Darryl D. Morin sees the darkness, right here in Wisconsin.
He believes the reports that at least some law enforcement offers in Wisconsin are pulling over drivers because they look Hispanic. School attendance fluctuates with fear. And children worry they will lose their parents to a sometimes-shadowy law enforcement system.
“I’d be remiss not to say that what we’re seeing happen around the country hasn’t significantly raised the concern in our community,” said Morin, national president of Forward Latino, a nonprofit that aims to help the Latino community achieve the American dream, based in the Milwaukee area. “We’ve seen waves of attendance in various school systems go up and down as that concern varies. We’ve also seen the same when it comes to worshiping ….”
It wasn’t like this years ago: He receives reports of people being pulled over by law enforcement because they are deemed to look Hispanic, he said. The repeated pretext is a taillight that’s out, he said. He noted that in Wisconsin, undocumented immigrants cannot obtain a driver’s license and an officer will typically ask for a driver’s license when they pull someone over. Word gets around and even Hispanic Americans are now afraid to drive in certain Wisconsin jurisdictions, he said.
“It is something that we know is occurring because it just happens too often in the same municipalities for it to be by accident,” he said. “I don’t want to paint with a broad brush, though, that it’s all of law enforcement – no. They are like any other group, right? There are individuals who step outside their bounds of authority and operate alone. But that is something that we know is happening; it’s become more prevalent.”
Meanwhile, on the issue of whether racial profiling is appropriate, the U.S. Supreme Court has so far stepped aside on the issue, and the president appears willing to protect his allies, Morin said.
There’s also fear in public spaces, that media coverage portraying undocumented immigrants as violent criminals or threats can lead to danger from individuals who will act on what they hear. Hate crimes are on the rise, he noted.
Fear is a state of being for his community. There is worry: If ICE relaxes elsewhere, will those agents be sent to Milwaukee? Is a surge coming to Milwaukee?
That’s Morin’s world, but you may not know much about it. Today’s media exists in silos, serving us our supposed preferences through social media or preferred television and radio shows. What he sees on social media may not be what you see, and his lived experience may not be yours.
He calls this one of the great challenges facing the country at this time.
“Now, it is possible for someone to live in an entire ecosystem that doesn’t so much share the news as it positions information in the way that pleases the listener. If I have very heartfelt opinions with regards to immigrants, I can put myself in the information ecosystem that just feeds me what I want to hear. And that’s dangerous for society, because for any democracy to succeed, you need a well-informed electorate, and right now, people are thinking they’re well-informed because they may be listening to the news every night, but it can be a biased news that they’re listening to on the radio, on the TV and on the internet. It all feeds them information that supports their personal position or appeals to a certain part of their character versus what the facts really are.”
The solutions? Morin advises his children to get their news from a variety of sources. And he’s reaching for allies, turning to the Jewish community that he has stood with for years. He is a board member at Jewish Museum of Milwaukee and was honored last year with the Robert H. Friebert Social Justice award from the local Jewish Community Relations Council for social justice work. One does not have to be Jewish to win the award.
“From my perspective, the Hispanic community here in southeastern Wisconsin has had no greater ally than our friends in the Jewish community. We do have, in many ways, a shared history, shared history of suffering in many of the same ways, and we’ve always been so grateful that the Jewish communities lined up side-by-side with us in our calls for justice and legal reforms and protections,” he said. “At this time, once again, we just we would ask everyone to participate and be active in our democracy, make their voices heard with regards to the injustices they see.”
Morin asks this of us: “If we do see a large immigration enforcement action come to Wisconsin, provide assistance as may be needed, because we will see large groups of individuals fearful to leave their own homes, individuals who will need food, medicine, transportation to and from healthcare facilities for things such as dialysis and much more. And at that point, should we reach that point, we’re going to need everyone’s assistance and prayers to make sure that as many can make it through that dark time as possible.”
“I’ll share this well. It feels incredibly dark to so many. We have seen so many points of light, individuals with no direct connection to the Hispanic community, stepping forward and asking what they could do to help, and that’s where the inspiration and the sunlight comes from during these dark times. And so many of those points of light have come from the Jewish community. So for that, we’re most grateful, and we look forward to coming to the end of this dark tunnel where we can enter a period of perpetual light.”
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