Solidarity Statement – Mountainfilm on Tour, Bend
Good evening, and welcome to Mountainfilm on Tour. Thank you for being here tonight to support The Environmental Center. My name is Priscilla Calleros, ella/she/her pronouns. I’m the Events and Outreach Manager at The Environmental Center, and I am a proud daughter of immigrant parents.
Before we begin tonight’s program, we want to speak clearly and collectively about where we stand.
The Environmental Center stands in unwavering solidarity with our immigrant and refugee neighbors.
Immigrants and refugees are essential to the health of society, the environment, and Oregon’s most critical sectors—agriculture, forestry, construction, outdoor recreation, hospitality, and caregiving. They harvest our food. They care for the land, and sustain local economies—often while living in constant fear. Environmentalism that ignores this reality is incomplete.
Across Oregon, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and communities throughout this country, immigrants face escalating violence and terror. People are being racially profiled and kidnapped from their homes. Children are being taken. Families are being torn apart. People are being killed on our streets. This should concern everyone—regardless of political belief—because it threatens the basic principles of safety, freedom, and democracy.
This is not safety. This is not justice. And we refuse to normalize it.
And yet—even in this moment—we are witnessing something powerful. In the face of fear and violence, people are choosing courage and connection. Where terror tries to isolate, neighbors are building networks of care, communities are linking arms and refusing to turn away.
The killings and violent enforcement actions carried out by ICE under this administration have sparked nonviolent resistance across the country—vigils, boycotts, mutual aid, and grassroots organizing. Communities are stepping up as protectors, demanding accountability, transparency, and respect for human life.
This moment affects all of us. Beyond physical violence, there is a climate of political intimidation—an attempt to make everyday people afraid to speak, to gather, to use our First Amendment rights. The goal is silence. The goal is fear. The goal is to intimidate people out of acting as a free society.
We refuse that. So we say clearly—to ICE and this administration: we will not tolerate injustice, violence, or the killing of innocent people.
We will not allow this administration to intimidate us out of organizing, mobilizing, and speaking out against what we know is wrong. Let us remember that our greatest power is each other. And we cannot allow ourselves to be divided. Unity is our strength. Solidarity is our protection.
We look to Minneapolis, Portland, Los Angeles, and communities across this country not only as a reflection of where we’ve been, but as a glimpse of who we can become—a community bound together not by fear, but by care, and by a shared commitment to dignity, justice, and protecting one another.
The fight for a healthy environment is inseparable from the fight for human dignity. We cannot claim to care about clean air, clean water, and thriving ecosystems while remaining silent as the people who steward our land and sustain our communities are targeted, criminalized, and harmed.
Tonight’s films invite us to choose courage over comfort, and action over silence. As environmentalists and community members, we are called to expand our definition of stewardship—to include not only the places we love but the people who make those places possible.
We stand with immigrant and refugee communities. We reject violence and dehumanization. And we call on each of us to find a way—any way—to show up for one another and push our shared future toward justice.
Thank you for being here tonight.
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CALL TO ACTION
There are many ways to take action and support immigrant families in Central Oregon and across Oregon. Sign the Protect Oregon END ICE VIOLENCE petition.
Here are a few ideas from our immigrant justice page for action, support, and resources: https://envirocenter.org/programs/advocating-for-change/migrant-justice/
