Christine Neumann-Ortiz in Omaha and the Metropolitan Community College

Immigrant rights activist Christine Neumann-Ortiz visits Omaha and the Metropolitan Community College(MCC) to share her experiences and views on the political climate immigration is going through in the country.
Neumann-Ortiz is an activist known for hercontributions and advocacy for immigrant rights in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and the country, as well as being the Founding Executive Director of Voces de la Frontera. With Voces de la Frontera Neumann-Ortiz has managed to organize communities formed by workers, immigrants and youth to demand and protect their civil rights.
In her talk at MCC South Omaha Campus on October 11th in celebration of Hispanic Latino Heritage Month, Neumann-Ortiz talked about strategies to unify the community and engage in organized social participation, “Is building up that trust over a period of time and then broadening it out.”Neumann-Ortiz shares that in her experience civil participation is born out of necessity, and having credibility with the community as an organization helps to create strategic advantages at crucial moments to demand changes in policy.
Neumann-Ortiz stresses the importance of uniting as a community independently of cultural backgrounds, and combating discrimination not for charity, but out of necessity. “Connecting the struggle of economic injustice for working people of diverse backgrounds wherever they come from, black, Latino, immigrant, all of them, to me is a very unifying movement,”Neumann-Ortiz said.
Another topic the activist covered was the current position of the administration in power towards immigrants, “Right now under the Trump Administration what we have seen is obviously an escalating war on immigrants.” Neumann-Ortiz believes that part of this is because we have an administration not only with an anti-immigrant rhetoric, but that has put people in positions of power that have ties withfar-right groups.
For Neumann-Ortiz, the ideas that one racial group is more deserving than another and the admiration for authoritarianism, are very explicit from the current administration. The activist sees actions such as separating immigrant families because they do not legally reside in the country as unacceptable. Neumann-Ortiz argues that the Trump administration, “Is willing to use very cruel policies to implement its agenda and in part to desensitize us to cruelty and escalate cruelty.”
The activist known for her work in favor of the immigrant community civil rights left space for a conversation after her presentation, in which she invited all attendees to participate through questions and civilized conversations regarding the topics covered.