Undocumented immigrants in the Pasadena area have become increasingly vulnerable to harassment, intimidation, and deportation. Join us for a conversation with Pablo Alvarado, one of the nation’s leading immigrant rights activists, who will describe how President Trump’s policies are impacting undocumented immigrants, how local cities and communities are addressing the problem, and what individuals and organizations can do to help people facing deportation and the break up of their families.

This event is part of a two-week long “Sanctuary Sabbath” program during which a number of religious congregations in Pasadena educate their members about the plight of undocumented immigrants.

THURSDAY, MAY 4 | 7:30–9pm

PASADENA JEWISH TEMPLE & CENTER
1434 N. Altadena Drive, Pasadena, CA 91107

INFO & RSVP
pjtcsocialjustice@gmail.com

Alvarado is executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), which works with 70 workers centers in 21 states (including the Community Job Center in Pasadena) to improve the lives of low-wage workers, most of them immigrants and many of them undocumented, who work in the shadow economy as day laborers, housekeepers, gardeners, restaurant workers and janitors.

Growing up in a region of El Salvador where revolutionaries and the army were battling for control, Alvarado saw his fifth-grade teacher murdered by a death squad. At the age of 10 he volunteered with his brother to teach adults in their rural village to read and write. He continued to teach and study for his university degree until his family received death threats, forcing him to flee to the United States along with his brother. He came to the U.S. in 1990 at age 22 and worked as a day laborer for five years, while also teaching literacy classes to immigrants, before becoming a full-time community organizer. He and others started NDLON in 2001. TIME magazine called him the “Cesar Chavez of day laborers” and one of the country’s 25 most influential Latinos. In addition to running the national organization, he has played an important role in Pasadena, helping to organize the campaign that won Pasadena’s new minimum wage law and mobilizing local residents to urge Pasadena city officials to prohibit the local police department from collaborating with federal deportation agents against undocumented immigrants who have not committed violent crimes. He is also a musician whose band, Los Jornaleros del Norte (Day Laborers of the North), have recorded three albums and traveled up and down California playing at marches and rallies. His family lives in Pasadena and his children attend local schools.

READ MORE:
Day Laborers Leader on Right-Wing Hostility: “So Far, We Have Won This Fight”
In These Times, 8/9/16