $500,000 in gold bullion must be put aboard the plane made available to the political prisoners. When one recalls the spendings caused by the recent visit of the Queen of England, the millions of dollars lost by the Post Office Department because of the stubborn millionaire Kierans, the cost of maintaining Quebec within Confederation, etc. ... $500,000 is peanuts! 

7. The NAME and the PICTURE of the informer who led police to the last FLQ cell must be made public and published. The Front de liberation du Quebec is in possession of information dealing with the acts and moves of this louse ... and is only awaiting "official" confirmation to act. 

Through this move, the Front de liberation du Quebec wants to draw the attention of the world to the fate of French-speaking Quebecois, a majority which is jeered at and crushed on its own territory by a faulty political system (Canadian federalism) and by an economy dominated by the interests of American high finance, the racist and imperialist "big bosses.." When you examine the origins of Confederation you are in a better position to understand what were the true interests ($ $ $) which inspired those who were called the Fathers of Confederation.

 Besides, in 1867, the Quebec people (Lower Canada) were not consulted as to the possibility of creating a Confederation of existing provinces. It was a question of big money and these questions are only sorted out by interested parties, the capitalists, those who possess and amass capital and the means of production and who, according to their sole needs and requirements decide on our whole lives as well as those of a race of people. Thousands of Quebecois have understood, as did our ancestors of 1837-38, that the only way to ensure our national as well as economic survival is total independence. 

The Front de liberation du Quebec supports unconditionally the American blacks and those of Africa, the liberation movements of Latin America, of Palestine, and of Asia, the revolutionary Catholics of Northern Ireland and all those who fight for their freedom, their independence, and their dignity. The Front de liberation du Quebec wants to salute the Cuban and Algerian people who are heroically fighting against imperialism and colonialism in all its forms, for a just society where man's exploitation by man is banished. However, we believe that the only really true support we can give these people moving towards their liberations is to liberate ourselves first. During and after our struggle we shall offer much more than the usual sympathy of shocked intellectuals confronted with pictures showing aggression in a peaceful and blissful setting.

Here is how the various steps must be carried out:

1. As soon as this communiqué is received by the ruling authorities, they must immediately free all the aforementioned political prisoners and take them to the Montreal International Airport. There, a private room must be placed at their disposal straightaway so they can fraternize and become acquainted with the manifesto, the conditions outlined as well as the steps of the operation. A full copy of the manifesto and of this communiqué must be given to them. 

2. They must undergo no harm, brutality, torture, or blackmail. 

3. In the hours following the liberation of the political prisoners, a room must be turned into a studio where they will be able to:  Communicate with their respective lawyers;  Make a public announcement of their personal decision. The political prisoners can accept or refuse to leave Quebec; in other words, the imprisoned patriots are allowed to dissent in view of the disparity between the sentences imposed upon each of them;  Read and discuss the manifesto during a televised and broadcast programme, as set out earlier in the conditions;  Meet all the friends and militants who may wish to go and see them. 

4. The ruling authorities must ensure the return to Montreal of legal advisers and newsmen who will accompany the political prisoners to Cuba or Algeria. 

5. The "voluntary tax" of $500,000 in gold bullion must be taken to Dorval airport in nine BRINKS trucks. If this raises any technical problem, the authorities can surely call upon the "experts" who managed to make such a brilliant get-away at the time of the now famous "Brink's show" on the eve of the election. Newsmen (including the one from the Gazette just like in the good old days) must be allowed to attend the departure and arrival of the "happy group." All these conditions and their fulfilment must be dealt with within forty-eight hours from the release of this communiqué.. All these conditions are irrevocable. The life of the diplomat depends therefore on the good-will of the ruling authorities. Once the Front de liberation du Quebec has made sure that the lawyers and newsmen are on their way back and the latter have confirmed the arrival of the political prisoners as well as the voluntary tax which must be checked by Cuban or Algerian experts, and once they have confirmed that everything went according to plan, then and then only will the diplomat be set free. We feel confident that the imprisoned political patriots will benefit from the experience in Cuba or Algiers and we thank them in advance for the concern which they will express for our Quebec comrades. 

We shall overcome! 

Front de liberation du Quebec. 

© 1999, Claude Bélanger, Marianopolis College

Front de Libération du Québec

Manifesto of October 1970

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Source: “The FLQ Manifesto,” Marcel Rioux, Quebec in Question (1971), tr. James Boake;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.

Issued by the Front de Libération du Québec and read over CBC/Radio-Canada Oct. 8, 1970 as a condition for the release of kidnapped British trade official James Cross. Cross had been kidnapped on October 5 by the Libération cell of the FLQ, and among their demands for his release was the reading of this manifesto on TV and radio. Three days later the Chenier cell kidnapped Quebec’s Labor and Immigration minister, Pierre Laporte. Cross was released by his captors on December 3 when their hideout was discovered; the felquistes were flown to Cuba. Laporte was found dead in the trunk of a car on October 17.

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The people in the Front de Liberation du Québec are neither Messiahs nor modern-day Robin Hoods. They are a group of Quebec workers who have decided to do everything they can to assure that the people of Quebec take their destiny into their own hands, once and for all.

The Front de Libération du Québec wants total independence for Quebeckers; it wants to see them united in a free society, a society purged for good of its gang of rapacious sharks, the big bosses who dish out patronage and their henchmen, who have turned Quebec into a private preserve of cheap labour and unscrupulous exploitation.

The Front de Libération du Québec is not an aggressive movement, but a response to the aggression organized by high finance through its puppets, the federal and provincial governments (the Brinks farce, Bill 69, the electoral map, the so-called “social progress” tax, the Power Corporation, medical insurance — for the doctors, the guys at Lapalme...)

The Front de Libération du Québec finances itself — through voluntary (sic) taxes levied on the enterprises that exploit the workers (banks, finance companies, etc....).

“The money powers of the status quo, the majority of the traditional tutors of our people, have obtained from the voters the reaction they hoped for, a step backwards rather than the changes we have worked for as never before, the changes we will continue to work for.” (René Lévesque, April 29, 1970).

Once, we believed it worthwhile to channel our energy and our impatience, in the apt words of René Lévesque, into the Parti Québécois, but the Liberal victory shows that what is called democracy in Quebec has always been, and still is, nothing but the “democracy” of the rich. In this sense the victory of the Liberal party is in fact nothing but the victory of the Simard-Cotroni election- fixers. Consequently, we wash our hands of the British parliamentary system; the Front de Libération du Québec will never let itself be distracted by the electoral crumbs that the Anglo-Saxon capitalists toss into the Quebec barnyard every four years. Many Quebeckers have realized the truth and are ready to take action. In the coming year Bourassa is going to get what’s coming to him: 100,000 revolutionary workers, armed and organized!

Yes, there are reasons for the Liberal victory. Yes, there are reasons for poverty, unemployment, slums, for the fact that you, Mr. Bergeron of Visitation Street, and you too, Mr. Legendre of Ville de Laval, who make F10,000 a year, do not feel free in our country, Quebec.

Yes, there are reasons, the guys who work for Lord know them, and so do the fishermen of the Gash, the workers on the North Shore; the miners who work for Iron Ore, for Québec Cartier Mining, for Noranda know these reasons too. The honest workingmen at Cabano, the guys they tried to screw still one more time, they know lots of reasons.

Yes, there are reasons why you, Mr. Tremblay of Panet Street and you, Mr. Cloutier who work in construction in St. Jérôme, can’t afford “Golden Vessels” with all the jazzy music and the sharp decor, like Drapeau the aristocrat, the guy who was so concerned about slums that he had coloured billboards stuck up in front of them so that the rich tourists couldn’t see us in our misery.

Yes, Madame Lemay of St. Hyacinthe, there are — reasons why you can’t afford a little junket to Florida like the rotten judges and members of Parliament who travel on our money. The good workers at Vickers and at Davie Shipbuilding, the ones who were given no reason for being thrown out, know these reasons; so do the guys at Murdochville that were smashed only because they wanted to form a union, and whom the rotten judges forced to pay over two million dollars because they had wanted to exercise this elementary right. The guys of Murdochville are familiar with this justice; they know lots of reasons. Yes, there are reasons why you, Mr. Lachance of St. Marguerite Street, go drowning your despair, your bitterness, and your rage in Molson’s horse piss. And you, the Lachance boy, with your marijuana cigarettes...

Yes, there are reasons why you, the welfare cases, are kept from generation to generation on public assistance. There are lots of reasons, the workers for Domtar at Windsor and East Angus know them; the workers for Squibb and Ayers, for the Quebec Liquor Commission and for Seven-up and for Victoria Precision, and the blue collar workers of Laval and of Montreal and the guys at Lapalme know lots of reasons.

The workers at Dupont of Canada know some reasons too, even if they will soon be able to express them only in English (thus assimilated, they will swell the number of New Quebeckers, the immigrants who are the darlings of Bill 69).

These reasons ought to have been understood by the policemen of Montreal, the system’s muscle; they ought to have realized that we live in a terrorized society, because without their force and their violence, everything fell apart on October 7.

We've had enough of a Canadian federalism which penalizes the dairy farmers of Quebec to satisfy the requirements of the Anglo-Saxons of the Commonwealth; which keeps the honest taxi drivers of Montreal in a state of semi-slavery by shamefully protecting the exclusive monopoly of the nauseating Murray Hill, and its owner — the murderer Charles Hershorn and his son Paul who, the night of October 7, repeatedly tore a .22 rifle out of the hands of his employees to fire on the taxi drivers and thereby mortally wounded Corporal Dumas, killed as a demonstrator. Canadian federalism pursues a reckless import policy, thereby throwing out of work the people who earn low wages in the textile and shoe industries, the most downtrodden people in Quebec, and all to line the pockets of a handful of filthy “money-makers” in Cadillacs. We are fed up with a federalism which classes the Quebec nation among the ethnic minorities of Canada.

We, and more and more Quebeckers too, have had it with a government of pussy-footers who perform a hundred and one tricks to charm the American millionaires, begging them to come and invest in Quebec, the Beautiful Province where thousands of square miles of forests full of game and of lakes full of fish are the exclusive property of these all-powerful lords of the twentieth century. We are sick of a government in the hands of a hypocrite like Bourassa who depends on Brinks armoured trucks, an authentic symbol of the foreign occupation of Quebec, to keep the poor Quebec “natives” fearful of that poverty and unemployment to which we are so accustomed.

We are fed up with the taxes we pay that Ottawa’s agent in Quebec would give to the English-speaking bosses as an “incentive” for them to speak French, to negotiate in French. Repeat after me: “Cheap labour is main d'oeuvre à bon marché in French.”

We have had enough of promises of work and of prosperity, when in fact we will always be the diligent servants and bootlickers of the big shots, as long as there is a Westmount, a Town of Mount Royal, a Hampstead, an Outremont, all these veritable fortresses of the high finance of St. James Street and Wall Street; we will be slaves until Quebeckers, all of us, have used every means, including dynamite and guns, to drive out these big bosses of the economy and of politics, who will stoop to any action however base, the better to screw us.

We live in a society of terrorized slaves, terrorized by the big bosses, Steinberg, Clark, Bronfman, Smith, Neopole, Timmins, Geoffrion, J.L. Lévesque, Hershorn, Thompson, Nesbitt, Desmarais, Kierans (next to these, Rémi Popol the Nightstick, Drapeau the Dog, the Simards’ Simple Simon and Trudeau the Pansy are peanuts!).

We are terrorized by the Roman Capitalist Church, though this is less and less true today (who owns the square where the Stock Exchange was built?); terrorized by the payments owing to Household Finance, by the advertising of the grand masters of consumption, Eaton’s, Simpson’s, Morgan’s, Steinberg’s, General Motors — terrorized by those exclusive clubs of science and culture, the universities, and by their boss-directors Gaudry and Dorais, and by the vice-boss Robert Shaw.

There are more and more of us who know and suffer under this terrorist society, and the day is coming when all the Westmounts of Quebec will disappear from the map.

Workers in industry, in mines and in the forests! Workers in the service industries, teachers, students and unemployed! Take what belongs to you, your jobs, your determination and your freedom. And you, the workers at General Electric, you make your factories run; you are the only ones able to produce; without you, General Electric is nothing!

Workers of Quebec, begin from this day forward to take back what is yours; take yourselves what belongs to you. Only you know your factories, your machines, your hotels, your universities, your unions; do not wait for some organization to produce a miracle.

Make your revolution yourselves in your neighbourhoods, in your places of work. If you don’t do it yourselves, other usurpers, technocrats or someone else, will replace the handful of cigar-smokers we know today and everything will have to be done all over again. Only you are capable of building a free society.

We must struggle not individually but together, till victory is obtained, with every means at our disposal, like the Patriots of 1897-1898 (those whom Our Holy Mother Church hastened to excommunicate, the better to sell out to British interests).

In the four corners of Quebec, may those who have been disdainfully called lousy Frenchmen and alcoholics begin a vigorous battle against those who have muzzled liberty and justice; may they put out of commission all the professional holdup artists and swindlers: bankers, businessmen, judges and corrupt political wheeler-dealers. ...

We are Quebec workers and we are prepared to go all the way. With the help of the entire population, we want to replace this society of slaves by a free society, operating by itself and for itself, a society open on the world. Our struggle can only be victorious. A people that has awakened cannot long be kept in misery and contempt.

Long live Free Quebec!

Long live our comrades the political prisoners!

Long live the Quebec Revolution!

Long live the Front de Libération du Québec!

 

Front de Libération
du Québec

1963-1971

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Historical Introduction, by Mitch Abidor

Message of the FLQ to the Nation, April 16 1963
Our Position, June 1963
Declaration of Principles, September 1963
Is It Necessary to Become a Policeman?, 1963
Quebec Should Denounce Terror, 1964
Our National “Harkis”, 1964
The Revolution on the March, February 1964 - October 1965
The Canadian Communist Party and the Independence of Quebec, January 1965
Does the FLQ Exist?, October 1965
Strategic Retreat and Rearguard bases, March 1966
Defense of Québécois Political Prisoners, June 1968
For a Multinational Common Liberation Front, February 1970
FLQ Manifesto, June 1970
FLQ Manifesto, October 1970
Defense Speech of Paul Rose, March 1971
A Pimp Named Trudeau, Gérald Godin 1971
The Execution of Pierre Laporte, Pierre Vallières 1977

 

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Pierre Vallières Biography
Quebec History

A-Maize-ing Maize: The History of Corn
Corn was domesticated nearly 9,000 years ago and has a rich history throughout the Americas.

nan fischer
Sep 7, 2018 · 

Painted Mountain Corn, photo ©Boxcar Farm, Llano, NM


Corn is one of America’s favorite vegetables in the garden and on the plate. From the rainbow-colored ‘Glass Gem’ flint corn to the classic ‘Golden Bantam’ sweet corn, corn is grown in many backyards. Buttery corn on the cob is part of almost every child’s summer memories. Popcorn and movies are inseparable. Corn chowder with oyster crackers warms us in winter. Cornbread, succotash, and taco shells are a few other common ways we heartily consume corn.

Corn (Zea mays subsp. mays) is known as “maize” in Mesoamerica and many places outside the U.S. and has its origins in a wild grass from Mexico called “teosinte.” Only five genes keep teosinte and corn from being genetically identical, and teosinte is the closest relative of today’s corn. All research and hypotheses point to the domestication of one of the four species of teosinte, Zea mays spp. parviglumis, about 9,000 years ago in Oaxaca by the Mayan people. Teosinte still grows wild in Mexico and is considered a weed and a nuisance to maize farmers. Its seed heads shatter and fall to the ground, making them hard to collect. Almost unrecognizable as a relative of today’s corn, teosinte has a branching growth habit and tiny heads of less than 12 kernels, each with a hard shell around it.

It’s hard to understand why this almost inedible plant was chosen to be cultivated as food. It may have been that there were anomalies which showed potential for food, more closely resembling today’s corn. Or maybe the environmental conditions thousands of years ago were so different they produced a teosinte other than what we see today.

No matter how domestication began, over thousands of years, the indigenous people of Mesoamerica bred a vast genetic diversity into maize that most crops never undergo. Maize was invented. Without human intervention, it would not be what it is today, and it would not continue to survive. Those ancient farmers were brilliant geneticists!
Maize’s Cultural Relevance

Besides being a revered food crop, maize was an integral part of Mesoamerican culture and spirituality. The “grain of the gods” ranked almost as high as royalty, and rituals, dances, and festivals celebrated its planting and harvest. Maize was depicted in hieroglyphics, petroglyphs, and artwork. The Mayans believed they were created from maize, and according to Charles Mann in his book 1491, Oaxacans still call themselves hombres de maiz, or men of maize.

Mesoamerican farmers noticed that teosinte grew with squash and beans in the wild, so they imitated that growing pattern in their milpas (crop-growing systems), and added other native crops, such as peppers, tomatoes, avocados, jicama, and amaranth. The plants benefited from the biological diversity, and the crops were nutritionally complementary, providing fat, protein, carbohydrates, and vitamins. Maize and the concept of the milpa migrated around Mesoamerica, eventually south to Peru and Chile and north into the future United States. Dozens of landraces were created as farmers adapted maize to their unique growing environments. The colorful palette of reds, blues, yellows, black, greens, and pinks represented the various growing conditions and the farmers’ preferences. According to Gary Paul Nabhan in Where Our Food Comes From, landraces reflected the different languages and cultures of each region because they were grown for specific purposes, such as tortillas, popcorn, textiles, and beer. This is true genetic diversity.

Large trading centers along busy routes saw the exchange of maize, stone, metal, feathers, shells, pottery, textiles, and culture. Maize arrived in the arid Desert Southwest nearly 4,000 years ago. About this time, ancestors of the Hohokam in the Sonoran Desert built an elaborate system of irrigation canals for farming. Farther north, the Anasazi in the Four Corners region and the Pueblo people of northern New Mexico also benefited from trade with Mesoamerica.

From the Southwest, trade routes radiated out to the West Coast and across the Great Plains. The indigenous people of the Plains traded with tribes near the Great Lakes. The idea of the milpa died out as it moved north because temperatures were too cold to grow some of the crops, such as avocados. But maize, which is very adaptable, was still being bred for local conditions and grown together with squash and beans, known collectively as Three Sisters.

By 900 A.D., maize was established along the Eastern Seaboard and in the Southeast. As a reliable crop for people and livestock, it had become a staple throughout the Americas. Maize has been credited for the rise of civilization because it’s adaptable, nutritious, and easy to dry and store for lean times.

Different Ways to Eat Maize

Early native cultures would harvest baby ears for the Green Corn Ceremony, held to celebrate a good growing season. It was also a purging and time of rebirth, akin to starting a new year. Green corn was a sweet treat, but it was never harvested in great numbers because the ears needed to mature to provide abundant food for the upcoming months.

Mature ears were boiled or roasted whole. Kernels cut from the cob were roasted, boiled, baked, fried, and cooked with other vegetables. Succotash, for example, is an indigenous meal of maize and beans that was cooked with bear grease or maple syrup.

As a grain, maize was ground into masa for tortillas and tamales. The addition of lime or wood ash released niacin and calcium to make it more digestible and nutritious. Fermented masa was made into an alcoholic beverage.

Native people often used all parts of the plant. Husks were woven into mats, baskets, dolls, clothing, and masks. Cobs were dried and used for rattles and fuel for the fire. Tassels were boiled into a sweet drink, and the stalks of some cultivars were eaten like sugarcane. Even corn smut, a common fungus, was eaten and is considered a delicacy today.
Maize Goes Global

Maize was foreign to the explorers from Spain and England. Columbus saw it for the first time when he arrived in Haiti. When the British landed on the eastern coast of the North American continent, they found maize fields that stretched for miles. They didn’t have a name for it, so they called it “corne,” which was a broad Middle English term for grain.

The British imported their staples of wheat, barley, oats, and rye, but these crops did poorly in their new environment. Some settlements were almost wiped out by starvation. The survivors realized they needed to grow what had proven to sustain an entire continent — maize.

The native people taught the Europeans how to grow and cook maize. Their farms soon provided enough to eat fresh, put away for winter, trade for other goods, and ship back to Europe, where farmers adapted the crop to local growing conditions.

After being brought to Europe, corn spread east and south from there and became a major staple in Africa, Eastern Europe, and China. Being adaptable, it grew where wheat or rice couldn’t and provided high energy and calories with its carbohydrates, fat, and sugar. Again, maize was responsible for burgeoning populations wherever it was introduced.
Old-Time Corn Cultivars

‘Golden Bantam’ corn was grown by William Chambers, a Massachusetts farmer in the 19th century, and was selected to be early and sweet. As the story goes, Chambers would gleefully share his harvest with his neighbors, whose crops weren’t nearly ready, but he wouldn’t share his seed. Burpee picked up the seeds after his death in 1891, developed the cultivar, and offered it for sale in 1902.

Growers today continue to improve corn strains out of curiosity, but also out of necessity. Dave Christensen of Montana has been breeding corn for more than 40 years. He gathered up dozens of rare strains that were grown throughout the Rocky Mountains and northern plains hundreds of years ago. He repeatedly selected seed from the hardiest plants that thrived in his harsh conditions and short season. ‘Painted Mountain’ corn is the result, and it’s surely on its way to becoming an heirloom.

Carl “White Eagle” Barnes developed ‘Glass Gem’ corn by isolating strains from his Cherokee ancestors. Over several years, he saved seed from the most colorful cobs. His selecting produced a wide variety of colors, each with a name, but ‘Glass Gem’ has become the best known and is grown to be popped, parched, and ground into meal.

Of course, ancient maizes are still being grown. Some are available commercially, but many others can only be found on the farms of indigenous people. ‘Hopi’ corn comes in a wide variety of colors and uses. ‘Oaxacan Green,’ ‘Mandan Bride,’ ‘Cherokee White Flour,’ and dozens more are still used for roasting and parching and to make flour, sweet corn, and popcorn.

Inca Rainbow Sweet Corn, photo ©nan fischer 2013
Preserving Heirloom Corn

Native and heirloom strains are disappearing as modern breeders try to “improve” them. We can keep the old cultivars alive by growing them, saving and sharing seed, and cultivating locally adapted landraces. It took 9,000 years for maize to become what it is today. We need to respect that work and the genetic diversity by protecting the old strains.

Whatever your favorite heirloom corn, you can be sure it originated in Mexico as agriculture was taking hold. The next time you have melted butter dripping off a corn cob and down your chin, give thanks to ancient farmers for turning a 12-kernel seed head into the multicolored, multipurpose crop that maize is today.

This is the second of a four-part series on the history of the Three Sisters — corn, beans, and squash. Read the others here:

From Ancient to Heirloom — The History of the Humble Bean

Similarly pleasing to see and to taste, heirloom beans have a long and colorful past.

Squash on the Scene: The Evolution of Cucurbits

Squash, pumpkins, zucchini, and their cousins all have deep roots in ancient North and South America.

Ancient Companion Planting: The Three Sisters

Squash, beans, and corn have a long history of being planted together to benefit each other, the soil, and the…


Originally published in the Summer 2017 issue of Heirloom Gardener Magazine.

REENGINEERING LIFE

Fresh Off Her Nobel Prize Win, Jennifer Doudna Predicts What’s Next for CRISPR

The new Nobel laureate chats with ‘Future Human’ about what her gene-editing companies are up to.


Emily Mullin

Photo illustration; Image source: picture alliance/Getty Images

Reengineering Life is a series from Future Human about the astonishing ways genetic technology is changing humanity and the world around us.

When the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on October 7 that she had won the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry, Jennifer Doudna was still fast asleep at home in California. It was just before 3 a.m. when a phone call woke her up. It was a reporter from Nature, asking if she could comment on the award.

“Well, who won it?” Doudna asked.

Doudna, PhD, of the University of California, Berkeley, and Emmanuelle Charpentier, PhD, of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, share the award for the discovery of the gene-editing technology CRISPR. The two biochemists began collaborating in 2011 and just a year later published a groundbreaking paper on CRISPR, which has revolutionized our ability to edit genes.

Short for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, CRISPR is actually a naturally occurring bacterial immune system. When viruses attack bacteria, bacteria in turn grab snippets of genetic material from their viral invaders and incorporate these bits into their own DNA. This helps bacteria recognize viruses later on and thwart future invaders. Bacteria do this by producing an RNA molecule that acts as a guide, which cuts up the viral genome.

Doudna and Charpentier realized they could harness this cutting ability to edit genes in just about any living thing. In their 2012 paper, they described how this bacterial system could be used as “DNA scissors,” and the gene-editing technology CRISPR was born.

Declared as one of the most important discoveries of the 21st century, CRISPR is faster, cheaper, and more accurate than previous gene-editing systems and has since become ubiquitous in labs around the world. Scientists are using it in an attempt to treat serious genetic diseases, restore eyesight in people with a type of inherited blindness, engineer crops that are more resilient to disease and climate change, and eliminate disease-carrying pests like mosquitoes and mice. And researchers are already working on newer and improved versions of CRISPR that are even more precise.

The power to edit genes also opens up many ways for CRISPR to be abused. In 2018, Chinese scientist He Jiankui was widely condemned after revealing that he used CRISPR to make the world’s first known gene-edited babies. He is now serving a prison sentence, but the revelation has raised fears that CRISPR could lead to genetically enhanced “designer babies.”

After the Nobel announcement last week, I talked with Doudna about what’s next for CRISPR, the field of gene editing, and her own scientific work.

This interview has been lightly edited for grammar and clarity.

Future Human: First off, congratulations. What an incredible honor. How surprised were you to find out that you had won a Nobel prize?

Jennifer Doudna: Oh, total shock! I mean really. Coming out of a deep sleep and getting news like that — I couldn’t believe it. I said to the reporter who had called me, “I can’t talk to you right now. I have to call somebody and find out if this is official.”

We’re seeing a handful of clinical trials for CRISPR-based treatments get underway right now. What diseases do you see CRISPR being most promising for in the near future?

Certainly, diseases that are caused by single genes or genetic mutations. A great example, and we’ve already seen early results from one trial, is for sickle cell disease. But I think going forward, we’ll see opportunities to use CRISPR for other kinds of blood disorders, genetic diseases of the eye, and then, maybe in the longer term, cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy, which are also genetic diseases.

What do you think is going to be the biggest obstacle to getting these treatments to patients?

It’s probably delivery. One of the reasons why blood disorders have been some of the early targets of CRISPR is that the genome editing that’s used to correct those mutations can be done in cells that are taken out of a patient. The editing is done in the laboratory before reintroducing them versus a disease like cystic fibrosis or muscular dystrophy, where the editing would actually need to be done inside the body, in the right cells, to have a clinical benefit. That’s a hard challenge right now.

Your company, Mammoth Biosciences, is working on a rapid CRISPR-based test for Covid-19. What role do you think CRISPR diagnostic tests will play in the future?

There are several efforts underway to develop CRISPR diagnostics in comparable companies and academic labs. I think we’re going to see everything from high-throughput laboratory tests that require robotic equipment and experts to point-of-care tests that can be run in a research lab, a doctor’s office, or an emergency room. Down the road, we hope to have an at-home test that would work like a pregnancy test for Covid. What’s exciting with the CRISPR technology is that it’s potentially a faster and more direct way to detect the presence of the virus and also relies on a different supply chain than what’s necessary for the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test.

What’s the status of your company’s Covid-19 test?

Mammoth Biosciences is planning on rolling out its test to a few partner labs for initial beta testing in November. Depending on how those experiments go and how those results turn out, we’ll expand to other labs after that. We want to see how it compares to the PCR test.

You recently just launched another CRISPR company, Scribe Therapeutics. What’s the focus of this new startup?

This is the thing about CRISPR: There’s so many different ways that it can be deployed. For clinical applications, the reason we’re seeing a lot of early efforts focused on blood disorders like sickle cell disease and, to some extent, diseases of the eye or even the liver is because those tissues are easier to introduce gene-editing molecules into. With Scribe Therapeutics, we’re looking at opportunities to use CRISPR for neurodegenerative diseases. For those disorders, the technology obviously needs to be very robust and very safe. It also has to get into brain cells and neural tissue where it can have an impact. We want to make sure that the editing tools are the best they can be and then figure out the best way to introduce them into the brain. That’s really the focus of the company.

What do you think is going to be the next big CRISPR advance?

That’s always a hard question. We’ve so much going on in the field. I think one interesting possibility is that we’ll see CRISPR being used not to edit genomes, or at least not to make permanent changes to genomes, but instead to regulate them, to control levels of human proteins that are produced from different genes. This is a newer way of using the CRISPR technology. I think it has a lot of potential to allow control of cells that doesn’t require actual permanent chemical changes being made to the DNA.

After the birth of the CRISPR babies in China in 2018, there’s been a lot of talk around the idea of germline or heritable genome editing. Do you think that should be off-limits to scientists right now?

I don’t think it needs to be completely off-limits. I was pretty pleased with the recent report that came out from the National Academies and the U.K. Royal Society that recommends a kind of a measured approach to developing the technology for use in the human germline. They’re encouraging research to understand how the technology works in embryos. First, the technology will need to be proven safe. Secondly, any clinical use [to establish a pregnancy] would need to be restricted to cases of serious genetic disease where there are few or no other options to treat the disease. I think those are both pretty high bars. Those situations are pretty rare. I personally think there are more viable strategies today, like embryo screening and selection in an IVF (in vitro fertilization) clinic, rather than using genome editing.

The report you mentioned also calls for “extensive societal dialogue” before countries decide to permit the use of heritable human genome editing. You’ve talked in the past about public engagement around CRISPR. How do we educate and engage the public about CRISPR?

Yeah, that’s really critical. I think the media has an important role to play in terms of large-scale education. Interactive media, like videos and documentaries, can also help. The challenge of course is making sure that the science is right.

How do we make sure that the public’s voice is heard in regard to how CRISPR is used?

It’s a really important question. It’s a challenge because, on one hand, I think it’s critical to have more public engagement in important decisions like this about how technology is used. On the other hand, that requires a level of understanding about the technology that the average person might not have or maybe doesn’t want to have. So, I think it’s important to have different formats and forums for encouraging discussion. We’ve already seen this with CRISPR in some way. On the one hand, there are highly technical meetings that include discussion of ethical and societal issues from a pretty detailed technical standpoint. But there are also increasingly conferences and events that don’t get into the weeds of the science per se, but they spend a lot more effort thinking through CRISPR’s implications and its different uses. Inviting people who are nonspecialists to engage in those meetings has been really effective.

Other than medicine, where else do you think CRISPR could be transformative?

Agriculture is the other area where it’s going to be impactful. We’re already seeing a lot of use of CRISPR in making plants that have genetic changes that can enable things like better crop yield, resistance to drought, higher levels of nutritional value, things like that. I think that’s really exciting, and there’s clearly a lot more to be done there. That’s likely to be the area where we’ll see a broader impact in the near term.

Given CRISPR’s potential for misuse, how do you think it should be regulated?

Fortunately, I think there’s quite a good regulatory framework in the United States and in most places that have major research operations that can serve to regulate the use of CRISPR. That really goes back to the 1970s [at the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA], when voluntary guidelines were put in place for using some of these early tools of molecular biology, like molecular cloning. That being said, as we discussed, there are certain applications of CRISPR like in human embryos, where I think there needs to be special attention.

Who are the CRISPR scientists you really admire?

Many. It’s become a huge field. It used to be tiny, and now it’s vast. One is Luciano Marraffini. He’s a scientist at Rockefeller University. He works on the fundamentals of CRISPR biology and understanding how it works in bacteria as an immune system. Jill Banfield at Berkeley is continuing to do work on bacteria that are not cultured in the lab but are growing in various environmental niches. She was one of the very early discoverers of CRISPR systems and bacteria, and she continues to find a lot of new ones. In plant biology, I really like the work of Pamela Ronald at the University of California, Davis. She’s doing work primarily in rice, where they are using CRISPR to make modifications to the rice genome that I think are going to be really important as rice farmers face the challenges of climate change. On the biomedical side, I’m really excited about the work of Charles Gersbach at Duke University.

What’s next for you?

CRISPR is going to keep us busy for a while. There are still a lot of fundamental questions about how these pathways operate that I really like to try to answer. Jill Banfield is a close collaborator of ours, and she continues to supply us with many, many new CRISPR pathways that we’re excited to investigate. We’re also really interested in genome editing in natural microbial communities. I think there’s a really interesting opportunity to be able to manipulate certain microbes. I think those are areas where I’ll be focusing my efforts in the near term.


WRITTEN BY
Emily Mullin
Staff writer at OneZero and Future Human, where I cover biotechnology and genetic privacy. I also teach science writing at Johns Hopkins.

Future Human is a science publication from Medium about the survival of our species. It is run by the OneZero editorial team, which also publishes stories about major forces in technology through its namesake publication and stories about gadgets on Debugger.

NASA Finally Made a Toilet for Women

The new lavatory is a symbol of the agency’s growing recognition of female astronauts’ needs.

MARINA KORENOCTOBER 12, 2020

NASA / SHUTTERSTOCK / THE ATLANTIC

Buzz Aldrin remembers feeling “buoyant” and “full of goose pimples” when he stepped onto the moon in 1969, becoming the second person to touch the surface of another world. The view was magnificent.

The first thing he did was examine the ground beneath his boots. “I immediately looked down at my feet and became intrigued with the peculiar properties of the lunar dust,” the Apollo astronaut recalled in one of his memoirs. “If one kicks sand on a beach, it scatters in numerous directions with some grains traveling farther than others. On the moon the dust travels exactly and precisely as it goes in various directions, and every grain of it lands very nearly the same distance away.”


The second thing he did was pee.

Aldrin, the first person to urinate on the moon (into a special collection device worn around his waist) is one of hundreds of astronauts who, in between doing extraordinary things, have done the most mundane thing. In the nearly 60 years since human beings first went to space, engineers have worked carefully on the technology inside spacesuits, shuttles, and capsules to accommodate this very earthly act, and the effort continues today: Astronauts are preparing to install a brand-new toilet on the International Space Station soon.

NASA spent $23 million on the Universal Waste Management System, which might make it the most expensive toilet in the universe. The privy represents the state of the art in NASA’s off-world bathroom facilities. It is smaller and lighter than the old version. It’s easier to maintain, which is handy because when a space toilet springs a leak, astronauts can’t call in a plumber. Its metal pipes are now 3-D-printed, and still capable of withstanding the acid used to treat astronauts’ urine before it becomes their drinking water.

Read: A very relatable moment on the International Space Station

But the most important new feature is the one that allows astronauts to do something that the rest of us mostly take for granted on Earth. There’s no artful way to put this, so I’m just going to say it: The current toilets on the International Space Station aren’t conducive to peeing and pooping at the same time.

This matters more for the women in the astronaut corps, for whom the two bodily functions can be trickier to separate. For years, women astronauts have been carefully positioning themselves over the bowl, exchanging tips with their colleagues on best practices, and trying to make do with hardware that wasn’t built for their bodies.

Space toilets don’t look quite like the one in your bathroom. With the older latrine models on the ISS, astronauts urinate into a handheld funnel and defecate into a device that looks like a smaller version of a traditional toilet seat. A fan inside each apparatus suctions the waste away from the body, an important function in an environment where everything floats. The urine is transformed into the next day’s water, while the feces are compressed in a removable container and eventually dispatched on a special trash spacecraft that burns up in the atmosphere in the majestic manner of a shooting star. It’s careful business for men and women alike. Hold the funnel too close to the body, cutting off airflow, and liquid can end up pooling near the top. Lose contact with the seat, and waste might escape. Forget to turn on those fans before you start, and things can get messy.The current bathroom in the American segment of the International Space Station (JACK FISCHER / NASA)

This configuration is more challenging for women, who more commonly perform “dual ops,” a popular NASA euphemism for simultaneous evacuation. “It’s a little bit difficult to be on the seat and still get the funnel where it needs to go,” Jessica Meir, a NASA astronaut, told me. Special instructors train the astronauts on how to use and repair the toilet, in the same building at Houston’s Johnson Space Center where astronauts practice spacewalking around a replica of the station inside a swimming pool. (They wear diapers for that activity, in rehearsals and during the real thing.)

Meir said the training is crucial for understanding the old toilets’ plumbing, but the best advice for actually using them comes from her fellow astronauts. When Meir flew to the ISS last year, her best friend, Christina Koch, was already there. Koch showed her how to situate herself and which handrails and foot restraints helped most. “I actually found that I could do it with the existing toilet, even though other females haven’t been able to. So, definitely some anatomical differences, or maybe just some technique differences,” Meir said. “I was so relieved to realize that I could do it, because I was just like, This is going to be really annoying if I can’t do it.”

The newest lavatory was designed specifically with female anatomy in mind. In this way, the Universal Waste Management System is more than a toilet. It is a symbol of a changing American space program that for its first two decades took only men to space. Although men still make up the majority of NASA’s astronaut workforce, there are more women astronauts than ever before, and the agency has recognized that it must adapt its technology to meet their needs. “It’s about time,” Nicole Stott, a retired NASA astronaut who flew two missions to the space station, told me.

NASA consulted women astronauts in the design for the new system, including Stott. While the basic setup is unchanged, engineers have “completely recontoured” the urine funnel to better accommodate the female anatomy, according to Melissa McKinley, the project manager for the effort. They also made changes to the positioning of both the urine funnel and the toilet seat, allowing women to more comfortably use them at the same time. As an added bonus, astronauts don’t have to turn on the toilet before relieving themselves; as soon as they remove the urine funnel from its cradle or lift the toilet lid, the fan kicks on.

It might seem baffling, even a little absurd, that the organization that put men on the moon more than half a century ago did not, until this year, enable them to go number one and number two at the same time. But the problem originates in that very achievement: NASA put men on the moon. The existing toilet on the American side of the space station was developed in the 1990s, using a Soviet model. The gender balance of astronauts in the United States and Russia was even more lopsided at the time than it is today, so male anatomy and needs drove the design. Astronauts used a similar design on the space shuttles, which delivered the hardware to assemble the ISS.

Read: If everyone left the International Space Station

Stott and Meir likened the clumsy toilet design to NASA’s supply of spacesuits for astronauts working outside the space station. Last year, the agency was forced to reshuffle a spacewalking assignment because there weren’t enough spacesuits on board to fit Koch and Anne McClain, who both wore a size medium. A male astronaut replaced McClain on the spacewalk. NASA’s current spacesuit wardrobe, much of it designed in the 1970s, was meant to be customizable, with mix-and-match parts. Production on the smallest sizes was halted in the ’90s because of budget cuts, and because NASA had never planned a two-woman spacewalk before 2019, the ISS simply wasn’t prepared with enough garments for its female crew members.


NASA’s vision for the next line of spacesuits is tailored for the more diverse group of astronauts that the agency hopes will return to the moon later in this decade. NASA wants to send the first woman to the moon as part of its Artemis program for lunar exploration, named for Apollo’s sister in Greek mythology. The latest space toilet technology is expected to follow her there; in addition to the toilet NASA sent to the ISS, the agency created one for the capsule, still in development, that will deliver her crew to the moon.

As a beloved, best-selling children’s book put it, everyone poops—but it’s far more interesting when an astronaut does it. There’s an entire catalog of YouTube videos of astronauts describing how they do mundane things in space. People want to know how they brush their teeth, wash their hair, sleep, exercise, and even cry in microgravity. In space, the tedious tasks of human existence become curiosities.

And although astronauts can’t give as realistic a walk-through of their lavatories as they do of the onboard gym and bunks, they’re willing to talk about the bathroom process, sometimes even eager to. Consider Michael Collins, one of the Apollo 11 astronauts, who remained in orbit around the moon while Aldrin and Neil Armstrong descended to the surface. In the decades since the mission, reporters have bombarded Collins with questions about what it was like to be so alone, even though he’s always insisted that he was just fine. When I asked him last year whether he wishes people would ask about something else, he replied with: “How do you go potty in space?” No one had ever asked him that, and he was eager to reveal the answer: “Carefully.”



MARINA KOREN is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

MORE STORIES


Why Women Weren't Allowed to Be Astronauts MARINA KOREN


The Outdated Language of Space Travel MARINA KOREN


The Astronaut Wives Know Exactly What to Expect MARINA KOREN

Why We’re Fighting for a World Without ICE
Under the cover of post-9/11 antiterrorism, the Department of Homeland Security has unleashed a carceral assault on immigrant families and children


UnitedWeDream.org





This article is part of Abolition for the People, a series brought to you by a partnership between Kaepernick Publishing and LEVEL, a Medium publication for and about the lives of Black and Brown men. The series, which comprises 30 essays and conversations over four weeks, points to the crucial conclusion that policing and prisons are not solutions for the issues and people the state deems social problems — and calls for a future that puts justice and the needs of the community first.

By Cristina Jiménez Moreta and Cynthia Garcia

Immigrant youth and our families courageously left everything behind in our countries of origin to move to the United States. Some of us fled poverty, military coups, violence, and wars, while others simply wanted to go after a better life. While adapting to a new place, we’ve experienced some of the worst this country has to offer: workplace exploitation, wage theft, racial profiling, fear of deportation, and police violence. But as part of the immigrant youth movement at United We Dream (UWD), we’ve also experienced the power of people coming together, taking action, and winning change.

The seeds of our movement began with the idea that we have to protect and defend our families from deportation and fight for our right to access higher education. In the early 2000s, tens of thousands of undocumented students were graduating from high school each year. All of us lived with the fear of deportation and the looming possibility that our families could be torn apart, while simultaneously facing barriers to college education, exploitation at work, and a future filled with uncertainty.

This fear of deportation was heightened after September 11, 2001, as we witnessed how immigration enforcement and national security were being conflated in new and troubling ways. In the name of fighting terrorism, President George W. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2002, within which immigration and immigrants were considered matters of national security. This not only led to increased racial profiling and xenophobia, but as a result, local and federal law enforcement were targeting Muslims, Black immigrants, and non-Muslim immigrants of color at higher rates, often leading to detention and/or deportation.

Nationwide, thousands would be implicated by the post-9/11 enforcement regime, which produced an expanding infrastructure that supported local and federal law enforcement efforts to criminalize, target, detain, and deport immigrants. Within this infrastructure, we saw the increase in racial profiling, greater policing of Black and Brown communities, enhanced militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, and the implementation of racist federal policies, such as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, which targeted immigrants from 25 countries.

Among the thousands who were affected by the post-9/11 regime were Kamal Essaheb and Walter Barrientos in New York and Marie Gonzalez in Missouri — three young undocumented immigrants who were threatened with deportation.

Their deportation cases spurred some of our first advocacy efforts that would eventually carry us forward in later forming UWD in 2008. Together, along with activists and organizers from across the country, we mobilized people to write letters and telephone elected officials to demand that the government allow Kamal, Walter, and Marie to stay in the United States, winning extensive media attention. Although Marie’s parents were deported, our organizing efforts stopped the deportations of Marie, Walter, and Kamal. This was a bittersweet moment in our fight to protect immigrants, as it further exposed the human impact of the enforcement regime in not only deporting immigrants but also tearing apart families.


In the early 2000s, tens of thousands of undocumented students were graduating from high school each year. All of us lived with the fear of deportation and the looming possibility that our families could be torn apart, while simultaneously facing barriers to college education, exploitation at work, and a future filled with uncertainty.

This moment also taught us that people closest to the pain are closest to the solutions our communities need. At the time, undocumented immigrants publicly fighting against deportations were unheard of. Yet, in defiance of conventional wisdom, undocumented youth and their families launched campaigns to share their stories, pressure those with decision-making power, and win deportation relief. It was clear that our movement had the power to create real change.

This was even more evident in 2012, when the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was created as a direct result of our organizing efforts. Under the Obama administration, enforcement programs and collaboration between ICE and local police were aggressively expanded, leading to an increase in the number of immigrants being detained and deported even for minor violations, such as traffic infractions. Under the political calculation that ramping up enforcement would bring members of Congress from both parties to the negotiating table, the Obama administration deported a record number of immigrants from the United States. During Obama’s eight years in office, more than 3 million individuals and families were deported and separated from their loved ones. His administration failed to pass legislative immigration reforms, while the enforcement regime steadily grew in resources and power.

As organizers and directly affected people, we recognized this as a moment of leverage: By sharing our stories, we could pressure President Obama to take action. Our movement successfully created the conditions that led President Obama to implement DACA, which protected close to 800,000 young immigrants from deportation. The program continues to be the most significant policy breakthrough and victory on immigration in almost three decades. By sharing our stories and leading direct action and civil disobedience to get ICE agents out of our communities, we recognized the power we had in winning protection from deportation through policy changes.

This and other victories have strengthened our movement and brought hope to our communities — but as we have seen, mass detention and deportation have not stopped. ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the two agencies primarily responsible for immigration enforcement, have continued to carry out a racist and white supremacist agenda, targeting immigrants — particularly Black and Brown immigrants — for detention and deportation with little oversight or accountability. Clearly our fight is not over.

Year after year, failure at the immigration-policy negotiation table has been followed by near-silent acceptance of growing annual budgets and authority for ICE and CBP. Together, the two agencies employ more than 80,000 people, with a massive budget of $25.3 billion in 2020 ($8.4 billion for ICE and $16.9 billion for CBP), which is more than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined. Yet, while resources for the deportation force have grown, schools and hospitals in our communities often remain underfunded and suffer from a lack of federal support.

The deportation force of ICE and CBP, built by administrations on both sides of the aisle, has been completely unleashed under the Trump administration. ICE and CBP have carried out a list of attacks against immigrant communities, including putting children in cages; targeting immigrants in their workplaces, schools, places of worship, hospitals, and homes; and breaking down doors and abducting parents from their children. But the Trump administration hasn’t stopped there.

Throughout his four years in office, Trump consistently tried to dismantle DACA, reduce refugee programs, and detain and deport an increasing number of immigrants. Under his administration, we have seen 57 immigrants, including children, die in detention camps, the deportation of a woman who served as a key witness into reports of sexual assault and harassment inside ICE facilities, reports of forced hysterectomies being performed on immigrant women, and eight immigrants who have died as a result of Covid-19 while in ICE custody.

Facing these and a number of other attacks, UWD has fought tirelessly to protect and demand justice for immigrant communities. Over the past decade, UWD alone fought on behalf of more than 1,000 people threatened by deportation. Facing hundreds of calls per week on our community “Migra Watch” free hotline, UWD community organizers responded to immigrant families reporting interactions with ICE and CBP agents and needing help when their friends and loved ones faced detention and deportation.

In one instance, Tania, a cancer survivor in Georgia, was taken to a detention camp after a traffic stop. ICE agents kept Tania locked away for four months, away from her children and the cancer treatment she needed to live. UWD has fought on behalf of individuals like Hector, who was taken away after being stopped for expired tags on his license plate, and high school students like Dennis, who was dragged away by ICE agents after reporting being bullied at school.

Our history and the present moment have shown us that the risk of harm, detention, and deportation will always exist wherever police and federal law enforcement do. Our vision is for all people in this country, regardless of immigration status, to be able to live freely, with full dignity, and thrive. To get there, we must unite in the larger struggle against white supremacy and racism, which are rooted in interlocking systems of policing, mass incarceration, and immigration enforcement that, by design, target and further dehumanize immigrants, especially people of color.

At the same time, we must also acknowledge the historic erasure of Black and Indigenous people from immigration conversations and center these communities in our fight for immigrant justice. The United States’ legacy of genocide and colonialism cannot be ignored, as the impact of this continues to be felt today. We have seen indigenous immigrants die as a direct result of the U.S. immigration system’s failure to provide interpretation and translation services to immigrants who speak indigenous languages. In 2018, two children from indigenous Maya communities in Guatemala died in CBP custody after not receiving proper medical attention, as medical services were not translated in Q’eqchi’ and Chuj, the two indigenous languages that the children and their families spoke.

This is why, over the past decade, UWD leaders have made the demand of abolition and justice for all central to our vision, work, and movement strategy. Grounded in our lived experience, we know that ICE and local police work together to racially profile immigrants. For many in our communities, a traffic stop or any other contact with local police is the first entry point into the deportation pipeline.

Thus, when we call for the abolition of ICE, we are also calling for the abolition of enforcement on all levels and the systems that support it, from detention facilities to prisons. The abolition of ICE is inherently tied to the abolition of all other forms of enforcement and incarceration. Hence, UWD stands unequivocally with the Movement for Black Lives and its demands to defund the police, because we know that the police, ICE, and CBP work together to disproportionately target Black and Brown immigrants. We also know that the same people who profit from the mass incarceration of U.S.-born Black and Brown people also profit from immigrant detention and deportation.

We are engaged in a lifelong journey toward racial, gender, and economic justice. With each victory, our sense of what is possible should grow and our understanding of the vulnerabilities of our adversaries should deepen. A world where our communities do not have to live with the fear of deportation and detention is possible. A world in which we and others in the movement have abolished ICE — and where the safety, health, education, and well-being of our communities is a priority. We have witnessed and participated in a movement of undocumented people who have transformed the politics and policy of immigration with a bold vision of freedom and dignity for all people, regardless of immigration status. That movement has proven that when we follow the leadership and vision of those closest to the pain and injustice, a new world is possible.



Cynthia Garcia is an out, queer, undocumented womxn living in Oklahoma City. She serves as the national campaigns manager for community protection at United We Dream, where she runs a nationwide hotline of support for immigrants whose family members have been abducted by ICE agents and teaches them how to organize and fight back. Cynthia is herself protected from deportation because of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Cristina Jiménez Moreta is a community organizer, strategist, and freedom fighter who is a co-founder of United We Dream (UWD). Cristina migrated to Queens, New York, from Ecuador with her family at the age of 13 seeking a better life and grew up undocumented. She is the former executive director of UWD. Under her leadership, UWD grew into a powerful grassroots network of 800,000 members across 28 states.