Cages, walls, asylum and shattered dignity. What is the state of human rights at our southern border, especially for young migrants? Two powerful local investigators with decades of experience bring this conversation o Kepler’s. 

Author Lauren Markham and Senior Human Rights Researcher Clara Long will discuss rights and immigration at our Southern border. In partnership with Human Rights Watch, this conversation will be moderated by KALW’s Hana Baba of CrossCurrents.

Markham’s startlingly intimate portrait of two migrant El Salvadorian brothers, who fled to Oakland by coyote to escape gang violence at home, has been broadly praised. Rebecca Solnit calls The Far Away Brothers a “movingly written” meditation on “the caprices and brutalities of immigration policy.” It is a story of young people in our own community whose only support is each other, whose lives include the quotidian concerns of young men with teenage crushes against the backdrop of antagonistic immigration law and crushing coyote debt.

"It has some of the pleasures of a novel— but all the force of bitter truth.”

Long, a graduate of both Harvard and Stanford, contextualizes Markham’s close-lens narrative portrait with her work investigating detainee deaths, mistreatment of asylum seekers, and more at our southern border.

How do we take notice, and shape this period of international change? That story begins with firsthand accounts from those who are engaged in human rights issues on the frontlines. The next chapter will be written by those who take the time to listen.

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Produced in partnership with Human Rights Watch, the Silicon Valley Committee. HRW defends the rights of people worldwide, scrupulously investigating abuses and pressuring those with power in order to secure justice. Human Rights Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the cause of human rights for all.