“IT WAS tough growing up undocumented, with the fear of deportation deeply imbedded in (your) life,” MLK Day speaker Estela Villareal, left, said of her upbringing in the U.S. Villareal, who spoke in English, gets a hug after her talk from Liliana Bello of Hood River, who served as interpreter at the Riverside Church event. Villareal said that as a child she was fueled by her parents’ drive to give her and her siblings an opportunity she did not have in her homeland.
“IT WAS tough growing up undocumented, with the fear of deportation deeply imbedded in (your) life,” MLK Day speaker Estela Villareal, left, said of her upbringing in the U.S. Villareal, who spoke in English, gets a hug after her talk from Liliana Bello of Hood River, who served as interpreter at the Riverside Church event. Villareal said that as a child she was fueled by her parents’ drive to give her and her siblings an opportunity she did not have in her homeland.
The 300 people at Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr. celebration “are not afraid to look at things as they are and imagine how they ought to be,” said Rev. Vicky Stifter of the host Riverside Community Church.
About 50 people had attended earlier workshops on immigration, and then the sanctuary was filled with attendees, many of whom stayed for a potluck. The events went along with the federal holiday honoring the late Rev. Martin Luther King, civil rights leader of the 1950s and 1960s who was murdered in 1968.
Mayor Paul Blackburn welcomed the attendees. Also attending were Oregon House Rep. Jeff Helfrich (R-Hood River) and Hood River City Council Members Peter Cornelison and Megan Saunders.
Speaker Estela Munoz Villareal announced, “I am undocumented, I am unafraid, and I am unapologetic.”
“We are here. I am one story among more than 800,000,” Villareal said. “We don’t need any more temporary status. Immigrants deserve an answer to every politician’s promise to protect our families and our communities. We are strong, we are courageous, and we will prevail.”
Niko Yasui, whose grandparents were incarcerated during World War II, told of his lunch conversation that day with his two young children, who had learned about MLK Day at Mid Valley Elementary School.
“When we asked them ‘why was he so special?’ they said that it was because he was speaking out for people who were being cheated,” Yasui said.
“We thought that was pretty good for a 5-and-7-year-old, that people are cheated because of their race, their background. It is good to know that we have a generation coming up that’s aware of these issues, so as my daughter put it, ‘we won’t cheat people in the future,’ and that we protect everyone because what happens to the least of us can happen to all of us.”
Yasui quoted Blackburn’s mayoral proclamation from May 2017: “in reflection of the experience of Japanese Americans,” which reads in part: “we appreciate the contributions immigrants and refugees bring to our nation and commit to valuing all Americans irrespective of their ethnicity, religion, or country of origin.”
Commented