Tucson Treasures, Part Three

I am really grateful to have the time to reflect on all that I did, saw and learned in Tucson.  We are spending the week with our friends Marilyn and Dale in Desert Edge, California.  I think that everyone at Healing Waters Park, where they live, who sees me working away every morning on my laptop probably wonder what that woman is working on that keeps her away from the desert.  It is lovely at the end of my work to take a break and enjoy the area.  This morning I am working outside and hummingbirds are visiting me on their way to and from the orange tree that is in blossom.  The smell of the orange blossoms is so sweet that I am lulled into a sense of peace and well being.  Mike has been hiking, biking and enjoying life in the desert while I work.  I think it has been a good trip for him and he is taking full advantage of having his bike on the trip.  He has been riding a 31 mile loop up and down hills and is quite happy to be warm!

Orange blossom

Baby hummers

So, back to reflecting on Tucson.  The day after I visited with Anna and her class on migration, I drive into town to interview Emrys Staton in depth. I met him at the Borderlinks facility where he is a board member and where I had originally met him during our Immigration Justice experience.  Emrys is an social justice activist, theology student and a person with a great deal of integrity who grew up in Arizona.  He came to Tucson from Northern Arizona and was raised as a Unitarian Universalist.  He was exposed to the concepts of suffering and political engagement as a means to alleviate suffering as a child, both through his religious education and by the examples set by his politically involved parents.  It seems to have stuck with him.  He majored in geography with an emphasis on social justice at the University of Arizona.  He told me that he was a sophomore in college on September 11, 2001.  He reported alot of hate being present on campus immediately following the attacks.  He joined Beyond Tolerance, a campus group formed to help mitigate the climate of hate.  His journey towards the activism he now engages in continued by befriending a group of Sudanese refugees who had been settled in Tucson by the UN High Commission on Refugees to attend the university.  He learned from them what it personally meant to be a refugee.  These young men had left their homes at the ages of 9 and 10 to travel safety and it took years of struggle and horrible treatment to arrive in Tucson.  Emrys was horrified by the stories they told.

Emrys

By the end of college he was working in independent media on food and justice issues and would attend protests and actions and be beaten up and then report the experience. This preceded the blog and other social media era.  It was the only way to get the truth out about how demonstrators were being treated.

Emrys became in involved in No More Deaths(NMD) from the beginning.  He attended the inaugural event, a Memorial Day 2004 cross border march between Nogales Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora.  He went first as an independent/citizen news reporter and later as a core member of the organization.  A year later he was fully involved and living with a group of activists who were all dedicated to NMD. He spent time at the first encampment NMD in the desert in the summer months of 2004. The encampment provides first aid, water and respite for migrants crossing the desert in the hottest months of the year.  It still operates and is now sanctioned by the International Red Cross which makes it a little safer than some other humanitarian operations from being raided by law enforcement and anti-immigrant vigilantes.  

I asked Emrys what victories he has seen in his 10 years of work with NMD.  He shared the following:

• There are a lot of people we have kept alive.  We have countered the policies of the US Border Patrol that includes enforcement through deterrence, even if death is a "collateral."
• There many immigrant groups who are now fighting to make the political change,  and they had to survive in order to be activists.
•  They (NMD) are one of the only groups that can call out the Border Patrol.  He believes that we should defund Border Patrol.  The theme that I saw in the office of Borderlinks in posters is Revitalize Not Militarize Border Communities.  He believes this should be the message for all of our borders.  All land 100 miles in from the border is now under the purview of the Border Control.    He stated that we need to be very alert to the role the Border Patrol is playing.  Even as they become integrated into the community the enforcement aspect becomes subtly integrated into the community.  What if a border patrol dad becomes assistant boy scout leader - will he be welcoming to undocumented boys and/or families.  Or a soccer coach or 4-H leader (I add this because that is the youth development program in my world)?
• The revision of police policy in how immigrants are treated for routine infractions of the law.  Immigration papers will no longer be sought.  The policy was big news in Tucson and upsetting to the crafters of the infamous SB 1070.  It is good to know that one significant community is fighting back.  It follows revisions of policies that will no longer check school children for immigration papers in the Tucson area.  
• Emrys wholeheartedly endorsed Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Homeland by Todd Miller.  Todd has a really informative blog.  I intend to order it from my independent bookseller!

I asked Emrys what he sees as future needs for both NMD and all of us who are concerned with immigrant justice.  His answers were not always easy to hear.  He said that the work for the future for NMD is solidarity with immigrant-led groups and movements.  Allegiance with black-lives matter.  Prison industry targets both black and brown skins.  He shared that the International Red Cross endorses the work of NMD.  "We work within international humanitarian guidelines.    We need to keep on message that we are doing that here.  We (our society) need to think about decolonizing the concept of humanitarianism.  It is seen as something that people of privilege do.

We need to look at people most effected by conditions taking leadership for making the change.  We have to hear and believe their voices.  We need to use language that tells the facts and avoid the use of language that creates veneer of legitimacy.  We need to hear what they are saying: They (the US government immigration agents and policies) are “terrorizing and kidnapping” us and our children.  Then we need to take the voices seriously.

Lots to think about from our conversation.  

Thanks for reading.

Borders and Heroes

 Dear Readers,

We are in the third day of Borderlinks experience and have more to come.  I am quite overcome with feelings and had a difficult time getting to sleep last night.  We have been witness to the following.  I will likely write more later about each of these pieces but I wanted to write something while my images are fresh.  In the past three days we have -

*Witnessed people whose only crime was entering the country without documents for the purpose of working and surviving brought before a judge in a Federal immigration court in leg and hand shackles to be sentenced in groups of 8-10 to time in one of our private prisons, aka Detention Centers, some for up to 6 months.  All were plea bargains.  No pictures were allowed.

*Spend time with recent deportees in a community kitchens run by the Jesuits in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico.  We have seen radical hospitality in the setting and people with very little hope and much determination treated to a Valentine's Day meal of posole, tortillas and more with balloons all around and brought to tears with the gift of music and love.

Outside the Kino Center where the meal was served.  

Pre-meal agreements and fun!

Valentine's Day Breakfast: Posole and torillas.  Horchata to drink!

Reproductions of murals and balloons decorate the wall.  Every effort is made to create hospitality and dignity in this setting.  I sensed that the memory of this  meal would help these folks at least for this day.  

*Met with women in a shelter who were all separated from their children, several had just completed 75 days in a cruel detention center before being returned from the detention center to Mexico and being dropped off to find that their money was stolen from someone within the system.  While in prison they suffered sexual abuse from prisoners and horrible treatment.  As one of the women said, "we are not criminals, we want to return to our children who are citizens and to work honestly."  There were so many tears from these beautiful young women and those of us who were privileged to hear their stories.  I lay awake last night thinking about them and hoping they will live to see their children and not be either incarcerated again, sexually exploited by narco terrorists or killed or neglected by coyotes, drug cartels or even our own border patrol or left to die in the desert.  We did not take pictures of the women but we listened and the stories and their faces live in my memory.

Some of the artifacts she shared with us. 

Shura with children's clothing.

*Heard stories from heroic Tucson area residents.  I do not think any of these folks would identify themselves as heroes but in my mind they are.  We heard from Emrys Staton who is a minister in training and one of the founders of the No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes organization that began leaving water in the desert 10 years ago to help save lives.  I hope to interview him in more depth next week.

Emrys, No More Deaths or No Mas Muertes

This morning we visited the co-organizer of the Green Valley Sahuarita Arizona Samaritans.  She is an amazing woman who moved to Green Valley from Berkeley CA and found that people were dying in the desert near her home.  She has organized a group of over 200 Samaritans in her area to help stop deaths in the desert.  Our group gathered in her hope around a table of artifacts that she had found in the desert near Green Valley.  She told the stories of what happens through the artifacts.  It was sobering.  She would not consider herself a heroine.  She told us that she is burdened every day with this work and she never gets away from it.  She is a powerful advocate for change.  She shared with us a powerful book of images by photographer Michael Hyatt: Migrant Artifacts; Magic and Loss in the Sonoran Desert published by Great Circle Books, Los Angeles.

This afternoon we spent time hearing stories of the sanctuary movement from Central American refugees that began in Tucson in the 1980's.  Rev. John Fife, one of the principals of the movement who was arrested with 15 others on a number of charges and later given 5 years probation, told the story of the movement from his experience.  He summarized the current US policy on the border of excluding the poorest of the poor from entering our country through a safe border as a gross violation of human rights and international law.  Strong words and strong convictions backed up by a deep faith in what should be done to protect all people and for the children who are now suffering as they are separated from their parents for a number of reasons.  He urged that our country develop a much broader view of what being a refugee means and how we can broaden the new sanctuary movement to protect children and their families.

I have been riding a roller coaster of despair, worry and hope over these last few days.  I think this experience will influence the rest of my sabbatical and my life for sometime to come.  I will not forget.

We finish here tomorrow and move a bit south where will be visiting agencies that serve families in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, including some in Nogales, Arizona.

Thanks for reading.