The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – All Else Failed: The Unlikely Volunteers at the Heart of the Migrant Aid Crisis by Dana Sachs

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

All Else Failed: The Unlikely Volunteers at the Heart of the Migrant Aid Crisis by Dana Sachs As hundreds of thousands of displaced people sought refuge in Europe, the global relief system failed. This is the story of the volunteers who stepped forward to help. In 2015, increasing numbers of refugees and migrants, most of them fleeing war-torn homelands, arrived by boat on the shores of Greece, setting off the greatest human displacement in Europe since WWII. As journalists reported horrific mass drownings, an ill-prepared and seemingly indifferent world looked on. Those who reached Europe needed food, clothing, medicine, and shelter, but the international aid system broke down completely. All Else Failed is Dana Sachs’s compelling eyewitness account of the successes—and failures—of the volunteer relief network that emerged to meet the enormous need. Closely following the odysseys of seven individual men and women, and their families, it tells a story of despair and resilience, revealing the humanity within an immense humanitarian disaster.

You wanted the best? You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. The Chris Voss Show.

The family loves you, but doesn't judge you. At least not as harsh as your mother-in-law. Anyway, go clean your room. Anyway, as always, for the show to your family, friends, and relatives, you can only go to goodreads.com for just Chris Voss. YouTube.com for just Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com for just Chris Voss. Subscribe to the big LinkedIn newsletter.

That thing's killing it over there. And I don't know what's going on, man. That LinkedIn hasress Chris Foss. Describe the big LinkedIn newsletter. That thing's killing it over there. And I don't know what's going on, man. That LinkedIn has really turned into something, something else. We have an amazing author on the show. She's the author of the newest book that came out March 21st, 2023. Dana Sachs is the author. She's on the show with us today. We're hearing her brilliant insight and her research and experience with her new book, All Else Failed, The Unlikely Volunteers at the Heart of the Migrant Aid

Crisis. She joins us on the show today to talk about it. And I think it's going to be pretty insightful. We're going to learn a lot about history, things that go on, and hopefully how to create a better world. Dana Sachs is a journalist, novelist, and co-founder of the non-profit Humanity Now, direct refugee relief, which supports grassroots teams providing aid to displaced people. A former Fulbright scholar, she is the author of three works of non-fiction,

The House on Dream Street, Memoir of an American Woman in Vietnam, The Life We Were Given, Operation Babylift, International Adoption, and The Children of War in Vietnam, and all else failed, The Unlikely Volunteers at the Heart of the Migrant Aid Crisis that has just come out, as well as the novels If You Lived Here, The Secret of Nightingale Palace. Her writings appeared in numerous publications, including the Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, and Mother Jones, and she lives in Wilmington, North Carolina. Welcome to the show, Dana. How are you? Thank you. I'm fine, thanks. It's great to be here. Thank you, and it's an honor to have you as well. Congratulations on the launch of your new book. Where's your.com so you'd like to have people find you on the internet? www.danasax.com

There you go. And you've written quite a few books there. What made you motivated to want to write this particular one? Well, I actually went to Greece to volunteer with the grassroots aid effort in April of 2016. And I went with a friend of mine who works with refugees in the United

States. And she told me she was going over there to volunteer. And I had really mostly thought about humanitarian aid in terms of, you know, the International Rescue Committee and the Red Cross and the United Nations. And I said to her, you can just go over there and volunteer. And she said, you can. And in fact, they need people because the mainstream organizations and the governments that we expect to help were really not managing it in Greece at that time. And there were hundreds of thousands of people who were moving through Greece over a period of about just a few months. And they needed everything like blankets, food, clothing. They'd gotten off boats. So, you know, those small dinghies you saw photographs of,

and they had nothing. So a lot of individuals just went there to help. And when I got there and I saw what this grassroots effort looked like, I thought, this is an amazing story. And so I decided to write the book about it. There you go. And what was, so we can dial this back for history. Some people watch your videos 10 years from Syria.

They had escaped into Turkey. They found in Turkey that they couldn't they couldn't work. They couldn't make it happen for their families. And so they as one of the people in my book told me that he and his family had had made it to Turkey and they thought they'd wait out the war there. And then they just couldn't get work. They couldn't they couldn't provide for the family. And said he felt like turkey was saying get on a boat and go to europe there you go and so what made you interested in this what what sort of life path that uh you know made you say hey i'm gonna go volunteer for this because a lot of people you

know they they kind of send money from afar they kind of watch the TV and they go, well, that's lots of prayers. What made you want to really involve your life in it? What kind of built you as that sort of person that felt that was important? I've always been a traveler and I think travel expands your view. It connects you to people in a deeper way than just reading about things. And I lived in Vietnam for a long time. And I wrote several books about Vietnam. And I think when I when I went there for the first time in like 1989, 1990, I was sort of shocked to see how much I had in common with Vietnamese people, because I'd grown up during the war. And I just had an idea of like, Vietnamese as being the enemy and of course that

was not the case and I wrote several books to sort of like convey that to an American audience and so I think that you could go back that far and say that that experience opened up my mind to the idea that we can learn so much from other people and by whenever I have the opportunity to meet people from different cultures and try to learn from them, I jump at it. And I think it's important that everyone does that, that we understand, you know, that even though there's different cultures around the world, we're still we're still a humanity. We're still a group of people that are human beings at the core. interesting to see uh you know how massive this uh this migrant thing was and you know the war that was going on in syria largely and other things going on in the middle east with uh al-qaeda and and all the craziness that was going on during that time uh how many people uh were running

were migrating out of out of uh out of the middle east and trying to get into places of europe well i can tell you that um over the course of the year 2015 and i didn get into places of Europe? Well, I can tell you that over the course of the year 2015, and I didn't get to Greece until 2016, but in 2015, a million people, migrants and refugees, came through. I'm not sure if it was just Greece or into Europe, across the Mediterranean, but mostly coming in through Greece. And during that time, they were mostly moving north. The borders were still open, so they were able to move north into other parts of Europe. And I'm sure you

can remember all the photographs of these long lines of people walking down rural roads and, you know, children carrying teddy bears and parents carrying children and they had whatever they could carry on their backs. But then in the beginning of 2016, Europe basically decided enough, too many people. And so they closed the border between Greece and the countries north of Greece, particularly Macedonia. And that meant that any people who had come into Greece before that but hadn't gotten out were effectively stuck. And that was something like 60,000 people at that time. And that's why a lot of makeshift camps developed along the border where those people were just waiting, hoping to cross. Yeah.

And I mean, there was the images. I remember the one that was in The Guardian and other places of the boy face down laying on the beach. There were Syrians that were drowning. Their boats were returning. It was a hell of a crisis. And you know, if you've seen the cities in Syria that were just basically

I don't know, Carver bombed is the right word, but just basically bombed and destroyed to death where the cities became inhabitable cities with millions of people i think in them and uh just the images are heartbreaking they were um just seeing seeing people go through these crises was were we not prepared for this sort of thing or the the uh the you know like the un and other refugee services not prepared for it? Or was it financially overwhelming? Or what was the crisis that made it such a need that so many volunteers had to come to aid?

There were both sort of political and institutional reasons. They were not prepared, partly because, for the most part, the United Nations and some of these other large humanitarian aid organizations, they don't do humanitarian relief in Europe. The idea is that Europe can take care of itself. And this was the largest humanitarian emergency or movement of people, if you want to call it, since the end of World War II. So these organizations were, they should have been prepared, but they weren't prepared. And when the numbers of people started to increase, they weren't really sure what to do. So they just basically were doing the minimal. And that's why there was such a large effort among individuals and small grassroots aid teams to fill those gaps. And you follow a group of refugees

going through the whole process in the book. To my understanding, some of the families, seven different individual men, women, and their families. Tell us a little bit about that, the journey that they go on. Well, my idea was to talk, really focus on these volunteers and the people who got involved in the volunteer effort. As it turns out, the seven individuals and families I focused on, three of them were women from non-conflict ridden countries. You know, one from New Zealand, two from the United Kingdom. But the other four were actually refugees who became involved in the volunteer effort as a way of helping themselves and their families.

And I would also say, and I think this becomes clear in the book, you sort of see how becoming a volunteer and stepping forward and helping other refugees helped a lot of these people to bring dignity back to their own lives and these are these are people who've lost everything they've been driven for their homes probably bombed from their homes uh they're they're escaping you know they've reached a point you know it it takes a lot i i don't think you know i've talked to people about the migrant crisis whether it's south of our borders or in other countries but but it takes a lot to drive people from their homes it takes a lot sometimes it's sometimes it's pretty much a threat of death whether it's local mobs or or whether it's you know prevailing uh

political winds like with what was going on with syria but it takes a lot to people to just uproot themselves from a place they call home from a a country they know, from a place they're born in, to want to run someplace. And especially if they're family-oriented. They've got kids. They've got whatever the case may be. And to leave with just whatever few belongings they can pack or they have the privilege to take on their back and travel with and maybe not in the best of health i remember watching people escaping uh ukraine at the outbreak of the war and you know a lot of older people who couldn't walk were in wheelchairs

trying to cross you know chasms that were bombed out on roads and stuff and you know you see the people that are affected the most uh you know, are usually families and older people, people that, you know, they can't deal with this sort of bombardment that they're taking. But it takes a lot to cross that Rubicon of going, well, we need to abandon everything and run. Yeah, I think that's true um the people that i know and have talked to they continue i mean even years later they still suffer it's a heartbreak i mean i don't think you and i we're not refugees and we can't understand what that what the experience is like but we can understand what it means to love your home and to be connected to your family and the people who live in your neighborhood and the language. I mean, when you leave, we're lucky we speak English because English is now really a universal language. But if you leave your homeland and you don't speak English or

another language, your status goes down immediately. Your ability to function goes down immediately for men in a lot. I mean, especially who are like maybe the, the heads of the family, the sense of like powerlessness and weakness that, that they can feel by going somewhere where they can't function. I mean, even something like going to a doctor becomes really difficult or,

or the legal system and trying to get asylum or opening a bank account, all of those things, you become sort of maybe in your own mind, your confidence drops down. And these are parts of some of the tragedies that people experience when they leave the place where they've grown up and functioned for their whole lives. Yeah. And it takes a lot. I mean, imagine putting the most important things. I mean, I have a case that I call the football, and it's a case that's the grab-and-run case.

If my house is on fire, flood, whatever the thing is, these are my most valuable items, my photos, my recordings, my dog's ashes. These are the things that I really feel I can't live without. There's no way I could carry this box on my back for any given time, more than five minutes. It's heavy as heck. But it's meant to be a grab and run. And if you had to ask me,

and probably without any preparation, a moment's notice that I would have to grab what small items that I have to decide to carry in a backpack and then carry those for miles and miles in hunger, rain, whatever the case may be, and without any other real provisions of trying to carry provisions of food and water, I really don't know what I would cut that down to. And, you know, I see that when I see migrants moving through the world, whether it's south of our border or in other places, you know,

literally carrying almost nothing. And sometimes you'll see a child carrying a doll or a teddy bear or something that's important to them. But you think about the hundreds or thousands of miles they may circumvent, cross, the things they're going to deal with, the things that were going on in that crisis where they're trying to cross small seas and oceans and get to any place there could be safety. And it really was an overwhelming experience. What do you hope people come away from reading your book? What do you hope that the impact might be? Well, I'm going to just come back for a second and refer to what you're talking about, about what people give up,

and then I'll return to that question. But in the book I record, there's one family that um each time they move so they go to turkey and then they they make it to greece and then they eventually they make it to germany but each time they make one of these moves they have to give up some of the stuff that they've brought with them they cut they leave syria with um you know big blood suitcases full of luggage and then they leave Turkey and they have to throw things out. And you can see the mother talking with her children and the daughters are saying,

can I keep my school uniform? No. Can I keep my documents from school? No. Can I keep this doll? No. And it goes in the wastebasket. And so, yeah, what you're saying about the kind of the loss of physical things that mean something, maybe they can keep one photograph or their passport, but very little. And so, I mean, of course, obviously, that is one of the things I'm trying to convey in the book is the experience of refugees. But I also would say that we do have, we have opportunities to read about the experience of refugees in that way, in the media, in books. Luckily, there's been a lot written about refugees. And luckily, there's a lot of memoirs out by refugees about their experience. And I celebrate that. I think that the particular thing that this book in this book I was trying to capture was the idea that people can rally and respond to crisis by working together and by a kind of generosity that we don't expect. video footage of these crises, or we read about it, we often just see the disaster. I mean, even if you're talking about Ukraine, we just see the disaster. And we rarely see the moments,

and there are so many, when people begin to coalesce around each other to support each other and help. And that's what I really wanted to capture in this book, the way that individuals can get involved. And, and I mean, we need we need the government and the and the large humanitarian institutions, we can't do this without them, and they need to improve. But we also need to see the roles that we can play, and and how much we can learn from it and how much we can um how we can find it meaningful in our own lives to get involved as well yeah and you talk in the book about ngos being completely out of touch the red cross etc etc that gives a little touch in on that i mean i don't want to i like i said i i i don't want to say that they're um useless they, they need to be better.

We really need them to be better. They are not nimble. They are not flexible. They are not easily adaptive to the crises that come up. And therefore, they can do major things in very slow ways, but they can't necessarily respond

to changing situations in ways that are really effective. Do you think that those NGOs have learned from the crisis and maybe prepared themselves for these things better? I would like to think so. The way I describe the failures of the NGOs and the European Union and, you know, individual governments is that is that I kind of I compare it to a fire in a house. The house is burning down and the fire trucks that you think are going to come don't come.

And so the neighbors step forward and they do what they can to help. And and I'm trying to really focus on this effort by the neighbors. And I see that the fire trucks didn't come. I can tell you that. And I can tell you that the house burned down, though I can't necessarily say why. But I don't call myself an expert on the structures of non-governmental organizations and humanitarian organizations. So I would like to say that they are learning and adapting but i i i'm not really seeing evidence of that if we look

at um uh the ukraine crisis um i'm not seeing that there's such a huge change yeah the you know it it's interesting to me how we lose the humanity of it. Oh, you know, we always have these words that we put on people. Oh, they're immigrants. Oh, they're human beings. You know, George Carlin talked about the importance of language and words and stuff. And how sometimes we use words to be dismissive, to take away the emotion, to take away, oh, that's painful to think about. So we're going to dissolve the word down into something

that doesn't mean as much. And by doing that, it makes it more palatable across the news when we see it. When we call somebody an immigrant, I mean, this country was founded on immigrants. My great-grandfather was an immigrant to this country. I mean, we came in the late 1800s if it wasn't for immigration policy in america and statute of liberty i suppose uh the uh you know

well i wouldn't be here most of us wouldn't actually in this country when it really comes down to it uh it'd probably still be native americans um so you know it's it's it's interesting the attitudes that come of it and how we deface the humanity of it. And we just kind of see them as, well, these people are, you know, almost invaders is how sometimes there's some news channels that present them that way. And so I think books like yours are great because they show the humanity that these are real people these are and and and in any and when we look at folks that are going through these processes or challenges we understand that it wouldn't take much for us to for some of us to become in the same sort of thing i mean a catastrophic event nuclear uh some sort of you know a major earthquake or some sort of thing you know we've seen that recently with tornadoes

and things and i think it's destroying whole cities uh you know there's major earthquake or some sort of thing. You know, we've seen that recently with tornadoes and things, and I think it's destroying whole cities. You know, it doesn't take much to lose everything and to be adrift. And so, you know, how do we need to look at immigrants more? How do we need to understand this process? How do we need to do better? I think is what I'm asking. Yeah. I mean, I tell, I, one of the central characters in my book, she's a character, I'm calling her a character, but she's of course a real person. I call her Rima. I changed the

names of the refugees for their privacy and safety. Syrian, uh, housewife who lived in a town outside of Aleppo. You mentioned Aleppo, which was basically destroyed. And, um, she had five children and one more on the way. And, you know, when I say, when I, I like to use the word housewife because housewife is a word we can relate to in this country. I like to say, and this is true that that she loved organic. She loves organic cosmetics and she was, you know, loved to have parties at her house and in Syria and and all these kinds of things. I'm trying to remind people of how similar we are. Her life was not that different from ours.

You know, she had a really nice kitchen and she had marble floors and she was a chef. And so when things started to really go downhill in her community and she and her husband had to decide, OK, we're going to flee. By describing her as someone a lot like us, I'm hoping that you can see that she's not that different. And we often see photographs of the people once they've made it a long way on their journeys. And they have, you know, they're wearing, they could be wearing almost rags and they have nothing and they're dirty. And they might, you know, be wearing shoes that are way too small for them because they've ended up with clothing that's been distributed to them through some charitable organization. And so they become less and less like us. And they become more and more something different, something other. And we see that at the border, I mean, in the Mexico border, because those are people who have had extraordinarily difficult journeys to get where they are. And they look, a lot of them look worn out and terrible. And as,

I mean, in contrast, last year, when the war started in Ukraine, we saw people fleeing Ukraine with a, you know, a suitcase, a roller suitcase, and sweaters and nice coats, because they had not been through a journey like that they drove to the border and they crossed. So I think it's important for us to see that the people who are making these journeys are are people that could be us very easily be us. And if we feel this kind of affinity with the Ukrainians crossing the border because they look like us, it's not just because of race, although I think race is part of it. It's also because they didn't have they didn't make this they didn't escape a war that had been going on for a long time at least last year um and they they came across looking healthier yeah and you bring up a good point i think that when people and race plays a big factor

in it but when people see these folks and they've been traveling thousands of miles by foot through water, mud, rain, you know, whatever the elements are, you know, they look dirty. They look, they look like they haven't had a good time and they haven't. But we don't see them as to where you, like you mentioned, you know, they had a beautiful life. They had something they thought was be forever. They had their home, their, home, their domicile. They had their job. They had their work.

They had their clothes, you know. And, you know, I mean, I've seen pictures before and after of places like Syria, but the before and afters of Ukraine. And you see the shops and you see the coffee places that people used to go to, the stores they used to shop. And they had a normal life just like many of us do in in in worlds that haven't been torn apart yet uh knock on wood and why is it important you know what one of the factors that came out of the 200 2015 uh migrant crisis was an extreme uh blowback of of right wing um sort of anger or response to migrants. And this whole sort of thing that I despise, that we have this, instead of being benevolent,

we have this knee-jerk reaction that goes to, you know, if we have to help someone, then it takes away from us, that there's a scarcity mindset to it, instead of a benevolence mindset that a rising tide lifts all boats. And, you know, even in America, you know, we're suffering from, you know, not having enough people in the workforce right now, or we're suffering from inflation. You know, we're like, oh, we shouldn't bring new people into this country.

Well, that's what made America great was bringing immigrants in and having this huge melting pot of ideas, you know, somewhere else, brilliant minds, Steve Jobs, the head of Google right now, came from other countries. And without them, you go, where would we be without some of these things? So do you feel that maybe in your book, or focusing on this migrant sort of element that we need to change our mindset towards immigrants? Yeah, I mean, that's the ideal. I think most of us came from an immigrant background ourselves, at least a few generations back. And I think there's a lot of fear. There's a lot of fear in our country and in other countries that people are afraid that they will lose what they have. And it's a different

mindset. Honestly, I don't know the way to combat that and shift the mindset to see it as a positive thing. I think fear is a difficult thing to change. But I do think that when people come into contact with immigrants and they see what they bring to this country, I think it helps to give people a little bit more of an open mind about the possibility. And I absolutely agree with you about, I mean, demographically, we need more people. We need more workers in this country. And when you look at immigrants, it's quite amazing what they're able to do. I mean, as I said, I spent a lot of time in Vietnam and I've been watching the Vietnamese refugee community for a few generations now. And over and over again, you see them arriving in this country and working as, you know, bussers and restaurants or dishwashers and the next generation goes to college and there's the next generation might be surgeons. I mean,

I've seen that like a bus boy and then their, their children are surgeons and scientists and scholars and lawyers and all these different things or business owners. I mean, we're all eating Vietnamese food all the time now in this country. And I think that's great. You know, personally, I find that it makes our country much stronger and more interesting and better and economically sounder. But I think it takes a kind of shift in your mind to start to see it as a positive thing.

There you go. I mean, last month we interviewed billionaire John Katsimatidis on the show. And he came from a Greece immigrant family. And they came with nothing. And they were broke. And their father worked every hard job he possibly could to make ends meet. And the next generation is a billionaire um and he's had an effect and and he does great charity and stuff uh an effect on the world and and so you know it there what do you think about uh do you have any sort of thoughts on what i've always

been kind of shocked by is the close the door behind you mentality of immigrants. We've seen a lot of Cuban and Mexican immigrants that come to this country, they get established, they get their citizenships, and they believe that migrants shouldn't come to this country anymore. They call it the close door behind me policy. And it comes from that scarcity mindset as well. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or address that in your book at all.

I mean, I don't address it in my book, but I feel sadness about that because like I said, I believe that immigration makes us a stronger country. I mean, I really deeply believe that. And so this kind of scarcity mentality is not helpful. Yeah. And rising tide lifts all boats. I mean, when you have scarcity mentality, that's a losing mentality. If this country had had a scarcity mentality, you just can't think of

how bad it would be. I mean, there was the times in the, I think it was the 20 or the 30s when we shipped a Jewish ship back to Germany, which ended up in the Holocaust. You know, we had this defeatist sort of nationalist scarcity program. And, you know, we're going through a crisis. A lot of countries are going through a crisis right now. China, Japan, where their populations are dwindling. Their marriage rates, their production of children are dwindling. And when that happens, your tax base falls off, your empires fall down.

You have significant seismic shifts in what are core families to building blocks of countries. And so this makes a demographic change. I mean, you're seeing it. You're seeing Japan literally starting to disappear off the face of the earth with its dwindling population. Their house is just sitting around empty because their dwindling population. And, of course, their new generation can't afford it.

So I'm glad you bring some light to this. I'm glad you shine the humanity of it because when i see people that are immigrants i see human beings i see people i see people that would that i can empathize with that very easily i could be in their situation uh with any turn of events especially you know some of the seismic shifts we've seen with climate and uh you know, disasters from that. Anything more you want to tease out in the book before we go? I think that it's important, as you said, to see that and to, I'm trying to bring a little bit of hope into this question of what's, you know,

what it means, what does migration mean to us? And I think if you start to see it in a positive way, and in my book, I try to weave together the stories of all these different people, not just the refugees, but also the volunteers who saw this book that I expect them to like jump on a plane or get in their car and go to the Mexican border or whatever, but there are so many ways that we can get involved, um, into our own lives and it helps others. And I think there's a value in that. And I think people who volunteer often find that there's a richness in their lives and in the experience that they didn't expect. So I hope people will read the book and feel inspired by it, not just by what it shows us about what humans are capable of doing, but also maybe be inspired to reach out a little bit themselves in their own lives. And what are some of the best ways people can help if they want to help? Because there's still

people going through immigration crises around the world. What are some of the best ways that people can help from all of the different factions? Well, I mean, if people literally want to try to help in the global humanitarian effort, I recommend an organization called Indigo Volunteers. It's a free service that will match people who want to help, want to go somewhere and volunteer, usually for a few weeks. And if you have skills, like if you're a doctor or a lawyer who could offer legal advice, you know, or anything, you know, if you have the skills to work in a warehouse and help to organize things or a teacher, all these kinds of things. I recommend checking them out, Indigo Volunteers.

But in your own community, I mean, whatever charitable organizations in your community that you hear about that are doing work, you might just call them up and check them out and find out. And it might take a while to find a volunteer opportunity that is meaningful to you. Maybe the first couple of things you do, you don't enjoy because there's certainly things that I've done before as a volunteer that I didn't want to do again. But in time, if you keep at it, I think you'll find something that you'll find really rewarding. And it'll be helpful too. There you go.

Pay it forward. Help other people in life. You know, we make ourselves better when we help other people in life. And I think that's what's great about your book is we need more humanity. We need to care about these people. And, you know, what an amazing America we've built. What an amazing country. what an amazing america we built what an amazing country what an amazing democracy we have built and this is this is a grand experiment and it is a melting pot of people and uh i don't think america would ever be as great as as it is i'm not saying it's the

greatest we we have our issues where we zig and zag, as President Obama said it. But in the end, we're a shiny beacon to the world. When I see people who want to come to this country, who are willing to give up everything to come here because they believe in the American dream, I mean, what an inspiration. We take so much of this country for granted, you know, those of us who were born here and grew up here and haven't seen much of the world. But to have people that will put their life on the line, that will put their saw mothers throwing babies to soldiers to give them up just to get them to America. I mean, you just saw it. And some of the narratives that are out there, I hope people will deal with. You know, some of the narratives that are fed by sometimes networks that say, well, you know, we should vet people that come to america we should make sure they're not terrorists and they go

through a huge vetting process they go through a huge background process it takes years sometimes to get your citizenship here and uh and yeah they're not it isn't a free ride by any means of anything if you see these people so i'm glad you're addressing this i'm glad you're you've written about it and brought a human, human face to it. And hopefully we can all learn from it. Give us the.coms where people can find you on the interwebs and get to know you better.

Okay. I'm at www.danasax.com. And the nonprofit that I co-founded is called humanity now. And it's at humanity-now.org. And it's all volunteer, and we support grassroots aid efforts in Greece and in surrounding Ukraine. And 100% of the money that people donate to Humanity Now goes directly to grassroots efforts. There you go. Thank you very much, Dana, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it.

I enjoyed it. Thank you. And order up the book, folks. Wherever fine books are sold, share the wealth, share the knowledge, get people educated on what's going on in the world. All Else Failed, The Unlikely Volunteers at the Heart of the Migrant Aid Crisis, available wherever fine books are sold, March 21st 2023 thanks for tuning in uh be sure to refer the show to your family friends and relatives because it's a five-star rating over

there on itunes we certainly love those ratings that you guys always give uh goodreads.com fortress chris foss youtube.com fortress chris foss linkedin.com chris foss all those crazy places those kids play on the internet thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe we'll see you next time and that's