BOSTON (CelebrityAccess) Lila Downs recently spoke to the Boston Globe about the five-date Lantern Tour, conceptualized by the public’s perception of the U.S.’s longtime immigration policies.
The tour includes Emmylou Harris, Jackson Browne and Steve Earle at the Toronto, Chicago and St. Louis stops and kicks off in Nashville plus a sold-out show at Boston’s Orpheum Theatre Saturday.
Harris and Earle conceived the tour in response to what they, or the Boston Globe, call “”the Trump administration’s ‘family separation’ policy for immigrants seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border” (the administration has noted that the vast majority of the children in the custody of Homeland Security come across the border alone and that the policy has been in place for several administrations with CNN noting it in 2014).
Downs told the Globe that she hasn’t felt comfortable speaking Spanish in public because of the “polarized American climate and the immigration flashpoint.”
“Even here in D.C. you can see people looking at you, like, ‘What are you doing here?’ ” she says. “I guess there are much worse things that can be happening. But it’s a sad time.”
“One thing we hear often from the administration and its supporters is that people should come here the ‘legal’ way,” Michelle Brané, director of the Women’s Refugee Commission’s Migrant Rights and Justice Program, told the Globe. “We have a system in place that requires that you be at the border and then ask for asylum.
“I think we want to remind people that together we have a voice. Family separation became a top news story, and the administration had to change course because the public spoke out. We can’t stop there. The administration is now looking for new ways to separate families, to prevent access to asylum.”
