across the state and across the country visited Matamoros on Saturday, calling for asylum to remain protected in the U.S. The group, consisting of academics, leaders from local and state nonprofit organizations and churches who provide aid to migrants along the southern border, gathered in front of Gateway International Bridge in Brownsville Saturday for a prayer walk to Matamoros. The walk, which ended in a migrant encampment along the Rio Grande in Matamoros, was led by the Practice Mercy Foundation, a nonprofit migrant aid organization based in McAllen.

Faith leaders and education advocates held a march Saturday to show their support for asylum seekers and the asylum process. Organizers said their faith led them to participate and show support for those who are suffering. Rally attendees said they don’t want immigration issues and asylum seekers used as pawns in political negotiations. Recent talks on Capitol Hill have centered around tying foreign defense aid to stricter immigration enforcement.

Posted Sept. 8, 2022 — Why do you look so surprised? You thought prison would define me? The opening lines of a poem by James Adrian, who wrote the verse while in prison, prove the power of literature to defy circumstances. You thought my potential would get lost in this crime spree, or the magic in my pen would mysteriously run out of ink, & I would never find a way to articulate what I think? Adrian had the opportunity to tell his story as part of the book “Flying Kites: Narratives of Prison Literacies in Essays and Art,” co-edited by Mikel Cole, an associate professor at the University of Houston College of Education. The book sheds light on the realities of mass incarceration in the United States and how literacy and literary expression can change that. Most chapters were written by people currently or formerly incarcerated or in immigrant detention facilities, while scholars working with the marginalized population also contributed.

A trio of bilingual college professors is spending the Memorial Day holiday weekend helping asylum-seeking migrants south of the border. South Texas schools put in lockdown after gun battle south of border Border Report met up with them Friday as they prepared to cross into Mexico where they were distributing eyeglasses and offering counseling and education information to families, as part of their South-Carolina-based nonprofit called Education Ilimitada, which means unlimited education. “We are here to do humanitarian work with the migrants in the camps, as well as offer information about their educational rights in the United States, and also try to help get the children prepared for what school will be like whenever they are able to cross the border,” Stephanie Madison, of Clemson University said.

In Flying Kites the voices of the incarcerated soar across the firmament, bearing witness to the grave injustices of the prison industrial complex. This powerful anthology reveals the hope and promise that quality literacy education offers to society, especially those who are ensepulchred in the dark alchemy of our prisons and youth detention centers. It is a book that needs to make its way into the hands of educators everywhere as a testament to the human spirit and the triumph of self and social transformation towards a compassionate and justice-seeking greater good.