As more videos from the Netroots 2010 mock ICE checkpoint are released and I reflect on my own experience as a reverse border agent, I am struck by, as la Macha pointed out, how many of those profiled laughed their way through. This video, from Madelou de VozMob, really captured alot of that (click on the image in the link to see the full video).

What her video clip made me think of was also how gendered and sexualized the border debate has become, and it’s not something that gets discussed often enough or analyzed enough. At one point during the Mock ICE checkpoint, I and Yahira Carillo were at a checkpoint by ourselves without cameras documenting. Men who were stopped by us used their bodies to try and dominate. Given some of my own personal experiences at last year’s Netroots Nation conference and this year’s as well, finding myself in situations where I was the only mujer among a group of people who identify as male and seeing how that was noticed by others and how the men themselves in those spaces used it as an opportunity to flex some machista muscle. In my video mashup of parts of the MockICE Checkpoint, note how quickly some men use words like “assault” and “police” to threaten our fake agents. I would like to remind people of how these words are often used in so called “progressive” spaces to attack both men and women of color, even amongst our own. Words like “assault” when uttered from the mouths of women of color and non-gender conforming folks, is expected to be backed up by concrete proof, when in the mouths of men, there is the expectation that we should become meek, docile and cower in a corner. It should be noted that after the MockICE raid, a higher up from the Netroots Nation conference approached us asking that some video clips showing people reacting negatively, not be shown, so that peeps’ white progressive asses would be shown publicly.

How many times in immigrant and people of color communities is the violence against us silences, downplayed, viewed as individual incidents and expected to fade back into the shadows? How many times is violence against immigrant and Latina mujeres laughed off, ignored, or hushed to save face?

We need to save our cuerpos, our mentes and our souls, and that does not come through silence or perpetuating invisibility.