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FEATURING JOSEFINA LOPEZ - More than two decades ago, full-figured women all over the US and world felt seen and celebrated when the film Real Women Have Curves debuted to great acclaim and the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. That film put its writer and producer, Josefina Lopez firmly on the map even as it gave visibility to women who are invisibilized, women who work in LA’s garment factories not unlike the ones that federal immigration agents have recently been raiding, snatching and disappearing mothers and daughters.  

This paywall is here because Real Women need a Living Wage so please consider signing up for access to the video and full transcript of my conversation with the great Josefina Lopez!

Lopez is a screenwriter and playwright, film producer and performer, born in Mexico and undocumented for more than a dozen years before receiving amnesty. She is also the founding Artistic Director of Casa 0101 Theater in Boyle Heights, LA, and has produced over 200 plays celebrating Latinos, immigrants, and the LGBT and BIPOC communities.

The Real Women Have Curves musical opened on Broadway April 27, 2025. Lopez's latest project, 20 lbs to Happiness, considered a quasi-sequel to Real Women Have Curves, premiered at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival this year.  I spoke with the acclaimed filmmaker recently about her work and the importance of immigrant stories.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Welcome to the program Josefina. Such an honor, and thrilled to have you. 

Josefina Lopez: Thank you so much, Sonali. I always love talking to you and I love the fact that you're an immigrant as well, and that we share this in common. We tell the truth about our community because there aren't enough voices speaking up, and it's important that our voices be heard, especially right now. 

Kolhatkar: Exactly right now. And you know, I have to tell you, Josefina, when I saw your film all those years ago, and I've watched it several times since, because it's one of those films that you like to rewatch over and over. Um, I didn't feel, you know, at first that, 'oh, what would I have in common with garment workers in LA?' But I felt so connected to those women that you profiled in a film whose screenplay was based on your own background, your own life as well. 

And I am wondering if we can start by talking about the universality of experiences at a time when empathy is unfortunately in low supply, given that we have a big segment of our population encouraging and celebrating. Donald Trump's very, very disgusting deportation, detainment and you know, Gestapo-like tactics against this very community. How important is the universality of these stories, like the ones you write? 

Lopez: You know, I had to write the story because I worked in this factory and the work was tough, but we laughed all the time and we, and we shared incredible stories that made every day a beautiful day. And I just remember thinking, I know people may feel sorry for us, but the kind of joy and connection that we have as Latinos, as women, as workers I just was like, ‘Oh my God, people need to know how much joy you can still have.’ 

And, and that's the power we have, is that we can choose to stand in joy and dignity. And, you know, that's what it really was, is that these women were so dignified because they were third world feminists and they were there working and we, we didn't have time to feel sorry for ourselves. 

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FEATURING FREDID TOLEDO & LUANA LOPEZ - Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have arrested nearly 3,000 people in the Los Angeles area since June 2025, wreaking havoc on the city’s inhabitants. ICE agents also went after farmworkers in central California, in Camarillo and Carpinteria, rounding up and snatching about 300 people. One farm worker named Jaime Alanís Garcia died during the raid from injuries sustained after he fell off the roof of a greenhouse.

Your paid subscription allows you access to the video and full transcript of this powerful conversation with Luana Lopez, the daughter of Ana Franco Galdamez who was snatched by ICE agents on June 19 and remains in detention, and Fredid Toledo, an activist with Homies Unidos who is supporting Ana Franco's family.

Meanwhile, a federal judge on July 11 issued a temporary restraining order against ICE raids in Southern California saying they violate people’s constitutional rights. 

What has it been like for people in the Los Angeles area to survive these dark times when the Trump administration appears determined to make an example of the city?

I spoke recently with Fredid Toledo, Youth Development Coordinator at Homies Unidos, and Luana Lopez, a student at Cal State Northridge, whose mother Ana Franco Galdamez who was arrested by ICE agents.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Let me start with you, Luana. You are a student at Cal State Northridge, as I mentioned. Tell me what happened to your mother. 

Luana Lopez: So my mom was attending work like a regular day and um, there was an ICE raid, like a big ICE raid where she was at, and she was one of the people who got taken that day. I think it was June 19 at 7:30 in the morning. 

Kolhatkar: So it was soon after they first started the raids? 

Lopez: Yeah. 

Kolhatkar: And she was working and, and she was rounded up with, with others or was it just her individually? 

Lopez: No, other people got taken as well that day. 

Kolhatkar: Where were you when this happened? 

Lopez: I was actually at home with my sister and um, my older sister had called me saying that ICE was in the area my mom was working at and we tried calling my mom and she wasn't answering. And that's when we…

Kolhatkar: Is it just you and your sister and your mother, your is a family of three? 

Lopez: Yeah, it's just us three. Tell me where your family's from. I understand that your mom is from El Salvador?

Lopez: Yeah, my mom's Salvadorian. So my mom came here to the United States because she was suffering a lot of domestic violence by her ex-husband in El Salvador. And she took the chance that when she had put him in jail, she took the chance to come to the United States and I was born here in California. 

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FEATURING HUSSAM AYLOUSH - It has been more than six months since Syrian dictator Bashar Al Assad was overthrown, ending a bloody civil war and his family’s 54-year rule over the Arab nation.

How has the battered nation been faring since then under the rule of new leader Ahmad al-Sharaa? 

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FEATURING SHANELLE MATTHEWS & MARZENA ZUKOWSKA - Right wing ideas and stories infuse our culture every day, powered by the endless resources of billionaires and other moneyed elites. Those stories shape our culture and our policies.

Now, a new anthology of strategies aims to help progressive, people-centered narratives take hold–stories that can reshape our world to recenter collective care and equity. It’s called Liberation Stories: Building Narrative Power for 21st-Century Social Movements.

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FEATURING VICTOR NARRO - The Los Angeles-area city of Huntington Park just passed a strict sanctuary city ordinance in response to the violent invasion of federal immigration agents.

The ordinance ensures that the city will not cooperate with ICE agents, nor will the city allow its facilities to be used by ICE agents unless required by federal law. It also establishes a fund to support impacted people. 

Huntington Park is 97% Latino and has been an epicenter of LA-area ICE raids. In late June 2025, ICE agents blasted the door off a home in Huntington Park in a violent raid that left children inside traumatized. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was present for that raid.

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FEATURING SUCHI BRANFMAN & FORREST REYES - Dance, like other art forms, is deeply therapeutic, and some would say, powerful. But can dance tear down prison walls?

Perhaps not literally, but, if Suchi Branfman and Forrest Reyes have anything to do about it, it can do so figuratively and, in the long term, pave the way for prison abolition. 

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FEATURING PROF KENT WONG - Donald Trump’s program of mass deportation is going strong in Los Angeles and around the nation. On July 7, about a hundred Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents descended on Los Angeles’s immigrant-rich neighborhood of MacArthur Park, right by a children’s summer camp. Mayor Karen Bass denounced the action saying it amounted to “a city under siege, under armed occupation.”

But, with a compliant Congress and a complicit Supreme Court, Trump and his anti-immigrant machine appear to have free rein over the nation’s democratic institutions. 

Among the most effective activist tactics from the nation’s dark past is nonviolent direct action that has its roots in the civil rights movement. Is it time to revive this practice in the face of fascism?

If you live in the LA area, there will be a nonviolent direct action training at the LA Convention Center on July 10.

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FEATURING SOPHIA MIRTO & ALEXANDRIA HADDIX - More than a 100 people have been killed, including dozens of children in catastrophic flooding in central Texas on the fourth of July. Among the hardest hit was Camp Mystic, a girls’ camp in Hill Country, Texas, where 27 campers and counselors were lost when four months worth of rain was dumped in four hours.

The tragedy has prompted fresh scrutiny over state warnings of such natural disasters in the central part of Texas where officials have spent a decade discussing the installation of sirens to alert people for evacuations. There is also concern over the Trump administration’s enforcement of numerous vacancies in critical federal agencies including the National Weather Service.

Meanwhile, local organizations rapidly mobilized and began engaging in mutual aid efforts.

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FEATURING TREVOR SMITH & EMI AGUILAR - A new study on the impact of narratives that combine the common links between Black and Indigenous communities is an effective way to  push movements for reparations and Land Back.

Currently, there are rich and diverse movements all over the nation for reparations for Black people in the U.S. and, there is a dynamic push by Indigenous-led groups for returning land to their nations and communities. What if these movements and their stories were linked? 

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FEATURING RON GOCHEZ -  Fear has gripped Los Angeles’ Latinx, immigrant, undocumented, and mixed status communities since early June when President Donald Trump sent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to Southern California. So far, an estimated 1,600 people have been snatched up and disappeared from the streets of Los Angeles and surrounding neighborhoods. 

Earlier this year, Union del Barrio, in anticipation of Trump’s planned raids, convened a “Community Self-Defense Coalition.” Neighborhoods are now organizing people in rapid responses to the appearance of ICE agents. 

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