IN MEMORY OF TAM TRAN AND CINTHYA FELIX

by Kent Wong

Tam Tran and Cinthya Felix were women of extraordinary capacity.  They were brilliant, compassionate, beautiful, and full of life and energy.  They represented the best and brightest of this generation.  Tam and Cinthya were leaders of IDEAS at UCLA, and were proud UCLA graduates; both entered Ivy League graduate schools on scholarship:  Tam at Brown and Cinthya at Columbia.  They were gifted scholars and committed leaders and activists. Both had boundless energy, and enjoyed life to its fullest.  Tam and Cinthya both came from humble origins, from immigrant families, from working class communities of color.  Tam and Cinthya were undocumented immigrants, victims of a broken immigration system that force many immigrants to live a life in the shadows.

But Tam and Cinthya never lived their lives in the shadows.  Their courage, their determination, their spirit were an inspiration to us all.   And they were leading advocates for passage of the DREAM Act to provide rights for millions of undocumented immigrant youth and students throughout the country.  And in their honor and memory, we will pass the DREAM Act soon, very soon.

I was so inspired by Cinthya’s decision to attend the masters in public health program at Columbia University, perhaps the first undocumented immigrant student ever to do so.  With no family or friends in New York, with no money, she found a way to build a new life and a new support network in New York City.  She worked as a graduate student researcher on health care access within immigrant communities, and dreamed of becoming a physician, a people’s doctor who would serve the community.

I visited her in New York a few months ago.  She took me to her office near Columbia, where I met her faculty and graduate student colleagues, and I was amazed how this young woman from East L.A. had made New York her city.  I took Cinthya and Tam out to eat ribs at Cinthya’s favorite rib joint.  They enjoyed food like they enjoyed life, and these two young women could eat.

Tam worked with me at the UCLA Labor Center for several years as a teaching assistant, film maker, and as a project coordinator.  She and Susan Melgarejo were our two teaching assistants on the first class ever taught to focus on the issue of undocumented immigrant students.  Tam and Susan worked with our students to publish Underground Undergrads, and Tam’s story is featured in our book.  I traveled with her to present the book and speak at conferences throughout California, and in Nevada, New York, and Washington D.C.  Tam was petite, soft spoken, unassuming, and excessively modest.   But she had extraordinary courage and determination.

Tam testified before Congress in 2007, was featured in the national media, built a new immigrant student organization in Rhode Island, and emerged as a leading national advocate for the Dream Act.  Tam’s parents were picked up by ICE agents in a pre-dawn raid in their home in Orange County, and it was Tam who organized a national campaign to have them released and to stop their deportation.

Tam was a gifted film maker, and her documentaries have educated thousands of people on the plight of undocumented immigrant students.  Her latest and final project was a new documentary on her good friend Cinthya Felix.  And in celebrating Cinthya and Tam’s life, Tam’s good friend Tim Jieh has agreed to complete this documentary.

I will forever be grateful for the honor and privilege of having known Cinthya and Tam.  Although we mourn their passing, we celebrate their lives.    For Tam and Cinthya lived life to the fullest.  They deeply loved their moms, their families, and gave so much of themselves.  They treated each and every obstacle and barrier as a challenge to overcome.   Nothing could ever stop them from achieving their hopes and dreams.  They developed life-long friends, the kind of friends you can always count on 24 – 7 to be there for you.  And Tam and Cinthya were sisters, they were kindred spirits, they were always in sync with each other, planning their next meal, organizing their next trip in search of new adventure, pursuing their next dream.

Tam and Cinthya accomplished more in their short lives than ever could have been imagined.  In their honor and memory, let us carry on the work they left behind.  Let us celebrate their lives and their spirit with a new commitment to pass the Dream Act, to working for social and economic justice, and for civil and human rights.   It is so hard, it is so painful to say good bye to these incredible young women.  Many in this room are filled with grief, with despair, with anger.

But if Tam and Cinthya were with us today, they would not want us to wallow in self pity or in anger.  They would be there to encourage us to keep moving, as they always moved forward; to keep struggling, for they always struggled on.  Let us turn grief into strength, let us carry on in their memory, let us carry on their spirit, and let us create a better society with more compassion, more humanity, and more love.  Tam and Cinthya, I pledge to you both, that your spirit will live on in our hearts and in our minds forever.