Live Music For Detained Immigrants

On February 1st, 2020, a group of musicians from the San Francisco Bay Area went inside the Mesa Verde I.C.E. Processing Center in Bakersfield, California. We performed four sets of mostly polka music , one set for each of the four security levels of detainees held there. We had hoped to return to that facility again, and were looking into expanding our reach to other similar facilities run by the same contractors “GEO” who manage  Mesa Verde. Then COVID, so nothing since then. 

We have recently been invited to return to Mesa Verde once Covid restrictions are lifted, possibly July or August. We plan to set up other shows at some of the same contractor managed I.C.E.
facilities wherever possible. 

LOOKING FORWARD in 2021 -
We are trying to wrangle permission from the Department of Health and Human Services to bring music inside some of the transfer stations now being set up for HHS management to handle the recent influx of unaccompanied minors. One in San Diego is already up and running. Another very large facility is being organized on the grounds of Fort Bliss, Texas, near El Paso. 
Other Facilities are in the planning stages but those are the two locations I am sure of so far. 

Our immediate goal is to return to Bakersfield again, and if possible branch out to other adult facilities managed by GEO. 
In 2021 our goal is to obtain permission from the Office of Refugee Resettlement within HHS to enter and perform at some of the facilities they manage for juveniles as well as to continue to do shows at adult facilities managed for ICE by GEO. The plan is to do as many shows as we can obtain permission to do and our operating funds allow.
     One thing at a time. If all we can do is to make one return trip to Mesa Verde for a second show, so be it. If we can raise enough funds and gain access to the HHS facilities, fantastic. 

WHO WE ARE-
Last years lineup will be essentially this years line up of players with a few substitutions. All of us have decades of experience as professional musicians. Most of our band members are alumni of POLKACIDE, a currently inactive band which started in the punk music clubs of San Francisco in the early 1980’s and went on for over 30 years to play a wide variety of venues, festivals, weddings, and community benefits. www.polkacide.com 

WHY POLKA FOR IMMIGRANTS?-
There are thousands of asylum seekers in our country right now  many of whom are being held in unsuitable living conditions. As the new administration in Washington begins to set up these HHS facilities for unaccompanied minors, they do so with the goals of humane care and treatment, pairing the juveniles up with lawyers to assist them with their asylum claims, finding and vetting sponsors within the local communities who can house the kids until their asylum hearings come up. Refugees and asylum seekers struggle with everything. Everyday until their problem is resolved is a stress test of their endurance and resilience. People under stress need live music - music played for them by live humans who are happy to be doing so.
I am currently 70. I have been playing music in public since I was 16. In all that time I have never felt the level of satisfaction and after glow I felt as I did when we played our first time at Mesa Verde. You haven’t lived as a performer until you have seen a big crowd of people in jumpsuits behind a cyclone fence doing their version of the polka. The second set which was for the women’s unit turned into a big conga line and when we finished they were chanting “polka polka” with big smiles. 
We want to welcome our new in-comers with some happy music in a style which may be familiar to them. The influx of German and Czech immigrants to South Texas and Mexico in the 19th Century brought with them their accordions and polka music and to this day polka is an integral part of the music heard in Central America. 
They may have never heard any of the tunes we will be playing for them but they will recognize the style. 
Please help us do this. Thank you.