Social Change Witness and Movement Allies: Empathy, Imagination, and Active Responsibility on the Migrant Trail

• In Event: 378 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session II
  In Refereed Roundtable: B. Table 09. Social Movements

Abstract

Social movement allies that seek to challenge the legitimacy of state violence against immigrants must navigate complex power dynamics and the concomitant ethical challenges. This paper examines the annual Migrant Trail Walk as a form of social change witness, an annual protest event in which allies of the border justice movement spend a week walking 75 miles through the U.S.-Mexico borderlands to protest migrant deaths. Original data include five years of participant observation, interviews conducted during the 2011 Migrant Trail, and surveys conducted a year and a half after the event. Through an analysis of the Migrant Trail, I identify three core elements that I suggest constitute the practice of “social change witness” among allies: humanizing empathy, ethical imagination, and active responsibility. Furthermore, I suggest that attending to “social change witness” in movement contexts allows for an exploration of some important questions: How is the relationship between those undertaking witness and the directly violated negotiated? How might witnessing interrupt structures that make state violence acceptable, including affective investments in the national security state?

Author

• Chandra Russo, University of California-Santa Barbara