Gina M. Pérez, "Sanctuary People: Faith-Based Organizing in Latina/o Communities" (NYU Press, 2024)

Welcome to the new book's network. Alo and welcome to new book's network. I'm Jennifer Nahera, your host for today, and I'm excited to be speaking with Dr. Gina Betis, chair of the Department of Comparative American Studies at Oberlin College and author of the new book, "Singulary People, Faith-Based Organizing in Latina, Latino Communities, Published by New York University Press in 2024." Dr. Betis is a cultural anthropologist and the author of two award-winning books, The Near Northwest Side Story, Gender Migration and Puerto Rican Families, Published by the University of California Press in 2004, and Citizen Student Soldier, Latina, Latino Youth, J-R-O-T-C, and the American Dream, Published by New York University Press in 2015. She is also co-editor of two anthologies, Beyond El Barrio, Everyday Life in Latino-Latina America, and Ethnographic Refusals, Unruly Latini-Dates. Dr. Betis's research interests include Latinas and Latinos, Youth, Militarism, Gender Migration, Urban Ethnography, and Faith-Based Organizing. Her new project focuses on sanctuary movements and multi-ethnic faith-based organizing among Latina and Latino Communities in Ohio. And that is the subject of sanctuary people, the book that we'll be discussing today. Volcanjina. Thank you, Jennifer. So, just to begin our conversation, I was hoping that you could talk to us a little bit about what brought you to this particular research topic. Yeah. So, this research topic emerges in the wake of the 2016 presidential election. And it was not a topic that I anticipated on researching, and instead it came out of what it means to be a community member, both where I live in an Oberlin, Ohio, but also being a professor at Oberlin College and witnessing how people were responding to the election of Donald Trump in 2016. And as you will well remember, and probably many of our listeners will remember, there was a lot of concern about what this election would mean for immigrants, in particular, undocumented immigrants. And this played itself out in a really interesting way on college campuses, where very soon after the election, there was a movement, I think, that began at Pomona College of trying to create sanctuary campuses. It was the sanctuary campus movement that involved hundreds of campuses and universities in California to New York and Midwestern colleges and universities as well. And so here at Oberlin, there were a group of staff members, students, administrators, and faculty who came together to have a number of conversations about what it would mean to have Oberlin declare itself a sanctuary campus. And there were protests and there were different kind of organizing efforts that succeeded in conveying to the then president, Marvin Christlaw, like the significance and the meaningfulness of Oberlin taking a stance, particularly given Oberlin's history as both a city and a college that was part of the Underground Railroad in the 19th century that has always been able to take a moral stance in the face of different kinds of unfair laws, like the fugitive slave act of 1851. And so there was a declaration that Oberlin would declare itself a sanctuary campus as many others did. So I became really interesting to me to hear that use of sanctuary in that moment. And shortly thereafter, it seemed that sanctuary was being invoked and evoked in a lot of different ways in different community spaces that I was a part of in not only in immigrant communities, but even within Puerto Rican communities that were concerned with head of what the new administration policies would mean for Latino communities. And I think this became very obvious and very real in September of 2017 after Hurricane Maria and Hurricane Irma devastate the island of Puerto Rico that sets in motion more out migration from the island to diasporic communities like Lorraine Ohio where I live near where I live and where I've worked for a long time, Cleveland, you know, as well as other diasporic communities. And you had people in Northeast Ohio who were trying to meet the needs of Puerto Ricans who are riding to to the communities to help get their kids in school trying to get them connected to health care and to implement opportunities trying to help them with language skills and acquisitions and really trying to create this place of refuge and safety, particularly in the face of federal neglect and and a failure of the state to meet the needs. And so you had people mobilizing both within faith-based communities as well as secular organizations and service organizations and churches, et cetera. And so people talked a lot about what does it mean to to welcome, you know, newcomers once again into our diasporic communities and what kinds of responsibilities do we have, particularly when the state seems to, in this case, you know, be particularly not assert. You could make the argument that they were hostile, but they were also very negligent and they could feel negligence and what that meant to people both on the island and the mainland. And so those networks, and so I'm thinking about this in the context also of President Trump's very early executive orders and being clear about trying to punish sanctuary jurisdictions. I mean, that was one of his very first executive orders and his first first administration as well as in the second one. And so this language of sanctuary was circulating in a lot of different ways. And so the networks of support that were in place to help Puerto Rican migrants arriving to Northeast Ohio in the fall of 2017 then became with the very same networks that were activated to respond to undocumented immigrants who were being detained by ICE. And in a particular in June of 2018, there was a large workplace raid that decimated a community. It was a garden center in San Desquil, Ohio, very highly militarized immigration raid that detained 114 workers at this garden center and just devastated a community, separated families, mixed status families. And in the very, the same groups of people, secular activists, faith-based activists, social service organizations who had responded to Puerto Rican migrants arriving in 2017 were the same ones who were responding to provide support for these families and these communities in the wake of the workplace raid in 2018. And they used the same language about, in this case, it wasn't necessarily welcoming newcomers, but how do we provide a place where people can feel safe, where they can feel welcome, where they can feel security in the face, in this case of state intervention and of immigrant attention. And so in that language of sanctuary became the language that people were using to talk about this even while people were increasingly aware of how sanctuary was something that was being reviled and being criticized and denigrated in the public discourse and in political discourse. But a lot of the faith communities themselves were using that language of sanctuary. And this is happening at the same time where there were people in Ohio and throughout the United States who were taking physical sanctuary in church spaces as well. And so there was a lot of different ways that sanctuary was happening and that people were using that language as well as other kinds of ways to capture that word. But I became really fascinated by why people were using that language of sanctuary, what older histories were they tapping into and what did it allow them to convey about how they were being called and what was informing the kind of work that they were doing in those critical years between 2016 and 2020. Yeah, I mean, the way that your mind works is actually very beautiful. I was just thinking like you're putting all of these things together, you know, you're putting the sanctuary campus, which in, I mean, I think most respects, we had a lot of debate at UCMIA University, University of California Riverside. I was totally student led and it was a declaration by the Associated Students of UCR and there was lots of debate even amongst the students about, you know, can we call ourselves and should we and, you know, what's the point even, like does it have teeth to call yourself a sanctuary campus and we really offer sanctuary to people, you know, those kinds of debates that happen. But, you know, that's a secular, a secular space, you know, nobody's going to think about sanctuary in a sort of religious, um, religious sense and, you know, and I guess we'll talk about this. I think Warren is second we talk about the new sanctuary movement versus what was happening, say, and then 1980s. And then, you know, you're putting together the language of refuge and safe space and welcome from these Puerto Rican, these displaced Puerto Rican folks who have been affected by the hurricane. And I think also the neglect, right, this sort of thing. or the state neglect of the United States and Puerto Rican officials as well. And then a family, this raid as state violence. And so just really I think a very thoughtful and kind of beautiful way to put these things together and thinking about, you know, I think we think about a social, we think about social movements and we think about them as sort of these kind of coordinated, organized, you know, a movement against, you know, the Vietnam War, for example. And if we take a historical stance, but really like, I think you're putting things together in a way that helps us to see a couple of things, you know, the way that like everyday forms of activism take root and are activated. But also the kind of the language, the language almost that inspires a social movement or that can motivate a social movement, which I think is really, which is really fascinating. And so I know we're kind of dancing around using sanctuary and old sanctuary movements. And so maybe it'll be good if you could speak a little bit about the new sanctuary movement and how it differs from the sanctuary movement of the 1980s that people might be more familiar with. - Absolutely. So the new sanctuary movement emerges in the mid 2000s. And I think one of the kind of landmark cases that people point to when we think about the new sanctuary movement is a case of Elbira Arreano in the city of Chicago, who is a Mexican woman, has a U.S. born son and they take sanctuary in a church in Chicago in order to avoid a deportation order. And this is at a moment where, you know, post 9/11, you have the building of the infrastructure that we are all navigating now and an increase in immigration enforcement that, you know, really is ripping apart different kinds of families. And so you have the beginning of a movement that is returning to and using strategies and using kind of the language of the 1980s a sanctuary movement as their inspiration. And I think it really, really important ways. So one of the things that I think is really significant for people to know and there's what's really beautiful is there's been a lot of new writing about the 1980s and the sanctuary movement. And I think there's some important differences. And one is that, in the 1980s, the sanctuary movement was very much focused on kind of around newcomers. And about thinking about how to, you know, both draw attention to the impact of U.S. foreign policy in places like Central America, you know, the militarization of U.S. foreign policy to, that had this incredible impact in displacing people and fueling wars within Central America and the impact that has. And so you have a group of faith-based actors who were involved in this first sanctuary movement or an overground railroad in the 1980s that is really kind of focused on providing safety to people who are coming, who are fleeing these wars and coming through Mexico to the United States and then to oftentimes to Canada in order to receive asylum. And so these are refugees, these are people who may or may not remain in the United States. But that sanctuary network is a transnational phenomenon that is very much focused on, you know, that movement of people, you know, who are, who are not necessarily residing in the United States, but who are coming and seeking refuge within the United States. I think, and I think that that's, there's a lot of really important scholarly work that has been done documenting the kinds of solidarities that were developed during that moment, you know, what were some of the challenges as well as some of the ways that that activism then fed into other forms of activism. I think including the seeds for what we see in the 19, in the 2000s with the new sanctuary movement. I think one of the differences between the new sanctuary movement is that the new sanctuary movement often talks is talking about people who have resided in communities for decades, you know. So many of the people who I, you know, interviewed and the research that I did are people who have lived in cities like Columbus, Ohio for 20 years. That they often have come from mixed status families, they're people who have been living and working and being part of communities in a variety of ways and because of a failure of any kind of meaningful immigration reform since 1986, haven't been able to regularize their status. And so a deportation order then threatens to separate these families and so people are trying to remain in the communities that they have called home for decades. And so I think that one of the really interesting things in doing the research for sanctuary for my book, sanctuary people was to really see how activists and faith-based workers really had to grapple with this idea of what does it mean to be a newcomer because in a lot of cases, the people who were taking physical sanctuary weren't newcomers that they're people who have been part of our communities for a very long time. And what is the biblical basis? So if there's a biblical basis for welcoming the stranger, what's the biblical basis for being able to accompany and support immigrant families who are facing a deportation order that threatens to separate them, right? And so I saw people really grappling with that quite a bit in doing the research. And I think what became really evident to me and how I came to the title for my book, "Saint-Tray People" is that there was a community activist named Ruben Castilla Herrera. And he was based out of Columbus, Ohio. And he worked in areas of immigrant justice and labor justice, working with farm workers. He also worked with communist palates around LGBTQ rights and also with anti-police violence and black and brown communities. And when I would hear him speak during these years of 2016 to 2020 at rallies, at prayer vigils, at workshops around the sanctuary movement, he always said that he always reminded people that we were all being called to be sanctuary people. And to be a sanctuary person, he would say, is to not just be there for immigrants, but it's to be there for queer communities and for communities of color that are facing police violence, to be there for people who are displaced because of war in their country or because of natural disasters. I can Puerto Rico. And so this idea of how we're all called to be sanctuary people and to accompany each other and to respond in the moment in that way, in a loving way, in a way that offers support and refuge and safety to people and help to create those communities of safety really resonated not only with me, but I think with all the people who came in touch with him. And so that's where the title "Sanctuary People" comes from. It's from Ruben Castilla Rera and the work that he was doing as a community activist. And sadly, he passed away in 2019. And that that's the basis of this idea of sanctuary people. - You know what, actually, that makes a lot of sense, this idea of being a person who can provide a safe space, right? I think about on our campuses, for example, oftentimes, you might see somebody who has just a sign on their door, like this isn't safe space for LGBTQ+ people or for migrants or whatever, like a little butterfly symbol or something, just to signal to the students that this office or this person that you were about to speak with is a safe person. - Right. - And I think about the difference, you know, between training people to address the needs of students versus this idea of safety. Because when I was working with and documenting students, Ash and Mr. Ben in 2013, and we're doing a live ally trainings, the idea is like, you know, sometimes the office will be like, okay, all of you people from like counseling and psychological services have to do ally training and you know, the folks with the documented student programs, offices were like, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can't force somebody to be an ally, right? 'Cause that's a, you know, you can trade them on how to address people's needs or in financial aid office. Like what are the policies that are gonna, you know, like that you need to know, but you cannot like make somebody like be a safe person. Like that has to come from the person, right? And so this idea of, you know, being called as a sanctuary person, I think is really, is really interesting and important, you know, in terms of building the kind of consciousness, right? - No, absolutely. And I think along, I think in the same way, Jennifer, it's both kind of focuses on the individual, but it also taps into, and this is what I learned through my research is that when I would interview people about like, why would they doing this work, what drove them to do this work? And then you realize that people have been doing this kind of work for a very long time, you know, in a variety of different ways. And for some of them, you know, they came to the work, you know, that was kind of sanctuary work or the work in 2016 to 2020 because of work that they did during the Chicano movement or during the anti-war movement or, you know, through their work with Puerto Rican communities and independence in the 1960s and 1970s or through the anti-nuclear proliferation movement and, you know, or through housing justice, you know. So there was this way that people, that you aren't born a sanctuary person, but you become a sanctuary person through the different kinds of choices that you make every single day in your life. And so like he said, like that example of, I'm putting a butterfly on my door to let people know that I am a person who you can come to and find some kind of safety and refuge in a moment where you can feel very insecure. And there's something really beautiful about that. And that I've really developed my understanding more deeply reading the work of someone like Barbara Sostaita. You know, she wrote a book sanctuary everywhere. She really focuses on this idea of the mobility and fugitivity of sanctuary that is a little different than how we prioritize sometimes are thinking about sanctuary as being very place-based. You know, because there's something really powerful about, you know, church's ass sacred spaces that can offer physical protection and sanctuary to people who seek it. And that has, you know, for millennia that that has existed. But her work invites us to think about that power of the fugitive and of the mobile and of kind of how that operates to as a place of sanctuary. And I think it really resonated. It really resonates with what I was trying to do. And what I think Ruben was trying to remind us about the power of thinking about sanctuary people, because then we carry that with us wherever we are and whatever spaces that we are. And I think that that's really something very, very powerful. And I think speaks to, and why this idea of sanctuary can resonate so deeply with people in a range of different ways. One of the things that you talk about, you know, in the first part of the book, is this idea that sanctuary is, especially physical sanctuary, is not the goal. In fact, sanctuary can also feel like a kind of, yeah, like a kind of prison, right? Because you're, you can't, you're still, you're still missing the moments. You're still not able to go to the doctor's appointments or to the graduations or the family gatherings, you know, in order to have proximity, you know, you're confined in these spaces. And so, you know, I think it's, it's interesting to think about when we, we think narrowly about sanctuary as a space, as a place, rather, versus, you know, we're cultivating a kind of consciousness or epistemol, a sanctuary epistemology sanctuary consciousness, right? As a person, because that mobility, I think, does make a difference. Now, now, you know, we're kind of getting into sort of like the theoretical, you know, versus the kind of, you know, the more, the more, like the grounded in like the response to state violence, right? Like a person can come to my house, but, and I can, you know, I can beat them and I can, you know, provide for them, but I can't provide them really a safe space from, from the state, right, from deportation. And that's what we, I think, right now we're struggling with a lot on our college campuses, you know, because we can say we're sanctuary campus, we can say we're not cooperating with ICE, but, you know, at the end of the day, can ICE come into our classrooms, yes, they can, you know, and what, you know, and, you know, I can say put my body in front of a door, but they can arrest me and then they can arrest my student as well, right? And so, you know, the, so, so this idea of sanctuary as like a place versus sanctuary as sort of like a consciousness, you know, there's, I mean, I think there's, there's some interesting kind of movie that's right to sort of understand like how it's working and how it, and like work, I work on the harness the power of sanctuary, right? Yeah, given this particular moment. Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right that, and, and I want to go back to what you were saying about kind of the way that in this is one of the quotations from the Reverend Alice and Herrington, who, from Southside Presbyterian Church, you know, which is one of the important centers of the first sanctuary movement of the 1980s in Tucson, Arizona, is that sanctuary is a tactic. It's not the goal, right? And I think that sometimes, you know, what her words and some of the things that I was observing and documenting in my book was people really struggling with this idea of, you know, what does it mean for sanctuary to be a tactic and not the goal, and also to recognize what an incredible emotional toll this has on families, right? And, and that's one of the things that, just using the example of a Vite espinelle, you know, who lived in sanctuary. She lived in a men and a church for over three years, you know, she entered in October of 2017 on this men and a church in Columbus, Ohio and didn't leave that church until February of 2021, when President Biden, after he was inaugurated. And this had an incredible toll, as you said, you know, on her about, you know, what do you miss? You know, what are the kinds of milestones you miss? There's the kind of emotional weight that it has both on you and your family. But she always said that it was something that she wanted to do because she wanted to be there for her family. She didn't want to be separated from her children. And, and, and, but I think she, the kind of the impact that's had on her mental health, on her emotional well-being, was so great that, you know, really raised the question, like, you know, would she and other people do it again, especially once President Trump was elected back in, in 2024? So, so I think that that's something not to be underestimated. Which again, I think kind of makes us think about, well, where does sanctuary derive its power? I mean, so clearly part of how it derives its power and how it's historically, you know, as an ancient tradition in practice has just has has derived its power in part by the sacredness of place. But I think it also, I think through what what what my research as well as Barbara Sostita's and I think other people's research is also kind of pointing us to is, is again, to kind of think about the mobile kind of the fugitive and of strategies of sanctuary that permeate our lives that can also be ways of addressing and of these these moments of insecurity. And how can we harness that power of sanctuary in different kind of ways that don't discount the importance and the sacredness of place but don't see it as residing only in that space, right? And so, and so I think that that's one of the things that I've been really interested in, particularly now with the elimination of the secure locations memo that makes schools hospital. Yeah, exactly, that we're just in a different very different place and I see people responding to that in much more creative ways that I think speaks to that mobility, that yeah, that mobility and fugitivity of sanctuary. There was somebody in your book who was talking about like this idea of sensitive locations and you know what and it was a really beautiful way. I should have like marked it for our conversation right now. But it was that he said it in a really beautiful way. It was talking about those places, our sensitive locations that they're supposed to be because of the work that happens in those places, right? Because and it was almost like because of this like the sacredness you know, the sacred patterns in those places. And I thought that was really beautiful, you know, because it then forces you to think about what is sacred that is not necessarily in a church, yeah, and and that was a tension that you you arrive at kind of at the end of the book like this idea of the secularization of sanctuary and you know, and one faith leader that you'd interviewed, I don't know if it's a reverend five. Yes, Reverend John Fife, who was part of the sanctuary movement, you know, one of it's on. Yes, and that he wasn't like he wasn't really ready to say like it's okay, let it be secular, you know, he was like, wait a minute, there's something there's something that is important, you know, this the sacred nature of this work is important. Yeah, but there is this sort of but there is this sort of tension and I thought about this a lot also, you know, in my in my own work with a document to students like thinking about like immigration reform, thinking about and you talk about this as well, like the way that people talk about their families, the way they talk about maybe motherhood, and the sacredness of that role of those, you know, of those of those institutions even, you know, we're talking about families institution in our country, you know, why is it important to call them sacred? Like, why can't you know, like, and I guess like this kind of getting to like, how does a quote-unquote, you know, secular nation? I mean, I guess if we're supposed to have separation between church and state, like, where is the moral center, right? Who gets to define it? And I think that's it's sort of this tension that I see in your in your book and you're and you're thinking and developing this idea of sanctuary as well, is like, you know, is sanctuary providing us a moral center? Some people are saying, no, you know, and some people are saying maybe it doesn't need a moral center. This is just like, something we do as like, you know, just to recognize the humanity and the dignity of others, you know, the thought necessarily secret. But what is your, I mean, what is your thought on that? I mean, I was kind of, you're being very judicious in the in the book, right? But in terms of like, both sides, but really like, what are your thoughts on, does sanctuary need to be secret? To have its power? Well, that's the question I asked everyone. Where does sanctuary derive its power? I so to Reverend John Fife was very clear that, you know, that faith-based activists and organizers and and and actors need secular, need secular activists and but the secular also needs the the sacred and that I think he said in the interview that every social movement that has had any significant success has always had religion or kind of, you know, religious people have been part of those movements. And I think he says something about like, you know, we have the songs, we have the prayers like these are. So I think that there is something really to be said about the value of, you know, of understanding the sacred and to understand the power of the transcendent. Because from its very inception, sanctuary has always been a way to challenge the authority of the state with the authority of the transcendent or the authority of God. And to be able to remind people that there are limits to kind of secular power, particularly when it comes to different kinds of laws that can violate the human dignity of other human beings, right? And so, you know, and then this brings you back to it. And this is again because I've lived and worked at Oberlin for 23 years and its historic place within the underground railroad in the 19th century. And to think about kind of all the different kinds of legal infrastructure our nation had and that played itself out in particular ways around slavery that and people's willingness to defy those laws, you know, these were laws that, you know, people defied them, have had significant consequences and that people defied those laws. And oftentimes they came at it through religious means not entirely, but they often use religious means as a way to justify kind of their ability and the need to defy these laws that you don't, that your conscious requires you to not follow laws that, you know, that undermine human dignity. And I guess like this reminds me, then, and I think going back to the 1980s, it's really instructive is, you know, Oscar Romero, you know, that, you know, his, his call to people to the Salvadoran National Guard and to the military that you, you should not kill. Like even if you're being ordered to kill that your conscience kind of requires you to defy those laws and to know that the higher authority of God is telling you not to kill, right? And so I think that there's something very powerful in, in kind of, in how our faith and how people's faith can inform how they are able to find the kind of moral center and to claim that moral center to resist and to challenge and to defy and to speak back to very powerful secular kind of narratives and authorities and laws, right? And that's, and that's kind of where we are right now. And so I see that as having a really particular and very special and distinctive place within this landscape of this political landscape. Yeah, that's, that's, I think that's just exactly spot on in terms of just the way that we need to understand almost like a dialectical relationship, right, between the secular and the sacred and how they, they need each other, they inform each other, they shape each other. You know, but there is something about, you know, people taking a stand, I'm thinking about all the people who are like quitting, you know, like quitting the Justice Department, quitting, you know, these different state agencies that, you know, where they could they feel that they can't do, but they can't do the work of the state with the moral, with their moral conscience intact. And so I do think that we're in that moment again, right now. You know, when, and, and just thinking about like the, the way that politics affects or pushes against sometimes people's moral, moral center, moral underpinnings, and even the law, I was thinking about, you know, as you were speaking about Oskar Olmetov, he has a famous quote, I, I use it sometimes in my lectures and I'm, it's something, and I'm, I'm going to say it wrong, but it's something about like, no, like Nihun Zeru Mano, Viennike, Viennike, Sadid, Wunanle, Inumano, In Usta, they like that. It's like no human being should have to follow in an unjust law. And, and I think about that sometimes because, yeah, when people say things like, well, you know, they came here, they came here illegally, and I think, well, you know, what are, what are the laws that we're broken? You know, are those laws just laws? I think that's important for us, you know, and especially maybe on college campuses to really get us to think, you know, to get us in our students to think critically about it. What, not just to accept that this is the way it is, but like to really question, how does this can be and why? Right? Which is, I think what was happening in the 80s with people, you know, really smart folks involved in these social movements, understanding U.S. intervention, you know, in these other countries that was meeting people, you know, forcing people out of their, out of their home lands, right? Exactly. So when I was, I know, I could, I go talk if I should this for days. Let's go down this rabbit hole. But I actually was really interested in, I haven't interested in this idea of like these, like the way that the sacred and secular dovetail, but the other thing that came out in your book that I thought was interesting because I had known a little bit about the first sanctuary movement in the 80s and liberation theology, and so much of that being rooted in the Catholic Church. And, you know, obviously the, the, the theologians, you know, who are, who are writing about liberation theology. But what I was reading in your book were all these case studies, the Protestant churches right over there. Where is the Catholics? And then as I was getting, you know, a little bit deeper into the chapters, I think I hit, I hit one moment where there's a little bit of tension between one of the community or a couple of the community leaders and the the bishop and the bishop saying something to the effective, it's against the law. That's the law. And the person pushing back and saying, you and I both know that, you know, that laws could be immoral or unjust or whatever. So, okay, this is really an important something that I documented and that's really important because that person who you're referring to who had the interaction with Bishop Nelson Perez, who was the bishop of Cleveland diocese at the time. The person who was having that argument with him was actually the chief of police of the city of Lorraine. And so, and to that interaction, so when I was interviewing in his name is Celestino Rivera, sadly, he passed away recently. And he was someone who, you know, he was a Vietnam veteran. He was a police officer in the city of Lorraine for, you know, more than 40 years. He was a police chief for more than 25 years. And, and was an incredible advocate of immigrants. He, himself, is Puerto Rican, an incredible advocate for immigrants. And part of his journey to become this incredible advocate of immigrants came from immigrant organizers who drew his attention to the way that routine traffic stops by his police officers was setting in motion deportation orders. This is before, this is in the mid to the like 2015, 2011. So, even before President Trump was elected. And so, he comes to this greater understanding about what can his role be as a police officer in terms of training his police officers about what their duties are. And one of the things that he says is that, you know, with regard to kind of the pressure that was placed on him as a police chief and other police chiefs and other police departments around kind of sanctuary. And, you know, and in the different kinds of ways that the federal government was trying to deputize local law enforcement to do immigration enforcement is his position was like, you know, they're all kinds of laws. There are wildlife laws. There are city laws. There are federal laws. And that he would tell his police officers that, you know, their city police officers and their role is to enforce city laws. And that, you know, that he wasn't going to, you know, that that was his concern. And so, when he's talking to Bishop Perez and saying, like, you know, that the church, that the Catholic church needs to respond in a way, in the diocese of Cleveland needs to respond in a way that is similar to what some of the Protestant churches were doing. It was very interesting that the Bishop, knowing who he is, knowing who Celestino Rivera is, is saying, like, that's breaking the law. And then Celestino Rivera says, yes, but we all know that sometimes some laws are unjust and that we don't necessarily have to abide by them as people of faith. That it's our job to have a conscience and to, and to follow what God tells us to do. And so that's the tension that exists. And it was really interesting because the diocese of Cleveland, in particular, has a really strong and beautiful and long history of not only supporting immigrants, but also they have this really strong relationship and ongoing relationship with El Salvador. And they have sent people to El Salvador to work in the communities. And in fact, the after Bishop Romero was assassinated in March of 1980, the four church women who were killed by the El Salvador military and National Guard in December of 1980 were from Cleveland, and from the Cleveland diocese. They were three nuns and one layperson. And so the people in the Catholics in the Cleveland diocese who were trying to organize and trying to persuade Bishop Perez to, to, to, to offer physical sanctuary to immigrants with deportation orders, were drawing on that history of the Cleveland diocese of having martyrs from our diocese who have, who lived their lives proclaiming the gospel so much so that they, that they were killed for it, that that was the history that they were drawing on, that it was our time to take a stance as a diocese. And Bishop Perez did a lot of amazing things, offered lots of support through Catholic charities through the legal you know, aid, etc. for immigrants, you know, helped to strengthen the, um, welcoming the stranger program and all these kinds of things, but he drew the line at physical sanctuary, of offering physical sanctuary. And that, that was a big disappointment to a lot of people because that, for all of the problems of physical sanctuary, there's something very meaningful about what does it mean to put your sacred place. And, and it, because there were Lutheran churches, men and night churches, Presbyterian churches in the area who were offering physical sanctuary to people to evade a deportation order. So, so, so that was, um, very much an ongoing conversation, a series of negotiations during that time. Yeah, I was, um, I was thinking about, I was also, you know, thinking about this, this says sort of like, the, the physical sanctuary is obviously, it's symbolic, it means something, right, that your church or the that space, you know, is, is really willing to, you know, to even if it's, even if it's symbolic, it is meaningful. Um, but, but I also think this is sort of a place where your concept of sanctuary people comes in. Yeah, that even if the sanctuary isn't in a place that it's in the people, right, it's in the way that the people respond to, um, in this case, um, I mean, in this case, you know, undocumented folks who are trying to evade deportation order, but it's also, in this case, as you, as you read about, you know, Puerto Rican, um, yeah, climate refugees, basically. Um, and, you know, so I think this is really, um, one of the, one of the really beautiful interventions that in your book is, is, is sort of pushing us to think about sanctuary, um, in, in a way that connects it to different communities, not just, um, not just the undocumented, um, but, you know, to folks who are, you know, subject to police violence, who are subject to anti-LGBTQ, plus discrimination, who are climate refugees, um, and then also, you know, so you've, you've got these connections in terms of thinking about sanctuary as it, you know, as it is connecting these different communities, um, and the, and the work, right, the very, um, difficult work it is to create, to create, sustain those connections, but also, you know, connecting it to these, um, these histories of resistance and consciousness. Um, and so, you know, I think that's something that, you know, I think is really important about this book is really like expanding our understanding of sanctuary in terms of community and history. Um, yeah. No, I think that that's really, I'm glad that you brought that up because I think that was one of the very important and surprising findings of my book is that, you know, what, you know, how people, how sanctuary people respond or how people engage in the kind of sanctuary work, um, they do really is shaped by their local histories, right, and it can look very different, um, like so, for example, here in Oberlin, I've talked several times about like the history of the Underground Railroad and kind of how that informs and how that justifies and is used as an argument to both persuade and to challenge people to take a particular position because of that history, um, of, you know, challenging the future of sleighback and challenging, you know, those kinds of laws. And then in the city of Lorraine, which is only eight miles away, has a very different kind of history as a, it's, you know, city of Lorraine is, um, proudly the international city and the way that they're, um, the way that they can persuade people to be involved and to respond to the moment has more to do not with that history of the Underground Railroad, but has a lot to do with like, what does it mean to be an immigrant community? And what does it mean to be welcoming of immigrants? And so the after, so there was no, so the city of Oberlin can declare itself as a sanctuary jurisdiction, but the city of Lorraine is never going to, you know, be able to officially declare itself as a sanctuary jurisdiction, but they can do the kind of work that they do or activists and, and community, um, you know, service providers can do very similar kinds of work by grounding it in their particular local histories. And so local history, local identity, how people understand, um, you know, what they're, I, you know, their identity is based on those histories really informs the kind of how they, how they shape the activism that they are a part of. And that was something that I saw repeatedly, you know, through, through the work, and how important that was. Yeah, I think that is, um, that is something that that is very important, you know, comes out towards the end where you're really focusing on the local. And I think that's, that's, there's a, there's a power to that, you know, for, for people reading this book to think about, to think critically about their own, um, their own places and, you know, the, the history of their place. And if it's not going to be, you know, I, you know, I live in the middle of like a small town in Texas, I'm, it's not going to declare itself as a sanctuary city. I personally do not, but, you know, thinking of a person who's, you know, of that positionally, but, you know, what are the, what are the possibilities here? You know, what are the things that we can tap into in terms of, you know, our identity, our sense of identity, our sense of history, that we can, that we can leverage, you know, as, maybe as sanctuary people, right, to, to provide refuge to be, to be welcoming. And also, you know, to be part of, of a social movement, right? Like that's, it's something that is, um, not necessarily as, um, visible in the streets, like a protest, right? But it is something that is, still, um, meaningful I'm making an impact. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Um, well, Gina, um, that's all I have for us today. And, um, I've really appreciated this conversation and, um, and I'm encouraging our listeners to pick up a copy of your book and, and to read it such, it's such a thought-provoking book. Um, so thank you again for making time today to, to talk about it a little bit more. Thank you so much, Jennifer. This has been so great. I really appreciate it. Thank you for listening to this episode of The New Books Network. We are an academic podcast network with the mission of public education. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and rate us on your preferred podcast platform. You can browse all of our episodes on our website, newbooksnetwork.com. Connect with us on Instagram and Blue Sky with the handle at new books network and subscribe to our weekly subscribe newsletter at newbooksnetwork.substract.com to get episode recommendations straight to your inbox.