People's Freedom Caravan: Children's Voices

Nez Evans, 13, and Dezbah Evans, 11, are with the caravan along with their parents Cy and Bineshi, and their younger brother Chi. Here they have written their perspectives of the first two days on the caravan.

Dezbah Evans:

On the 1^st day of the USSF we launched the conference as I call it. Mom’s inspiration speech started the journey to Atlanta, Georgia. I road the bus that Jessie was on. It was cool sitting with my best friend in the world! We listened to Jessie’s MP3, ate snacks, and did a game of trivia with the whole bus. We stopped in Carlsbad to have some lunch with a family. The family was the Dorado family. The main host was Martin Dorado. He was the father and husband of the house. There was I think another family that lived in that house. From there we headed to San Antonio. We arrived at the hotel about 10:30 or 11:00 at night.

On the 2^nd day of the USSF we start the day with an environmental justice tour of Kelly AFB. Then we meet with community members at Community Headquarters of the organization Committee for Environmental Justice Action. I met many new people there. We headed to the Alamo for a rally about migrant rights. Then we marched to Senator John Cornyn's office, by Travis Park. They had the kids write messages to him, draw dead body’s out line, hang up wanted posters of him, and tear down a paper wall meaning “tear down the wall!” Our buses picked us up at the park. Then we went to another park to eat lunch. After lunch we went back to the hotel for an hour or 2. Then went to the Ruta Maya café to eat dinner while there was music and performers. I ended the day with a good night sleep.

Nez Evans:

This was the day when the NM caravan left. Where it all started. It’s also where I first got motion sickness. I will probably remember the launching most of all. We picked up some people working for better education in Carlsbad. We also started watching movies that day. The first one was George Lopez. In Carlsbad, we stayed for a while and had lunch.

We stopped in San Antonio where we would stay for the next whole day. We all piled up in a motel. After that we took a tour of the air force base and learned about the toxic waste being released into the community and the water under ground. After that, we all went to a park with a swimming pool. It was very fun and there was food there. I think the coolest and most memorable part was swimming in the pool.