Featuring Angelica Salas, longtime executive director of Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) which she transformed into a mass membership immigrant led-organization that empowers immigrants to win local, state, and national policies, advancing their human, civil and labor rights.
What happens when immigrant workers become ill? Hear the story of how Guillermo, an undocumented construction worker in his late fifties, was exposed to coronavirus on the job and lost his life. How does his death impact his family and his community? Angelica Salas, executive director of CHIRLA (Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights) and host Brenda Gazzar discuss how access to emergency health care alone is simply not enough.
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Immigrant Justice: For some, it never comes
—– TRANSCRIPT —–
Opening MUSIC – “Talk Back” 10 seconds, fade down
Welcome to Code WACK!, your podcast on America’s broken healthcare system and how Medicare for All could help. I’m your host Brenda Gazzar. Today we’ll talk about one immigrant’s experience battling the coronavirus.
(Stinger music – 5-seconds)
Angelica Salas is the longtime executive director of CHIRLA, which she transformed into a mass membership immigrant led-organization that empowers immigrants to win local, state, and national policies that advance their human, civil and labor rights.
Welcome to Code WACK!, Angelica.
Salas: Thank you for having me.
Q: Do you have a story you can share with us about a Latinx immigrant who has suffered during the coronavirus pandemic?
Salas: Just recently one of our members, Guillermo, who also passed away of coronavirus. Guillermo was such an active member of CHIRLA. He had been fighting, he was one of those members who had been fighting for immigration reform, for licenses you know so undocumented immigrants could drive. He was always in our protest, making sure that the immigrant voice was lifted up and he and his wife became extremely active in our fight for immigrant justice.
It was just so sad to see him pass away, too. He was a construction worker who picked up the virus at the construction site. It was the workers who actually let him know that another worker had also tested positive but was also very ill in the hospital. He had been in very close contact with this worker, and he had obviously pre-existing conditions too. He had been sick before. He didn’t have access to care. So he, very quickly, had to be intubated, and he passed away.
His wife was also infected of coronavirus so she was isolated from her husband, of course, he was at the hospital. She was isolated at home and away from her kids. It was just a very tragic situation. She called me because, you know, with our members we check in on them to see how they’re doing, how their family is doing and we knew that Guillermo was very ill and she called me as soon as he heard that he had passed away.
So it’s very sad too to just hear the sadness, the just great pain and suffering that she was going through and then also just fearing for her own safety and health. And more than anything these are individuals who continue to fight for immigrant justice and so for Guillermo, it never came.
You know, he died undocumented. Immigration reform never came, access to health care never came and so it’s time that we actually help these families and these individuals who are part of our community.
Q: So he didn’t have health insurance. How could that have changed his situation?
Salas: I was talking to his wife Maria and what she said was that he had become ill before. He hadn’t been able to….Because they work in construction, he had gotten hurt on the job, so again, trying to take care of other conditions. She believes that because he didn’t quite treat his injury — he was injured with a nail gun in the eye, by the way — so she feels that he was just recuperating from that injury. She feels that he was, you know, at risk so that would have made a difference. And it’s just about having not just emergency care, but you know, care is about preventative care, it’s about regular check-ups and everything. It’s not just about going to the doctor when it is absolutely necessary to show up at the emergency room. She just feels that when he contracted coronavirus, she really felt like ‘I hope he’s strong enough to survive it but he wasn’t.’
Q: Aww. What will you most remember about Guillermo?
Salas: Um, well first of all, he was an incredibly polite and helpful human being. We were talking about how he was always the first to volunteer to carry our banners. So he had these huge banners, and he was like ‘I’ll carry those banners.’ Sometimes, you know, when there’s a lot of wind and they become very heavy or if it’s very hot, but he was just like ‘I’ll carry the banner’ so we were always saying that he was so proud both of being a CHIRLA member and of just carrying our messages for justice.
But he was also just very active, very happy. And then, really we believe in family organizing so he’s just an example of somebody who, it was his family …Tony Bernabe, who is our organizer, said you know he would just come from work because he was a member of the San Fernando Valley and we have regional committee meetings, and he would just leave the construction site, not go home, not take a shower but literally just arrive to the meeting right out of work and he did that often. It was just that commitment but also the joy.
Q: Aw. How old was he?
Salas: Well he was, oh my goodness, he was in his late 50s. So yeah, it wasn’t his time. It still wasn’t his time.
Q: Thank you, Angelica.
Find more Code WACK! episodes at ProgressiveVoices.com and on the PV app. You can also listen to Code WACK! at heal-ca.org. This podcast is powered by HEAL California, uplifting the voices of those fighting for healthcare reform around the country. I’m Brenda Gazzar.
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