Up for a newsletter by the cash register. A few more things. 50 of all of our sales will be donated to immigrant comes together. Yesterday was a one year anniversary, excited, congratulations. [applause] and later in the q a portion make sure to speak into the mic so people can hear you. So our guest this evening, suketu mehta the the author of this land is our land an immigrants manifesto. His work has appeared in the new yorker, the New York Times magazine, National Geographic, harpers, time and g2. He has won a guggenheim fellowship, the writers writing award and an o henry writing price. He was born in calcutta and lives in new york city ways a professor at new york university. Julie clawson is a former bilingual social work at a writer journalist whose work is of it in the print and online magazines including National Geographic traveler, outside, i took american, discover, latina, the guardian and times. The five immigrant Families Together she works with attorneys and advocacy groups to identify when eligible for release from ice detention facility can post the bond and manages media relations. Everyone, could you please join in welcoming suketu mehta and julie collazo. [applause] thank you very much. So he does not know this but we have Something Else in common besides being writers are interested emigration. You and i believe are the only to like people from the United States who have read our books in havana, cuba, which is cubas only englishlanguage bookstore run by my friend connor. So, yes. [applause] fantastic bookstore. I highly recommend if you ever go. It has coffee and a source of revolution and interesting stories. And first i wanted to say when i read your book i could not put down the book or the pen i help them enhance the entire time i was reading it and i had not underlined so much of the book since i had read burst of light collection of essays that i i wanted to give us to as a gift. Thank you. While many of the essays written in the 60s or 70s, clearly these are themes that are still very relevant and important today. There so much to talk about and i think this book is extremely powerful. What i want to suggest is i have a lot of questions that i think will resident properly with all of us who are here interested in this topic. And well make since you whether you read the book or not yet come and certainly you want to read a couple sections as well, something about the meatball wars. Definitely we want to open up and have a conversation with all of you. This is not my computer, this is not my state solely. I want to make sure were time to talk with everybody. I think theyre so much going on that, this conversation is really important and special right now. Without further ado. One of the themes in your book for me is about how much of our language around immigration is, for lack of a better word, completely mic up [bleep] up. I would love if we could use as a point of departure for our conversation because i feel like it really quite literally frames everything historically and also the tapping in terms of how we think about immigration records of what our critical views are. Thats a great question, and thank you. Im honored to be sharing a stage, or chair with you. Its all right that the conversation around immigration, language matters to you and i are both writers, storytellers. I began writing fiction and then ive written about books about, reading a book about newark city for the last ten years, but i felt like to put that aside for a while and respond to this emergency. Im an immigrant to many of you in this room are immigrants. In the United States today the most powerful person in the country thinks of us as less than human. Hes compared immigrants to vomit. Hes called the country that many of us come from should all countries. Hes called us robbers and rapists. Its not just in the United States. Around the world theres a group of strongmen, like in hungry, brazil, the philippines, erdogan in turkey, modi in india. Who have come to power by demonizing the other, by referring to migrants as invaders, as people who come to these countries to take. A populist as nothing but a gifted storyteller kept her hand it to these guys. They tell false stories well. And the only way to fight them is to tell the truth better. And the true story is kind of indisputable. People move across the world and make the countries that the go to better. Immigrants have lower crime rates than the nativeborn and they work harder and longer, and these country that the move to would be crude. Thats basically what thats the message i want to convey in this book, about, very much tied to language. Most migrants, etymology is destiny. Like at a border when asked what are you, a difference between refugee or migrant or economic migrant, you know, can mean literally the difference between life and death its only very recently that human beings have that you classify themselves according to these categories but most of Human History we have moved across the planet. There have been any borders. The whole convoluted superstructure is only as recently as the early 20th century. Its been a blip in Human History. Weve got to fight the bad language with the good link the true language. When would we think about le related to immigration, particularly in the borderlands of the us and mexico, for example, how do we make words that are maybe not assessable to somebody who is not up to the eyeballs in the subject everyday more accessible . Some of these words among those of us here have come up to take on a particular charge. The dog pound. How do we reclaim some words and either making meaningful for people who may not have access to the meaning, or sort of shake us out of this numbness may be that weve come to hear certain words again and again and they have been rendered meaningless as a result . Lets take the biggest word of all, illegals. How can a human being be illegal . But this is what 12 Million People in this country have been classified, i mean branded. Its kind of branding. The idea that human being is outside the law, that he is less than legal. I call migrants in my book another word or phrase. I call them ordinary heroes. Because my book as all these people move across writers, Central American migrants moving to the United States or african migrants trying to get into europe, being among them. And ive spoken to them and ive gotten to know them. Do you know what they are . They are nothing less than ordinary heroes. Why . Because there willing to do anything, make any sacrifice to ensure a better life for the children, and its breathtakingly moving. Out the one story from a book. I met a 23yearold honduranyearold honduran mother at the woman shelter. She made this incredibly journey for motown and hunters. She lacked her family. One day her husband happen to see him he was a bystander andy witnessed a murder and had to flee for his life. The gains came to her home and said basically they would take her little boy in payment for her husband fleeing. We will come for now or we will come for later when he has grown up. So she immediately took the next bus north. Shes going to claim asylum, which by International Companies that the United States has signed, she is entitled to because she had a wellfounded fear of persecution. This is at the height of the comma separation crisis last year where we shamed shame ours a nation by snatching crying babies from the arms of their mothers. And i said, youre going to claim asylum which have right to do so, but you know that they might take your baby away from you. She had this angelic 18 month old baby who was in her lap, a beautiful child. And she started crying and she said, yes, i know but this is what a mothers love is. I would rather never seem again and know the estate somewhere then have to put him six feet below the ground in the box back from a come from. She is an ordinary you. Shes willing to do anything to ensure safety for her child. Its about language. Theres another word. Which is undocumented people when the family so detained in immigration detention since come out of detention and someone post bond for the is i. C. E. Retains their passport or national id or whatever identity paperwork they brought with them. It restricts restriction movem. Then you have this whole stack of paperwork that put you on another piece of paper called a secure flight list. Its true, you walk around. A lot of the language about immigration is also very imprecise. Im very interested in, you and i were talking earlier about how we reclaim words, how we reclaim narratives but also who gets to tell narratives. Im wonder if we can talk more about the ordinary heroes youve met and how they share the stories and what kinds of spaces they share their stories and what we talk about which was about the agency, iq has the right to tell a story and what do they tell it . Absolutely. I am an immigrant myself. I came from bombay to jackson height in the south asian community. When i was 14. I can speak to the immigrant experience but i didnt come as a political refugee. I am trained not just as a storyteller but as a listener. Doing this for a long time i know how to go to people and listen with empathy. One of the stories in my book is a Little Family from the country of guinea in africa. I met them, and a mother, fathd newborn child and that youre on moroccan coast. They were going to take their little baby and try to cross the mediterranee. They showed me they can about their going to do this on. There was a little, not even a lifeboat, like a little plastic dini, the kind children used to play on the beach. I feared for the life and i feared for the baby because theyre going to drag this boat to keep them quiet by their teaching them to the beach on the journey. I told them highly dangerous thing to do. And i got to know their story. They had fled guinea because there was no life possible there. Then i spoke to them for days. I hung out with them in their little room that they lived in. I walked around the city with them and they listened. And then i went into the history of guinea. Thats also very important because they have the story but its important to put the store in context. Why are they leaving guinea . I came across these dini is not a poor country. Its rich in Mineral Resources but theres an American Hedge Fund which controls most of the bauxite in guinea. After this i was sued by the fcc and the Justice Department and had to pay tens of millions of dollars in fines for practices in africa. Not to the guineans but to the americans and the Justice Department. That was billion, right . Billion. But being the head of a hedge fund, he didnt nestled have to move out of his previous residence which only cost a mere 100 million which was just down the road. Michael cohen bought a 900acre english estate and countryside. What i i can do is connect thee stories. This samatha told me, theyre both both educated, willing to work. There are going to work at any job they could in europe, and they did it because not only did they not have a future in guinea but the child had no possible future in guinea. So who stole their future . The hedge fund. The for the i connected through, because im a journalist, to the larger picture beyond just guinea, so 40 of the multinational profits in the world are immunity moved to tax havens. So most of the money is not taxed in africa. Its shifted to all kinds of financial shenanigans to places like the Cayman Islands and the city of london where the multinational corporations and going to places like africa, great for the stretch, we provide jobs, we pay taxes. Most of the tax man is without and most of the benefits of this kind of corporate colonialism which is why i call it go to a small group of the local elite. I think thats a really nice segue to the opening part of your book in which your grandfather, right, is in london and a white londoner comes up to a man says can what are you doing here . Your grandfather very small pieces, we are here because you were there. I just want to pass that along to everybody. That is become their new motto. Guinea i think is one of hundreds of examples around the world. You also talk about the world is not a pipe. Theres not some sort of finiteness to what we have available to us, its about how it gets distributed. You talk so much in the book about so many different kinds of folks and cultures who are not moving across the planet because they were there, because someone elses are taking from them what was theirs. Beside that characteristic of corporate colonialism what of the other trained you see that are forcing the folks youve met, all these or heroes, to flee or to seek a light summer else . There are four identified in the book. The first is colonialism. As my grandfather said to that man and why are you here . About your country . You came to my country. You utah, gold and diamonds so e are the creditors. Weve come to collect. The figures about colonialism are just staggering. During closing europes share of gdp increased from 20 to 60 . When i Wander Around europe, its a beautiful cathedrals and opera houses, the spouses can i said thats actually my house. I should have a room in there because its my money. So thats the first. The second is when the colonialists left, you know, imperial crown might have moved on but they let the corporations behind to continue raiding and looting. Thats what i described in the corporate colonialism section. And if you go to any small african country and you see, go to the local hilton or sheraton, it would be a group of local elites, the general order, president for life, huddling with two or three white guys in suits plotting how to divvy up the countries spoils. The third is war. We the United States launched an illegal and unnecessary war in iraq under false pretenses. 600,000 iraqis lost their lives as a result and set office conflagration. If there is any justice, and 900, [inaudible] we cause people to move because of the wars that we engage in, and also when the colonial powers left, they divide up the former colonies entirely infeasible maps that ensured constant conflict between these people. When britain left india after two or jews of rolling and exploiting it, and they exploded by pitting muslims and hindus against each other. But when they left they brought in an english barrister who would never been to india and gave him six weeks to draw two lines down the map where around 2 billion people now live in have to bear the consequences of those two lines which now divide india, pakistan and bangladesh. Ive been to the spores in south asia. There were people in pakistan and india would did know which side of those lines they would be until days after independence. Most massive ethnic cleansing made by bad mapmaking pick the french and a british went in there and the french and british together made 40 of all the boards in the world. They put these lines directly through tribal territory, so all the small scale conflict you about in africa, they are about tribes trying to regather themselves over these colonial made maps. Guns, thats another massively in which we cause people to migrate. During the nicaraguan conflict, the United States put in 1. 8 million guns in honduras to arm the contras. 75 of the guns in mexico come from the United States. 98 of the guns in the bahamas come from the United States. We arm these countries where basically its a civil war happening. We arm their militaries. And, in fact, actually export our militia. If you look at these games, ms13 and these terror gangs that trump and steve miller are so fond of, or declaring a threat to us, the actually came from the presence of los angeles of california when we entered our prisons and sent the most hardened criminals can we do for them to these countries. They had no capacity to take them. These are people often been, come here as children and can know how to make a living in the northern trying to countries. They form these militias and our arm but our and then we sold the product we bought the product they had to offer, the only product left, which was drugs thats the 13. And the fourth and potentially the biggest rival of migration is going to be Climate Change. You think 4 million civilians are thinking refugee in germany as a problem now . What if bangladesh gets flooded or 400 million bangladeshis have defined dryland . Where will they go . The study on Climate Change, its incredible. 2050, anywhere from 200 million to 1 billion people are going to be displaced by Climate Change. Plan that is home to 650 Million People now is going to be underwater by the middle of the century. And onethird of the earth will be home to 1. 5 billion people will be desert. Lets look at the chain of responsibility. Who made this happen . We americans we put onethird of the carbon in you. The eu another quarter. We are responsible for it. When these people move, they are moving not because they hate their homes or their families what you want to just leave home for the hell of it, for the lights of broadway or to see the eiffel tower. They are moving because colonialism, war and Climate Change of rendered their homeland uninhabitable. So i think about this a lot, right, but i feel like these histories of colonialism, history of we, westerners being there, still is not sorted for a general public being restored to curricular narratives. I have a nineyearold, a fiveyearold and a fouryearold who go to a Public School a few blocks away from you. I grew up in South Carolina and im now 41 and i am astonished by how similar the lessons that they learn, not talked about math, still are. I go to one my childrens classes and they are singing youre a grand old flag. Im like really . Were still sing the songs . Still learning about columbus framed as a hero . That actually happened this year. One of the things people often ask me when i speak of pills or go to events is what can i do to