(C) Common Dreams
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Rising Against Authoritarianism [1]
['Cloee Cooper']
Date: 2024-12-13
Could you tell us who you are and how you started to resist authoritarianism and state repression?
My name is Greisa Martínez Rosas. I’m undocumented, unafraid, queer, and unashamed. And I’ve been doing this organizing work for the past 15 years—since I was in high school.
I grew up in Texas, which has historically been a state where it’s difficult to be a woman, a person of color, or an immigrant. When I was 18, my father was detained and later deported. That was the first time that I was confronted with the full weight of what it means to be undocumented in this country.
My dad told me stories of being detained in a room that’s so cold, he signed his own deportation order without counsel or a hearing just to get relief from the desperate conditions. By then, I was involved with United We Dream, and we’d been fighting for the DREAM Act and DACA. That time was the most heart-wrenching and politically defining moment of my life.
What is your sense of the moment we are in? How would you define some of the challenges of the political atmosphere that you’re organizing within right now?
We are in a period of rising authoritarianism, not only here in the U.S., but across the globe. The real harms of living under authoritarianism are why some of our community members have fled to the U.S. Fascism and authoritarianism threatened our very lives, so we made the courageous decision to make this our new home.
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[1] Url:
https://politicalresearch.org/2024/12/13/rising-against-authoritarianism
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