You can login or create a free account and vote here: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/79478

By the time the next SXSW rolls around, we’ll be over a year into the dangerous impact of this administration on human rights in the USA, and growing authoritarianism around the world. Our meet up will explore what we can learn from each other about how citizen journalism and civic witnessing using our smartphones can best challenge injustice, hate, dangerous populism and authoritarianism, in the US and internationally. 

Help us get the word out for collaborators by sharing! Voting closes Friday, August 25 (11:59 PM CT).

Join us to hear how these groups are documenting and organizing around encounters with immigrations and customs enforcement (ICE), and learn more about their approaches, challenges, and vision for a way forward. As ICE expands the deportation system and priorities for deportation, communities and grassroots groups like these continue to lead the way – fighting back, challenging mainstream narratives, and documenting abuses.

Register to attend #EyesOnICE: Community Responses: http://bit.ly/EyesOnICE_Webinar2

You can view our first webinar #EyesOnICE: Know Your Rights and Practical Tips for Documenting ICE here (also available in Spanish). Presentation slides from the webinar are also available to download and use in your own community work.

For general Know Your Rights information on encounters with ICE, check out IDP’s website (available in multiple languages) or our tip sheet for Filming ICE in English or Spanish.

Featured Organizations:

Make the Road New York builds the power of Latino and working class communities to achieve dignity and justice through organizing, policy innovation, transformative education, and survival services.

Their model integrates multi-issue, multi-generational organizing – on workers’ rights, tenant rights, LGBTQ justice, youth power and policing, public schools and education justice, immigration justice, and climate – with an array of wraparound services that create a space of safety and support for entire families.

NDLON improves the lives of day laborers in the United States. To this end, NDLON works to unify and strengthen its member organizations to be more strategic and effective in their efforts to develop leadership, mobilize, and organize day laborers in order to protect and expand their civil, labor and human rights. NDLON fosters safer, more humane environments for day laborers, both men and women, to earn a living, contribute to society, and integrate into the community.

Equality for Flatbush is a people of color-led, multi-national grassroots organization which does anti-police repression, affordable housing and anti- gentrification organizing in the Flatbush and East Flatbush communities of Brooklyn, NY

BAJI educates and engages African American and black immigrant communities to organize and advocate for racial, social and economic justice. Local BAJI Organizing Committees in New York, Georgia, California and Arizona build coalitions and initiate campaigns among communities to push for racial justice. At the local and regional level, BAJI provides training and technical assistance to partner organizations to develop leadership skills, works with faith communities to harness their prophetic voice, and initiates vibrant dialogues with African Americans and black immigrants to discover more about race, our diverse identities, racism, migration and globalization. BAJI’s flagship project is the Black Immigration Network (BIN), a national alliance that brings together black-led organizations and programs to advance just immigration policies and promote cultural shifts our communities need. The BIN kinship provides a safe, communal space for diverse black communities to connect, engage and advocate for equality and justice for all.

ICE continues to surveil, target, and harass immigrant communities, often showing up at homes in nondescript clothing, identifying as police officers, or using fabricated stories to gain entry. In an escalating climate of fear and uncertainty for immigrant communities, WITNESS and IDP remain committed to protecting immigrant communities and supporting activists and organizers. 

Filming these encounters on a cellphone or other device, if possible, can help expose illegal activity and human rights abuses committed by ICE officers, deter violence, substantiate reports and serve as evidence. However, if footage isn’t captured and/or shared safely and ethically, there can be unintended harm to both the person being filmed and the person filming.

Join our webinar to learn more about the opportunities and perils for filming ICE, and how to safely, ethically and effectively document encounters. Register to attend #EyesOnICE here!

Stay tuned for information about our next webinar on July 18th that will cover community responses to ICE and documentation efforts already being deployed.

For general Know Your Rights information on encounters with ICE, check out IDP’s website (available in multiple languages). And check out our tip sheet for filming ICE below (also available in Spanish).

Webinar Presenters:

Michelle Paris is the Staff Attorney, Training & Resources Director at IDP. She brings to the work several years as a public defender in the Criminal Defense Practice at The Bronx Defenders, where she developed a keen understanding of the challenges of representing immigrant clients. Michelle was previously awarded an Equal Justice Works Fellowship focused on indigent defense for defendants with mental health issues. Michelle is a graduate of Stanford Law School where she was a student attorney with Stanford Law’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. She was also Board Member of the Stanford Black Law Students Association, a coordinator and translator for the Housing Pro Bono Program, a Juvenile Detention Facility Teacher for Street Law, an Editor for the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and a member of the Stanford Latino Law Students Association.

Palika Makam is the Program Coordinator for WITNESS’ US work. She supports activists and communities to use video safely, ethically and effectively to document human rights violations involving police and immigration officials, and protect the rights of LGBTQ, minority, indigenous and vulnerable communities around the country. Palika brings to the work several years of training activists to use video for change in New York, Ferguson, Cape Town and The West Bank. Media she’s helped produce has been used as evidence in human rights abuse court cases, utilized for human rights campaigns, and screened in classrooms and at the UN. Palika was previously awarded an Emerging Activist Fellowship with The Social Change Initiative. She holds a BA in Journalism and Social and Cultural Analysis from NYU, and MA in International Development concentrating in human rights and media from The New School. She is a board member of The Truth Telling Project based in Ferguson, MO, and a youth board member of the ACLU Illinois Chapter.

Update: WITNESS would like to thank the Immigrant Defense Project and the over 300 people that logged on for the Eyes on Ice Webinar on June 13th. If you were unable to catch the webinar live, video and audio from the full presentation has been made available below via WITNESS’ YouTube. Find additional resources from the webinar here.

In an escalating climate of fear and uncertainty for immigrant communities, we remain committed to using video as a tool for documentation and advocacy.

Immigration Enforcement continues to surveil, target, and harass immigrant communities, often showing up at homes in nondescript clothing, identifying as police officers, or using fabricated stories to gain entry (practices also sustained throughout the previous administration). We believe that filming these encounters on a cellphone or other device, if possible, can help expose illegal activity and human rights abuses committed by immigration agents, deter violence, substantiate reports and serve as evidence.

Though communities are organizing and finding important ways to resist, ICE raids and encounters are unpredictable and therefore challenging to prepare for. Filming these encounters can serve as a form of accountability, but if footage isn’t captured safely and ethically, there can be unintended harm to both the person being filmed and the person filming.

Check out our tip sheet for  documenting these encounters safely and effectively below. You can also download the tip sheet here.

A warm thank you to the Center for Constitutional Rights, Worker’s Justice, Make the Road NY, Sanctuary for Families Immigration Intervention Project, Immigrant Defense Project, National Immigration Project of National Lawyers Guild and more for reviewing the tip sheet and supporting our work. 

Tip Sheet for Filming Immigration Enforcement

Since 2010, there have been more than 120 documented cases of activists murdered for standing up to the government and companies who steal land and destroy the environment. Berta Cáceres –  world-renowned Honduran Indigenous leader, environmental activist, and recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize – was assassinated March 2, 2016. Despite these atrocious violations of human rights, the US continues to provide security assistance to the Honduran government.

WITNESS is committed to building the capacity of activists and organizers defending their rights and demanding accountability from those who oppress them. We stand with indigenous communities and individuals who continue in those efforts despite continued threats.

We urge you to join us and others in endorsing The Berta Cáceres Act today! Individuals can also call and ask their representatives to co-sponsor this legislation. If you don’t know your representative’s number, you can call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224- 3121 and ask to be connected to your representative’s office. Once connected, ask to speak with or leave a message with your representative’s Latin America policy aide. You can also find a script example at the bottom of the page.

Without international pressure from us, this situation is unlikely to change.