NPQ’s column, We Stood Up, features first-person stories from workers, builders, activists, and organizers of their work and world. From inspirational stories to strategic insights and powerful solutions, these stories may offer a moment to breathe, collective wisdom, and the community solidarity we need to keep pushing toward a just and equitable future.
In my day job, I’m an organizer. But I also stand up through music. Being a singer in a band that fights for social justice—like Los Jornaleros del Norte (The Day Laborers of the North)—is more than an artistic endeavor. It means being in service of a greater purpose—to heal, accompany, educate, mobilize, denounce, resist, fight, and remember.
There is something very raw about putting your body and voice out there when you know that so many are going through moments of terror and hopelessness. Even so, when I step on stage, I do my best to project strength, joy, and hope.
As do my bandmates: Pablo Alvarado on bass, Ricky Molina on drums, Ervin Mancilla on congas, Arnoldo Juarez on vocals and piano, Francesco Cañas on violin and sound, Jesus Rivas on guitarrón, and Omar León—who also writes much of our music—on vocals, accordion, and piano.
In our communities, pain and joy have always walked side by side. Our music doesn’t deny suffering—it names it, transforms it, and honors it.
With songs like “Ese Güey No Paga (That Dude Doesn’t Pay),” “¿Dónde Está la Justicia?” (Where Is Justice)?,” and “Las Redadas (The Raids),” our music speaks directly to immigrant workers’ lives. It also makes you want to get up and dance, laugh, and sing.
In times like these, when immigrant families are being ripped apart, when state agents abduct our loved ones with impunity, when fear walks with us in every home, school, corner, and workplace—music becomes essential. It is not a luxury. It is resistance and survival.
Every time we sing at an action, a march, or a vigil after a raid, I feel the collective pain. There are days I feel broken inside. My heart carries the rage, helplessness, and sorrow of seeing our families torn apart. Sometimes it’s hard to breathe before going on stage.
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Part of me wonders: How can I sing, laugh, or move to the rhythm while so many people are missing, detained, deported? How can we play when there is so much suffering?
And yet, I know I have to put on a brave face, project strength, lift spirits. Because people need a ray of light. In our communities, pain and joy have always walked side by side. Our music doesn’t deny suffering—it names it, transforms it, and honors it.
Celebrating life, even when it’s under threat, is a deeply political act. Joy, even in the midst of pain, is an act of resistance. Every note we sing tells the world that we are still here—with dignity, history, culture, love, and resilience.
And culture heals. I’ve seen it in the day-laborer community that learns our lyrics and sings the songs like resistance mantras, in the shining eyes of young people who’ve lost their mother to immigration enforcement and still sway to a song that reminds them of their strength, and in the laughter that bursts out during a catchy chorus in the middle of a protest: “Esa migra desgraciada, que se vaya a la chingada,” which more or less means “That rotten ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] can go to hell.”
Our culture, rhythms, words, and stories hold us up when everything seems to fall apart. They remind us of the path when we feel lost.
I’m never alone when I sing. I feel my people singing with me, even when they don’t have a microphone. I feel the power of generations who resisted before us. For me, singing is sacred. It transforms pain into strength. It says with every note: “I am an immigrant; my work is important.”
As long as we have a voice, we will keep singing. As long as we have a heart, we’ll keep loving. And as long as we have community, we will keep fighting—together.
