An Activist reflects on the border region...

A major circle completed itself for me as I sat in Panchita's Salvadoran Food in San Francisco the other week. I took the tattered Modelo Especial label from my wallet and set it on the glassed-over tablecloth, trying to remember all that happened during the time it spent squished up against my right buttock. Three years ago, Joe the Mormon and I enjoyed some late night pupusas and beer at Panchita's. He had just graduated from Teach For America, and I had just started my first summer of No More Deaths on the border. My bottle of Modelo had an extra label dangling from it, and I stuck it in my wallet to keep the good memory with me. Joe went back to work with his students, and my label came back with me to the border. Three years later, with guidance from Joe's iPhone, I found myself back in the same spot on a spontaneous escape from a 3-hour airport layover. An older, silver-toothed waiter came to take my order, and grabbed the piece of trash off the table. I stopped him, introduced myself, and with some hesitancy began to try to tell what was so Especial about that label. The waiter told me his name, which I was pretty sure he shared with an old Chilean dictator. I was also pretty sure he would think my sob story was a cheap attempt at talking some free food out of him, but I told it anyway. He knew of the work of groups like No More Deaths, and thought it was neat that the label had wandered the border with me ever since I'd wandered into his restaurant three years ago and wandered back in again today. He had heard about the tragedy of little Josseline – they were both from El Salvador. I was happy to see him smile, saying he would keep the label for me there at the restaurant, and that he would tell the story to the woman making pupusas. And I was relieved when he charged me for my food and for my Modelo Especial.

I may not have been so relieved were I not finally gainfully employed again. After a lengthy interview process and lots of finger-crossing and name-dropping, the Sierra Club hired me as their Borderlands Campaign Organizer! I work from an office in downtown Tucson, helping put together a grassroots campaign against environmentally harmful border policies and infrastructure, especially the border wall. The opportunity to engage the nation's largest, oldest, most influential conservation organization, and its 1.2 million members, in this struggle is amazing and humbling. I am the only Sierra Club employee in Tucson, and, as far as I know, the only convicted litterer in the entire organization! Seriously though, right now is a time of unity, of solidarity between humanitarian and environmental causes working together against a destructive and absurd border policy. The future holds hope, and tons of work! If you'd like to help out or learn more, check us out at www.arizona.sierraclub.org/border or look up Sierra Club Borderlands Campaign on facebook.

It's the day after Thanksgiving, and I'm writing this from the back of my truck, parked at the makeout point above Flagstaff, AZ. I have spent a lot of time here on recent visits to my hometown, sadly always alone. For whatever reason, it's my preferred place to practice crappy Garth Brooks renditions on my borrowed guitar, or maybe now to type up messages on the Sierra Club's laptop computer. Wow – there's even wireless signal! From here, the flash and whine of sirens stand out most, and the trains sever the city in half every few minutes, like a twisting steel wall rumbling over anything in its path. These things, and helicopters, often drag me back to memories and stories of our border emergency.

I have three border stories to tell you: one about a friend, another about a friend's friend, and the third about a stranger. Only my friend is still alive.

About a month before and not far from where I was ticketed for leaving water for migrants, Samaritans volunteer Kathryn Ferguson was parked along the highway. She was doing a routine trail check, looking for lost, injured or sick people in need of help. An unmarked truck pulled up behind her, and three burly plainclothes men confronted her, refusing to identify themselves. An experienced border volunteer, Kathryn smartly began writing everything down. They responded by shoving her against the truck, handcuffing her, and holding her for an hour and a half before our lawyers were finally able to convince them to let her go. She was charged with creating a nuisance, and a trial date was set. The day before she was to go to court, the charges were mysteriously dropped. Here is an article on the whole ordeal: http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Currents/Content?oid=116779

Francisco Dominguez Rivera was not so lucky. This month, for the second time, a jury failed to convict the Border Patrol agent who shot him under his left arm at point blank range in 2007. The bullet pierced his heart and lodged in his abdomen. When he died, Francisco was 22 years old and weighed 145 pounds. The 240-pound agent who claims to have shot him in a scuffle is still on the job. Eyewitnesses and official reports say there was no scuffle.

Just as tragic is the story of my friend's friend Luis. Early this year he was pulled over for a routine racial profiling – uh – I mean traffic stop by Phoenix police. Having no driver's license, Luis was turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE is the same agency that has been in the news for rounding up and scapegoating brown people in Iowa, Florida and beyond, as well as conducting lesser-known raids like the one this month here in Flagstaff). Luis refused to sign voluntary deportation papers. His wife and three children are here in the U.S., where he had lived and worked for ten years. He sat in jail for six months before being deported in August. On September 15, Luis was found dead in our Arizona border desert. Trying to get back to his wife, his seven year old, his four year old, and the three month old baby daughter he had never met, he died of dehydration and exposure.

There are 182 more stories like this one; stories that end in lifeless bodies lying on our border. One of those is Josseline's story. She and Luis are just two of the 183 whose remains were found along the Arizona border this year. This does not include those found in the three other U.S.-Mexico border states, or the thousands found in the years since the invention of NAFTA and the walls. And only God knows how many thousands more are never found.

I cry every time I write one of these messages. I'm hoping the next time they'll be tears of joy, a happy report about winning the appeal we filed of my littering conviction. But most probably there won't be a next message. I'm stepping back from the "front-lines" work of No More Deaths, learning to plug into my new "command center" post with the Sierra Club Borderlands Campaign. If you would like to continue getting monthly updates from this new vantage point, please send an email to dan.millis@sierraclub.org and I'll sign you up. I enjoyed sharing my experiences with you, not because the memories are fond, but because they are important. That 2,000-mile imaginary line between rich and poor, English and Spanish, ketchup and Tapatío, is like an endless scroll whose writings contain the saddest stories, the most absurd ironies, and the essential lessons. I implore all of us to continue to share what we witness, what we live. As always, you can share my memories with a click on www.borderstoked.com. Now, more than ever, we have an opportunity to push for real change in the way our government and society operates. Together we might close some of the mangled and bloody circles plaguing not just our borders but our very beings.

Thank you, so very much, for standing beside the migrants, the volunteers, and me, in the desert, in federal court, and in our common human heart.

Dan

The Migrant Trail: We Walk for Life

The Migrant Trail: We Walk for Life
May 26-June 1, 2008

A 75 mile walk from Sásabe, Sonora, MX to Tucson, AZ
The precarious reality of our borderlands calls us to walk. We walk together on a journey of peace to remember people, friends and family who have died, others who have crossed, and people who continue to come. We walk to bear witness to the tragedy of death and of the inhumanity in our midst. Lastly, we walk as a community, in defiance of the borders that attempt to divide us, committed to working together for the human dignity of all peoples.

For Immediate ReleaseMay 30, 2008Contact: Kat Rodriguez, Stephanie Dernek: 520.561.2427
Press Conference:Migrant Trail Arrives in Tucson to Testify About Border ExperienceSunday, June 1, 200811:30amKennedy Park, Ramada #3 Tucson, Arizona
Tucson- An international group participating in the fifth annual Migrant Trail Walk from Sásabe, Sonora to Tucson, Arizona will arrive on Sunday, June 1st. The 75-mile Walk will culminate in a press conference, followed by a community gathering at Kennedy Park in Tucson, Arizona. The Migrant Trail, a Walk through the most traveled corridor on the Arizona-Sonora border, sponsored by a coalition of nineteen organizations, bears witness to the thousands of women, men and children who have lost their lives in an attempt to provide a better future for themselves and their families. "The deaths of more than 5,000 women, men and children are the direct result of our failed and unconscionable U.S. border policies," says Jodi Read of Mennonite Central Committee. "We, as people of faith and conscience, are called to make this journey together as witnesses, to be the voices that our migrant brothers and sisters no longer have." For the last five years, this collaborative effort has joined friends and allies from across the country and from international backgrounds for a one-week experience through the Sásabe corridor, where most crossings occur and the vast majority of bodies are recovered along the Arizona-Sonora border. An act of solidarity, the Walk is a means of bearing witness to the death and devastation that has resulted from the violence, division, and xenophobia in response to the mass migration that has resulted from failed border and trade policies. "I recently returned from Juarez/El Paso where the militarization, violence and death toll increase daily. I am impelled to action for those I met and for the migrant community in Chicago, Illinois," says Stephanie Dernek of 8th Day Center for Justice and Chicago New Sanctuary Coalition, who has made the journey for the last three years to the Arizona border. "I walk the Migrant Trail to be a witness to the human rights violations, unjust and racist border/immigration policies. I walk in remembrance of those who died in the journey and to recommit myself and my community to work to bring about justice and peace for the migrant." The Migrant Trail Walk will begin the final 6.7 miles of their journey at 9am at the BLM campsite on Ajo Way and San Joaquin Road. Participants will be welcomed home at Kennedy Park with speakers, music, food, and testimonies from participants and supporters. This event is free and open to the public.

The Migrant Trail
c/o Arizona Border Rights Foundation
P.O. Box 1286 Tucson, AZ 85702
Tel: 520.770.1373Fax: 520.770.7455
www.derechoshumanosaz.net

Tom Kowal on the Migrant Trail Walk

Statement by Tom Kowal from Denver, at the press conference in Tucson at the end of the 5th Migrant Trail Walk, June 1, 2008:

There is a reason why we are here. We are here in memory of the 5,000 women, men and children who have died in the past 14 years on this border. These brave people committed no crime. They came across this desert because they need to feed their families. They died because the US laws are broken. These laws are unrealistic, inhumane and lethal. They serve only those who would exploit other human beings, and those who seek to divide us.

We are one community – somos un pueblo. So when these brothers and sisters -- these friends and neighbors -- suffer and die in the desert because the safe routes have been closed by failed policies, we all suffer this loss.

And so Coloradans For Immigrant Rights, the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition and the American Friends Service Committee stand here in witness to those sacrificed in this killing field. We mourn with their families and we call for reform. We call on our government to end this evil madness; to immediately pass humane and realistic comprehensive immigration reform; to reprogram the billions of dollars being wasted on border militarization to human needs.

It is not too much to ask to stop the killing and to begin healing our border communities.
~ Tom Kowal

Reflections on the Migrant Trail Walk, by Tom Acker

I recently returned from a symbolic journey. In the materialistic, pragmatic context of most of our lives, we tend to disregard those things which transcend our daily existence. But here I am writing to you, dear reader, of a place in which what are usually disquieting abstractions, life and death, are tangible constants. They are seen in bleached bones of animals, circling vultures, stupefying heat and dusty dry arroyos. These are elements that accompany you if you venture outside the air-conditioned comfort that most of the inhabitants seek in southern Arizona.

The hidden side of the folkloric Southwest border is deadly. The reality of the desert becomes a horrific and epic awakening for those unfortunate individuals that make up the thousands that attempt to traverse our hemisphere’s most forbidding region: the Sonora Desert that straddles both sides of the Mexican-U.S. border.

Since October 2007, 52 people have died in the desert (as of June 6th, 2008). They die from dehydration, hypothermia and hyperthermia. These statistics reveal the stark reality that unsuspecting economic refugees face upon encountering this inhospitable region for the first time.

Immigration is an act of desperation. The urgency to leave one’s home arises from the extreme poverty that exists in southern Mexico (the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca are famous for this) and Central America. The verdant rainforest of the Lacandona jungle of Chiapas bears no resemblance to the arid international desert with its cholla cactus and its mesquite trees. Add to the physically demanding geography the Sonoran desert’s socio-political chaos. As lethal as the desert are the gangs of narcotraffickers, human traffickers and those that prey on the ill-prepared migrants, the bajadores. This frightening no-man’s land also harbors stories of unscrupulous Border Patrol agents as well as Mexican border officials.

The migrants connect with traffickers, the coyotes, in the northern Mexican launching site of Altar. These entrepreneurs promise them safe passage across the Arizona desert in exchange for thousands of dollars, usually borrowed from relatives or loan sharks. I, on the other hand, felt well protected. My worries were few as I meet my friends and colleagues from the previous year’s Migrant Trail at the Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson. Among them are members of innovative and courageous groups like Humane Borders, No More Deaths, Tucson Samaritans, Derechos Humanos and Green Valley Samaritans as well as good citizens from colleges, faith groups, and just interested humanitarians. We prepared to walk for 6 days the 75 miles between the Sonoran border village of Sásabe into the increasingly treacherous Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge.

The Migrant Trail walkers are following an natural south-north passage through the Altar Valley with mountain ranges to our east and west. It is as if we were literally passing through an altar where migrant men, women and children are tried to the extreme. It is an inhumane sacrificial altar on which there is a divine struggle between good and evil. In this large expanse of desert, the mistake of taking the wrong arroyo, separating from the coyote, joining up with the wrong groups of fellow migrants is paid for in human lives. In fact, this is sacred ground.

As we approach the outskirts of Tucson we camp in an old quarry which belongs to the Tohono O'odham people. Their disconnection from their traditional Mexican relatives and culture is testimony to the ill conceived immigration policies that castigate this beautiful and rich cultural environment. Many Tohono O'odham people are no longer able to participate in centuries-old events because they lack the recognized documentation necessary to cross at the border check points. Pre-1994, they could move relatively freely between their Mexican and US communities. Now they are prisoners resulting from laws about which they were not consulted.

Arizona currently has the nation’s harshest immigration laws. Colorado follows closely behind. Tucson resident and AZ native, Quaker Mike Gray, observed that the Arizona natives are not the motor behind the state’s cruel legislation. He observes that the influx of Northern retirees from the mostly white suburbs of Chicago and other Midwest areas, unaccustomed to living in multiracial communities, are largely responsible for the anti-Latino changes in the Arizona political climate. The irony in Tucson is the fact that the attraction for these Gringo immigrants fleeing northern winters are the “Spanish” motifs of the sprawling subdivisions popping up through out the desert. Every one of them sports a quaint “Hispanic” name like Corte El Rancho, Miramar, Maria Elena, etc.

I was fortunate, being on vacation, to be able to deliver a car-load of survival packages with varying contents donated by the good people of the Grand Valley to be used by the humanitarian organization No More Deaths at the Mariposa aide station in Nogales, Sonora. NMD ameliorates the suffering of the persons detained by the U.S. Border Patrol and deposited, blistered, dehydrated, disoriented and broken, far from their homes and families. Our shipment was utilized immediately the week we were walking. Jim and his wife Sarah from the Southside Presbyterian Church gratefully received this help from 600 miles north and asked that I convey their appreciation for the support this contribution gives. If you want more information about the border and the humane organizations working there, go to www.nomoredeaths.org/ There you will find more links to organizations affiliated with them as well.

~ Tom Acker is a professor of Spanish at Mesa State College and President of Grand Valley Peace and Justice. He is also a member of CIRC through the Western Colorado Justice for Immigrants Committee.

Reuters Blog: Walk to America

This is a great blog by Reuters reporters called Walking to America. It gives a good perspective of the physical hardships as well as the myths propagated on the Mexican side of the border about how short the walk is. The first installment was here.

This really compliments the things on Bri's blog working with No More Deaths.