Incredibly intrusive noise interfere and if you would like to hear more about event signed up for the newsletter with the cash register. 15 of all of our sale today will be do it donated to immigrant families together. Yesterday was their one issue Year Anniversary which is very exciting. Congratulations. [applause] and later in the q a portion speak into the mic so people can hear you. So, our guest this evening, suketu m mehta. His work has pend a knicker, New York Times magazine, national agree jack, harper are time and gw, won a guggenheim fellow and inand born in cal date and lives in new york city where the is a zornes of professor of journallively am new york ski. Julie asia former bilingual social worker and a who is work appeared in a number of print and online magazines including National Geographic traveler, outside, scientific american, discover, latina, the guardian, and time. The founders immigrant family together, works with attorneys ands a vote cass groups to identity women eligible to be lead and post band. Please join me in welcoming our speakers. Thank you. We actually have something necessary commonality beside being writer. You and i i believe are the only two people from the United States who have read our books in have havana cuba in the only english book store in cuba. Run by my friend. A fantastic book store. Itself is, highly recommend if. It has hammocks and coffee and revolutionary and interesting stories. First i want to say, when i read your book i could not put down the book or the pen i held in my hand the entire time i was reading and hat nod unlined so much of a book since i read the burt of life so i wanted to give this to you as a gift and i think while many ofes essays were written in the 60s or 70s, these are themes that are still very relevant and important today. So wow. You in good company. Absolutely. Theres so much to talk about, and i think this book is extremely powerful and so what i wanted to suggest is i have a lot of questions i think will resonate with all of us who are here and interested in this topic. Will make sense to you whether you read the back or not yet and certainly you wanted to read a couple of sections as well, something about the meatball wars and we want to have a conversation with all of you. This is not my stage soley simple want to make sure we have time to talk with everything. Theres so much going on that to be in conversation is very special and important right now. So, without further adieu. One of the themes in your book for me is about how much of our language around immigration is for lack of a bert work completely fucked up. And sorry, my nineyearold is in the back. But i think i would love if we could use that as a point of departure for our conversation because i feel like it really quite it literally frames everything historically and also thats happening rackets now the terms of how we think about immigration regardless of political views. Absolutely. Thats a great question and thank you. Im honored to be sharing the stage or chair with you. Its all right of the conversation around immigration language marys. Were both writers, storytellers. I began writing fiction, and then went into journalism, ive written books about been righting a book but new york city for ten years. But i felt i had to put that aside for a while in response to the presence emergency. Im an immigrant. Many of you in the room or immigrants. In the United States today the most powerful person in the country thinks of as less than humidity hes compared immigrants to vomit, called the countries that many of us come from shithole countries. Called is robbers and rapists, and its knotts just in the United States. Around the world, theres a group of populists or strong men, like hungary, brazil, due tart philippines, turkey, who have come to power by demonize the other, by referring to migrants as invade years, dish invaders who come to these countries to take. A populist is nothing but a gifted storyteller. You have to hand it to these guys they tell false stories well and the only way to fight them is to tell the true story better and the true story is kind of indisputable, people move across the world and make the countries they go to better. Immigrants have crime lates than the native born, they work harder and longer, and the countries they move to would be crude if immigrants werent do toe come. So that basically what i thats the message i want to convey in this book about an and its very much tied to language. For most migrants, etymology is destiny. At the border when asked what are you . The difference between refugee or migrant or economic migrant, can mean literally the difference between life and death. And its really very recently that human beings have had to classify themselves, for most of Human History we moved across the planet, there havent been any borders the whole convoluted superstructure of passports pasd series visas if othe earliest 20th century. A blip in Human History. We have get to fight the bad language with the good language, the true language. When we think but language related to immigrant, picker at the border land over u. S. And mexico, how do we make words that are sort of not maybe accessible to somebody who is not up to their eyeballs in the subject every day more access nibble there are certain recuring words that people hear but there are words that are devoid of meaning. So, some of these words i think among those of us here have come to take on a particular charge, like the ice box, the dog pounds. How do we sort of reclaim some words and either make them meaningful for people who may not have access to their meaning or shake us out of this numbness maybe that we have come to hear certain words again and again and sort of been rendered meaningless as a result. The biggest word of all, illegal. How can a human being be illegal . But this is what 12 Million People living in this country have been classifieds. Have been grandded. Its a kind of branding. The idea that human being is outside the law. That he is less than legal. I call migrants in my book by another word or phrase, i call them ordinary heroes because my book hawse all these stovers people wooferring migrants move to the United States or african migrants trying to get into europe, ive been among them and spoken to them and got to know them and theyre nothing less than ordinary heroes because they are willing to do anything, make any sacrifice, to ensure a better life for their children and its breathtakingly moving. I tell you one story. I met 23yearold honduran mother in a womans shelter in tijuana, and tijuana is just below san diego, and she made made the incredibly areous to the United States the lords honduras but one day her husband happened to see a gang murder, buy stades end and he had to flee for his life and then gangs came to her home and said basically they would take her little boy in payment for her husbands fleeing. Come for him now or later when he is grown up. So he took the next bus north and she was going to claim asylum which by intercover anyones the United States assigned she has founded to because she had a wellfounds fear of persecution at thing high of the family separation crisis last year where we shamed ourselves as a nation by snatching crying babies from the arms of their mothers. And i said, youre going to claim asylum which you have a right to do about you he know they might take your baby and had this angelic 18monthold baby on her lap and beautiful child, and she start crying and she said, yes issue know, but this is what mothers love is. I would rather never see this boy again that it love so much more than the own life and rather never see him again and know that he is safe somewhere than have to put him six feet below the ground in a box back where i come from. She is an ordinary hero. Willing to do anything to ensure safety for her child. Its about language. Theres another word that we hear a lot which is about undocumented people, right . Hi and was reading a beautiful poem in which the poet said how can we possibly be up documented. We have more documents than anybody and its true. All of the people i accompany to i. C. E. Lad to go to la guardia and the families nor detained come out of detention and someone powes bond for them is i. C. E. Retains their passport or national i. D. Or whatever identify paperwork they brought with them from their home country, and that restrictions your movement. So then you have this whole stack of paperwork from i. C. E. That puts you on another piece of paper called the secure flight list, and its true. You walk around with all so a lot of of the language around immigration is very imprecise. So im very interested in we talked earlier about how we reclaim words, how we reclaim narratives and also who gets to tell narratives and i wonder if we can talk more but some of the ordinary heroes you met and how they share their stories in what kinds of spaces they share their stories and what we were talking about, which is the agency. Who has the right to tell a story and where do they tell it . Absolutely. Im an immigrant myself. I came from bombay to Jackson Heights when is was 14. So, i can speak to the immigrant experience but i didnt come a political refugee. Or a here rick journey that women particularly have to endure across africa or latin america. But i am a trained storyteller and a storylistener. Doing this for a long time and i know how to go to people and to listen with empathy. So, one of the story is have in my book is of a Little Family from the country of in africa and i made them in tangier and you can see spain just across the mediterranean and they were going to they can their little baby and try to cross the mediterranean and they showed me the boat they were going to do this on and it was a little not even a lifeboat, like a little plastic dingy that ching used to play on the beach and i feared for their life and i feared their the baby glaus was they had to drug a new born to keep him quiet. And i told them, highly dangerous thing to do and then i go to the know their story. They haded in their country because there was no life possible there. Then i did i spoke to them for days i hung out with enemy their little room that they lived in. Walked around the city with them. And i listened. And then i went into the history of guinea. Thats very important because they have the story and its important to put the story in context of why are the leaving guinea. I came across these statistics both guinea. Guinea is not a poor country. Up to half the worlds boxite is located in guinea. Its rich in mineral resources. But theres an American Hedge Fund which controls most of the boxite in guinea. The company was sues by the sec and the Justice Department and had to pay tens of millions of dollars in fines for practices in africa, not to he guineaans but the Justice Department help head of the company, recently bought an apartment at 220 Central Park South where the guardian ad litem for a quarter of a billion dollars. That was billion, right. Billion. But being the head of a hedge fund he didnt necessarily have to move out of his previous residence which only cost a mere 100 million, which is just down the road at 15 central park west, and another of official of the hedge fund, michael cohen, he brought a 900 ache at the english estate in the countryside. So what i can connect these to stories, this family told me they were both educated, willing to work, they were going to work at any odd job they could in europe, and they did it because not only did they not have a future in guinea but that the child had no possible future guinea0. Who stole their future . The hedge fund the further i connect it to because im other journalist, to the larger beyond just guinea. 40 of the multinational profit in the world are immediately moved to tax havens. So most of the money comes out of africa is not taxed in africa. Its shifts through financial shenanigans to places like the Cayman Islands or the city of london where the multiflames say this great for the country, we provide jobs, we pay taxes. Most of the tax money is moved out and most of the benefits of this kind of corporates colonialism, which i call it, go to a small group of the local elites. So, in storytelling its important to have both the anecdote, the story of the Little Family, and the political and historical process that shaped their story. So the larger context. I think thats a really nice segway to the opening part of your book in which your grandfather is in london, and a white londoner says to him, what are you doing sneer and youre grandfather very smartly says, were here because you were there. And i just want to pass that along to everybody. Let that become their new motto. But i think guinea is just one of hundreds of examples around the world. We you also talk about the world is not a pie. Theres not some sort of finiteness to what we have available to us. Its about how it gets distributed. And so you talk so much in the book about all many so many different kinds of folks and cultures who are moving across the planet because they were there, because somebody else was there taking from them what was theirs. What other besides that characteristic of corporate colonialism, what other trends you see that fierce the folks have med. Ordinary heros to flee or seek a life jew else. Theres four live somewhere else. There are four i identify. The first it colonialism. As my grandfather said to the when who said why are you here, he said you came to the company and took my gold and diamonds and were the collectors. So thing figures both colonialism are staggering, during the colonial period europesshire of orders depend increased from 20 to 60 when i Wander Around europe and i see beautiful cathedrals and opera houses and palaces, thats actually my house. I could have a room in there. The second is when the colonialist left, imperial crown might have moved on but left their corporations behind to continue raiding and looting. And that is what i describe in the corporates colonialism section. If you go do any small african country and you see good to local hylton or sher sheraton there will be a group of local elitees, president for life, huddling with two or three white guys in suit plotting how to divvy up at the countrys spoils. The third is war. We the neutz launched an illegal and unnecessary war in iraq, under false pretenses. 600,000 iraqis lost their lives as a result anded and off the conflagration which bottom line entire middle east. If there was any justice, the 900acre bash ranches in texas should be full of tents housing iraqi and Syrian Refugees we cause people to move because of the wars we engage in and also when the colonial powers left, they divided up the former colonies entirely in maps that ensured permanent conflict between these people. So when britain left india, 200 years of ruling and exploiting it pits muslims and hindus against each. Other divide and rule is an official policy. When they left they brought in an english barrister who had never been to india and give limp six weeks to draw two lines down a map where around 2 billion people now live and have to bear the consequences of the two lines which now divide india, pakistan and bangladesh and ive been to those borders. There were beam in pakistan and indiana who didnt know which side of the lines they would be until days after independence. So they fed on each other. Most massive ethnic cleansing made by bad mapmaking. You look at map of africa it abounds in straight lines. The french and british went in there and together made 40 of all the borders in the world and they put these lines directly through tribal territory, so all these small scale conflicts you larry about in africa, they about tribes trying to regather themselves over the colony colonial made maps. Guns, another massive way in which we cause people migrant migrate. During the nicaraguan conflict the United States nut 1. 8 million guns in honduras to harm the contras. 75 of the guns in mexico come from the United States. 98 of the gun bam mas bahamas come from the United States with arm these countries, basically a civil war happening. Hire than in the middle east. We arm their militias and we export our militia. Look at the gangs, the terror gangs that was trump and Stephen Miller so fond of, declaring theyre a threat to us, they came from the prisons of los angeles, of california, when we impede our present and sent the most hardened criminals we deports emt them to countries who had no capacity to take them. People who had been come here as children, and didnt know how to make a living in the northern triangle countries so formed these militias then were armed by our guns and then resold the product they had to we bought the product that they had to offer, the only product left, which was drugs. Thats the third this guns. And the fourth and potentially the biggest driver of migration is climb change. You think 4 million syrians are seeking refuge in germany are problem now what happens when bangladesh and 4 billion bungler la derbies have to find dry plant. And again the statistics on Climate Change are just incredible. By 2050, anywhere from 200 million to 1 billion people are going to be displace bid Climate Change. Land that is them to 650 Million People now is going to be underwater by the middle of the century and one third of earth will be home to one and a half billion people is going to be desert. Lets look at the chain of responsibility. Who made this happen . We americans are 4 of the population but we put a third of the excess cash bob in the atmosphere. The eu another quarter. Were responsible for it and these people moved, theyre moving not because they hate their homes or their families wanted to just leave home for the hell of it for the lights of broadway or to see the eiffel tower. They moving because colonialism, war, inequality and climb change have rendered their home land uninhabitable. I think about this a lot. I feel like these histories of colonialism, the histories of we westerners being there, still is not sort of for a general public being restored to cu