From The Harvest Video Analysis

Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz’s, Labor and Legality is a book written on the Mexican immigrant network in the U.S. She centers it on the Lions, a group of Mexican men from Leon, Mexico that all share their lives and help explain the many networks and strategies that are used in order to excel and gain happiness. There have been many different sorts of misconceptions about immigrants, and in recent years about undocumented immigrants from Mexico. The U.S. has made a sort of war on illegal immigrants and has made it a seemingly high priority in the media and in politics. Therefore, many Americans have been mislead and ill-informed about the history of immigrants/undocumented immigrants. Gomberg-Muñoz’s Labor and Legality helps set us straight. She unveils undocumented immigrants for the people that they are instead of the criminals that the media leads many to believe. Although she doesn’t have a wide range of participants for her study, I believe that she addresses many of the misconceptions and just plain ignorance that American people have of people that are undocumented; why stereotypes are supported by the people themselves, why politicians include stronger illegal immigration laws, and everything in between. Many of her topics reveal a sort of colonialism that the U.S. practices on Mexico; the exploitation of undocumented peoples to the benefit of the U.S. through economics, hypocritical laws and campaigns, and the racist and prejudice consequences.

Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, shares his life-long journey as an undocumented immigrant in his text, “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant.” As the title suggests, Vargas attempts to convey to his audience, who likely never has and never will experience anything similar to what he has, what it is like to live as an immigrant in the United States of America. Skillfully, Vargas details the perfect number of personal stories to reach the emotional side of his audience, which is anyone who is not an immigrant. Through the use of his personal accounts Vargas is able to effectively communicate that immigrants are humans too while simultaneously proving his credibility, as he has experience and a vast amount of knowledge

What I feel about Jose Angel’s presentation is that he was brave to share his story that is a common issue to face in America. This was nice book to be written and how many obstacles does he go through. The tenor of the presentation showed that it is right to step up to say your story. Even though he is still undocumented, he is still able to step up and show to the world that it takes effort to achieve one dream. He did not start off easy and had many challenges to face as well as receiving opportunities. His book has been written from diverse backgrounds, which makes the tone different because it was written from several locations, and how he was feeling at that time.

Each of their stories showed me just how much I had been missing from reading about DACA. I have not personally talked to anyone who is directly or indirectly affected by DACA or its removal, so these stories are really the first true insight that I have had to the personal, rather than the political or economic side of the debate. I think these stories are extremely important to know, because not everything can be summed up in a few numbers or

Throughout the various books that we have read, one of the many concepts that stood out for me was the well-being and healthcare of undocumented workers. Due to the current criminalization of immigration, most undocumented workers live in a constant state of fear and anxiety. This really made me think about the psychological and somatic outcomes of fear, stigma, trauma, and prejudice for undocumented workers. This brought into question the structural and symbolic violence that causes undocumented workers to suffer from mental and physical illnesses and how the treatment, if any, is administered.

As an individual who has witnessed family friends of immigrants that came to this country over 20 years ago in hope of a better future. I understand why so many immigrants are willing to cross a border so dangerous and treacherous to reach a country that is called the land of opportunities. What we call The Unites States of America the land of the free. An average of 2,700 illegal immigrants are willing to cross the border each day leaving there families and risking their own life's to cross to the US. Mostly in the news we tend to hear only the superficial fact but never the real facts or the stories of the capture immigrants. If we would just take time to listen to the real stories of what I called the unforgotten children and women. We

In this course we learned about many different types of oppression, from the time America was first “discovered” and the discoverers began oppressing the Indians, to slavery, to the oppression of the mentally handicapped, all the way to more “modern” times in schools were students are being oppressed.

After I read the article, I had to sit back and digest the material for an entire day. The article force me to do some soul searching regarding my position on power, privilege, and oppression. Have I been so oblivious to my surroundings? I quickly thought about the six core values of social work: service, social justice, dignity and worth, importance of human relationships, integrity, & competence. Will I be able to help others; because like Spencer (2008) I took somethings in life for granted? It was ironic when I was reading the article that Martin Luther King Jr, Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandella came to mine. They all fought for the injustice and sacrificed much to change the minds of the one in the position of power.

The book Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States illustrates the fieldwork of the author Seth M. Holmes by explaining the myriad aspects of migrant workers’ lives in the U.S.—from the politics to the social environments to the physical body. By not only studying, but living, the lives of these migrant workers, Holmes brings the reader a view unseen by the vast majority and provides the opportunity for greater understanding through the intense details of his work. The voices of vastly different characters—real people—are captured and expounded on without judgment but with deep consideration for all factors that contribute to each person’s life, opinions, and knowledge. Ultimately, a picture of intersectionality is painted in the colors of migrants, mothers, fathers, children, doctors, soldiers, executives, the poor, the rich, and more.

Despite the fact that animal crush videos are illegal, Stevens still participated in the unlawful selling of these videos which depicted animal abuse via the form of dogfighting.

On the one hand, the student from the first video argues that undocumented immigrants should give them path to be part in American society.

This article stuck out to me to hear & see the statistics and charts. This is sad that many of these people came here with the intentions to have a better life, and have to get

Intersectionality has truly opened my eyes in cases where there is a possibility where two systems of oppression can be working together to make life a struggle for a certain group or race. In the political world when someone feels that they are being mistreated or being taken advantage of they make their voice heard. They search for the correct people to help them in their situation and once in court and they feel that they have been mistreated for example racially and gender discrimination the question now becomes well which one is it? Gender or race? It cannot be both. Well, why can’t we choose both options each is a brick in the wall of oppression that everyone has faced at least once in their life. Not to generalize the fact that people face more walls in their life than others based on certain privileges from the type of skin, class, or the global power of wealth and how much it is used for ill intentions. Intersectionality creates lenses in seeing the “bricks” of the wall, seeing what each one stands for and what it does to us. However, it also shows us where it is weak and way for us as scholars to find the weak points and change our groups future where we will no longer fear to speak about the injustices we see every day and will be able to fight and give knowledge to our “enemy” as well for they could see their error as well.

Dinaw Mengestu, Richard Rodriguez and Manuel Munoz are three authors that have been through and gone through a lot of pain to finaly get accepted in their societies. They are all either immigrants or children of immigrants that had trouble fitting in America’s society at the time. They struggled with language and their identities, beucase they were not original from the states and it was difficult for others to accept them for who they are. They all treated their problems differently an some tried to forget their old identeties and live as regulalr Americans others accepted themselves for being who they are, but they all found a way to deal with their issues.

The reading this week also really resonated with me, especially the ones about minority women and feminists of colour. As a white person, I will never understand the difficulties that POC face nor can I speak on their issues, but I can use my privilege to help elevate their voices when possible. One thing that particularly caught my attention was the section by Kiran Ahuja about diversity in schools and community, in my hometown there is currently an ongoing case to desegregate a school, which I never would have thought would still be a problem, not only was my school fairly diverse but so were the neighbourhoods in our district. The thing is that not all communities are like this, some are segregated, either intentionally or not, and this