Conectados

If the people walking around the streets of Tucson right now weren’t bundled up in jackets and close-toed shoes, I’m not sure I would remember that three months had passed since I arrived in August. The Border Studies Program Fall 2012 semester kicked off during the monsoon season here in southern Arizona when daily highs were still upwards of 100 degrees and sunsets were often accompanied by heat lightening.

When we received a schedule of the semester on one of our first few days here, I remember being told to prepare for how quickly the next 14 weeks would pass. I tried my best, but even so, I’m not sure anything could have adequately prepared me for the strangeness of finding myself faced with the reality that in less than a week, my peers and I will be saying adiós to this semester and to one another. El tiempo ya se fue rapido, pero rapidíssimo!

For the past week or so, I’ve been expecting to be hit by the wave of sadness that usually engulfs me at around this point when I’m preparing to say a big goodbye. And there have been moments when I’ve felt that sadness creep in, but it’s hardly been anything unbearable. And I’m starting to suspect that there’s a reason for this. Here is how I see it: this semester may be coming to an end, but the fact that this is happening is hardly an ending. I suppose maybe I’m just parroting that old cliche about endings-as-beginnings, but this time, I think there’s something to it. Here’s why.

In the first place, I no longer believe that endings exist, gracias a the way that the Border Studies Program has exploded my understandings of time and space. One of the primary modes of learning we have engaged in this semester, as I understand it, is a process that I’ve come to know as “naming the world.” To me, that means listening deeply and looking closely, both inwardly and outwardly; it means telling a story about how things are and why they are that way. It means searching for history in the present and imagining the future. In other words, it means connecting all senses of “time” together, seeing past, present, and future as a whole, not disparate parts of a timeline. In this sense, this semester is much more than a semester. My experience here in the borderlands was shaped by every experience that had come before it in my life, and everything that is to come will bear its marks. I believe that every moment is this way.

This BSP’s tagline is “a semester in the US/Mexico borderlands.” I know that this semester is not really ending because I know that even after I leave Arizona, I won’t have left the border. The world we live in, the world that we create and that creates us, is a border world. And as it stands, those borders represent a cruel and inhumane logic that determines who can move, who cannot, and who is forced to move. No matter who you are or where you are, you are implicated in that grand system of controlled movement. In this moment, that fact is heavy in my mind and in my heart. And one of my greatest hopes for myself moving out of the semester is to continue feeling that way: to be conscious of borders and the unfreedoms that they create for the rest of my life––and to act in solidarity with those are demanding that those borders come down, so that we may all begin to heal from the ill-logic that made them possible.

Finally, I know that this semester is a beginning rather than an ending because the friendships that I have formed over the course of the past three months are ones that I hope will continue for a long, long time. I know that any learning I did this semester is owed to all of the incredible people I interacted with: my ten fellow students, our four classroom instructors, the family I stayed with here in Tucson, and all of the people who so generously shared their time, stories and knowledge with me and my peers. I believe that as we students transition into life after the Border Studies Program, we will be able to turn to one another for support of all kinds; we are in this lucha together now and we still can be in spite of physical distance.

And so as I think about what it will feel like next Tuesday when the Border Studies Program semester is officially over, when we students begin to go our own ways, I feel strong, not sad. It’s true that the world now seems a whole lot more tangled-up to me than when I first stepped foot in Tucson in August, and I feel despair about that in a more real way than ever before. And it’s equally true that I now feel better prepared than to act in that world, and do so in a way that’s in accordance with the convictions that I’ve come to name this semester. I am looking forward to seeing how our stories spiral out from this point, far but near, apart but connected. Siempre estamos juntos, todos nosotros en este mundo. Conectados. We’re always together, all of us in this world. Connected. I leave the semester with that knowledge guiding my feet, my hands, and my heart.

- submitted by Roxanne Rapaport

Dia de los Muertos: A Binational Procession

On Friday the 2nd of November, el Dia de Los Muertos, we gathered at the BSP office at 3.30 in the afternoon with instructions to dress in white. We were headed to a cross-border procession in honour of the recent deaths of José Antonio Elena Rodríguez and Ramses Barrón Torres, Nogales natives who lost their lives to the guns of Border Patrol agents in October 2012 and January 2009 respectively. The vigil also intended to protest the crime of their deaths, the lack of a thorough investigation into them and the lack of justice for the families of the deceased. The procession would begin from two points- one from Nogales, in Arizona, and another from Nogales, in Sonora. They would converge at the massive row of rust coloured bars- the wall that prevents both cities, and both countries, from merging into one.

It was here that José Antonio Elena Rodríguez was shot at the age of 16 by an American Border Patrol officer through the slats of the wall, on Mexican territory. The details of what happened are not that clear- officers allege he was throwing rocks. What is clear is that he was shot seven to eight times in the back through one of the four inch gaps in the wall.

We gathered at a street corner a short walk from the Border wall with images of the dead, placards, banners, candles and lilies and walked mostly in silence to the area where José Antonio was killed, walking alongside the wall. The wall in Nogales, and the fact that you can see through it, are becoming a familiar sight to us. We came to Nogales on our second day of orientation and walked alongside it, on the other side, during the day. It was the first time any of us had seen the US/Mexico border. To repeat that after having been to Nogales a number of times, and having seen the Border in its differing manifestations in El Paso and Big Bend National Park, is to realize that the militarization of this Border is both an uneven but ongoing process and a brute fact.

Another group gathered on the Mexican side of the Border and when we reached them everyone stopped walking. We pushed our faces through the gaps and said hi. People handed flowers and candles back and forth. Banners from one side were hung from the fence on the other. Many spoke to Jose Antonio’s family through the bars. Guadalupe Guerrero, whose son Carlos Lamadrid was killed by US Border Patrol in March 2011 as he attempted to scale the wall to enter Mexico came out of the crowd and gave her condolences publicly to Jose Antonio’s mother, Araceli Rodriguez. Songs were sung, solemnly, and both sides joined in with the same chants, speeches calling for accountability on the part of Border Patrol given.

We have been reading, in Dying to Live by Joe Nevins, about the maintenance of a state of what he calls “apartheid” between Mexico and the US, and about the human tragedy of that. Nevins states that there has never been a time when this Border has been so militarily blockaded as it is. And yet there has never been a time when more people and goods, legal and illegal, have crossed it. The tragic irony of the situation is that this wall ostensibly enforces national sovereignty when it has never been more irrelevant to the way the global economy works. Labour in the US will be sourced from the enforced idleness of dispossession in Mexico because third world desperation works for less pay, but workers can work in one country and live in another. It makes sense. The US government, and its associated corporations, calls the shots whatever side of the border we might talk about. Imperialism that pretends.

To militarize the Border is to pretend to the ordinary people of the US that their sense of besiegement that comes from ever lower wages, loss of livelihood, and no net of security to be caught in when you fall is unavoidable, and not engineered. It is also to make desperate, and quiet, the people who circumvent the walls and walk through deserts to work in secret at jobs it pretended didn’t recruit them. Standing at that procession equally close to people on both sides, only with obscured vision, it seemed inconceivable not to think that this “apartheid” could be said to be the pretence of sovereignty in an era when there is none. How can it be anything but a farce when a Border Patrol officer can walk to the line between countries, clearly demarcated, poke his gun through it, and shoot a teenager dead?

- submitted by Sophie Gregg

Tohono O’odam Nation- wisdom from our past, solutions for our future

For our last critical issues class of the semester we traveled about 60 miles southwest of Tucson to the Tohono O’odam Nation and had the privilege to meet with members of TOCA, Tohono O’odam Community Action in Sells, AZ. The Tohono O’odam, meaning “desert people” reside in areas of the Sonoran Desert in both southern Arizona and Sonora and are divided by the Mexico-US international border, drawn across their lands in 1853 by the Gadsden Purchase. The reservation is the second largest in the United States, is comparable the state of Connecticut and home to 70 miles of the international border.

Considering our previous study of the border in other contexts and geopolitical locations and having read a couple of articles about the Nation, it was clear before our visit that one could study interaction between native nations and the border alone for at least a semester.

As TOCA’s work does not center around issues of the border and with the brevity of our visit, we held in mind that a deeper understanding of the ways the border affects life on the reservation would have to wait.

We met with Anthony Francisco Jr. of TOCA at their office in the community/shopping center of Sells before heading out to TOCA’s farm, which employs traditional flood plain agricultural techniques. Ak chin farming, which utilizes rains of summer monsoon season is well adapted to the climate of the Sonoran desert. Traditional crops that the Cowlic learning center grows include tepary beans, O’odam squash, and native “60-day” corn. The farm works to reintroduce traditional crops and make them available to the community aiding with health and the preservation of existing traditional knowledge. One project of TOCA’s related to farming and native foods efforts is “A New Generation of Farmers” program which aims to train youth in traditional O’odam farming methods to promote a cultural, environmentally, economically viable way of life.

In speaking with Anthony about his work with the farm and youth of the nation, he emphasized the value of TOCA’s work being in large part helping young O’odam create strong connections to the land and their cultural heritage. He emphasized the importance of speaking to identity to inspire positive growth and its widespread success empowering youth, in contrast to efforts from outside organizations. I was reminded of the work of the Ethnic Studies Program once in place at Tucson High by its similar approach and success. Of the traditional language, song, and ceremony, Anthony highlighted the importance of the principle s-wa:gima, which celebrates an industrious lifestyle in which one’s strength is drawn from the sun.

After visiting the farm, we made a short visit to the Nation’s annual Diabetes Fair and were able to learn about many community organizations providing information and services from flu shots, to crafts including jewelry and baskets, to information about domestic abuse.

We concluded our visit at the Desert Rain Café where we were able to speak with Tristan Reeder, co-founder of TOCA, and Rhonda Wilson, a basketweaver who has been involved with TOCA for many years and works with TOCA’s Desert Rain Gallery. We were also accompanied by Julia Munson, former student of the Border Studies Program, and currently a Food Corps member with TOCA. The Desert Rain Café is another project of TOCA is dedicated to preparing traditional healthy O’odam foods such as tepary beans, saguaro fruit syrup, and cholla buds.

Tristan spoke of TOCA’s guiding focus as a community based organization, not affiliated with the tribal government, being on empowerment not service, working with not for. TOCA works to employ a systems change model for social change, which views policy change alone as ineffective. Their focus on working to improve local food systems stems from their belief that healthy and sustainable eating habits cannot be made out of “individual choice” as they are prevented by systems constraining choice. They are working to make traditional healthy foods more accessible and make growing these foods profitable on the Nation, while embracing the O’odham Himdag principle which they see to mean: wisdom from our past, solutions for our future.

I found TOCA’s work in many ways inspiring and seeking to effectively address issues affecting the nation, but I am left with many larger questions about the context for their work, the border, and the Tohono O’odam Nation in general:

Considering histories of colonization and identities of colonizers what does it mean for privileged white folks to work on the nation? In contexts where they serve in a teaching role, a role of knowledge or of preaching ‘the right way of doing things’?
How does the Arizona state and US federal government relate to the O’odam nation’s tribal governing body?
What does it mean for a ‘sovereign nation’ to exist within the continental united states?
How does a militarized international border crossing the nation affect felt senses of security?
How do effects of drug trafficking change relations to ‘security’ provided by the Border Patrol?
In reacting to high numbers of migrant deaths in the remote desert landscape how would the nation be able to both reject the presence of this issue that has been forced upon them while also saving lives?

It seemed from our short visit that the additional layer of complexity present when considering the O’odam nation’s stretch of border differed greatly from the particularities of the border we have considered in ambos Nogales, Douglas/Agua Prieta, El Paso/Juarez and in Big Bend National Park.

- submitted by Elizabeth Tipton

Inverted Particularities

Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore spoke at the University of Arizona on October second about the proliferation in this country of enclosures; of those not documented to work, and those documented not to work. These are the “inverted particularities” of the lives, the movements, the meanings of the undocumented and the incarcerated. Our boundaries grow denser, more embedded, and our institutions eat more bodies every day. “The border” the professor said, “waits as quietly as a land mine.”

The Border Studies Program found the border last week in the bleak and thirsty prison town of Florence, Arizona. The town is host to seven prisons and jails, including a state prison, two private prison complexes, and the Florence Detention Center, an ICE facility. It is to this institution that we paid our visit. The site once held detainees from Fidel Castro’s prisons and asylums. Before that, it was an internment camp for Japanese-Americans. In the room where we are screened for weapons, a U.S. Immigration and Naturalization sign hangs on the wall; a picture of the World Trade Center, and the words “We will never forget.”

Our host is the Assistant Field Office Director, Martin Zelenka. Mr. Zelenka meets us in a conference room prior to our tour of his facility. On the wall, a screen flashes through a series of video-feeds: men sleeping in bunk beds, men folding sheets, someone being processed, men playing cards, watching TV. No one explains why it is there. A security measure? Insurance against accusations of mistreatment? A selling point? The loop appears endless-the entire time we sit there I watch the same people go about their daily activities inside the facility. Mr. Zelenka begins his presentation. He explains that he is in charge of a very dynamic facility. “I think,” he tells us proudly, “that you’ll be very surprised at what you see.” Indeed.

The Florence Detention Center (FDC,) processes roughly 5000 intakes a month, and cages around 1500 people on any given day-the count is shaky because the Center’s administration often doesn’t account for the population in transit-those just passing through on their way to being deported. These inmates, we learn, can be identified by their green jumpsuits. Other inmates wear white, blue, and orange uniforms. This system marks each man according to his “level of criminality,” ranging from “none” to “some but not too much criminality,” to “habitual criminal.” Inmates hail from 80 nations, though 48% of them are Mexican, 25% are Guatemalan, and the majority of the rest are from Honduras and El Salvador.

After the presentation, we are led on a tour through the facility. We are shown the kitchen, the dormitories (row upon row of tiny beds, shoes sticking off the edge of each one like disembodied feet,) the dining hall, the tiny courtroom for on-the-spot trials, other rooms that smell the same. We pass by men staring at us from their cells, men doing laundry (for which they are compensated at a rate of $1 per day,) men being marched in rows from one part of the complex to another. When we venture outside, we can see rows of National Guard tanks lined up across the street, waiting. Next door, a training facility in “desert warfare” is being erected. It’s hard not to think about war. It’s hard not to wonder what purpose these casualties in color-coded jumpsuits serve.

2.2 million people are currently incarcerated in the United States-more than any other nation on the globe. Of these, detained immigrants (numbering 33,300 as of 2011) are the fastest growing population. Cycles of militarization, detention, and incarceration ravage communities of color in the United States, and perpetuate racial partitions that resonate with this country’s legacies of slavery and colonization.

Perhaps this is not lost on our cages’ keepers. As we say goodbye in the parking lot outside of the detention center. Mr. Zelenka wants to make sure we know in whose name the apartheid continues; “Thanks,” he says, “for coming to see what your government’s doing for you.”


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/07/private-prisons-immigration-federal-law-enforcement_n_1569219.html
http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=107
http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-growing-for-profit-detention-industry
http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=107


- submitted by Sofie Ghitman

1,500 miles...

bags on bags of snacks, hours of naps in vans, very few showers, and numerous placticas later, we have returned to Southern Arizona from our second travel seminar. The premise of the second trip was to understand how the border functions differently in different parts of the southwest. I can’t boast a complete, thorough understanding of what the entire US-Mexico border encompasses, but I can say that the time we spent in Agua Prieta/Douglas, El Paso, and Big Bend National Park gave me a sampling of the ways in which Mexico and the US are unavoidably neighbors, and conflicts that exist within that relationship.

Our trip began in Agua Prieta, Sonora. Mark Adams, US Coordinator for Frontera de Cristo, took us to the fence one morning to give us a brief synopsis of the relationship between Agua Prieta and Douglas. Douglas’ economy, he explained, is based on the residents of Agua Prieta – Walmart, Food City, and all the fast food chains that are on the US side of the border in Douglas (pop 16,000) primarily serve the folks on the other side of the border (who number between 100,000 and 125,000.) With a crossing visa, Agua Prietans can pass through the check point, do their shopping, leave the sales tax in Arizona’s economy, and go home with their goods.

The fence that we were all standing next to was an excellent example of border hysteria and American tax dollars being poorly spent, he pointed out. The fence used to consist of chain link with barbed wire on top. It was incredibly permeable, and people used to cross for weddings, funerals, lunch and/or shopping. Next, it became a cream-colored picket fence with pickets pointed towards the US, ostensibly so that Mexicans didn’t feel like they were in jail. As Mark sees it, the direction of the pickets are representative of how border policy really just makes it harder for people to go home to Mexico. He also mentioned that US Border Patrol has started checking documentation for folks heading south across the border and detaining the folks as they’re trying to return to Mexico. While this could be explained as “teaching them a lesson,” to me this merely exemplifies how border enforcement, at the end of the day, is mostly about profit – the more bodies we incarcerate, the more money is made in food contracts, contracts with doctors, contracts with construction companies, contracts with folks who was prison garb, etc etc etc.

Mark also explained to us how the communities of Douglas and Agua Prieta started to feel very differently towards each other by the mid 1990s, when traffic through their section of the border increased because bigger cities like El Paso and San Diego were sealed off. Residents of Douglas hadn’t even wanted the wall in its current manifestation because they were well aware that they were financially supported by undocumented crossers. However, as more migrants passed through the region, resources got squeezed and “the illegals” started to be blamed. Even residents of Agua Prieta turned hateful towards other Mexicans who were trying to cross through the region. Additionally, the culture of fear that we’ve seen so shamelessly propagated in Tucson reared its head in Douglas, too, as the border became militarized. As Americans saw a huge fence, lights and cameras as prominent parts of the border, it was harder and harder to believe that there was nothing to be afraid of on the other side of the fence.

Our time in Agua Prieta/Douglas had a religious bent to it, and left a number of us thinking about how religion can span the border and motivate people to be allies in the name of brotherhood and sisterhood. While this left a few of us (including myself) feeling pretty conflicted, I found myself able to push past my discomfort to appreciate the weekly vigil that was held by Frontera De Cristo on the Douglas side of the border. Beginning in the parking lot of the local McDonalds, Mark distributed 100 some-odd crosses to participants of the vigil. Each cross was inscribed with the name, birth date, and death date or date of discovery of a migrant found in Cochise county, where Douglas is located. We set off south on Pan American Ave, arms full of crosses, walking single file towards the border and designated port of entry. Every few feet, the person at the head of the line would turn around, raise the cross bearing the name over their head, and say the name as loudly and respectfully as possible to the line of cars waiting to cross the border. After each name, everyone else in line shouted “presente!” After some time, each person would leave their cross in the street, leaning again the sidewalk, and return to the line. In this manner we leapfrogged all the way to the border, all the while inhaling the exhaust of those waiting to cross the border. Despite my discomfort with the repetition of crosses and the visual of people raising crosses over their heads, I recognized this form of remembrance as vital and healing. Shouting “PRESENTE!” into the night over and over again gave me an outlet for some of the frustration and anger that has grown inside me at how migrant deaths are repeatedly forgotten in American media and culture. Additionally, standing so close to the border while remembering those that had perished not too far away made it real to me that wherever I find myself in the borderlands, people are dying trying to reach this country and its economic opportunities. And while I may feel in the current recession that those economic opportunities are few and far between, I remind myself that largely because of my country’s actions, the economic opportunities in Mexico don’t hold a candle to those that I have daily access to in the US.

El Paso/Juárez blew me away. The cities (which are indistinguishable from each other after sunset, see photo to the right) have a combined population of 3 million – 2 in Cd. J, 1 in El Paso. A huge shift in population from south to north occurred between 2007 and 2012, when violence south of the border skyrocketed due to Calderón’s misguided war on drugs. (When I say skyrocketed, I’m talking about 3,600 murders in 2010, which is just under 10/day in a city of 2 million.) As a result of this violence, 1/3 of Juárez’s population moved north across the border. As that population moved north, business also moved north, resulting in Forbes rating El Paso as one of the best mid-sized cities in which to find employment in 2010, the same year that 10 people a day were getting murdered just south of the wall. The way that El Paso was able to remain one of the safest mid-sized cities in the US while Juárez was the most dangerous city in the world is through the incredible border security industry that we tasted briefly. With Border Patrol agents stationed every 500 feet in the urban area, tens of people manning the port of entry between the two cities, motion sensors built into the ground in the suburban area outside of the city, video cameras all over the place, and thousands of wattage in enormous lights that shine on the border all night, the border in El Paso felt like a low-intensity war zone.

The question of how we take care of our neighbors and each other as human beings became real to me in a very different way during our time in El Paso. UTEP professor Kathy Staudt talked about the femicides that have swept through Juárez in the last two decades in the context of being in El Paso’s backyard. If tens of women were being raped and murdered across a state line in the US, would the state without a rash of femicides fail to offer support for the other state in the same way that the US has failed to offer any support to Mexico?

Annunciation House (a shelter and comedor for migrants,) Maternidad de la Luz (an extraordinarily low-cost midwifery,) and Centro de los Trabajadores Agricolas (an eatery and community center for farm workers) are organizations that are supporting undocumented folks in El Paso. It was interesting to think of their work in the context of the responsibility I believe we have to take care of each other. It was also interesting to think of the work those organizations do as a means of resistance to the US’s profiting off of migrant hardship and subordination, and, in the case of those organizations that were run by white Americans, as a way of putting one’s privilege on the line, exercising the responsibility that comes with that privilege, and using one’s social capital as a tool of defense for those subjected to unjust laws.

To avoid being written off as a crazy radical when I say things like the US is coresponsible for and profits off of Mexico’s problems (and I can go off with examples like this all day, so let me know if you need more): Also in El Paso, we got to talk to the Labor Justice Committee, which is a group that fights wage theft in El Paso. Wage theft is a pretty large problem there for a number of reasons: 1) non-nationals sometimes don’t know that they’re entitled to minimum wage, even if they’re undocumented. 2) as the recession has hit and jobs have become more scarce, wages have fallen lower and lower (sometimes to below minimum wage level.) 3) undocumented status – it’s harder for undocumented folks to organize and fight because employers can threaten them with deportation. So essentially, there are plenty of people in El Paso (and across the country) who are being ridiculously underpaid (if paid at all) and they’re unable to fight for their wages due to their status. Furthermore, American employers are the ones benefiting off this cheap labor.

I left El Paso both in awe and infuriated. I was even more in awe when we got to Big Bend National Park. Did you know that Texas is huge? Turns out it is. We spent all four days there wallowing in nature: We camped all three nights by the Rio Grande – one of the only parts of the border that exists without a fence. There was something completely mind boggling about sitting on the banks of (and occasionally in) that river and thinking about how we’d be fined $5,000 and potentially sit in jail for a year if we were caught crossing it (as US citizens. The consequences are much steeper for non-citizens, of course.) We hiked around some of the most overwhelming canyons I’ve ever been whelmed by that serve as the border, yet didn’t cost millions of dollars to create. We met men on horseback who had just gallivanted across the river, as they did every day, to see if visitors to the park had purchased any of the beaded animals they left on the bank of the river. We heard, yet again, about how the hardening of the border post 9/11 (on 9/18/2001, to be exact) had ravaged cross-border communities. Did you know that on the aforementioned date, Border Patrol agents disguised as river runners entered Presidio, another town that straddles to border and had a thriving bi-national community, and rounded up and deported hundreds of people? The park ranger who told us this story said that the day when most people cluster around the fence, having conversations through it with people on the other side, is Mexican Mother’s Day.

Y así regreso a Tucson: angrier, more confused, a little sunburnt, and my understanding of the border, the Mexico-US relationship, and what it means to care for people complicated and strengthened.

- submitted by Mariel Cohn

Raza Studies

In a lecture at the University of Arizona as part of Ethnic Studies Week, renowned geographer Ruth Gilmore told us that one of the goals of ethnic studies is to rewrite and challenge the mythic geographies, ancient and contemporary, that characterize the way we are taught to see the world. Her lecture, "The Birth of Ethnic Studies," dealt with the history of the epistemological question of who are we and who does what--the history of describing difference--tracing it from the Greek historian Herodotus to the banning of Mexican American Studies in Tucson. The lecture laid an interesting context for the rest of our week, which we spent learning about Mexican American Studies (MAS), its history in Tucson, and the resistance and organizing surrounding it. We watched the documentary "Precious Knowledge," met with teacher José Gonzalez, and hung out with four representatives from UNIDOS, a group of former Ethnic Studies students and their allies who are fighting for autonomous education, political analysis, and outreach surrounding Ethnic Studies in Tucson. It was a wonderful opportunity to dedicate a short but intense amount of time to a big topic.

The Ethnic Studies Program was created in the late 1990s in order to counter devastatingly high dropout rates among Latino students in the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD). During its 10-year tenure, the program was incredibly successful, lowering dropout rates from around 56% nationwide to 2.5 % in Tucson.

We had the privilege of meeting with former TUSD Ethnic Studies teacher José Gonzalez. José spoke to us about the content of the classes, and why they were so successful in engaging students. First and foremost, González told us, MAS classes are based on philosophy that humanizes students and teachers. Rather than ignoring the differences in background that make up the TUSD student body and instead following a deficit model of teaching, MAS classes teach identity - teach students to know, respect, and love who they are. A lot of Latino students have never been encouraged in school, so intentional spaces must be created for them to share and to make mistakes. This is because, González says, "as teachers you have the ability to build or destroy. And Frederick Douglass says that it is easier to build a child than to repair a broken man."

José also spoke about the influence of Paolo Freire, author of "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," in MAS classes. Freire emphasizes the important of critical thinking. Critical thinking, as opposed to magical thinking ("put it all in God's hands," or "She is a lucky person and I am not") or naïve thinking ("there is an achievement gap because some students are lazier than others"), teaches students to look at systems with a critical consciousness, and to think about their thinking.

MAS classes were successful in boosting Latino graduation rates because they dealt with material that was important to the students. For many students in the classes, this was the first time they read books by people from similar backgrounds, about topics that are alive for them each day. And they learned to love and respect their communities, and to harness that pride and build something positive with it.

Then it came crashing down. In 2006 and 2007, Tom Horne, then Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, began claiming that TUSD's MAS programs promoted anti-American and anti-white sentiments. By June 2009, Horne introduced state legislation to attempt to ban Ethnic Studies courses.

This is where it gets more interesting. We got the chance to talk and have dinner with four young activists from UNIDOS (United Non-Discriminatory Individuals Demanding Our Studies), who provided a perspective on resistance in the context of the MAS controversies. On April 26th, 2011, student activists took over a TUSD meeting and chained themselves to the desks on the dais, preventing school board members from being seated. "We felt voiceless, like our voices didn't matter. Taking the schoolboard was the only thing we could do," said Denise, one of the UNIDOS students who spoke with us.

The efforts of MAS students prevailed in this moment, but Horne, his successor John Huppenthal, and Governor Jan Brewer, succeeded in passing lHB 2281, which decreases state funding from schools found to be promoting "classes that advocate overthrowing the government…or advocate ethnic solidarity," and MAS was officially suspended on January 10th of this year.

It's hard to describe the fury that I felt while watching "Precious Knowledge." It was incredible to me to see scenes of love and learning in the classroom -- learning that truly engaged students, that made them feel important and made them think critically about their world -- and devastating to see that taken away by a few powerful white men in suits who did not even deign to visit a classroom, or, in the case of Huppenthal, visited the classroom once and then misrepresented his experience to prove his erroneous point. I can't really imagine what it would be like to be a student in the classroom when the books were banned, when, as Erin from UNIDOS put it, "these books that reflect you are put in a box and taken away."

The UNIDOS students that we met are inspiring models of community organizing. They've acquired a casita, which they are in the process of fixing up, and are planning to have teach-ins, classes, a garden, a library, and tutoring. Their goals center around autonomous education, political analysis, and outreach. They've organized rallies and marches, had alternative school days with teach-ins, and work to provide for the educational needs of their community. On a personal note, I valued the opportunity to converse with people our age and hear their journeys towards activism. BSP student Roxanne put it best when she said that it seemed to her that activism her in Tucson is based around the heart: people are acting because it directly affects their life, or their neighbor's life.

Here are some helpful resources on MAS in Tucson:
Raza Studies Background and Timeline
News article from January 2012: Tucson School Board Eliminates MAS Program
Daily Show Clip about MAS Ban
Precious Knowledge Documentary ad
Mexican American Studies statistics show that the program works, from SaveEthnicStudies.org

- submitted by Rachel Adler

Imagining Borders Following Watersheds / That’s a Resource in Your Toilet

A watershed is “that area of land, a bounded hydrological system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community.”
— John Wesley Powell

Did you ever consider that we pee into clean drinking water? No, really, it’s clean and you can drink it. That’s why your cat does – it’s probably fresher than the water you leave out for her. Not only is this a common practice, in the United States we are mandated by law to turn clean water into toxic waste however many times a day nature calls us to, without considering what sort of impact this has on our community or environment.

Brad Lancaster is a Tucson native who has spent the past 20 years turning his property into a rainwater harvesting system and teaching others to do the same. We walked over to his house from our classroom last week, and came to think a little differently about borders.

Tucson is in a water crisis. The water table here has dropped 300 feet in the past 100 years, and continues to fall at an average rate of 3 feet per year. 44% of the energy the city of Tucson uses goes to pumping and filtering water. According to Brad, if Tucson used its rainwater as a resource instead of shooting it out of town through sewers and drains, this city in the desert would no longer have a water crisis, and we’d be more connected to the land and each other.

On Brad’s property, he uses very little or no city water; from what I gathered, the only energy used in the consumption of water is the energy used by his washing machine, which functions as a community laundromat. He gave us a tour of his composting toilet, his natural clay water filter, and his sunken garden beds, which collect water, rather than shed water like raised beds do. He led us in a “sun dance” to teach us how he developed passive heating and cooling systems for his house without blocking his neighbors’ winter sun. He also showed us the systems he’s created on his street to reduce flooding, by directing rain into roadside gardens of native plants. Brad’s house is a living laboratory of how Tucson could reimagine the way in which it uses the water that floods its streets every time it rains. “Turn a problem into a solution,” Brad says.

Brad took us on a virtual tour of neighborhoods in Portland, OR and Seattle, WA which have changed the way they interact with rainwater by narrowing streets and planting native plants that use the rainwater that falls into the soil that has replaced pavement. It is worth noting, however, that in these neighborhoods in Portland and Washington, innovative flood-control implementation has coincided with gentrification. I don’t personally know very much about these areas, but the question of access to the resources that allow these rainwater harvesting systems to be implemented and maintained was definitely in my head throughout Brad’s presentation. Most of the techniques he showed us rely more on community organizing, observation, and creative thinking than spending power. Still, “green living” is a buzzword these days, and when a neighborhood becomes more environmentally conscious, property values come up, and it becomes more difficult for low-income people to continue living there.

But perhaps if Brad’s methods were to become the norm, access wouldn’t be a problem anymore. Radical shifts in how we think about water are hard to imagine as reality, but around the world, as water becomes scarcer, people are beginning to think differently. Grey water harvesting is now legal in Arizona, California, and New Mexico, and the composting toilet in Brad’s yard is actually part of a trial to see if that specific composting system can become legal in Arizona.

Radical shifts in the way we think about water also require reimagining the way we think about borders. The way water rights work, especially in the southwest, where water is both scarce and in high demand, is a complicated maze of laws and dams and regulation, because state and international lines cut straight through watersheds; sometimes they are rivers themselves. Reimagine: borders drawn along watersheds, as John Powell said. If we imagine our communities as all of the people living within our watersheds, political borders fall away. Suddenly, we’re not only connected to Tucson, but we’re also connected to the greater Arizona community, and beyond, into Mexico. Water doesn’t stop at the border wall. If our borders come to be about the resources within an area whose bounds are defined by nature, we can start to think about working together to use those resources in a way that makes sense: harvesting the rain, only making use of what an aquifer can recharge on its own, and not peeing into drinking water, but rather into a pile of sawdust that can become compost for fruit trees.

- submitted by Maddie Taterka

Oaxaca: Education as a Means of Resistance

By the end of my time in Oaxaca, I was proud to tell Taxistas that I lived on Fraccionamiento la Noria, sobre la Mitla. The week had brought so many physical and emotional challenges on our group, and arriving to Cenobia and Viri’s house was always a pleasure. Here we’d have time to decompress, relax, and reflect on the days we’d shared. I start this entry with a huge and humble Gracias to the family that accepted us into their home and shared so much. Their stories, their smiles and laughs, their cute kids, and their willingness to sit down to talk over coffee always felt rejuvenating and personally made me feel closer to home.

SURCO and a brief history of APPO’s Oaxaca and beyond

Our first day began with an introduction to SURCO (Servicious Universitarios y Redes de Conocimientos en Oaxaca, A.C.) with Oliver Froehling. SURCO is a non-profit grassroots organization in Oaxaca focusing on education and consultation for Oaxacan activist and organizations, as well as international participants interested in food and water sovereignty, environmental issues, indigenous rights, and community-radio and video, in hopes of creating an international network invested in creating worldwide change through dissemination of local knowledge and experiences. Oliver talked about the Comite de la Defensa de Tierra y Territorio, and explained that twelve organizations are mobilizing and working on land rights issues with surrounding communities. He also described the local efforts focused on the self-empowerment of communities through the use of community-based radios and television stations, operating regardless of governmental licenses. Oliver mentioned that there is a debate surrounding the issue of airwaves and frequencies and who owns them, since they’ve technically been there since before the radio was invented.

We learned about RASA (Red Autonoma para la Soberania Alimentaria) which started in 2008 to promote urban agriculture, the value of agricultural skills brought by campesinos, and the sharing of agricultural knowledge. Oliver explained that Oaxaca is one generation or less from the countryside, and people seeking jobs in the city have brought along their agricultural skills that usually go forgotten. RASA attempts to remind campesinos of the agricultural wealth and knowledge they bring to Oaxaca city. RASA was created in response to the food crisis of 2008, which brought tortilla prices to an all-time high, making it almost impossible for campesinos earning just a few cents a day to purchase their staple food, in an already devastated region affected by free-trade.

More recently, the prices of the egg have increased sixfold, once again making it impossible for Mexican families to afford yet another staple food. According to Oliver, the price of a carton of eggs went up to about $6 dollars, which is in most cases more than many Mexican workers make in one day.
RASA has not only been on the frontlines of addressing the crises first-hand along through “farmer to farmer” trainings, but they have promoted discussions about inequality and marginalization in Mexico through the economic disasters.

We also learned about the APPO (Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca), created in 2006 after the teachers were brutally apprehended during an annual strike in May of that year. Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, then the governor of Oaxaca, called for the dismantling of the teacher’s occupation in city’s center square after 23 days of protest; this resulted in a violent square-off between police and protestors, comprised of teachers, students, and community organizations. After the violence in 2006, tourism in Oaxaca decreased and their economy felt a huge impact. The movement was then broken as the federal government cracked down on organizers and used intimidation tactics to subdue activists.

Education as a Means of Resistance

Oliver was a great lecturer and shared a bit of his own story and journey to this work. In 1994, as NAFTA had just been implemented and EZLN (Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional) he was searching for a topic for his dissertation. He arrived in Mexico to do research and never left . He spoke on the intersection of activism and academia, and the need for more “public intellectuals.” I’d struggled with the relationship of activism and academia throughout my time in college, as I’d hear students and professors theorize social justice, while others demanded out on the streets. I wondered what the use of academia was in a movement that required more people willing to demand justice through political and social action, and even more how my late nights at the library were contributing to any movement. I still struggle with these questions, but listening to Oliver talk about spreading knowledge and ideology through the use of history and analysis reminded me of the importance of education within activism.

Education became a central theme in our trip, from visiting el Centro de Desarollo Comunitario Centeotl in Zimatlan, Oaxaca, and CEDICAM (Centro de Desarollo Intergral Campesino de la Mixteca “Hita Nuni” A.C.) in Nochixtlan, Oaxaca. Similarly to RASA, both Centeotl and CEDICAM focused on valuing and retaining local knowledge/skills, and capacity building through farmer to farmer learning and escuelas de campo. Both community organizations focus on lessening dependencies on outside resources through agriculture, however Centeotl also works with campesinos to bring income to families through the production and sale of amaranth products. CEDICAM focuses on training and educating community members on sustainable agricultural practices which require little to no additional money to start, not only allow them to sustain their own families through farming, but also to empower them in making their communities look like they want them to through the use their own skills.

At CEDICAM we met Eleazar Garcia who is a promoter and local indigenous campesino that has been active and an integral part of the organization for over ten years, doing everything from family outreach, to delegations, agricultural trainings, and reforestation projects. He explained that CEDICAM values the skills of the people of the region because the indigenas have been growing maiz for over 9,000 years; something incredible worth knowing and praising. He explained that the region is called Mixteco, meaning “Land/Nation of the Rain,” and that stories tell of a time that the region was filled with vegetation and life. Eleazar continued that the land had been destroyed by poor agricultural habits, limestone burning, machinery and fertilizers, as well as goats that were brought into the region and destroyed soil as well as plants.

Eleazar explained that it was possible to bring the soil back to life, but it would take dedication and hard work. He explained that another reason for doing this work was to create more opportunities for self-sufficiency, so that families would not have to migrate elsewhere to find livelihood. This is a challenge however, because as Eleazar explained, fixing damaged soil and land takes months, even years at times, and migrating still seemed like a more viable means of survival for many struggling families.

Eleazar’s discussion made me think about the meaning of “gente del Maiz,” and the parallel between maiz and the peoples of Mexico; both have been around for thousands of years, both have adapted to all climates and conditions, both come in all different shades, colors, and sizes, and ultimately, both are tied to many products consumed by the world. Eleazar talked about maiz being an integral part of life, and using the parallel mentioned above, I was reminded of the crucial role that Mexican immigrants and corn have played for the US for decades. Immigrants have been the back bone of industries like agriculture, hospitality, etc, and without their work, the US economy would have floundered ages ago. At the same time, corn has been the base of so many products consumed in America, from gasoline to potato chips and cooking oils, and even beauty products. Eleazer’s work educates campesinos on the importance of their work and existence in order to consolidate the necessary power of the communities constantly victimized by governmental, military, and financial institutions, for change.

As Eleazar explained, there is an importance in valuing and learning the cultures from the Mixtec region, along with their skills and histories, and their ability to survive for centuries by maintaining corn as central to life. Their history of resistance is the foundation of today’s struggle against huge corporations like Monsanto and Maseca. I was reminded here that education is part of the process of mobilization; that people must understand where they came from, where they stand, where they are headed, and where they want to be. Eleazer also explained that through their farmer to farmer education, they are not imposing changes that can become undone, they are concretely showing people how these changes are beneficial and people naturally gravitate towards the new ideas. Education in activism and organizing creates the space for analysis and understanding of the larger systems at work, reflection on previous resistance strategies and their successes and failures, and planning on future tactics and actions. Through education these organizations are able to discuss with campesinos about the current state of their communities and the tangible efforts that can be taken to challenge those conditions.

- submitted by Erik Martinez

OPERATION STREAMLINE: Human Beings, the “Justice” System, and the Economy in Action

The Magistrate sits up high on the bench in his black robe, peering over his glasses at the bottles of hand sanitizer lining the tables before him. Lawyers sit sternly in their ironed suits. US Marshals and Border Patrol agents stand in their blue and green uniforms at the doors and in the aisles. In the moments before the trial, they elbow one another, joking. For them, this is a familiar event, a daily proceeding to which they have become accustomed—and many of them appear nonchalant, even bored.

For the 70 recently apprehended migrants in the room, the situation is not so familiar, or so non-consequential. Filling more than a third of the seats in the courtroom, they sit handcuffed with chains around their waists. Many of them are still wearing the camo they must have sported on their journey through the desert. They are almost all men, one woman. From Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador. From a long journey that has brought them to lethal heat and short-term facility floors and courtroom chains.

From the other side of the room, we scan their many faces, aware that the men we met in Altar may well be among them. I don’t recognize anyone, but I hear from Rosalva later that she found a familiar face.

What we are seeing, a public defender has told us, is not just a court proceeding; it is “the economy in action.” And in the scene before us, we can indeed see the stark human reality of the First World “making use” of the Third—the clean ritual dance by which that “use” is legitimized and justified. Operation Streamline allegedly functions under the logic of “deterrence.” First implemented in Texas in 2005, it is known as a “zero-tolerance” policy, which treats undocumented border-crossing as a crime, and undocumented crossers as criminals. Rather than undergoing civil deportation proceedings, they are forced instead through the federal criminal justice system and into US prisons. First-time crossers may be punishable by up to 6 months, and those who have re-entered after deportation may be prosecuted for felonies, facing up to 20 years. In addition, these convictions almost guarantee future exclusion from all legal pathways to migration and citizenship.

The idea is that this risk of punishment will prevent—“deter”—migrants from coming. But this idea is wrong. Like other aspects of US immigration policy—the installation of a new wall, the increasing militarization of the border—Operation Streamline fails to acknowledge the realities of poverty and violence that the US actively continues to help foster in the nations to our south. Many of those making the journey north come out of necessity, out of the human drive to survive, and to care for those whom they love.

What is “streamlined” in this operation, then, has nothing to do with deterrence, security, or justice. What is streamlined is the flow of human beings from the impoverished economies south of the border to US detention facilities to US courtrooms to US private prisons. The prisons, and the US justice system that fills them, can be seen as the other side of the human trafficking industry. Through Operation Streamline, migrants are practically handed from coyote to Border Patrol Agent to Magistrate to the Corrections Corporation of America. Each step of the way, someone is making money—from the mafiosos running cartels to US officials to prison industry executives. Since Operation Streamline was first implemented in Arizona in 2008, the public defender explains, the US Marshal budget for the area has increased by $2 million, the state has contracted lawyers making $750 a day, and CCA has had 7500 new prison beds installed. The treatment of migrants as “aliens” and “criminals” has gone hand in hand with their treatment as commodities. “The economy in action” looks like human beings in chains.

In the windowless courtroom, we can only guess at the lives, histories, and relationships, the hopes and the fears, that are in our presence. While most criminal proceedings in this country last up to several months, Streamline proceedings take place over the course of a single day. In Tucson, 70 migrants are tried en masse within less than two hours. In the course of today’s rapid proceeding, we find out almost nothing about the individual migrants being tried—their stories or the details of their apprehensions.

It takes me a special effort to see them as individuals in this context, amidst the crowd of chains and translation-headphones and hand sanitizer. They are seated together, addressed together, and asked to speak together, called up in groups of eight to make their pleas, which have been predetermined. “Are you entering this plea voluntarily and by your own free will?” the judge asks in a tired monotone that can only come from excessive repetition—“compassion fatigue,” the public defender calls it.

“Sí,” the men respond in unison. The meanings of “voluntary” and “free will”—along with the meanings of “due process” and “rights”—have been stretched thin.

- submitted by Irene Milsom

Ambos Lados: Reflections from Altar & Nogales

This weekend as a party of sixteen (all of us students, our instructors, Rosalva Fuentes our housing coordinator/community organizer wonder woman, and a good friend of one of our instructors), we climbed into our white vans and took a two-day trip to Altar and Nogales in the state of Sonora Mexico. In about 72 hours, we toured the Nogales Border Patrol station, then crossed the border and visited the Kino Border Initiative, an organization that functions as a political action group and shelter for recently deported women. From there, we traveled further into the interior of Mexico, to Altar, Sonora. In Altar, we stayed at CCAYMN (Centro Comunitario de Atencion al Migrante y Necesitado), a migrant shelter that offers help to migrants traveling in both directions from the border. The next morning, we explored the central area of Altar, and visited a casa de huespedes. From Altar, we made a quick stop in Magdalena de Kino. From there we drove back to Nogales, first visiting a community organization called HEPAC (Hogar de Esperanza y Paz). From HEPAC, we went to our final destination, Colonia Flores Magon, a community in Nogales. In Flores Magon, we visited and stayed with local families, sharing meals and conversations with them. The next morning, we piled into our white vans, and drove back to el otro lado. Below I tried to sketch out, at least a little, to experience this trip and the many border narratives that we were given.

The trip really started as we pulled up to the Nogales Border Patrol station. By the end of our two hour tour, which included a weapons demonstration, I felt drained and shaken. I’d never seen a real gun before, but what really made an impression on me was the narrative of the Border Patrol that we were presented with. One of the most prevalent threads of this narrative was that of victim-hood. Our first stop on the tour was a conference room where with almost no introduction we were shown a video depicting “rocking,” which is the official Border Patrol term for when people on the “south side” throw rocks over the wall at agents. Our tour guide pointed out two large rocks sitting on the table in front of us, asking us to pass them around and asking whether we would ever respond to law enforcement “like that.” Again and again, we were told that all these officers just wanted to get home to their families, and it was impressed upon us that all violence was connected to self-defense, or heroism. In response to a question about the use deadly force, one of our tour guides described a scenario wherein we (as female officers) were faced with the threat of a big, imposing man attacking us. She challenged us, asked if we could “take him,” if we would use deadly force. She used the underlying threat of sexual violence, a very real experience for countless migrating women and girls, as a method of justification for state violence. The Border Patrol’s narrative is undoubtedly one of loudest coming from the borderlands, and the idea of victimization is only one piece of it. I think, though, that it was the piece that spoke loudest to me as our tour guides led us down hallways evading questions about detainment facilities and the use of deadly force.

From the Border Patrol station, we crossed and visited the Kino Border Initiative. The Kino Border Initiative is an organization, run primarily by Catholic nuns, that functions both as a site of political activism, and also as a comedor, shelter, and resource center for recently deported women. The hermanas (nuns) who we spoke with talked about their journeys to this work, as well as the various services that the center provides, including short-term shelter, basic medical care and referrals to clinics as well as other migrant aid resources, women’s empowerment work, and policy work. It amazed me to know how much was being done from within one small space, especially in response to all the state and interpersonal violence that exists surrounding the realities of the border and migration. We were also privileged enough to hear the stories of the two young women currently living at Kino. There is a great deal of privilege that exists in the exchange of stories, not only the privilege that we as Border Studies students received in hearing these stories, but in the realities of where we bring them, as we freely cross back and forth. Because of this I don’t feel comfortable sharing the stories of these young women, or any other migrants we were lucky enough to speak with. It was an emotional experience, the receiving of two lived stories from two women with their own relationships and conceptions of the border. It was heavy, and I held it in my back pocket (not literally of course), with an even heavier set of questions attached. How could I hold, and respectfully understand the gift of these lived stories? And how can I understand these narratives in the light of the last space we occupied?

These questions stayed with me for the remainder of our trip. From there we traveled south to Altar. Altar was once a city with a massive immigration economy. It was once, one of the most frequented staging areas/spaces of migration. While it is no longer an extremely trafficked area of migration, there is still a significant presence of migration related economy, including a presence of polleros and coyotes. While we were able to explore the central area of the city the next day, we initially visited and stayed at CCAYMN, a migrant shelter and comedor that offers, in addition to food and rest, assistance and information for migrants moving in both directions in relation to the border. Also run by nuns, the center is a safe space for migrants in the sometimes dangerous city of Altar. CCAYMN is also a very politicized place. The walls inside and out are hung with the names of those who have lost their lives in the desert. It was in space that we were lucky enough to shake hands with, say grace with, eat food and tables with, and share stories with the men who were at that time staying in the shelter. In much the same way as with the women we spoke to in Nogales, I felt at a loss for how to correctly, respectfully listen and receive these lived stories. What did it even mean, I thought, that I was hearing them? The next day, when we traveled back to Nogales, and stayed with host families in Colonia Flores Magon, I felt this as well. A sense that my current understanding of the border was woefully incomplete, but also a sense of fear that in trying to build a new understanding I might misuse or colonize the lived stories, the narratives that I was privileged to soak for those two days. Interwoven with this, was the question of how the Border Patrol narrative can exist in the same space as these, quieter (quieted) narratives of the border. This of course, is my analysis two days out, with a clearer head. I’m sure in any one of these spaces, my immediate thoughts had a few less commas and parentheses.

Right now, as I am curled up comfortably en este lado, trying to create a synthesis of this trip, it’s easier for me to understand what it meant for me, and how that made me feel. When I was in it, when I was still trying to make sense of Border Patrol while I struggled with my Spanish speaking to a man at CCAYMN or taking notes in a presentation while I thought about what it means that I am in the borderlands, or any of the other challenging spaces I found myself in, I couldn’t quite get there. It took me a few days to get there, to get that all this dissonance, and heaviness, all those challenging spaces, they all connect. Specifically, they all connect to narrative, to storytelling, to speaking the border. I’m getting a bit flowery even for myself right here, so I’m going to try and speak this as plainly as I can. By virtue of my social location and my global north citizenship, I came to this program with a pretty clear image of the border. So much of this image was built through reading, through speaking, through anger––it was an intentional construction project. But, a whole bunch of it was fed to me, whispered to me, and soaked up as a person living in a securitized state, and told that borders are for my protection. So, I came to Tucson with this, my own conception of the border, and didn’t really listen when Jeff, one of our instructors, told us that a lot of Border Studies was about unlearning. Our trip to Altar and Nogales was an emotional and powerful experience, and I’ve got to say that I didn’t come away with any earthshaking conclusions, but I did come away understanding that in order to figure what I’m doing here, I’ve got to start tearing down the old border in my head and build a new one, one that resists tokenizing, that respectfully receives the gift of a shared, lived story, that doesn’t survive on intellectualism alone, and that actively rejects the voices and narratives that justify violence. Above I tried to sketch out, at least a little, what some of these border voices meant to me in this respect.

- submitted by Sophie Christenberry

“They want my taxes but they don't want me”

Not only has 1070-style profiling and policing happened for years, it's not the first time such legislation has been pushed in Arizona. In 2004 Proposition 200 narrowly passed which required proof of citizenship to register to vote or apply for social services and made it a misdemeanor for public officials to fail to report those who failed to provide proof. Much of this proposition was later vetoed, but it opened the door for similar legislation. Proposition 300 in 2006 forced students to pay out-of-state tuition and prove their legal status to receive financial aid. In 2007 the E-Verify system was implemented which provided a national database and required employers to check their employees' Social Security numbers online within three days of hiring. Although E-Verify mandated punishment for employers who knowingly employed people without the right documents, it more often led to employers learning the status of their workers and refusing to pay them after weeks of work under threat of reporting them. Although this was facilitated by a new law and new technology, this appears to be the same type of theft that proliferated under the Bracero program from the 1940s through 1960s. It's all too easy to see SB 1070 as an isolated incident that happened in a crazy state. Instead, we were challenged to see Arizona as a fertile testing ground for this legislation which has since been implemented in other states. This is the product of large-scale successful organizing by nativist groups like Numbers USA, Federation for American Immigration Reform, and the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Another major legislative attack has been HB 2281, or the Ethnic Studies Ban which targets programs in Arizona schools that teach Mexican-American literature, history and cultural studies. Proponents of this bill literally say they are afraid of the “racial tensions” that result from these classes. That means that they are not only spaces for cultural celebration and preservation but that they are uncovering dangerous, radical truths about this country. If that is not enough of an endorsement for the value of these educational programs, then watch how these kids fight for their classes:

(VIDEO) FIGHT BACK!

Rosalva was clear that it is important to direct efforts to combat a proposition from becoming law because once it makes it to the law books, efforts to repeal it are often futile. Many people actively fought against each of these laws, but as they've been passed it seems the focus has shifted to efforts like the Protection Network and escuelitas that teach what was banned by HB 2281 outside the classroom. Towards the end of our visit, Rosalva hit on two points that I think have profound implications for all justice work. First, that these problems are systemic. It doesn't matter if politicians, cops, and CEOs are explicitly racist and cruel or if they are nice folks “just doing their job,” it's the system itself that is destroying us. Second, that protest doesn't do anything on its own. Both of these points raise big questions about our current state of politics and ongoing organizing for justice. Can we really expect transformative change or true democracy from our two-party system? Does equal rights under the law lead to true social equality? What alternative tactics and strategies must we consider if traditional forms of protest are ineffective?

- submitted by Will Wickham

“This isn't happening to undocumented Canadians”

Last Thursday we met with Rosalva Fuentes, a powerhouse community organizer who seems to have her hands in most of the coolest organizing working going on here. We met her at Fortin de las Flores, an organization she formed a year and a half ago with three other women. The organization is for women and their families and offers Know Your Rights trainings, self-esteem workshops, and support and empowerment for women facing domestic violence. A nine family committee meets at Fortin to educate each other about political issues and community problems.

Much of this work focuses on resisting the racially-motivated policing undertaken by the Tucson Police Department in collusion with Sheriff's departments, Border Patrol, and federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) police. This urban policing effort is part and parcel of the larger “border security” project. It is common practice for police to pull over latino drivers for having a taillight out, or having something hanging from their rear-view mirror, in order to check their immigration status. These are the situations in which knowing your rights and asserting them can decrease your chances of being detained and deported. Rosalva also helps families organize their own Red de Protección, a protection network that, in the case of a detention or deportation, sets in motion a support schematic that includes legal support, fundraising, notarized letters regarding child custody and financial matters, as well as moral support through letters and signatures. This work is also supported by a Cop Watch and Migra Patrol group, which responds to calls in order to make sure those being policed know to assert their rights and to film what happens. Police are less likely to beat or shoot their victims when they are being filmed and when they do violate our rights anyway, the footage is important evidence.

Rosalva did a role-play with us of a typical racially-profiled traffic stop in which the cops are trying to check your legal status. It was immediately clear that we were in need of a Know Our Rights training! The students in the “car” consented to the car being searched, either lied about their status or admitted to not having papers, offered to open the trunk, and offered to take the cop to their house to “get their papers.” This exercise showed how to difficult it is protect yourself against a persistent cop, especially if you have a hard time understanding the language they're speaking. This type of policing and racial profiling certainly expanded after it was legalized in July, 2010 with SB 1070, but as Rosalva says “SB 1070 has always been in effect here.” That is to say, policing of immigration had always been racialized, and they've always gotten away with profiling. “This isn't happening to undocumented Canadians,” says Rosalva.

(VIDEO) Friday Night Injustice

- submitted by Will Wickham