MO AMER: It was really important to show the most authentic experience of what someone that is carrying all this trauma, not only being displaced from his family overseas, landing in a completely different new world. He feels so misunderstood. So it’s really, really important to just put it all out there and not hold back.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Welcome to We Disrupt This Broadcast. How are y’all doing today? It is a pleasure to have you back if you’re here again, and welcome if you’re joining us for the first time. I am your host Gabe González, and today we’re speaking with Mo Amer, creator and star of the Netflix series Mo. On the show, Amer paints a picture of undocumented immigrants that we rarely see, but desperately need to.
The lead character, Mo, is a Palestinian refugee on an endless wait to be granted asylum. Centered in Houston, he’s surrounded by a city of complexity, people of all different backgrounds. It’s a city of camaraderie, but also one that hides a seedy underbelly where Mo always seems to find himself.
Mo Amer’s sitcom is a vehicle for exploring the arduous journey of migration and the seemingly endless and emotionally draining path to legal status. He does this while also weaving a story that’s grounded in his lived experience and his sense of humor, creating a show that is both touching and naturally hilarious.
In this episode, we also hear from activist and author Saket Soni. Soni’s work with immigrant communities, as well as his relentless championing of the importance of immigrants in this country, makes him the perfect expert to help us explore how shifting the narrative around immigration could be the key to tackling one of our nation’s most divisive issues.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Welcome back. I had the very good fortune to have a conversation with Mo Amer about his critically acclaimed show Mo, his experiences as an immigrant in the U.S., and most importantly, H-Town, baby. I just learned that’s what it’s called, but uh, this interview was very enlightening in other ways.
Welcome everybody, I am here with Mo Amer. Mo, I wanted to kick things off by asking about where the show is set. It’s pretty obvious that Houston comes alive on the series. It’s where you grew up, and it does seem like Houston people really hold each other down. I feel like there’s an intense community and loyalty to that city. Am I right?
MO AMER: Yeah. I think it’s just like, there’s a Southern hospitality thing, right? You call it H-town. Although it’s one of the largest cities in America, it feels like a community. It really feels like a small town. Like you can’t hide anywhere in Houston. You end up somewhere and inevitably you’ll see someone either went to high school or middle school with and it’s just one of these places. And yeah that sense of community is there people want to lift each other up. And I’m just so blessed to be able to have that. It doesn’t get more authentic than that. You know, being from here, raised here feels like the city that not only raised me but showed me so much love when I was down and when I’m up I wanted to always make sure to have Houston here. And it’s one of those things that so many great artists have come out of the neighborhood that I grew up in. And it was part of the pitch when I was selling the show, is that it’s such an untapped landscape and community that people will get behind it and be excited about it.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: I think the whole country has this sort of archetype about what Texas is, right? The Cowboys and the Yeehaw and the barbecue, and there’s all of that. But I loved watching this show in particular because, well, first of all, you start off, I think one of your first lines, if not the first line in the series in season one is in Spanish, it’s you speaking Spanish, right?
MO AMER: It is. Yeah, you’re right.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Yeah.
MO AMER: I never thought about it that way, but yeah.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: You’re kind of blending these Palestinian and Mexican cultural traditions through Mo and his relationship with his girlfriend Maria, played by Teresa Ruiz. And they do kind of try to understand each other and find this balance and meld even when things are going wrong. So I’m curious, do you think that storyline or that relationship is sort of indicative of why it is important to get the cast right? Is that like one of the first duos you thought of?.
MO AMER: No, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that’s the galvanizing force around the whole series. And my, you know, growing up in Houston, the experience was always like, Hey, Latino, we’re all the same. You know, you’re like us, but you’re not. Like, you know, bring food to school day was like a big thing. When I brought like my mom was tenderizing lamb like days in advance and you bring this like rice dish with lamb and yogurt sauce and it’s like blowing everybody’s minds. And my friend Jose is like it’s like arroz con pollo pero like it’s not. Pero like, it’s almost like it, pero it’s not. It feels like we’re like the same, but there is these little things that accumulate over time. Like in their relationship with Teresa, where it’d be like religious beliefs, especially when you are trying to be in a real relationship and eventually get married, there’s like certain lines that you necessarily don’t want to cross. And then those minor issues become larger than life. And then they accumulate.Yeah.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: I mean, to me, it’s such a great example of those really small little moments that forum connection, right? Like, you’re not gonna find that stuff online. It’s like, it happens within your community. And I think I really appreciated that about the series too, right? That we’re brought into this, what feels like such an intimate, tightly knit community that includes people from so many different backgrounds.
MO AMER: I gotta say, like, sometimes I feel like I’m Mexican. Like, I don’t even know. You know, I feel so connected to the Latino community. Like, I’m not even sure who I am sometimes. I’m like, bro, am I Mexican? Maybe I was lied to my entire life. I just feel such a connection to them. And also like, you know, just with the experience of immigrating to a place where you feel so at home yet, so displaced, you know, and that connection is so pure and sweet. And I love everything about Latino culture except the pork. Give me everything except the puerco like I’m ready to go.
I think it’s a really common relationship. And historically the Arab existence in, you know, Spanish speaking countries, whether it be Spain or even in Italy, in Sicily specifically, it’s always been there. And I think that it gets lost in modern day narrative, and it’s really important to bring that back and show how close knit we are, actually.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Let’s get into the Arroz con Pollo together. Yeah.
MO AMER: Exactly, exactly. Pero sin lard, bro. Like.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Sin lechon, sin lard, like just a little, just strictly pollo. Yeah.
MO AMER: Just tremendous amount of love and respect for all the cultures. And, you know, speaking Spanish is something that came very easily to me. It’s something that just, I was surrounded by it. And there was a moment in time where I was just in love with the culture, but also a woman, you know, who’s Brazilian, but also spoke Spanish and Portuguese, and like three months later, I’m out here fully conversational. Love will make you do some crazy things, and one of those is tap into your intellect, and all of a sudden, just poop out a whole nother language. Like, it’s just really. It was really shocking to all my family, like I can’t believe this guy is sitting here speaking Spanish. He’s not faking it. Like she’s understanding and responding.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: I love that I was out here thinking I was like, Oh, you learned Spanish to get closer to community. You’re like, no, it was a woman.
MO AMER: You think I’m out here for that, bro? You should have seen her, man.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Okay, we’re getting the real stories now. I love this. We’re gonna, you know, like she made me learn a whole nother language. I think alongside, you know, the community and the presence of like Tejano Mexican American culture, we also have your family, which is such a strong anchor for Mo’s character.
One of Mo’s biggest challenges on the show is facing his grief over his father’s death and the role that that’s placed him in, in his family. Could you talk to us a little bit about how you worked that into the story and what it might be like kind of using personal experience to explore trauma for a fictional character?
MO AMER: Yeah. No, I think it’s really important in any story to tap in to the most emotional, the thing that makes you tick, right? And for me in my actual life was the trauma of losing my father so young and having to navigate the world as a young man, trying to figure it out without any real like, you know, father mentorship, you know. And trying to find that, and yearning for that, and losing my father on such bad terms as well. We weren’t really talking and everything is so sudden. And I think that is so relatable and people have so much regret over their past relationship, whether it be father or anyone that they love and care about that you lose so tragically. And so in a blink of an eye, it all just disappears. And then how can you actually get over that and move forward?
And the only way to do so is hit it head on. And I think that, you know, making sure our character goes through this gradual emotional shift. And you see him in season one trying to cope with it through drugs, you know? Trying to use lean as a coping mechanism when really he needs to like dig deep and have those conversations, because what you see in our communities is that you don’t talk about it. It’s just like you just keep burying it, burying it, burying it and at some point, there’s an explosion.
There was something else there. And I think exploring that was very important to me, diving into that. And initially I was really, it’s really tough. You know, once you just mine your own personal life for the whole world to see. And then when you’re in real time filming these scenes and you’re having a real breakdown that’s connected to something that’s absolutely real, but you’re also fictionalizing for this. But you’re like, no, this is real. Oh, great acting. No, I was acting, man. I was really fucked up, man. I’ll be honest with you.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: No method here. Just real.
MO AMER: No method. Just real. Just give me 30 seconds. Yep. I’m there. You know, it was really important to again, to show the most authentic experience of what someone that is carrying all this trauma, not only being displaced from his family overseas, landing in a completely different new world, he feels so misunderstood. So it’s really, really important to just put it all out there and not hold back. And I think that we also took that to a whole nother level of season two as well.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like a word or phrase that we hear a lot on the show is “the process,” right? Like “trust the process” or “you got to go through the process.” And it’s a word we hear a lot. In media, in politics, I feel like a lot of people are like, Oh, well, there’s a right process. There’s the right way and there’s the wrong way to come here, right? It’s like we love making things like black and white when it comes to immigration or asylum or people’s refugee status. Let’s take a listen to your character speak on this.
CLIP: Mo
I don’t know about this embassy shit, Lizzie. Every time I go there, it’s like starting from scratch.
I know you’re frustrated, Mo, but the laissez passer is your only option.
There’s got to be a better way.
There isn’t. This is the process.
Process, okay. You know, you know my friend Fernando has a line in Tokayote. Maybe it’s worth a risk.
No, no, absolutely not. Do not do anything stupid like that. If you get caught, it will essentially kill your entire asylum case, okay? Do you hear me? Trust the process, Mo.
The process, the process. Is this your favorite word? Is it the word of the day?…
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Can you talk to me a little bit about what that phrase means to you throughout the course of Mo, the process and what it says about the way immigrants and refugees are treated in this country?
MO AMER: Yeah, the process I hear, shut the fuck up and wait. We’ll tell you when we’re ready. You know, and it’s something that I really did hear in my actual life when I was on my citizenship journey. It’s just a waiting game and you have to put your trust in a system that’s clearly unorganized, you know, and unfair on so many different levels. Where you can live in– it’s almost like it puts you in a position, and that’s something that we really wanted to highlight in the show is that the asylee process, which is something there for you to become legal so you don’t be an undocumented person. So you’re trying to do the right thing, but by trying to do the right thing, puts you in a very, very difficult situation as a human being trying to make a living for yourself. So it’s actually better for you to be illegal, and it’s almost like pushing you to do illegal shit. So it’s like, wait, wait. Hold on. I thought this was the problem, but it seems like you want this and you actually need this as a society to have cheap labor for instance, and you can keep costs down. But you’re pretending like you really don’t want anybody here, but everything is open on the border for you to come, but it’s very hard for you to become a citizen; So if you don’t have the means to hire the right attorney, we hired a crooked attorney who just took the the money from us. And, you know, essentially almost got us deported, which is what you see in the end of episode seven, which was a real thing that happened to us.
You know, like it’s an incredibly difficult process to go through for you to actually become legal. The system is set up to tempt you to do illegal things for you to survive, but then it’ll punish you if you do so. It’s an incredibly grueling process. You have 10 years of, for me, in my case, to become an asylum, granted my asylum, right? And then once you get granted asylum, you have to wait five years before you even get your green card. And then you have to wait another four years and nine months before you even apply for your citizenship. So, you’re talking about 20 years of your life gone, right? You can’t go visit your family. If you go back to where you come from, then your asylum status goes away because why are you going back to where you came from? If it’s, you know, uninhabitable or not good for you or dangerous or whatnot? Whatever your political status is.
So it’s just, it’s an impossible situation to be in. It’s a massive injustice to sit here and contribute, become friends, become family with people, but then once they find out you’re not actually a citizen, this thing turns and they don’t see you the same. And that’s really difficult to function in the society as a real human being, to feel equal to the next person when they look down upon us.
And then, you know, there’s so much to cover in the show. It was, you know, first of all, how do you get here? The whole reason why I wanted to take our character to Mexico is to show what it takes to come back. Right? It’s the planes, trains, and automobiles of a refugee.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Quick heads up, for the next few minutes we’re about to talk about Season 2 of Mo, and that might include a few spoilers.
I’m curious about the choice of the timeline for this season. You and your team wrote the season partly before and partly after the events of October 7th, 2023, which must have been very challenging. So how did you decide when to set the events of the season?
MO AMER: So it’s really, really important for me to focus on the characters, to focus on the emotionality of each individual and where they’re going, whether it be comedy or drama, whatever it is that we needed to tap into, you know? It was always about going home and what it takes to actually go home and home being in the West Bank, Palestine is like how, how do you even get there? What does it take to get there? And what are the different, you know, obstacles that you have to get there?
All of it was there and it still addresses the elephant in the room without talking about it being exactly on October 7th. And that’s why we have the season on October 6th. We end the season on October 6th, 2023. But what we’re able to do is still encapsulate these conversations and have the emotionality of each character. Seeing my mom, you know, constantly checking the news, reading about it, completely inundated by it, always preoccupied by it, can’t even live a normal life, you know, it’s like a perpetual state of anger and depression. Like it’s this cocktail. It’s so toxic, it’ll just kill you.
And that’s something I’m always really fearful of my own mother, of my own family and those that I love. So much that are just consuming this tragedy over and over again. You’re concerned for your family. This is true for my own family. Like they, my aunt, my uncle has needed surgery for months. He can’t even go. It’s seven minutes away. He can’t even go. It’s like six hours of checkpoint. So how do you, you know, ignore all of this? It’s been going on way before October 7th.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Well, I will say what you mentioned earlier really stuck out to me, right? So I think the scene that I was thinking of, particularly when I asked about this, was a scene in season two where Mo needs the help of a pretty important official to make his way back into the US. And the conversation is like great. Everything is lined up. Everything is perfect. All right, cool. We’re about to go in. And then suddenly the issue of what to call what’s happening in Palestine comes up, right? Like the character could walk away and let it go, but he doesn’t. And so it’s interesting because it doesn’t come up as a, I mean, it is a debate between these characters, right? You call what’s happening, a conflict or an occupation. Let’s take a listen to that scene.
CLIP: Mo
Here’s to a safe return and a peaceful end to the conflict.
Conflict?
Israel Palestine. What?
Uh, nothing. Don’t worry about it.
No, please, what is it?
Well It’s not really a conflict, right?
Excuse me?
A conflict implies there’s two equal sides.
Well, there are two sides.
Well, one side is occupying another, so it’s…
And the occupation, if that’s the word you insist on using, is the basis of the conflict.
So you’re for the occupation?
No, wait. Do not put words in my mouth. That is not what I said.
Then where’s the conflict?
A conflict is a protracted disagreement, yes?
Sure.
Is the situation a protracted disagreement over land?
Yes.
Well, alright then. To the end of the conflict.
And the occupation.
Goddammit, I am trying to use terms here that we can both agree on.
What, you can’t agree on occupation?
The term conflict includes the occupation.
Conflict is used when you’re like, I don’t know, I can’t make the lunch today, I have a conflict. Not when there’s a military occupying power. And you don’t have the balls to say it, so fine. You know what? Let’s toast to peace.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: It’s infuriating because you’re like on his side, but you’re like, why now, bro? Like what? Come on. And so it was such an interesting way to approach that topic because you’re conflicted. You’re like fully, fully in agreement, but you’re like, come on.
MO AMER: Oh, it makes me so happy. Like, it makes me so happy. You know, you have an intention for a scene or all the scenes that you write and put together and for you to feel that way. It makes me so happy. It brought tears to my eyes. It makes me so happy. Yeah. But no, it’s one of those things, like, I will never let it go. Like, uh, there’s a decision right? Do I do it? Do I not? Nah, yeah, it’s not really, you know. I can’t. I gotta say it. I gotta say it. I can’t do it. I’m already stuck in Mexico. I’m already screwed. I’m already like, my life is shit. Right? It’s like, no way it’s gonna turn sour. Like, we could have a debate. He’s an ambassador. Like, it’s gonna be fine. No, it’s not. It’s just going to keep getting worse. Come on, you know, like let it go.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Yeah. And it, I mean, that is always how those things happen, right? You’re having a conversation. Suddenly someone brings up a topic they think is harmless. It goes south. It’s not a very special episode. It’s like, right. It’s life.
I did kind of want to bring us back to Houston, kind of come full circle. We read a story that your teacher in elementary school used to let you do stand up in front of your class?
MO AMER: In high school. Yeah.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: In high school. Yeah. It was like, damn that early? Come on. No. In high school. Yeah.
MO AMER: Can you imagine? No, but I did know I was going to be a comedian when I was like nine, like It was about four months before my 10th birthday. That’s when I figured out that I was going to be a comedian. But no, I did. That’s how it all started. Like was my dad passing, which is one of the biggest moments of my life for sure. But I just became, you know, Ferris Bueller. I was just kind of skipping school all the time and going to baseball games and just kind of like living my life, or just selling, hawking watches to make extra money and whatever. Like, I was like, ah, I’m going to be a comedian anyway.
And my teacher, just a wonderful woman, Miss Broderick, she walked up to me. She was like, how would your father feel if you don’t graduate? And I started crying. I’m in the back of the class. I was like, it’d be devastating. I come from a family that’s highly educated, engineers and PhDs. And this would be awful. And she goes, don’t you want to be a standup comedian? I was like, yes. She goes, I tell you what, if you want to do standup in class, I’ll allow it, but you can’t skip. You can’t skip anymore. You have to bring your grades up. And if you skip, I will fail you. Like it’ll be over, like I don’t care. If you break this deal, it’s over for us. We don’t even have a relationship. Like you basically, essentially broke my heart, it’s over.
And she was like, look, if you want to perform something from Shakespeare, I’ll give you a grade based off of your performance and how well you’re able to genuinely perform, you know, maybe one of the monologues. I was like, hell yeah, I’m down. I was like can I do it now? And she was like, yeah. So I went up in front of the class. To be or not to be! And I made it hilarious. And I did this really bad British accent to accompany it. I think it was decent. But kids were just laughing, they were just losing their minds. And I would freestyle in between, but I was also reading the text. And she loved it. Everyone was crying, laughing so hard. And she gave me an A plus. She was like, this is so good. And I was like, Oh my God, I caught the bug. And I love Chris Farley. And then I would go to theater arts department, find a small coat and I would put it on and I would go roast the class as Chris Farley.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: You had a residency at your high school. That’s wild. Yeah.
MO AMER: I had really just such a supportive group of teachers that knew it was important to impact a kid’s life. And I’m so grateful to them for sure. I wouldn’t be here today without their influence and without their guidance. And I’m so grateful.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: I love that story, man. Yeah, that’s incredible. I mean, first of all, good teachers, but second of all, you know, when I thought I was going to ask you about your start in standup, I thought I was going to learn about like the clubs in Houston, the Houston scene. Man, the hottest comedy club was your high school. That’s amazing. I love that. I am curious if you had anything else you wanted to share with us or any advice for our listeners ahead of them maybe seeing season two of Mo or anything else we might have talked about.
MO AMER: Uh, just know that I put my heart and soul into this season. So be gentle. No, it’s really something that I’m so proud of. So proud of the whole entire cast, crew, everyone that’s involved in the show. I truly believe that everyone gave their best foot forward to tell a real story of a Palestinian family. But it’s not only for them, but it’s for the world. And it’s for everyone who may be struggling with anything, not just immigration, your asylee status, your emotionality of what’s going on in your life, your relationships.
And it’s a love story to Houston. Yes. It’s a love story to my family. It’s something I’m deeply passionate about. And always, always listen to someone with the possibility of being right, and you also, when you speak to someone, you are right with the possibility of being wrong. Like it’s okay to be wrong.
It’s really very important just to listen to one another and truly process. Not just listen, to respond. You know, it’s something that I really try to live by. It’s very hard sometimes because you just want to just start responding without thinking. And I just really want people to be thoughtful about putting themselves in other people’s shoes. And what could that mean? And what could that feel if you were in that scenario as well? And maybe the world would be a much better place if we were compassionate with one another and thoughtful of one another.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: I think it’s a perfect note to end on, Mo. I’m so happy we got to hang out today. This has been such a fun conversation. Thank you so much for joining us on We Disrupt This Broadcast. It’s been such a fun time. I really appreciate it.
MO AMER: Love, man. Thank you so much.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: That was Mo Amer. From our conversation, it was so clear to me and hopefully to you as well that his love for Houston as well as Latino food runs deep. It reminds me that home isn’t just where you’re born or where your family is born. It’s where you set down roots, build community and foster relationships, which is exactly how I feel about my local Dave and Busters. Don’t go anywhere. We’ll be right back.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Welcome back to We Disrupt This Broadcast. I’m so excited to be talking to our guest expert this episode because he brings a really unique perspective to the issues we discussed earlier with Mo Amer. Our guest, Saket Soni, is a labor organizer and human rights strategist working at the intersection of racial justice, migrant rights, and climate change. He’s the founder and director of Resilience Force, an organization that advocates for the mostly immigrant workers who help rebuild homes after climate disasters all across America. He’s also the author of The Great Escape, a book about his time helping over 500 immigrants escape human trafficking in a labor camp in Mississippi.
Saket offers such unique insight into the experience many undocumented immigrants have in this country, and especially in places like Houston, where Mo is set. So, let’s get into it.
Saket Soni. How are you?
SAKET SONI: Great. So glad to be here.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: We are so excited to have you not just to talk about your work, but how your work touches on some very relevant and important themes that do overlap with Mo. And I was very excited to hear you are also a fan of the show.
SAKET SONI: I am. I am. I think it’s really great.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: I’m excited to hear a little bit more from your perspective. I’m curious if you could describe the types of stories you see about immigrant communities in the media and how they contrast with your actual experience working with those communities?
SAKET SONI: Well, you know, if you just think about the news about immigrants and immigration, the way the news media, for the most part in the United States, portrays immigrants is as synonymous with a problem, you know? Immigrants are either a problem themselves or they have a big problem to be solved, right? More often than not, especially now, they are the problem.
And then sometimes they’re portrayed as people having a terrible problem, a refugee crisis or an asylum case or no line to get into, you know, to get citizenship. That’s how the news portrays immigrants. And how immigrants are never portrayed is for what they really are. The stories you never hear are stories of real people.
I’m an immigrant myself. And in my work, I represent the workers who rebuild cities and homes after climate disasters. You know, whether it’s New Orleans after Katrina or Houston after Hurricane Harvey, as disasters become more frequent and destructive, hundreds, sometimes thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of Americans are waiting for their homes to be rebuilt.
And the people doing most of that rebuilding are immigrant workers. And so, I’m very invested in stories about immigrants that portray them not as people with a problem or people who are a problem, but as real human beings who are struggling, loving, and trying to have real lives. Any great narrative helps you cross a border, a border deeply into another person’s point of view and desires and life. That’s the best we can do. That’s what builds empathy.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s, there’s those moments of universality in the specificity, right? So I’m curious as an organizer, what is it about Mo that you most want people to take away from it?
SAKET SONI: Okay. Yeah. Great question. And I think probably one thing that helped the real Mo construct the character Mo was that although it’s not an autobiographical piece, it’s based deeply on a life and a reality he’s had and characters that he knows. He’s populated that show with a whole cast of characters that are based on people he was really intimate with and close to. And I think that what’s in common between his form of storytelling and organizing is you don’t have to have all the problems that your character has and you don’t have to have all the problems your community that you’re organizing has. But what’s in common is that you have to be deeply close, intimate, proximate with the people who have all of those lives and all of those things playing out in their lives. I think that’s part of what makes the show so special. It’s also part of immigrant life.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Saket, you wrote a book called The Great Escape about your time helping over 500 immigrants escape human trafficking in a labor camp in Mississippi. I’m curious, could you tell me a bit about how that experience impacted you and your work?
SAKET SONI: I was surrounded by the characters in that book. I was breathing the same air as them and eating the same food as them, sitting on floors, you know, with plates spread out on, you know, floor mats made of newspapers in church basements where we were hiding, waiting for and pushing the government to grant humanitarian visas to these workers.
And my proximity to them allowed me to access the kind of gallows humor and jokes and fun and joy that people can still have in those circumstances. Right? And that contrast between the heaviness of reality, but the kind of incredible, irresistible urge for joy, celebration, and love that still, you know, still makes flowers grow out of concrete, right?
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Wow, yeah. Thank you for sharing that perspective. It is obviously one that can only be gained from first hand experience. And so we’ve talked a bit about your work in Mississippi and how Mo depicts a side of immigrant communities in conservative areas like Texas that maybe we might not be familiar with.
How do you use that proximity to create positive relationships between, as you mentioned, a largely immigrant workforce rebuilding homes and the sometimes conservative people whose homes they are rebuilding?
SAKET SONI: So Hurricane Katrina was almost 20 years ago now, and overnight it and the flooding after the levees were breached in New Orleans, turned the Gulf Coast into the world’s largest construction site. There were a million homes to be rebuilt in Mississippi, another million in Louisiana, and the people who did the rebuilding were largely migrant workers, mostly immigrants, many undocumented.
And now each time a hurricane hits Florida or Mississippi or Texas, hundreds of migrant workers, hundreds of immigrants arrive to rebuild. So that’s an opening that we take. All of a sudden, there’s a new interaction. And a lot of what I see is that suddenly there’s a lot of gratitude. Homeowners are saying thank you to the immigrants for rebuilding, for helping them come home. Because after all, these immigrants are doing the thing that counts the most for these residents on the worst day of their lives, right? They’re rebuilding their home, helping them come home.
Last year, a mid-sized hurricane hit Louisiana. And I went out with a group of workers and we found a family that lived in a home that is falling apart. And, you know, the family didn’t have much money. It’s an uninsured home. FEMA hadn’t been around yet. So my members, you know, workers from Nicaragua and Honduras just climbed onto the roof and started fixing it, just for free.
You know, the family that lived there, this was before the election, they were intending to be Trump supporters. And putting all that aside, what took precedence there was the relationship. So in return for fixing up their roof, they took a huge pot out of their house. House didn’t have electricity, but they made a fire and made an incredible Cajun gumbo for lunch. And we ate and told stories. And the son in the family, a 20 something kid who works at the grocery store said, well, he thinks he wants to be a roofer, it looks like a pretty cool job. And now we’re setting up to train him.
And that’s, you know, in a little corner of the world, a small flower blooming. It’s one relationship, you know, but probably– with our nurturing — a lifelong relationship between that Nicaraguan worker and that young man from Louisiana. And that friendship is going to change minds. It’s going to expand both those human beings and it’s going to be the basis of our future.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: That’s such a great way to put it too. And often that can seem like such a small scale, right? It’s one person and one person, but that’s that whole person’s life. Like your life feels really large and vast and important. So it’s. Right. It’s that’s one person’s path and one person’s story, but for them it’s everything. So I think that’s such an interesting way to look at it, right? It’s like a little seed at a time.
SAKET SONI: That’s the human scale, right? And when that family says thank you, my work is to turn that spontaneous moment into a basis of long term connection, into a bond, into long lasting friendships that can be the basis of a new social fabric, civic fabric in this country. That’s the work that we do. A lot of it is about helping each side– the immigrant worker and the resident– understand the other side’s suffering, but also express gratitude to the other side for what they’re allowing them to do.
And I’ve seen that work miracles. You know, I’ve seen immigrants drive across states to check up on the residents they helped bring home long after the recovery is over. I’ve seen residents at the bar defend immigrants to their friends when immigrants are not around, which is exactly what we need people to do, right? Is at the bar say, no, no, no, that’s not how we talk about immigrants, right? And I think those are the seeds of change.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Absolutely. All right. Well, Saket Soni, thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate you making these connections between Mo and your work that I think myself and the writers have been talking about, but it’s so wonderful to hear you kind of paint this picture for us. Thank you so much for joining us and bringing, you know, a little levity and perspective to the conversation. I appreciate it.
SAKET SONI: Thank you, Gabe. Thank you so much.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: The series Mo urges us to confront the fact that without immigrants, and without the melding of many cultures, the U.S. would not be the same, and uses humor to tell the story of the arduous journey that is immigration. Amer understands that when it comes to immigration, people’s humanity is often denied, but what can’t be denied is his ability to challenge and complicate existing narratives using humor.
I’m also deeply moved by Amer’s commitment to build community while finding common ground with others. And how he highlights the importance of this both in his art and his personal life. I think this is a critical component in the work of Saket Soni as well.
Soni’s commitment to working with immigrant communities and upending narratives surrounding immigrant workers is also a feat in itself. For Soni, the tools he uses to dismantle these tropes are storytelling and community building. He fosters important relationships in the face of crisis. Bringing together those that need each other, but may not know it. That’s our show for today. Thank you so much for joining us.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: As you all know by now, I hope you do, the Peabody Awards are decided unanimously. So to close out our episode, I bring you We Disrupt This Broadcast‘s unanimous decision where we unanimously pick the most disruptive line of the day.
MO AMER: Am I Mexican? Maybe I was lied to my entire life.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Next time on We Disrupt This Broadcast, we’ve got director Ben Stiller and actor Adam Scott of the Peabody Award winning series Severance.
BEN STILLER: Whether it’s in a cold corporate climate or in a prison, any place where there are barriers that are put up to that connection, people are going to figure out a way to connect with each other. And I think that’s why we like stories about that, because you’re seeing the human will and the human need for connection and how it can overcome those different barriers.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: This one’s for all of our Innies and our Outies. You don’t want to miss it.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: We Disrupt This broadcast is a Peabody and Center for Media and Social Impact production hosted by me, Gabe Gonzalez, with on air contributions from Caty Borum and Jeffrey Jones. The show is brought to you by executive producers, Caty Borum, Jeffrey Jones, and Bethany Hall. Producer Jordana Jason. Writers: Sasha Stewart, Jordana Jason, Bethany Hall, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, and myself, Gabe Gonzalez. Consulting producer: Jennifer Keishin Armstrong. Graphic designer: Olivia Klaus. Operations producer: Varsha Ramani. The marketing and communications team: Christine Dreyer and Tunishia Singleton. From PRX: the team is Terrence Bernardo, Jennie Cataldo, Edwin Ochoa and Amber Walker. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.