Victor Valle knew he had to do something.
Earlier this month, when President Trump announced his plans to rescind Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the piece of Obama-era legislation that extends certain legal protections to high-achieving undocumented immigrants who arrived to the United States as children, Valle rallied his friends and colleagues in the local music scene to put their heads together and take action.
Valle manages several Bay Artists — including rapper Jay Stone and indie rock band Abbot Kinney — at his company, Counter Culture Group, and works in marketing for the concert promoter Live Nation. (Full disclosure: he’s also on the board of directors of The Bay Bridged, a KQED Arts affiliate.) His call for musicians to donate their time for a DACA fundraiser circulated quickly on Twitter, and within a week he put together a two-part party series, Dance for DACA, which takes place on Sept. 28 at Starline Social Club in Oakland and Sept. 29 at Standard Deviant Brewing in San Francisco.
Valle was born to Mexican parents in Los Angeles and grew up with undocumented friends and neighbors. When he heard about Trump’s DACA repeal, he immediately thought of people in his community who would be personally affected. “The idea of ICE going into my hood, going to my hometown and separating families infuriates me,” says Valle. “If we want to talk about how we can separate folks, how we can put certain folks in categories, how we can make certain communities scared for their well-being even more so than they have been the past five or ten years — that’s exactly what [Trump is] doing.”