Thread by @brooklynmarie

Finally this question has started appearing in the public conversation. Finally. I'm very glad.

latimes.com/california/sto…

In 2007, "reverse 911" calls were used throughout San Diego County during massive fires and were credited with saving many lives. Anglo lives only though; they didn't offer those same services in Spanish. Non-English speakers didn't even know they were an option in many cases

"One domestic worker in Santa Rosa who asked that she not be identified for fear of losing her job said that she was actually instructed to remain and safeguard a home in an evacuation zone as her employer fled. She was trapped by the roadblocks and mudslides for about a week.

To survive, she shared food and water with a group of day laborers at a home next door who were similarly stranded. When the evacuation orders were lifted, she told her employer that she was leaving, and he asked her to grab a few items from the house."

You want to know why I'm so opinionated? Cover the humanitarian side of immigration and report stories like that for years. Actually it took me like a month. You can't stay neutral when peoples' lives are on the line. And make no mistake, this issue has always been life or death.

Report stories like that and everyday human trafficking - the "I have your passport and won't it be a shame if you tell on me and I have to call ICE?" form of trafficking - and watch people weep as they recount horrible abuse at the hands of "nice all-American families" and, well

Re: the "reverse 911" calls. I was at multiple press conferences, including the ACLU one and still didn't write a story. I covered the 2007 fires for KNX/CBS, and we had a new program director who didn't think a story like that "fit with our demo."

aclusandiego.org/report-surveys…

Yeah, that's what he meant. That's also why I quit not soon after and learned to love the taste of my own principles, since that's all I could afford to eat. Yum yum! But anyway, yeah, I've got reasons to be mad.

I'm conflating perceived class with language because language is inherently political, especially here in southern California where speaking Spanish in public does not come without risk of harassment, particularly now. Spanish has been treated as a class indicator here as long as

I can remember, at least by people "north of the 8." It is improving, or it was - no telling what legacy this time in history will leave us with. It has caused enormous unnecessary divides.

The perceived humanity of other humans should not depend on what papers they carry, what language they speak, where on the planet they were born, and yet here we all are still allowing people no less human than anyone else to die, even though we have the tech to save them.

It makes me have a lot of opinions!

Oooh, check out this old email (April 2007) from an old boss I just found. This is what I'm talking about. I knew I saved it for a reason

That translated in practice to putting five (5!) reporters on a single burning home in Beverly Hills in which each reporter mentioned how expensive the house was on the same day there was a triple murder-suicide in South Los Angeles that barely got a mention from the anchor.

Incidentally, that was the day I emailed in my resignation letter.

I hold on to shit like this if I think it's worth saving, yet another reason you don't piss off investigative reporters

Oh that was the same boss that said it didn’t fit with our demo just to be clear