Monisha Das Gupta is Professor in the Departments of Ethnic Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She is the author of
The abolitionist politics of the Los Angeles area Immigrant Youth Coalition (IYC), led by queer and women organizers, foreground those directly impacted by criminalization. Through civil disobedience, they publicly confront police and immigration enforcement to stop deportation and all forms of incarceration. Their actions and peer-to-peer training exceed the discursive limits of the cap-and-gown narrative of other undocumented youth risking arrest. When IYC trainers brought their “Undocumented, Unafraid” workshops to Hawai?i, they sparked a youth-led reckoning with the complexity of migration to Hawai?i as a settler colonial space. They fostered local organizing focused on the criminalization of non-Hawaiian Pacific Islanders in Hawai?i and the barriers to education equity in higher education. Across LA and Honolulu, queer politics facilitated decolonial allyship between non-Indigenous immigrant and Indigenous Pacific Islander youth.
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