"Real justice and freedom doesn't come until all people are free."
Juanita Monsalve shares United We Dream’s ongoing work helping “folks see themselves as immigrants with pride and self-love."
During our recent conversation with Juanita Monsalve, the Creative Director for United We Dream, La Cuenta co-founder, Alix mentioned a shirt she received from the organization while marching for immigrant rights in Washington DC several years ago. “The same person who designed that shirt is a young undocumented person on my team,” Monsalve mentioned. “I love working with him and going back and forth on design ideas with him.”
It’s this ongoing history designing and imagining new projects within United We Dream that we found so refreshing in Juanita’s work. In this first part of our conversation, Juanita shares how her own personal history brought her into United We Dream and shares the origins of the recent show “No Borders Just Flavors.”
ANTERO GARCIA: Could you talk about what United We Dream is and what your role is within the organization?
JUANITA MONSALVE: United We Dream is the largest organization and network in the country that's led by immigrant and undocumented young people. The goal of United We Dream is to fight for the rights of immigrant people and people of color. And so United We Dream comes from a perspective of thinking that immigration, at its core, is not just about immigrants, that real justice and freedom doesn't come until all people are free. At the core of the immigration conversation, there's a conversation to be had about race and racism in the way in which economics, capitalism, and racism intersect to bring about an anti-immigrant sentiment. We think of our work as how can we achieve something larger and continue to build a movement for the freedom of all people.
ALIX DICK: I love that. How did you get involved with United We Dream?
JM: [pause] I'm trying to think of how far back to go. I'm an immigrant, like you, Alix. I was born in Colombia, and I came to the United States just with my mom and my sister at somewhat the height of the 50-year civil war in Colombia. I arrived in Florida when I was 13 years old or so, and it was just the three of us. When I was growing up, I didn't have something like United We Dream, and I didn't immediately identify as an immigrant or figure out the way in which race intersects in Colombia is so complex and interesting compared to where we came to. It took me learning and studying and going to college to really come to understand of it.
When I left college, I thought I was going to be a philosophy professor. Racial theory and art history are the things that I really love. But I decided that being a philosophy professor meant that I would write things that not many people would read.
AG: As a professor, I’ll attest that no one would read it!
JM: Yes, I didn't want to say that … I love academia and philosophy, but I wanted to put all of the things that I learned into practice to be able to help people. And so that led me into learning about the nonprofit world.
I bounced around different nonprofits trying to find a nonprofit that wanted to talk about racial justice along with immigration. I worked in some programs where I was actually the first person leading the immigration program who was an immigrant. And then I realized that part of the power of United We Dream and what made them so good at their job is that it is led by impacted people who hold that experience.
Particularly, I think that United We Dream is invested in having young people who are impacted lead. There are a lot of other spaces where that's not the priority, but that's where the power of United We Dream comes from--this philosophy of believing the people who are most impacted are the ones that have the solutions or are closest to the solutions. I came in starting out as the digital director throughout the Trump years, which was exhausting and very hard, but also really filled with pride and joy. I was very invested in providing young people of color digital tools which they are normally not afforded. United We Dream gave me the opportunity to do that.
That's where the power of United We Dream comes from--this philosophy of believing the people who are most impacted are the ones that have the solutions or are closest to the solutions
Now, I am the senior marketing and creative director of the organization, which means I'm a part of the executive team and I lead our communications, digital and culture change work for the organization. Part of my role is about developing narratives that are going to transform folks in the long-term; our goal isn't just responding to the moment, but really thinking about what are the values that we need to transform in order to arrive at a place where our world looks different. Often policy is going to change depending on who's in office, but really what matters is what are the values of the communities out there. And so we want to be working for long-term cultural change as well.
AD: I had so much fun watching “No Borders Just Flavors.” It is such a great combination of storytelling and creativity. Can you say a little bit about how that show came about?
JM: I'm so glad that you liked it. When we were developing the idea, I was really nervous and I thought, "What if no one likes this?" I'm always glad to hear that someone out there enjoyed it. I say that, but the show did really well and so I'm really excited about it as well.
Part of my job, developing these narrative strategies and culture strategies, is really about strengthening the movement for the long-term. And so the theory behind this was inspired in 2020 by the pandemic and seeing young Black people show up for their communities and risking so many things. The truth is that the immigrant movement can't end when people receive citizenship. That's not what the movement is about. It is about the long-term and it's about racial justice for all people. And so for me, the question is how do we build a movement that is going to last that long and that is going to continue no matter change in leadership, no matter who comes in and out? Ultimately that's answered by building a stronger immigrant identity, an identity in which folks really see themselves as immigrants with pride and with self-love.
The truth is that the immigrant movement can't end when people receive citizenship.
My learning from the movement for Black freedom is really about building a culture around what it means to be an immigrant, and often what brings us together as immigrant people is this question of, well, I suffered and my situation was really crappy and my experience was dark in this way or another. With “No Borders Just Flavors” I wanted to continue to build the culture of immigrant people that comes from joy and enjoyment and the things that we share together that are not about the pain that we suffered. The joy of the show was central for me. One of the things that immigrant people share is our love of food. And honestly, part of what the show is about, is how do we build an immigrant identity that is built across nationalities and across races?
And so you see young people of different races, of different nationalities, and the idea is to have a shared category of foods, some of it was rolled dough or stews, and have people coming from two different perspectives, but be able to identify the ways in which we do have things in common. For example, a lot of our foods, even though we are from very different places, are similar.
For me, the idea came from in Colombia, tamales are made with plantain leaves, but when I go to eat dim sum, Chinese folks actually wrap their rice in plantain leaves as well, and it's a sticky rice dish instead. It feels like even though we're really different, that's a thing that we share in common. It allows us to build a bridge that brings people together across nationalities and across races to strengthen an identity: we are both immigrants and we should be willing to fight for each other for the long-term and build together for the long-term. That’s the theory behind the show.
When I think of all the cultural change work that we've done--we've done a zine, we've done murals, we've done a giant sneaker installation--often the idea behind it is immigrant people building something for immigrant people that welcomes everyone.
AG: You’re reminding me of when I was a teacher in Los Angeles. The South Central community that I taught in had a large Salvadoran and Central American community. During my first year, my students brought me tamales and I remember how they were so different from my Mexican grandma’s tamales. It was a reminder of both our differences and our commonalities.
JM: “No Borders, Just Flavors” didn't just come from my head. The other part that I want to mention is that we actually did focus groups and testing with young immigrant people of color. And some of the questions were about where would you like to see your story? And many of our focus groups actually said, "We would really enjoy a competition. We would really enjoy something related to food." And so it came a lot from conversations with our membership and trying to bring their voice into the project as well, which I think is really important. It goes back to the people who are most impacted have the answers and we wanted to make sure to create something that they saw themselves reflected in.
There's another video series that we have that is “The Home is Here” video series that I was also lead on as creative director. In that series, there's some food work as well, and so we wanted to test out if food is a good conduit, a good bridge for these types of conversations. During COVID, we also created an Undocu Cookbook to be able to bring community to people at home, which was filled with stories and recipes of people who are undocumented. We took that content and tested it in order to be able to move the show forward. I want credit other folks who were a part of the project.
It was incredible to actually be on set. The show was filmed with an all immigrant and people of color cast and crew. And so you had people behind the camera who had the experience of being undocumented. Our makeup artist was a young Black woman who was amazing about working with the individual talent about what type of hairdo, what type of choices they wanted to make to represent themselves on screen. It's actually such a great experience once you're there because it is designed, produced, and filmed by people who are really invested in bringing young people together.
Propina
We’ll continue our conversation with Juanita next week. If you haven’t taken a look at No Borders Just Flavors, check it out here!
If you are interested in learning more about United We Dream, take a look at their website, Instagram, or TikTok.
We’ll see you next week!