I’d like to propose that we, as the GOAT Community, make a statement of solidarity with farm worker Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino, who was detained by ICE last week in the Bellingham area of Washington State, as well as calling for his immediate release. Lelo is the co-founder of Familias Unidas por la Justicia and an indigenous Mixteco activist, who has organized his fellow workers on WA berry farms to win better working conditions and overtime, as well as advocating language justice for Mixtec-speaking workers like himself. It’s pretty clear that he was targeted because of his effective political organizing in defense of immigrant workers and indigenous people.
There was an excellent report and interview with his FUJ co-founder, Edgar Franks, on Democracy Now! earlier today, for the full story:
In the past, GOAT has voiced its support for the principles of software freedom, food justice, digital rights, indigenous land rights, and racial equity in agriculture, as a constellation of rights that are all mutually interdependent. I believe those past sentiments mean very little if we are not willing to stand up for them now, when they are most threatened. We also can’t claim, as a group, to be allies to others struggling to win those same rights if we remain silent in such moments. When another advocate for our shared principles is attacked, it is an attack on all of us. We can voice our solidarity for Lelo as individuals, but we have far, far greater power when we stand up together as a community and loudly proclaim that we are united in Lelo’s fight and demand his release.
A last minute appeal prevented his deportation, but as of this morning (Fri 4 Apr 2025) he was still being detained in the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center. I don’t know how much we can do in quick fashion, but at the very least I think we could draft a statement to vote on at the upcoming April 14th GOAT Community Call. There is also a legal defense fund being coordinated through Washington State Legal Council (WSLC, AFL-CIO) and Community to Community Development at foodjustice.org, though they encourage checks be mailed to avoid additional fees.
Thanks everyone for the feedback during the community call today. I think everyone made really good points. I agree that it is wise not to make a statement without having a clear picture what impact that statement will have, for good or for bad. I also agree that a far better approach would be to talk with ppl already within our network who might have ties to the work being done locally in WA state, and try to get a better sense of what forms of solidarity would be most helpful. I volunteer myself to help facilitate, and may reach out privately where I can. I want to exercise the utmost caution in that respect, however, so if anyone else wants to chat privately, you can reach me on Signal as jgaehring.01:
I admit that one primary motivation of mine with this proposal was to raise this up into the level of discussion for discussion’s sake, so that GOAT remains a space for political and ethical discourse, and not just purely technological issues (because all tech is political, imo). I do believe we have positioned ourselves as allies to social movements in the past, collectively if not organizationally, and whether or not that position was formalized by any official process. That’s not to say that every member of this community agrees with what movements those are or should be, or what the obligations of those alliances might entail. When I take a look at forum posts with the session tag, just to get a sense of the things we seem to care about most when we come together, I see plenty of phrases like “appropriate technology,” “regenerative agriculture,” “equitable tech,” etc. that are all fraught with their own political histories. Even “open source” itself: just take a minute to dig into why we call it that and not “free software” and you open the political floodgates. I can’t help but feel we are engaging with those political and social movements and their whole drawn-out, messy histories just by invoking their names, whether we intend to or not. We are also importing a degree of social currency with that language. If we only seek to benefit from the marketing cachet such phrases can bestow on our work, only to drop them when they’re no longer fashionable or safe, to my mind that’s at best empty virtue signaling and at worst full-blown appropriation.
Of course, anyone can post here and put whatever buzzwords they want into the topic line. Whatever GOAT is, as a community or an aspirational institution or just a loose association, it doesn’t have a lot at stake in any of those claims, as it stands, nor does it have any strict obligation to adhere to one particular ethos or another. But I guess what I’m suggesting is… Maybe it should???
To be clear, this is not an argument from precedence but a provocation. Goodness knows how long we’ve debated this meta-issue around shared values. Remarkably, we’ve still gotten on fine without reaching a solid consensus, let alone any kind of formal statement of what constitutes those values – at least up until now. I’m not so confident we can continue to do so for very long, though, not given the current political climate. Is the best way to do that to issue a hasty statement without a solid base of community support and without knowing what the full ramifications of that might be? Probably not, but to bring this back to the bigger issue at hand: if GOAT is unable to reach a timely agreement on whether we oppose the politically motivated arrest and deportation of agricultural workers in our communities, is that because such a stance is outside the realm of our shared values? Personally, I don’t think that’s that case either, or at least, I hope we can all agree on a certain baseline of opposition to naked fascism when it directly threatens people who work in agriculture and who aren’t so far removed from our own line of work. In fact, as many of you so rightly pointed out earlier today, it is precisely that threat that is the crux of the whole issue; it is why we should hesitate, because it is a real threat, because it threatens all of us but not equally, and because those most at risk may not be at liberty to draw attention to the subtle ways they are at risk. To me that certainly demonstrates the need for caution, but it also underlines why the only thing worse than a hasty response might be no response at all. Of course, GOAT is not the only base from which to organize a response, but I think it’s a pretty good one under the circumstances. We are fairly aligned internally on the basic ethics of the issue, we’re aligned as a group with the commercial sector and communities under direct threat, and I think we have a good deal of organizational experience and resources at our disposal to adequately address the risks.
So my greatest concern and my final provocation is this: If there is a clearly demonstrated threat to our shared values and to members of our extended community; if we have the organizational capacity to respond in at least some small way, even if just to make a statement of solidarity in accordance with those shared values; and yet, if we are unable or unwilling to bring that capacity to bear to affirm those shared values in a moment of crisis – whether that’s in the form of a statement or something else, something bigger or smaller, as a public display or private offer of material support – then what does all that say about GOAT’s ability to maintain its organizational cohesion in the future? And what hope do we have that we could ever articulate those shared values in any more meaningful way after that?
