Undocumented Student Fanny Martinez Arrested Protesting Controversial Secure Communities Program

Interview with Fanny Martinez at Democracy Now
Aug 18, 2011

Last night in Chicago, the controversy over the immigration enforcement program called Secure Communities reached a dramatic standoff when six undocumented students were arrested protesting a meeting to discuss the program. Wearing T-shirts that said "Undocumented and Unafraid," the students joined about 300 people in walking out of the meeting. Once outside, they blocked an expressway on-ramp in an act of civil disobedience. Protests against Secure Communities were also held earlier this week in Houston, Boston, Miami, Atlanta and Charlotte. We go to Chicago to speak with Fanny Martinez, a 23-year-old graduate student in Chicago, one of those arrested at the meeting. She was released from jail shortly before we went to broadcast.

Friends of Friendship Park

Friends of Friendship Park Website here

We are a coalition of individuals and organizations who care about Friendship Park and Border issues.

Friendship Park is located within the Border Field State Park in San Diego California. Established in 1974, the park encompassed four hundred eighteen acres of land in the Tijuana Estuary to enhance public access to its natural and cultural features.  Lying along the Pacific Coast and adjacent to Mexico, the new development allowed access to the beach and more importantly historic Monument Mesa.  On top the Coastal Mesa rests border marker 258, originally marker 1, observing the U.S. Mexico boundary, established in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1849.  Over one hundred fifty-nine years ago the Boundary Joint Commission met at that exact location in San Diego to survey the land and divide their countries.  In the 1880’s a monument was placed to commemorate the initial point of the boundary and celebrate a friendship between the two nations.  In 1971 Pat Nixon, the wife of President Richard Nixon, commemorated this beautiful spot as friendship park or parque de amistad, a place where friends and family could meet, despite nationality.

Mixtec Farmworkers in California

UC Television
Oct 2, 2008

This important interdisciplinary video explores the history; culture, and current social and economic conditions of the Mixtec Indians of Oaxaca, Mexico. It examines the factors causing ever increasing numbers of Mixtecs to become migrants, living part of each year in California, where they make up between five and ten percent of all farmworkers. Series: University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources [3/2001] [Humanities] [Agriculture] [Show ID: 5597]

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