Courage is Not an Absence of Fear
Immigrant rights organizing in the face of tyranny
"Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world." —Dolores Huerta
"Here we are in the convergence of global environmental phenomena, collapsing economies, mass migration," writes Norma Ryuko Kawelokū Wong Roshi in her transformative work When No Thing Works: A Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse (2024). This convergence, she explains, creates a sensation that everything is accelerating—"much more going much faster"—a collective quickening that shapes our lived experience in profound ways.
This acceleration and its human consequences are vividly illuminated in Cristina Jiménez's electrifying Dreaming of Home: How We Turn Fear Into Pride, Power, and Real Change (2025). Far more than a simple memoir, Jiménez delivers a page-turning emotional journey rooted in her family's migration from Ecuador to the United States. We witness her remarkable evolution from a self-described "nerdy undocumented student" into a formidable national leader who helped secure Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) through her work with United We Dream.
Both books orbit around human movement—physical, political, and spiritual. As Roshi Wong eloquently observes: "Migrations occur as people move away from and move toward. Moving away from sustained flooding, sustained droughts, violence and conflicts... Moving toward possibilities, safety, jobs, promises. Others are stolen, coerced, forced, driven out."
And now here we are on the precipice of a new human movement—toward justice. It speaks in many languages, but one voice: we the people will decide who is in, and who is out, of our society—not Trump or MAGA politicians.
Courage in the Face of Fear
A powerful thread connects these works: "Courage is not an absence of fear; rather, it is what we are about in the face of fear and doubt." This reflection from Roshi Wong resonates throughout Jiménez's narrative as she recounts her family's heartbreaking migration and complicated path toward citizenship.
Jiménez masterfully weaves personal storytelling with incisive analysis of America's racial history of immigration. She illuminates the contradictory tangle of U.S. migration policies with clarity and moral force. Both authors boldly confront the hypocrisy of immigration policies created by settlers who, after stealing land and people, now presume to determine who belongs in this country—an immigration system designed primarily to maintain white wealth and power.
Exposing the Crisis
Jiménez opens with raw vulnerability, describing how her parents faced "the heartbreaking loss of my sister, and the crushing reality that they can no longer provide for their children in Ecuador." Their decision to leave emerged from a devastating calculus: "The grief and unknown danger of leaving become less bad than the guaranteed misery of staying home."
She methodically dismantles the façade of U.S. immigration policy, tracing its racist foundations from the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act that prioritized northern and western European immigrants to the creation of Border Patrol units that mirrored the function of slave patrols. With rhythmic precision that mirrors her family's "two steps forward, one step back" immigration saga, Jiménez chronicles the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act and the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act—policies that criminalized millions while leaving 11.2 million undocumented people without a citizenship pathway today.
Jiménez poses uncomfortable but necessary questions: what happens if we force out undocumented workers who comprise 5% of our workforce and are overrepresented in critical food, farm, construction, and service industries? The answer hovers ominously: economic collapse.
As Roshi Wong observes, "Only in hindsight, in the timeplace several generations downstream, will we be able to definitively say whether this current moment and place is in the beginning or the near middle of total collapse or, fantastically, beyond the crest."
The Winding Path to Power
Jiménez's journey to leadership begins in high school after her brother suffers racial profiling and violence at the hands of the NYPD. At Queens College, she discovers community and purpose, developing a structural analysis of her family's struggles: "I will realize as a college student and community organizer that the police profiling and violence we experience is intentional and systematic."
Her development benefits from earlier waves of immigrant student organizing that secured in-state tuition for undocumented students in New York. As she explains, while K-12 education for undocumented students has been protected since a 1982 Supreme Court ruling, higher education, especially in-state tuition at public colleges and universities remained inaccessible.
The narrative reveals how precarious leadership pathways can be, often hinging on singular moments and connections. In one pivotal scene, Jiménez searches for undocumented student resources on a computer at her college library discovering organizations that would later shape her trajectory. She leaves messages, waits anxiously, and eventually connects with an organization and people that change her life.
Throughout her journey, others recognize leadership potential in Jiménez before she sees it herself. When the outgoing vice president of the Political Science Club urges her to run for the position, Jiménez hesitates: "I'm not sure... The truth that I never tell her is that I don't believe I'm worthy." Her friend Azmina insists, "Come on, Cristina! You will be an excellent vice president. You're smart and capable."
This pattern repeats with Mr. Hayes, a Black administrator who "sees something in me I don't see in myself yet: the need to connect with who I am and where I come from, and the potential for greater leadership." Later, an email from an organizer at the New York Immigration Coalition leads Jiménez to a DREAM Act campaign meeting where she meets Walter Barrientos, "the first undocumented college student I have ever met"—a relationship that blossoms personally and politically throughout the narrative.
Even as her confidence grows, Jiménez initially resists identifying as a leader: "I don't see myself as a leader, activist, or community organizer. I don't quite know yet what those terms really mean. I simply see myself as a young undocumented student fighting for my family and immigrants like us to live in this country without fear."
Her perspective shifts dramatically at a training hosted by Community Change: "I have never been with so many undocumented young people in my life, and the feeling in the room is electric... I learn that community organizing brings together people impacted by injustice to build power in solidarity and collectively take action to effect change."
Jiménez's story illuminates the essential work of organizers—identifying potential leaders, investing in relationships, and creating spaces where people can transform themselves and their communities. As she notes, "I think sometimes there is an expectation that empowerment is like a switch that gets flipped... But my journey isn't like that."
Dreams Deferred No More
Dreaming of Home chronicles the exhilarating rise of the Dreamers and United We Dream, a movement that experienced devastating setbacks before securing DACA, energizing contemporary civil rights activism, and transforming hundreds of thousands of lives. Jiménez's narrative pulses with kinetic energy, humor, and joy—qualities that, as her friend and neighbor, the reviewer can personally attest she embodies.
As the book concludes with Jiménez's citizenship ceremony after more than twenty years of waiting, she offers a timely message of hope and challenge:
When I take the oath, I commit to continuing to push this country to live up to its aspirational values of justice and equality for all. I know this America is possible. An America where people see each other's humanity, building a community of belonging and solidarity... This America is possible because I have seen it and felt it. This America is here. It is up to us, you and me, to nurture it and fight for it.
Roshi Wong's conclusion in When No Thing Works offers a complementary vision through the concept of pilina: "the interwoven relationship of our current and future work, ancestral labor, and descendants' hopes." She continues, "Instead of a predestined trend line, think of and experience the future as the living story that descendants live in, in which they describe how ancestors imagined it and then made it true. Creation requires just that—both the imagining, and the hard work of making it true."
Together, these works offer organizers a profound roadmap for navigating our current moment of convergence and collapse—reminding us that through relationship, courage, and collective action, another world is not only possible but already emerging. Let's get to it.
Books Reviewed:
Dreaming of Home: How We Turn Fear Into Pride, Power, and Real Change by Cristina Jiménez. St. Martin's Press: 2025.
When No Thing Works: A Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse by Norma Ryuko Kawelokū Wong Roshi. North Atlantic Books: 2024.
First published in Social Policy: Organizing for Economic and Social Justice (55)2.