Join us this Sunday, August 7th at 4pm for a special rerun of Many Roads to Here, a production of The Immigrant Story, capturing the immigrant experience in the U.S. through monthly profiles. Voices from across the globe offer intimate accounts of immigration, war, genocide, and success. Listen live at 99.1 FM in the heart of Portland – or online anywhere at PRP.fm.

In 2012, President Obama announced the DACA program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, to help protect Dreamers from deportation. This year the DACA program turns 10. To recognize this anniversary and the challenges many Dreamers still face, we will be rerunning our very first episode this week, which centers on DACA recipient Denzel Mendoza.

The first time Denzel Mendoza came out as undocumented, he was on stage in front of a crowd of strangers.

That night, he didn’t just play his trombone. He let out the raw emotions of doubt, fear and hardship that had followed him throughout his life; letting himself be truly seen, for the first time, at this random jazz house show in Portland. After that night, life began to move quickly. A few years later, Mendoza shared his undocumented identity publicly once again. But this time the crowd wasn’t filled with strangers, it was filled with celebrities; and it was no house show. It was the Grammys.

This episode was edited by Caitlin Dwyer and Monica Salazar. Audio editing was done by Rick March and Gordon Graham, and original music was provided by Denzel Mendoza. Our executive producer is Sankar Raman. This episode takes audio from an interview conducted in the winter of 2020 by Angelica Alarcon.

Original post written by Monica Salazar

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