Thread by @Carrasquillo

“My fear is what the shooter says in his manifesto is true—that this is just the beginning because of the president’s rhetoric that he engages in regularly,” @JoaquinCastrotx told me

newrepublic.com/article/154655… via @newrepublic

“I thought that as soon as I got my citizenship, all these fears that I had would go away, now that I had a U.S. passport,” @julissaarce said, choking up. “I have a right to be here now, and despite that, I have never felt more alien than I feel in this place right now.”

@cristela9 blew me away with this story: “Despite the talk post-election from white people that they were going to wear pins and be loud allies for marginalized Americans, Alonzo told me, no one in the restaurant said anything.”

@_mariocarrillo_ called his parents after the shooting because they shop at the Walmart that was targeted. He thought about how someone drove 10 hours to kill Mexicans, about Trump’s America where you can get berated for speaking Spanish in public places

and the challenge of trying to get people to see this American crisis through a nonextremist lens.

At #UnidosUS19, women’s march co-founder @PaolaMendoza took the stage for a fiery speech. She said the next steps are hard conversations with moms, dads, abuelos, and tias—the 29 percent of Latinos that voted for Trump, including 32 percent of Hispanic men.

“A vote for him is a vote against us because his language is dehumanizing us & leading white supremacists to kill us,” @PaolaMendoza told me after her speech. “If they don’t change and he wins in 2020 I fear what will happen to us as a community. This is a life and death moment”