Experience at Del Mar Fair Grounds

As I walked around the shelter, I noticed that most evacuees were kind of keeping to themselves. It’s understandable, I assume the mentality was that most wanted to feel as much as they could like they were in the privacy of their own home. I couldn’t help but feel like, however, that this would be a great opportunity for people to get know each other across cultural and subcultural barriers. People who would normally never associate with each other were now all in the same room. I was volunteering at the Immigrant Right’s Consocium table and decided to do my part in breaking down barriers by talking with an elderly white man who was a volunteer for the Red Cross and was sitting next to our table of Latinos. Neither of us were too busy. Turns out he was a long time Red Cross Volunteer and was deployed here as one of the main supervisors of the Red Cross efforts at the shelter. He had been in Katrina, and several other major disasters and was often the person who handled coordination with the media. Because there wasn’t much going on as far as entry of new evacuees, Norma Chavez was busy setting up observation posts at checkpoints to make sure there were people monitoring the officials to report any type of racial profiling or abuse. After pulling up a map and waiting for the word for her husband and I to go off to one of these checkpoints, her husband came up to me and told me the operation had been called off until mañana. He had been volunteering there all day and the day before at Qualcomm. We walked over to the dinning area where there was a mountain of food. I think if everyone in the whole shelter were to gorge themselves for three days straight, they would’ve just barely made a dent in it all. I told Steven of my observation and how I though it would be a unique opportunity for people of different backgrounds to get to know each other. He went on to tell me of his experiences in Qualcom and we both were kind of bewildered by the fact that there was only one Latino family here (3 immediate families of brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles etc., 7 adults and 11 children). He said there were hundreds at Qualcomm and there was a raid at midnight on Wednesday night and everybody had to be out by the next day (this is when the acusation of a latino family stealing occurred) to prepare for Sunday’s game. “where did they all go? It’s Friday night and hardly any Latinos have appeared.” He went on to tell me other interesting stories of what he observed at Qualcomm. A kid who was riding around on his skateboard to bring food to people in their cars who were too afraid to come into the stadium got kicked out by the police. A kid who had been working tirelessly for 6 hrs straight and had done nothing wroing. Anyway, we strolled back to the immigrant rights table and something had happened. Ana Lozano, a volunteer, was shaking with anger and almost crying while holding and comforting a Latino woman who was also shaking but from fear. Eight Sheriffs had come in and stood in formation next to the stairs and some started interrogating people in the Latino family. I guess their Spanish wasn’t good enough to interrogate the monolingual Spanish speakers, but they found one kind of Chicano looking evacuee and interrogated him in English for 20 min ( he should’ve acted like he only spoke Spanish). They took his ID and when I left an hour after the incident, they still hadn’t given it back. I don’t know what they were interrogating him about. As I listened to Ana tell me through her broken up voice what happened while she and others comforted the a Latino mother who saw the whole interrogation and stood in fear with one of her children downstairs while her husband was upstairs holding their one year old son, I realized that the Red Cross was completely unaware of the whole situation. This is it, I thought, that whole separation is manifesting itself in a time of crisis. This was an instance where people communicating accross language/cultural barriers was actually would have a direct effect on making a more peaceful situation. I got Norma’s husband and we found that elderly white man I had met earlier and a Red Cross lady who Steven knew and brought them on the scene. I interpreted for the Red Cross lady and that same woman Ana was comforting earlier. While looking around for the head Red cross people we saw some IRC members walking with members of the Latino family with supplies out to their cars. The Latino family was getting ready to leave but was afraid to take stuff out to the cars alone for fear of being accused of stealing. The mother I was interpreting for with the Red Cross lady somehow was under the impression that she was only allowed a certain amount of supplies. The Red Cross lady told her that she could take as much as her family needed and that she could stay as long as she liked. She said many people, even when they’ve been told it’s ok to go back home, clean their house during the day and come back to the shelter at night to sleep until their house is completely safe and comfortable again. The Latino mother was so relieved she gave the Red Cross lady a hug. I almost started crying. She was still scared, however, that even though she now felt comfortable here, that when she left the building a Sheriff might be outside waiting for her.

My feelings and observations about the whole incident:

1. What the fuck is wrong with those Sheriffs? What, they have nothing else to do? I’m blown away by the blatan racism and abuse of power. I was feeling enraged by the whole thing on and off for a couple days after
2. That urge to take advantage of the situation with everybody in the same room by everybody making friends, if it were feasible, might have changed the whole situation. When the police started interrogating ONLY latinos, the non-latinos might have taken notice as their friends were being interrogated and told Red Cross authorities right away or even stepped in somehow to protect their friends. Or, even better, the Latinos and Non-latinos might’ve been conversing and socializing when the Sheriffs came and it would’ve been more difficult for the Sheriffs to single people out based on race or anything else.