tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68933024911221761432024-03-18T07:13:44.759-07:00BrookeBinkowski.comAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-14588401419496270432015-12-31T18:41:00.001-08:002016-01-01T14:13:29.877-08:00On Hate<div style="background-color: white; color: #500050; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><i>I originally wrote this piece in 2014 for the New York Times, but they didn't pick it up. I tried unsuccessfully to get it printed somewhere else to no avail, so I'm finally putting it up here.</i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">Mark Lane started to get threats a few days after he took in the family. At first, they targeted his San Diego restaurant, writing reviews online, saying his food poisoned them. “Mark Lane needs a serious beating in front of his customers,” declared a Facebook user.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">Lane had already stoked the ire of <span class="il">hate</span> <span class="il">groups</span> by starting a Facebook page calling for a boycott of Murrieta, California, a town that rocketed to the international stage in 2014 after protestors turned away immigrant children. He further inflamed it by taking in a family of Guatemalan refugees waiting for an immigration hearing. They uncovered his identity and put photos of his wife and sons on the internet, threatening to show up and kill him.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;">“<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">Mudshark,” a voice on the phone hissed. “Go back to Mexico,” whispered another.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">Lane, who is white with an olive-skinned, dark-haired wife from Mexico, was called a race traitor, and worse. “Happy white guy who helps brown people?” read a typical email. “How did a decent Southerner like you get so perverted?” People started to show up at his restaurant to lurk outside and snap photos of customers.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">While the <span class="il">groups</span> still threatening Lane come from the fringe, their rhetoric is straight <span class="il">out</span> of the mainstream. The terminology used to separate and marginalize people based on country of origin or skin color is not just the work of a few lone-wolf <span class="il">racists</span> – it is the basis upon which the entire concept of border security has been built.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">Southern California is peppered with dozens with gun shops. You can walk in, get a quick lesson on the right guns and ammunition for you, and then find bulletin boards – online or off – with information about your pick of militia <span class="il">groups</span>. Many of those have connections to the Minutemen or other, more fringe <span class="il">groups</span>. All of them talk about patriotism and the necessity of guarding the border. Many are filled with code words and dog-whistle language about illegals, gangbangers, thugs, and disease-carrying foreigners.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">This is no accident. </span>"California </span><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">has historically been a cauldron of <span class="il">racial</span> inequity in the United States,” said Kelly Lytle Hernandez, an author and border historian at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We are much more familiar with the narrative of the South in particular, but California has long been at the center of immigrant exclusion and border security, and those have always circulated around race and exclusion.”</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">The American Dream did not start <span class="il">out</span> as a melting pot, she said. “Border security” as it is known today has been discussed since the beginning of the United States, but at first, it began as a discussion over who was white. “The general physical political ideal of the 19<sup>th</sup>century saw the United States as a massive body of land that was supposed to be a white settler society,” said Hernandez.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">Discussion about border security in the latter half of the 19<sup>th</sup> century actually began because of Chinese immigrants, who came to California to do agricultural work and who became so populous they were accused of stealing agribusiness jobs. In 1862, the first immigration law, known colloquially as the “Anti-Coolie Act,” prohibited prostitutes, alcoholics, epileptics, criminals, and Asians from entering the United States.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">Each new wave of migration was accompanied by fresh xenophobia – more so if the immigrants did not fit that white settler ideal. In the early 1900s, black American families, fed up with the Jim Crow, lynchings, and other legacies of the slave trade, began to move west. By the 1920s, more than a million African-Americans had moved <span class="il">out</span> of the South. European and Russian Jews also arrived en masse at around the same time to escape increasing violence and discrimination in their home countries.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">In 1924, at the behest of <span class="il">groups</span> like the Ku Klux Klan, the United States passed the National Origins Act, which not only set a hard limit for foreign immigration in an attempt to preserve the ideal of American <a href="http://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act" target="_blank">homogeneity</a></span></span></span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">, once again excluding Asians completely, but also created the Border Patrol to enforce it. As these riders were stationed along the U.S.-Mexico border, over time their focus narrowed to almost exclusively Mexican immigrants, deepening <span class="il">racial</span> divides and inequalities along the border. During the Great Depression, nearly half a million Mexicans were rounded up and “repatriated,” some voluntarily, most forcibly.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">Despite increasing tensions, migration to California continued, following market forces. Many people ended up in Los Angeles, thanks to the economic pull of its industrial centers and ports, which offered a chance at the middle-class dream to people who until then had not been allowed to have that opportunity. A second Great Migration of black Americans began in the 1940s, and Mexican agricultural and industrial workers found themselves in high demand there. The dream of white homogeneity, which never really existed to begin with, was overturned, and people started to leave. White flight had begun.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">Whole swaths of counties close to Los Angeles catered to white flight, with realtors enacting “gentlemen's agreements” and “covenants” to not sell to any black families – or Jewish, or Mexican, or any families that threatened the neighborhood's whiteness. Shreds of these covenants still remain, like the hotly contested cross on a La Jolla hilltop, originally erected as a sign that the tony seaside neighborhood was a Christian one. Redlining, or housing discrimination, began in earnest in suburbs all over the region.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">This all provided a fertile ground for neo-Nazi ideology to flourish after the end of the Second World War, aided and abetted by real estate agents who understood the wink and the smile they needed to keep their business selling tracts of southern California land as a white paradise. Wesley Swift, a Methodist preacher, started his own church, eventually called the Christian Identity movement or Church of Jesus Christ-Christian, which taught an extreme interpretation of Scripture that concluded that white people were the true children of Adam and Eve.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">One of Swift's acolytes eventually created the Aryan Nations separatist <span class="il">group</span> in the 1970s. By then, the framework that had allowed the creation of neo-Nazi <span class="il">groups</span> to begin with was firmly in place in southern California. These new generations, spurred by the focus on immigration and protecting White America, now had God on their side, as well.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">In the 1970s, the first militia <span class="il">groups</span> made their way to the border.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">The Civil Rights Movement triggered the uptick in white supremacy that began in the early 1970s, and while 9/11 created a surge of xenophobia from the South all the way to the tip of Alaska, it was sustained and fed by the wave of Iraqi immigrants that arrived in the United States soon afterward. During each wave, nativists and white supremacists went <span class="il">out</span> to the US-Mexico border, and each quickly adopted the language of border security and anti-terrorism measures to justify their methods.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;">“<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">In the post-WW2 era, David Duke's 1977 'Klan Border Watch' was the watershed moment linking U.S. white supremacist politics to vigilante border patrols, although it was largely a media stunt,” noted Spencer Sunshine, a fellow at Political Research Associates, a Massachusetts think tank devoted to studying the extreme right wing. “The Ku Klux Klan has a long history of organizing in southern California, going back to at least the 1920s.”</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">More <span class="il">hate</span> <span class="il">groups</span>, some of which called themselves militias or vigilantes and seemed to see themselves as the nation's protectors, sprang up in California's segregated, yet increasingly diverse environment. Today, the state has nearly 80 organizations that are classified as “<span class="il">hate</span> <span class="il">groups</span>,” far more than any other state, and most of them are along the border. According to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, these follow a specific and trackable pattern.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;">“<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span class="il">Hate</span> crimes rise quite dramatically when neighborhoods begin to reach a tipping point racially,” Potok said.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">Where that tipping point begins is up for debate. Some scholars say “white flight” begins when a formerly white neighborhood becomes around 25 percent non-white. Others say just one family of color moving in can spark hatred and violence.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">What sociologists do agree on, however, is that how much money or education people do or do not have do not create the conditions that breed white flight, <span class="il">hate</span> <span class="il">groups</span>, or <span class="il">hate</span> crimes. The overwhelming reasons are twofold: demographic change that threatens the homogeneity of the dominant <span class="il">group</span>, and the history of a particular area.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">Membership in white supremacist <span class="il">groups</span> appears to be dwindling now for the first time since the late 2000s, the end result of different <span class="il">groups</span> settling in and multicultural cities becoming the rule rather than the exception.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">But they're still loud – voices of <span class="il">hate</span> <span class="il">groups</span> are amplified and organized by the Internet, Potok said, although he does not believe that the internet aids in recruiting people into white supremacist <span class="il">groups</span> or militias.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;">“<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">I think by and large people are not recruited into <span class="il">hate</span> <span class="il">groups</span> through a computer screen. Real recruitment into <span class="il">groups</span> of any kind happen face to face, even in the age of social media,” Potok said, although there is evidence that existing beliefs are strengthened by the echo-chamber effect of websites such as the very active Stormfront.org.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">After Mark Lane was unmasked as the moderator of the Boycott Marrieta Facebook page and nativist <span class="il">groups</span> discovered he was aiding a Central American family, he and his business received threats and poor reviews. But Lane also received a tremendous outpouring of goodwill and new business from people who had not heard about what he was doing until <span class="il">hate</span> <span class="il">groups</span> blasted him, including people who visited his restaurant to shake his hand and tell him that his altruism and tolerance had changed their opposition to allowing refugees into the country.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span class="il">Hate</span> <span class="il">groups</span>, at least the ones based on physical differences, will continue to dwindle as diversity becomes more mainstream, but until then, crimes based on hatred or fear of “the other” will continue as long as it remains a part of everyday American discourse. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12px;">In order to defuse the language of <span class="il">hate</span>, California,</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12px;"> along with every other state in the US, has to acknowledge and distance itself from its history of government-approved white supremacy.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 9pt;">Many have lamented that the language of <span class="il">hate</span> has infiltrated contemporary border politics, but the truth is that it has been there all along. </span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com71tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-90314877032335115452015-08-31T01:51:00.000-07:002015-09-11T11:00:10.631-07:00There and Back Again: The Image that Wouldn't Stop TravelingSan Ysidro, California is the last place to turn off before you drive into Mexico from the United States.<br />
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Interstate 5, a huge multi-lane freeway that runs from one end of the US to the other, is adorned with signs on the southbound side that warn you to turn around if you don't intend to drive into Mexico, that your last chance to turn back is three miles away, then two, then one. And in the area, for years signs have borne an iconic image cautioning drivers to watch for people running across the freeway:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo courtesy: <a href="http://russelrayphotos2.com/2012/09/13/" target="_blank">Russel Ray Photos</a></span></div>
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They're harder to find now, but everyone who grew up around here in the 1990s remembers this image. It was created in 1990 by a <a href="http://www.americanindiansource.com/hoodart.html" target="_blank">graphic artist at Caltrans named John Hood</a>, a Diné man from New Mexico who ended up in southern California, and it was made in response to an influx of people who had made it across the border and dashed into the freeway beyond. Hood drew upon his own experiences fighting in Vietnam watching desperate families dash for cover, as well as stories he had heard from his own Navajo family about evading American soldiers, to create the image.<br />
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In the 1980s and 1990s, Mexico suffered crisis after crisis of destabilization: fraudulent elections gave way to state sponsored violence, lynchings and shooting showed up in the news, the peso, which had been pegged to the US dollar, suddenly collapsed and sparked a long, painful recession that affected every aspect of Mexican society. Many people, beset on all sides by crushing economic pressures and bloody conflict erupting around them, left everything behind and fled north on foot.<br />
<br />
The end result was a massive change in Mexico, creating the largest modern diaspora in the world. Many people got into the United States, at least before it clamped down on border security in response to surges of people seeking asylum, but some got through the border safely, only to be <a href="http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050410/news_1n10signs.html" target="_blank">struck by cars on their way across the 5</a> immediately after crossing the border, dying sudden, violent,and bloody deaths in front of horrified friends and loved ones who had already trekked together across Baja California's badlands.<br />
<br />
The signs that went up warned drivers to be wary of people crossing, and its image – a silhouette of a man and woman running, desperately yanking a pigtailed child along in their wake – was instantly recognizable. It soon worked its way into the public imagination, becoming a local cultural touchstone on all sides of the immigration debate. The image, which was in the public domain, soon showed up on t-shirts, coffee mugs, billboards. <br />
<br />
Its meaning has become fraught with symbolism: for those who disagreed with the increasing militarization of the United States' southern border, it represented unnecessarily draconian immigration policies. For closed-border, anti-immigration proponents, it became a symbol of entire families disregarding border laws. For those who were trying to find a new place to call home, it was a sign of hope. And for those with no particular leanings, the image was a funky, instantly recognizable picture that represented southern California. <br />
<br />
The image's immediate import has faded as border highway deaths have waned. The signs remain, here and there, although mostly in pop art and within activist circles. Even <a href="http://www.colorlines.com/articles/banksy-transforms-migrant-road-sign-dream-crossing" target="_blank">Banksy added his own touch</a> to the signs a few years ago.<br />
<br />
But now, the images have taken on a new life in Europe, as weary families flee war, brutal violence, and crushing economic conditions in <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/05/europe/europe-migrant-crisis/" target="_blank">Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries</a> - and the European political rhetoric sharpens, and along exactly the same lines, just as the United States' did in the mid-1990s.<br />
<br />
I was startled today to see a news photo of people in Germany holding up a banner that said “Refugees Welome” with an outline of that family, John Hood's silhouette family, stenciled on the front. (It's also the slogan of a Berlin-based project that aims to match families seeking shelter <a href="http://www.refugees-welcome.net/" target="_blank">with flats and apartments.</a>)<br />
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<a href="http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/fisP2vOFbsXbDBdeOztmXw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3NfbGVnbztmaT1maWxsO2g9Mzc3O2lsPXBsYW5lO3B4b2ZmPTUwO3B5b2ZmPTA7cT03NTt3PTY3MA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/c8886ca379ef5026800f6a7067007619.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/fisP2vOFbsXbDBdeOztmXw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3NfbGVnbztmaT1maWxsO2g9Mzc3O2lsPXBsYW5lO3B4b2ZmPTUwO3B5b2ZmPTA7cT03NTt3PTY3MA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/c8886ca379ef5026800f6a7067007619.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/photos/people-hold-banner-reading-refugees-welcome-front-police-photo-160207680.html" target="_blank">Photo credit: Ronald Zak/AP</a>)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></div>
At first I was confused – did news outlets mix up their stock photos? – but when I looked into it further I found that yes, Hood's design has become an instantly recognizable international symbol of families fleeing untenable conditions, not just on the US-Mexico border, but all around the world.<br />
<br />
Will this end up reframing the debate that the United States is currently having internally, here on the doorstep of the 2016 presidential election? Will geopolitical powers in Europe and North America see the connection between their own ongoing destructive policies in other countries and the desperate people from those same countries who are now asking for help and hope? Only time will tell, I guess.<br />
<br />
It's just deeply ironic (although “ironic” is probably not the word that families washing up at the shores of the US and Europe are using right now) that the full horrors of a humanitarian crisis - wherever in the world it might be - can evidently only be clearly seen from an entire ocean away.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com104tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-60171063013984998252015-07-13T11:43:00.000-07:002015-07-14T08:31:18.434-07:00The missing and murdered women of the US-Mexico borderMy latest piece for the <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/mexicos-epidemic-of-missing-and-murdered-women/article25137141/" target="_blank">Globe & Mail</a> is up and live today. It accompanies their work on the missing and murdered indigenous women of Canada and the United States. These are important stories to tell, but not easy ones.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com102tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-62933785972423934272015-05-12T14:54:00.001-07:002015-05-12T14:54:26.623-07:00San Quintín's farms<h1 class="quoteText" style="background-color: white; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 18px;">“It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion on them. </span></span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 18px;">On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to sit all day, every day, on top of another creature and not have the slightest thought about them whatsoever.” -Douglas Adams</span></h1>
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<a href="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8684/16320880404_ebf7d63c32.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8684/16320880404_ebf7d63c32.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></div>
I've been remiss in updating this website. I've been working a lot on humanitarian stories -- the biggest one that's been catching my attention has been the <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/north-americas-fruit-industry-feeling-effect-of-farm-workers-strike-in-mexico/article23700928/" target="_blank">San Quintín's farm laborers' strike.</a> <br />
<br />
San Quintín, the first time I went there, was a quiet little town. I went with an old boyfriend who wanted to take me deep sea fishing. I remember very little about it except that I had drinks with an old guy at a hotel bar who was the saltiest of dogs, and that I bragged to anybody who would listen that I was immune to seasickness, and then got violently ill from it, for the first time in my life, about ten minutes after I stepped on the fishing boat. <br />
<br />
I also remember that they caught a huge tuna fish and clubbed it to death on the deck as I retched feebly over the side. <i>Barbarians, </i>I thought through the nausea. <i>Disgusting animals. </i>But I ate it later anyway.<br />
<br />
But that was all I really remembered about it: surf, salty dogs, bumpy roads, quiet. Nice people. The town didn't really pop up on my radar for years. I knew it was still around, and that it was surrounded by strawberry fields at the end of a drive so beautiful that it could almost be mistaken for one of Alaska's <br />
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highways, but then I started hearing about mistreatment of the jornaleros, the farm laborers, who worked as pickers.<br />
<br />
I went again and suddenly I saw what had been there all along behind the filter of my own ignorance: maltreatment, exploitation, backbreaking physical labor cheapened by an absolute lack of oversight. The valley is a huge producer of tomatoes and strawberries in particular, an enormously profitable industry, yet the people who pick them are paid less than $10 a day, with no paid days off.<br />
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The mobilization of San Quintín's workers has now ballooned into a major issue, a rare opportunity to peek behind the curtain and see the real, human costs of fruits and vegetables. When I went to San Quintín again, I didn't see it as peaceful or sleepy, I saw it as quietly roiling and getting ready to explode with long-deferred anger and frustration.<br />
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"It's slavery," one of the striking workers told me over a tire they were burning for warmth, "and it's been going on for generations." A crowd gathered and they nodded, adding things here and there. Child labor is <br />
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rampant, as is sexual abuse of women and children. Most of them had been working since they were 11 or 12. They wanted to go to school, to make better lives for themselves and their children, to have some hope and a way out, but they couldn't afford to. <br />
<br />
"We want to go pick in the US," one man said to me. "We heard you can make a good living there - eight, nine hundred dollars a month." He makes less than $300 a month right now.<br />
<br />
Most of these workers are Triqui, indigenous people from south Mexico.One of the things the strike has helped reveal is Mexico's deplorable treatment of its indigenous communities, not that the rest of North America is any better, and how ugly organic produce can look when seen through the lens of human rights.<br />
<br />
At any rate, <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aljazeera.com%2Fnews%2F2015%2F05%2F150512051555205.html&ei=wGpSVYjhJMa2yASNj4DICg&usg=AFQjCNGn8caebY2HH0K-SNzqKCfWX2lXbA&sig2=6rbtN1YiNy2-VYnaprglpw" target="_blank">here's my latest for Al Jazeera</a>, with photos from the excellent <a href="http://www.exilioperiodismo.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">José Pedro Martínez.</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com43tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-53438128081309745092014-12-23T11:15:00.002-08:002015-01-02T13:23:46.157-08:00Mexico fights back against violence, disappearances<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MnMgWKoxWLQ/VJm-xtqM_fI/AAAAAAAAFqA/Yy2ffIWif40/s1600/ayo_baja%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MnMgWKoxWLQ/VJm-xtqM_fI/AAAAAAAAFqA/Yy2ffIWif40/s1600/ayo_baja%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-2.jpg" height="401" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/11/mexicans-fight-back-over-their-missing-2014117181823659961.html" target="_blank">Here</a> is my story for Al Jazeera on the #YaMeCanse movement and what people in Mexico's state of Baja California are doing to fight back against enforced disappearances, military torture, and violence.<br />
<br />
I am very proud of this story, because I feel the story of what Mexico is doing - and what should be done by the international community - needs to be spread as widely as possible. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com51tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-63826681334756313622014-11-30T20:16:00.000-08:002014-12-17T00:18:57.342-08:00Life in The Bunker<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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I recently spent a day at The Bunker, a place in Tijuana that functions as a hangout, and sometimes a shelter, for deported veterans of the United States military.</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Soy2jZ1UHTo/VHvrmNZ2zeI/AAAAAAAAFmA/n-tomKeEh_o/s1600/vets%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Soy2jZ1UHTo/VHvrmNZ2zeI/AAAAAAAAFmA/n-tomKeEh_o/s1600/vets%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-6.jpg" height="335" width="400" /></a></div>
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Conventional wisdom statesthat serving in the military confers automatic citizenship. This is untrue. However, it can speed up the citizenship process, as long as applicants pursue it while they are still in the military. Otherwise, they wait in line along with everyone else.</div>
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There are many people in Tijuana who were deported after spending their lives and careers in the United States. Some were convicted of felonies. Others were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.<br />
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All are trying to find their place in a country that for most of them is strange and new.<br />
<br />
Photo essay on <a href="https://bbinkowski.exposure.co/life-in-the-bunker" target="_blank">Exposure.co.</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-44250143589788630312014-11-24T09:59:00.002-08:002014-12-17T00:20:08.997-08:00#YaMeCanse<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LzaZe4ULVuc/VHNxF_Ydp4I/AAAAAAAAFkI/xsGLLxvVjXk/s1600/ayo%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LzaZe4ULVuc/VHNxF_Ydp4I/AAAAAAAAFkI/xsGLLxvVjXk/s1600/ayo%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-4.jpg" height="214" width="320" /></a>The disappearance and probable deaths of 43 normalista students from Ayotzinapa, in the southern state of Guerrero, has taken Mexico by storm. The country's anger and grief went from a murmur to a shout overnight, and now people are in the streets from its northern border to the southern tip - and beyond, since Mexico's diaspora is enormous - demanding immediate and comprehensive reform.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OfEKepbUA6Q/VHNxFd3tH-I/AAAAAAAAFkE/41eIGK5OwBk/s1600/ayo%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OfEKepbUA6Q/VHNxFd3tH-I/AAAAAAAAFkE/41eIGK5OwBk/s1600/ayo%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-3.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></div>
The protests have been spurred by the disappearance of the student teachers at the hands of Iguala's government, but they have been inflamed by the government's mishandling of the situation. First, there is the misdirection. Whose bodies have they found? Search parties have found more than a dozen mass graves in the area, but none appear to contain the bodies of the students from Ayotzinapa. So whose bodies are these? No one seems to know. With each new discovery, Mexico's outrage grows.<br />
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"Ya me canse," said Mexico's attorney general at a press conference about the students, and Mexico's fury grew. <i>He's </i>fed up? Mexicans have been asking. <i>He's </i>tired? That spawned "#YaMeCanse," and on and off Twitter, people have been sharing what they're fed up with.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cQu-MrjnT24/VHNxCTBav7I/AAAAAAAAFj4/OoYIHcjMRMI/s1600/cuauhtemoc%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cQu-MrjnT24/VHNxCTBav7I/AAAAAAAAFj4/OoYIHcjMRMI/s1600/cuauhtemoc%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-2.jpg" height="296" width="320" /></a></div>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OD2l5hxh3gA/VHNw91B9FmI/AAAAAAAAFjc/lODSCtsEj9k/s1600/ayo%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OD2l5hxh3gA/VHNw91B9FmI/AAAAAAAAFjc/lODSCtsEj9k/s1600/ayo%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-2.jpg" height="235" width="320" /></a><i>I'm fed up with life in Mexico being safer as a narco than a student.</i><br />
<i>I'm fed up with the culture of impunity. </i><br />
<i>I'm fed up with the disappearances, the deaths, the mass graves, the mysterious people following the most outspoken activists, the implicit and explicit threats, and most of all the fear.</i><br />
<br />
In Baja California, citizens stymied by the government's inaction on missing people and unsolved murders have been taking matters into their own hands for years, forming action groups and pressuring law enforcement to investigate suspected killers and mass graves. Now they, too, are speaking out.<br />
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<br />
<br />
<br />
It's uncertain whether Mexico will actually reform as a result of this movement, but for the first time in a long time, the international press has its eye on the country and its military and government. What happens next remains to be seen and depends just as much on pressure from outside Mexico as it does on pressure from within.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-36262790046876083442014-11-01T15:44:00.002-07:002014-11-11T07:07:02.907-08:00Dia de los Muertos <div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J2VhlZlHhkk/VFVe7tMc2fI/AAAAAAAAFfM/-2JRE-eWVJM/s1600/diadelosmuertos%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J2VhlZlHhkk/VFVe7tMc2fI/AAAAAAAAFfM/-2JRE-eWVJM/s1600/diadelosmuertos%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-16.jpg" height="280" width="320" /></a>Today
is Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday that is a fusion of the
Aztec celebration of Mictecacihuatl, Queen of the Dead, and the
Catholic All Saint's Day and All Soul's Day. </div>
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Typically, it is a time to honor and celebrate the lives of those who have died. People build altars for their loved ones, strewn with photos, sweets, and, traditionally, marigolds to help the dead see their way to the next phase. Sometimes, they build altars for those they have never known.</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FsmDxvhLaeU/VFVczLeT81I/AAAAAAAAFeg/1hnfM4rXI2c/s1600/diadelosmuertos%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FsmDxvhLaeU/VFVczLeT81I/AAAAAAAAFeg/1hnfM4rXI2c/s1600/diadelosmuertos%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-5.jpg" height="302" width="320" /></a>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
On the
north side of the border, activists have altars for the unknown
migrants who lose their lives trying to cross from Mexico to the
United States, an arduous trek across deserts and rivers, complicated
by crooked coyotes and traffickers.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Often
they die alone, unidentified and thus mostly unmourned. Sometimes
they just disappear, only to reappear as a small heap of anonymous
dry bones, gnawed by animals and bleached white by the sun. </div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In
Tijuana, shelters for those who have been deported contain no altars.
“We don't have the money to put up art like that,” says a worker
there. </div>
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<br /></div>
He is young, rail thin, with sharp cheekbones. He speaks both
English and Spanish with an American accent. “We need it for
food.”<br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
These
places for the deported are run on a tiny budget, with little to no
help from the Mexican government, relying almost completely on
donations. They are mostly in raucous and rundown Zona Norte, just
meters from the high wall that runs all along Baja's northern border.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QwHsX17f8KA/VFVgV4FFT0I/AAAAAAAAFfY/svAke2xTpz4/s1600/diadelosmuertos%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-33.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QwHsX17f8KA/VFVgV4FFT0I/AAAAAAAAFfY/svAke2xTpz4/s1600/diadelosmuertos%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-33.jpg" height="204" width="320" /></a>When people with no social
networks are deported, their choices are limited. Many end up digging
holes to sleep in along a dry riverbed at the international border, using runoff to wash themselves and their clothes. <br />
<br />
Shelters work as alternatives and become waystations, where people with no other resources can shower and do
laundry.</div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q5ee355rhdI/VGIllTBzBeI/AAAAAAAAFg4/-pirsJnxTPQ/s1600/riverbed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q5ee355rhdI/VGIllTBzBeI/AAAAAAAAFg4/-pirsJnxTPQ/s320/riverbed.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SMW6PTdudS0/VFVeaII9eAI/AAAAAAAAFe0/2EdCCmNLLuY/s1600/diadelosmuertos%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-29.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SMW6PTdudS0/VFVeaII9eAI/AAAAAAAAFe0/2EdCCmNLLuY/s1600/diadelosmuertos%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-29.jpg" height="320" width="212" /></a>They
all have stories about their lives in the United States, stories of
loss and love, jobs they had and opportunities they wanted, but
always ending the same way, when they are dropped off alone in
Tijuana.
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Many
are injured. “I lost my eye when a cop beat me up,” Miguel says. He looks up from his mattress with his one good eye; his other eye is white with scar
tissue in its socket.
</div>
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“They
took all my clothes, so I have been wearing these filthy things for
weeks.” He doesn't say which country the cop was in, or why they
took his clothes. “I'm going back soon,” he says. “Back to the
other side.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wSejnL7K40M/VFVeTOpSj_I/AAAAAAAAFes/mfhCMwhm1so/s1600/diadelosmuertos%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-32.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wSejnL7K40M/VFVeTOpSj_I/AAAAAAAAFes/mfhCMwhm1so/s1600/diadelosmuertos%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-32.jpg" height="205" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Arturo
is on a mattress next to Miguel's. He says he came from Mexico City to look for work, and kept going north when he hit the border. He doesn't say when or how he was deported. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Arturo can't talk for long. His eyes are glassy and feverish. His belly is swollen. There are livid bruises on his abdomen where a bloody bandage covers a deep incision, and he pants when he tries to sit up. "Liver
surgery,” says a third man. “He drank too much.” </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“I
didn't drink too much,” protests Arturo weakly. “Those bottles
were full of water, I told you.” The other man shakes his head.
Arturo seems to stop caring and rolls over on his side. "Please give me something for the pain," he says. "I hurt." But nobody has anything to give him.<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kNcSXhCPjZI/VFVcvRWy25I/AAAAAAAAFeQ/Fuv4BUK3tDc/s1600/diadelosmuertos%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-24.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kNcSXhCPjZI/VFVcvRWy25I/AAAAAAAAFeQ/Fuv4BUK3tDc/s1600/diadelosmuertos%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-24.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a>One
man comes in with a single marigold, which they put on the
countertop: their one concession to Day of the Dead. There are few
decorations in this building. It's not intended to be a place that
feels like home.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
All of
them will be gone from here soon, one way or another.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-39969557690197482292014-10-11T11:26:00.002-07:002014-10-11T11:35:30.657-07:00A Day at the Fair<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zEVtQKPsiZM/VDl1-TaEX-I/AAAAAAAAFXk/8V1ZuMlDWmw/s1600/toronto%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-41.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zEVtQKPsiZM/VDl1-TaEX-I/AAAAAAAAFXk/8V1ZuMlDWmw/s1600/toronto%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-41.jpg" height="221" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Oh, so you're having an existential
crisis over death, eh?”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
There is a woman sitting across from me
at a little fold-out table, peering at me over the top of her reading
glasses while shuffling a deck of tarot cards. “I've died twice,”
she says, shrugging. “It's no big deal.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The <a href="http://www.fspsychicfairs.com/2014/10-Toronto.html" target="_blank">Mississauga Psychic Fair</a>, now in
its fourth year, is organized by First Star, a project by <a href="http://www.fsparanormal.com/" target="_blank">Stan Mallow</a>
and his business partner, Ray Fulcher. Mallow, a host of a
television series out of Niagara called “The Paranormal Show,” is
affable, friendly to skepticism, and even leaves me tickets at the
front counter so that I can go explore.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-l6OskfY_xfU/VDl1-Z8WKnI/AAAAAAAAFXg/-m4ZkRFLnyE/s1600/toronto%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-42.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-l6OskfY_xfU/VDl1-Z8WKnI/AAAAAAAAFXg/-m4ZkRFLnyE/s1600/toronto%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-42.jpg" height="320" width="211" /></a>The event looks much like I thought it
would. The conference room, not far from Toronto's main airport, is
carpeted in booths and draped with signs, silks, crystal balls, angel
figurines, gems, and other tchotchkes. The crowd – surprisingly
diverse to my eyes – is in constant motion, although here and there
I can see people talking earnestly and animatedly to
various psychics. As I watch, a woman starts to sniffle; the man who is
reading her tarot cards quickly brings out a box of tissues from
under his table in a practiced motion.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I sit down at a table with a placard that reads “<a href="https://www.facebook.com/tarot.anne.7" target="_blank">Tarot Anne</a>” and smile at the woman there, presumably Tarot Anne herself.
She smiles back. I like the way she looks: henna-red hair, half-lens
glasses that she looks at me over, and simply dressed. She could be
somebody's friendly mom, not a moony spiritualist.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Pick some stuff from my box of junk,” she says,
dumping trinkets onto the table. “We'll figure out where
to go from there.” I'm supposed to pick out four objects, so I do,
and she reads them with the help of tarot cards. I'm going to write,
she tells me. I'm going to do well communicating ideas to others.
Every single psychic or card reader I've ever talked to has told me
this, and I figured it out long ago: I always have ink on my hands.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
But then she stops at one of the
trinkets I picked out: a deep blue brooch with no discernible
pattern, just a shimmer. “Oh,” she says, “the unknown. And
the cards say you have some kind of fear?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“I do. It's about my dog," I say, "he died,” and to my embarrassed horror my voice breaks and I tear up.
She brings out a box of tissues from under her table in a practiced motion.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“He was fine before he was born and
he's fine now,” she says in a no-nonsense brisk librarian sort of way,
“and anyway, being dead is really no big deal. I've been dead
twice. It's great. But what I have to ask you is, why the hell are
you worrying about that shit? Life's too short.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This is better than a therapist, I think, sniffling and wiping my nose. As I look
around, I realize nearly everyone around me is crying. We're all
here grieving lost loved ones and searching for some kind of
assurance, beyond the heartache and the pain and the final awful
goodbyes, the universe might really, finally, be all right.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
For a moment, I am cheered. But then I
go to the hair reader.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Your hair carries memories of the
past and the future,” he leers at me, licking his lips. “Is that
a natural wave or a perm?” His helper, who as it turns out is also
his girlfriend, tosses her long hair over one shoulder and waves me
into a seat.
<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ykw_E7QVzl0/VDl1-NhlRwI/AAAAAAAAFXc/NRT63LL7OOA/s1600/toronto%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-43.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ykw_E7QVzl0/VDl1-NhlRwI/AAAAAAAAFXc/NRT63LL7OOA/s1600/toronto%2B(1%2Bof%2B1)-43.jpg" height="320" width="214" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Can I touch your hair?” he asks,
leaning directly into my face. He has the strangest eyebrows I have ever seen, like a moustache over each eye, but brushed straight up toward his scalp. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Oh, sure,” I tell him. I mean, that's why I'm here, right? So he puts out a huge paw and strokes my head.
“Oh,” he says, rocking back and forth. “Oh. Yes. Yes! Yes!”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I sit, frozen by the absurdity of it
all and the effort of trying not to laugh as he twines his fingers in
my hair. “I'm feeling that you're having a lot of, well, menstrual
problems,” he says, winking. “Your woman stuff has been a little haywire. Am I right?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
He is not right, but I shrug noncommittally anyway. I want to see where this goes. He grunts
and rolls a lock of hair between his fingers. “Are you sure this is
your natural wave?” I nod as well as I can with my hair in his
fist. That part, at least, is true. He leans in even closer.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“And,” he whispers, straight into
my face, “you're on your period.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As he pronounces the <i>p </i>in
<i>period, </i>a little blob
of saliva sails out of his mouth and directly into my eye. I try not
to think of ocular lesions and bacterial infections. Mercifully, the
reading is now over, so I rush away. For the rest of the day, I hurry
past his booth and avoid eye contact.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“I
see spirits,” announces the third medium. “They're all around me,
all the time.”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://itsthattime.ca/moon-child" target="_blank">Allison Boswell</a>'s story is particularly interesting. She was just a normal person, if a little bit dreamy, working in a normal business, she says. She was never
particularly skeptical, but she was never particularly superstitious,
either. She just hung out with her husband and worked at her job
until a month after her 29<sup>th</sup>
birthday, just a few months ago. Then, one day, she started seeing
ghosts everywhere.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“I
had to talk to people. I had to tell them what the spirits were
telling me. Sometimes they were sick, or sad, or had lost something
and they needed guidance. It was getting so bad that I would go up to
complete strangers and tell them.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“With
all due respect,” I begin to ask her, and don't know how to finish.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“How do I know
I'm not crazy? Because I can back it up. What they're telling me is
stuff that I can verify, things I couldn't possibly know otherwise.
And I'm never alone now – they're around, saying hello, crowding
around me and whispering in my ear, sitting on rafters and chairs and
on people's heads. By the way, are you ever going to finish that
book you started writing?”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I involuntarily
take a step back, then clear my throat and remember the ink on my
hands. But then I look at my hands, and there isn't any ink on them.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I end up spending
six hours at the Mississauga Psychic Fair, mostly enjoying the
people-watching and the massage chairs. But my favorite part comes
as I'm leaving, when I pass by the hair-reader's booth to see him
trying to make a sales pitch to a large, unimpressed-looking man, who
is completely, neatly bald.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-19299582208185413622014-09-26T09:00:00.000-07:002014-10-02T21:53:57.136-07:00Mariachi in The Last FrontierI'm currently in Toronto, in the middle of a <a href="http://munkschool.utoronto.ca/journalism/" target="_blank">journalism fellowship</a> through the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs, and with all the excitement about packing and forgetting things and leaving and planning and plotting, I nearly forgot to put up this story that I did last month for The Atlantic about <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/08/alaskas-hottest-mariachi-band/375924/" target="_blank">Mariachi Agave Azul, Alaska's only mariachi band.</a><br />
<br />
They're such a fun group, and it's such a cool story. Alaska is one of the most diverse states in the US, a product of oil and fishing jobs, the military, and Alaska itself. That means although the population is small (about 750,000 all told) it's an incredible melting pot.<br />
<br />
The state has exactly one mariachi band, made up of young people who either wanted to learn more about their family's home country or were just excited to learn an unfamiliar style of music. Not coincidentally, this is part of my master's thesis, should I ever finish it. (I'll finish it.)<br />
<br />
A companion radio piece will air nationwide on NPR's <a href="http://latinousa.org/" target="_blank">Latino USA</a> in November. <br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com88tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-64718659240243511662014-08-14T08:47:00.002-07:002014-08-16T20:46:35.252-07:00Goodnight, Gracie.<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In the beginning there was Gracie.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I had just met someone and had fallen
in love in a way that I never had before – hook, line, and sinker –
and when I saw Gracie, I fell in love again.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
He wasn't Gracie yet, of course. He was
just a scrawny pit bull terrier running around in a busy Los Angeles
intersection, rearing up on his hind legs and putting his paws on the
hoods of cars that were stopped at a traffic light.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>This dog is going to get run over, </i>I
thought. <i>Why isn't anybody doing anything? </i>I
saw three old ladies standing on the corner watching him dodge cars,
their hands over their mouths, but none of them made a move to help.
I sighed, pulled over, ran over to the intersection and shouted, “Hey
puppy! Come here!”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
dog turned around, panting happily, and charged at me full speed as I
crouched down and called him over. I caught a glimpse of enormous
smiling jaws and had just enough time to wonder if I had made a
terrible decision when he leapt on me, wagging his entire body, and
knocked me off my feet. I grabbed him and held him so he wouldn't
run back into traffic. I had left my car door open, and he jumped
into the back seat and sat there.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Where's
your owner?” I asked him, looking for a collar. There was none. He
was filthy, skinny, not neutered, and looked like he needed a good
meal and a bath before anything else. I sighed, looking at the time.
I was late for work. “Okay, pup. You get to hang out with me for
the day.” After work, I reasoned, I could find his home and get
him back there. Somebody around had to love this dog.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I left
him in my car in a parking structure at my work and got him food and
water. Every half hour I would go out and check on him and walk him
around the parking lot with a belt around his neck as a leash. “Your
owner must be really worried,” I kept telling him. He would just
grin at me.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
After
work, I went all over the neighborhood where I had found him. Nobody
had ever seen the dog before, they said, but hinted at dog fighting
rings and stray pits. “Take him to the shelter,” advised the
last person who opened the door for me. “And you probably
shouldn't be knocking on doors around here after dark.” He shut
the door in my face.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I had
already made up my mind that I wanted to keep him by then, so I began
the long drive back to San Diego. On the way there, I got him a leash
and a collar and called my boyfriend to tell him we had a dog, at
least temporarily, hopefully longer.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“No,
Brooke, we are not keeping a dog,” he said. “What kind of dog is
it anyway? What? A pit bull? No. No. No. That's the only type of dog
that scares me. Not that we would be keeping it anyway. I don't even
want it in the house.” I brought the dog in anyway.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Meet
Jaws!” I said. My boyfriend shook his head. “No. This dog is not
staying here.” Jaws started to growl and then bark at him. “You
see what I mean?” he asked me. “He's going to <i>attack
</i>me.” He got up and left the
room, and Jaws followed him, tail wagging, until he got closer. Then
he stopped barking, because what Jaws really wanted was attention.
After that, Jaws followed him everywhere.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
That
was the first day.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Over
time, Jaws became Gracie, so named because he was graceless, ramming
into people's legs with rough affection, knocking over cups and vases
with his constantly wagging tail. He was a street dog, awkward with
other dogs but wonderful with people. We weren't supposed to have a
dog in our place, so we took turns taking him to work so as not to
leave him alone. Gracie became a constant companion during my
frequent drives to Los Angeles and back. He was unfailingly wonderful
company. He was family.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Man,”
said the Los Angeles Police Commissioner during a press conference,
“I always see you covering stories with that dog. He's a beautiful
dog.” By then Gracie was a fixture when I was out on the field.
He met commissioners and politicians and celebrities and got to sniff
them all. He got to smell every city between Ventura and Tijuana and
loved every moment of it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
One
day, I was covering a triple murder and suicide in Laguna Beach at a
beachside hotel. When I was done, I decided to take Gracie to the
water. It was a secluded beach and no one was around, so I dropped
his leash to let him run.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
He
went straight into the water, tail waving happily, getting submerged
and then popping up again like a flag. I gaped after him for thirty
seconds – god, could he swim! I had never known – and realized I
had to go in after him. I jumped in with my clothes on and my phone
in my pocket and went after him, finally catching up to him on a rock
about a quarter of a mile out. I grabbed his leash, screaming and
swearing, and tried to tow him back to shore. He towed me instead,
and we swam back together as I held his leash tighter than I ever
had.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
When
we got back to the beach, I looked up to see hotel security lined up
on the cliff watching the whole drama play out. They had followed us
out to the water, thinking that I was going to take paparazzi-style
shots, and watched in awe as I dove in after my quick-moving dog.
They had towels for us and gave us pizza and we laughed about the
whole thing. Gracie had never looked so happy in his life – and he
always looked happy.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
He was
family. It was the two of us for a year, and then there was Gracie
too. He was our proxy for conversations, our companion as we slept.
I bitched at him in the mornings when he woke me up early and
groaning with a hangover to feed him. I curled up around him and my
boyfriend curled up around me at night. When we sat on the couch, we
unconsciously started sitting at opposite ends, so that he could jump
up and curl up between us, his favorite spot.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Honey,
we have to stop letting the dog come between us like this,” I would
say, jokingly. I never meant it. By then, he was us, the third leg
of the stool, the hypoteneuse of our relationship. We were a pack, a
family.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“That's
a damn happy dog,” people would observe, watching us walk together.
In pictures of the two of us, we had identical huge, stupid grins.
We ran together, jogged together, and finally, as he got older, we
walked together.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Gracie
was part of us for ten years, and I valued every moment of our time
together. This week, he got sick and died. His happiness and
liveliness concealed the tumor that was quietly growing in his belly
for months, maybe longer, until two days ago, it no longer could. He
was ten years old and so tired at the end, but still wagging his
tail, still curled up with us, still giving us every bit of love he
had as he always had, with no judgment and no reservations.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Now we
are lost, looking at the empty spot on the couch where he curled up
every day for years. I am lost, listening for his happy snores at my
feet as I write. Sometimes, I would listen to his breathing all day
and panic if I couldn't hear it, thinking he had died in his sleep.
“Gracie!” I would say, and he would open an eye and look at me as
if to say <i>don't be ridiculous, I'm right here, what are you
yelling about? </i>Then he would
sigh and stretch and go back to sleep.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Toward
the end, I think I knew on some subconscious level that he was
getting ill, even though I would take him to the vet and they would
tell me nothing was wrong with him but age. I would have recurring
dreams that I was frantically looking for him, crying and yelling,
running after him, and that he was gone. I would wake up and shower
him with relieved affection, knowing that he was still there, for the
time being, at least – that he hadn't run away, that he was with
us.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Just
before he died, those dreams stopped. When he got sick, I knew it
was final, but I didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to believe
that those dreams were coming true so soon. We have another few good
years, I told myself. At least a couple of good years. But we didn't.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Gracie,
where are you now? We miss you so much.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-44108141169856635102014-08-01T11:39:00.002-07:002014-08-01T11:39:57.585-07:00From Guatemala to San Diego: A Teen Refugee's StoryI wrote and reported a story about the Central and South American refugee crisis for NPR's <a href="http://www.latinousa.org/">Latino USA</a>. It can be heard <a href="http://latinousa.org/2014/08/01/teen-refugee/">here.</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-10464065033175639112014-07-22T12:12:00.002-07:002014-07-22T12:32:07.101-07:00Riding the beast: The journey of migrants from Central and South America<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/07/17/1405587371380_wps_16_Central_American_immigran.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/07/17/1405587371380_wps_16_Central_American_immigran.jpg" height="265" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Image source: <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2695565/All-aboard-death-train-Extraordinary-images-hundreds-Central-Americans-climbing-aboard-La-Bestia-cargo-train-attempt-reach-Mexico-U-S-border.html" target="_blank">Daily Mail</a></span></div>
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Yesterday, I visited two brothers and a
sister who are staying with a family in San Diego. The siblings are
20, 16, and 15, refugees from Guatemala, and part of the wave of
people who have come in the past few months to offer themselves up to
Border Patrol and ask for asylum. I am telling their story here but not using their names, because they are so afraid of being found, even here, even now.</div>
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The younger brothers, 15 and 16, like many boys their age, were recruited by cartels in the small Guatemalan mountain village
in which they grew up. “Recruited” is the wrong word, because it
sounds like they had a say in it. They did have a choice, a devil's
choice: join us, or you and your family will be killed. The family
said no, enduring threats and increasing violence, until they decided
they had to leave. They decided to try to go to the United States,
because they have a distant relative here. He was their best hope.</div>
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The entire family – mom, dad, three
brothers, a sister – left in the middle of the night to avoid being
found by the cartel's militias, walked to the Mexican border, and
rode <a href="http://www.chihuahuaexpres.com.mx/principal/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8182:se-descarrila-tren-en-el-sur-del-pais-con-1300-inmigrantes-&catid=1:noticias&Itemid=25" target="_blank">La Bestia</a> to the border. <i>La Bestia</i> means The Beast, and it's
the nickname for the freight train system that bisects Mexico and connects to the United States. Migrants ride along its roof <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2695565/All-aboard-death-train-Extraordinary-images-hundreds-Central-Americans-climbing-aboard-La-Bestia-cargo-train-attempt-reach-Mexico-U-S-border.html" target="_blank">as far as they can go</a>.
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That in and of itself is enough to make
the journey dangerous, but the human element makes it far worse.
Beatings, rapes, and robberies are common. Their money was stolen.
Their passports were stolen. Their food was stolen. By the time they
arrived at the border, the family had nothing. But they were still
together when they asked for asylum.</div>
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They remained together until the United
States, for reasons that are not clear, separated the adults from the
minors. The brother and sister who were 18 and 20 respectively were
taken aside. The two younger brothers remained together. Their
mother and father, too, were separated. None of them had phones or
contact information, and nobody had anywhere to go; their only point
of contact was that distant uncle in North Carolina, which is how the
mother, two brothers, and the sister eventually found one another.
Their father is still in custody. The 18 year old is still missing.
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The sister was released into the United
States first, but did not want to leave without her family. She found
a 24-hour bail bonds office next to the border entry in San Ysidro
and stayed there for nine days and nights, waiting, until someone
finally spoke to her and helped her call her uncle in North Carolina,
who told her where the rest of her family had told him they had been
staying. Someone connected them with a local church group, which
housed them for a time, until the sister was raped. They called the
police, but the police could do nothing without a better description.
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Finally, a local group called <a href="http://borderangels.org/" target="_blank">BorderAngels</a> heard about the family's plight. They were able to connect
the siblings and parents with a local family, where they are now
staying. The father is still detained and the brother still missing,
and so they wait to find out what their fate will be.</div>
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All they know is that they can't go
home again. “That's the saddest thing,” said the 15 year-old. “I know that place where I grew up, no matter where I go
from now on, is never going to be home again. If I go there I'll be
killed. I can't go back.”<br />
<br />
Their story is one of hundreds of thousands, but all begin more or less the same way: poverty, cartels, violence, desperation, flight, the search for a better life. And their story has something of a happy ending -- happier than many, anyway. They have been beaten and violated and have nothing but the kindness of strangers to survive on, but at least, for now, they are alive.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-76322701831719202262014-04-09T22:00:00.001-07:002014-04-09T22:01:14.895-07:00US-Mexico friendly, Glendale, Arizona, 2 April 2014<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-84362230902789412192014-03-20T23:32:00.005-07:002014-03-20T23:32:45.746-07:00Elvira Arellano Returns to U.S. Soil<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vNU5uuskeUg/Uyvb2hyuMRI/AAAAAAAAEs8/kdcCWWuNzvI/s1600/elv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vNU5uuskeUg/Uyvb2hyuMRI/AAAAAAAAEs8/kdcCWWuNzvI/s1600/elv.jpg" height="311" width="400" /></a></div>
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Border and immigration activist Elvira Arellano, who <a href="http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2019341_2017328_2017183,00.html" target="_blank">first made headlines in 2006</a> for living with her son Saul in a Chicago church to avoid deportation for a year, stands outside the federal building in San Diego Thursday after being released from detention. Arellano was among at least a hundred other activists without U.S. documentation who applied for humanitarian visas this week as part of a coordinated protest for immigration reform. She hopes to return to Chicago with her two sons.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-58196091324669865812014-03-10T20:38:00.003-07:002014-03-10T21:51:54.017-07:00Bring Them Home event for immigration reform at the Otay border crossingA rally at the US-Mexico's Otay border crossing Monday morning aimed to reunite families pulled apart by deportations.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QJgiMT0-GOA/Ux6DWiU7GYI/AAAAAAAAEqs/y1Ae2nIcKYU/s1600/rally8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QJgiMT0-GOA/Ux6DWiU7GYI/AAAAAAAAEqs/y1Ae2nIcKYU/s1600/rally8.jpg" height="262" width="400" /></a></div>
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Border Patrol, with protesters behind them on US soil.</div>
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Immigration activist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvira_Arellano" target="_blank">Elvira Arellano</a></div>
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Young DREAMers and their families joined and crossed into Mexico, where they were met by other groups (along with some of <a href="http://losotrosdreamers.org/" target="_blank">Los Otros DREAMers</a>) before trying to cross back into the United States. About 30 applied for asylum in the co-ordinated effort and were being processed by border officials by the end of the event.<br />
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The National Immigrant Youth Alliance organized the third and largest #BringThemHome event, pushing for comprehensive immigration reform. About 150 people on both sides of the border waved signs and chanted, "Bring them home!" and "No estan solos!" (They are not alone!)<span style="text-align: center;">.</span><br />
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There will be more events throughout the week.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-30138035845596876762014-01-18T23:07:00.001-08:002014-01-18T23:48:29.634-08:00On human traffickingThis week, I <a href="http://www.fronterasdesk.org/content/9438/casa-del-jardin-offers-girls-life-after-prostitution" target="_blank">visited a home in Tijuana for young girls</a> who have been trafficked -- bought and sold into slavery, sometimes across international borders, sometimes not, but always horrifically abused and tortured either psychologically, physically, or both -- and spoke with them, an adult trafficking victim, and Alma, who started the home.<br />
<br />
The issue of human trafficking is enormous and difficult to fully appreciate, so I will only focus on thing: a woman I met who I'll call Mari.<br />
<br />
Mari is 40 years old. She was born in Mexico, and spent the first few years of her life in Tijuana. She had always heard that the United States were where you could go to make money to take care of your family, so when a friend of her parents said he was going to the US, she asked him to take her along.<br />
<br />
What Mari didn't know was that he was a smuggler, a coyote. He took her to Encinitas, an upscale beach town in San Diego where there was a large but invisible population of undocumented immigrants, and left her in a shantytown, where she met her captor, who repeatedly raped her, abused her, incarcerated her, and impregnated her. Mari was 13, and he was in his 40s. She stayed with him until she was 19, living under constant threat, working as a maid or a fruit picker by day and being raped and beaten by night -- until he shot and killed a man they both knew.<br />
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Mari took the blame, and ended up going to prison for the crime for 18 years before she was let out. Afterward, she returned to Tijuana to look for her family and try to pull her life back together, but because she was an ex-convict covered in tattoos, tattoos that the man who had kept her in the shantytown had carved on her to mark her as "his," she was unable to get a job, and her family rejected her. They thought she was a gangster.<br />
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Mari is in the process of getting her tattoos removed. Her family has little contact with her. She works a low-paying job in Tijuana and spends a lot of time at Casa del Jardin. All she wants, she says, is a family, and to be loved, and to be able to love without reservation.<br />
<br />
One of the things people ask her the most, she says, is why she stayed with her kidnapper for so long. This is one of the most insidious and deeply violent things about human trafficking: the implied or explicit threat. In Mari's case, her captor told her he would kill her family in Mexico if she tried to escape, backing it up with extreme physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and eventually, like so many others, she stopped trying to leave and began trying to simply survive.<br />
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Mari's story is harrowing and heartbreaking, but hardly unique. The brothels and streets of certain parts of Tijuana are filled with them. Theirs is a life circumscribed by market forces; they are the supply, and the demand, as Alma from Casa del Jardin points out, comes almost entirely across the border, from the United States. Everywhere, trafficked humans are the world's beasts of burden.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com262tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-84054538390561372542013-12-06T11:53:00.004-08:002013-12-06T13:22:02.276-08:00Los Otros Dreamers and the fight for immigration reform<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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One of the most profound changes that is being wrought by the Obama administration's immigration policy is that an enormous amount of young people are being deported. This uptick has changed the fabric of Mexico's society.<br />
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In the 1980s and 1990s, an unprecedented amount of families made the trek from Mexico to the United States in order to escape a period of time known as "La Decada Perdida," or The Lost Decade. It was actually more than a decade, perhaps 15 or 20 years, which struck many countries throughout Latin America, which had borrowed enormous sums internationally to kick-start industrialization. The loans, made by oil-rich countries, quickly skyrocketed exponentially in value; in 1982, Mexico announced that it had to default on its debt, which of course ended loans to the country and caused an immediate financial crisis as infrastructure crumbled and social safety nets disintegrated.<br />
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The effects on Mexico's middle class (and the country in general) in particular was nothing short of catastrophic. Wages dropped, unemployment skyrocketed, crime rates went up, and the very young and very old were left to fend for themselves without much, if any, state help.<br />
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By contrast, the United States was doing quite well in the Roaring `80s. Many people in Mexico had started families thinking they would be able to provide for their children, and now were living in Depression-era conditions. They looked around, looked at their young children, looked northward, and packed their bags and began the long trek back to the middle class and economic opportunities. Some stuck it out longer than others, hoping that perhaps signing NAFTA might help them individually. When it became clear that it would likely not, they, too, went north.<br />
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At this time, the border was much more porous. "Border security," as it is understood today, barely existed until the middle or later 1990s. So these middle-class families settled into their new homes, raised their children, taught them the value of a good education and hard work, and went about trying to become Americans.<br />
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Some, the lucky ones, succeeded. President Reagan's amnesty, in exchange for tougher immigration laws, helped those who were in the United States before 1986. Others were caught between the cracks of bureaucracy. They began to treat their undocumented status as a shameful issue, a kind of public nudity that could only be discussed in whispers. <br />
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Their children grew up American. They knew nothing but American individualism, the entrepreneurial spirit and vibrant hopefulness that characterizes the United States at its best. They worked hard. They got educated. They graduated from college. They spoke Spanish at home but English everywhere else. Some of them knew they were undocumented; some didn't. Those who did know worked as hard as they could to file their papers and pay their fees to become citizens, but often were once again tied up in immigration bureaucracy. Some people have been waiting 25 years for an answer. <br />
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Now they are adults, ranging in age from 20 to about 40, and they are being deported in record numbers. After they are "sent back" to a country of which they have very few memories, if indeed any at all, they have to deal with a whole new set of problems. In border cities such as Tijuana, saying you are a deportee can cost you a job. Their college degrees also need to be recertified, a process that takes time, costs money that people who have been deported don't have (being deported means you are only allowed to take whatever you have with you when you are processed and sent out of the country, which sometimes means no phone, no cash, nothing but the clothes on your back) and is incredibly frustrating (sometimes college graduates need to re-take up to 75 percent of their classes.) <br />
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Some, however, have prevailed, and are continuing to work for both immigration reform on the United States' side of the border and for a better infrastructure and more help for those who have already been deported, as there are very few social services for people in their position. While the young and undocumented in the United States refer to themselves as DREAMers, after the DREAM Act, which would have offered them a clear path to citizenship, the deported people call themselves "Los Otros Dreamers" -- The Other Dreamers. Their story, which I wrote for NPR's Latino USA, is <a href="http://latinousa.org/2013/10/25/los-otros-dreamers/" target="_blank">here.</a> <br />
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You can also find more information on life as one of the Otros Dreamers at Nancy Landa's website, <a href="http://mundocitizen.com/" target="_blank">Mundo Citizen</a> (she is one of the people featured in my story) or in the book <a href="http://voces.huffingtonpost.com/gabriel-lerner/dreamers-de-eileen-truax_b_3462186.html" target="_blank"><i>Dreamers: One Generation's Struggle for the American Dream, </i>by Eileen Truax</a>, or in the upcoming photobook by Nin Solis and Jill Anderson, <i><a href="http://colorlines.com/archives/2013/06/los_otros_dreamers_a_book.html" target="_blank">Los Otros Dreamers.</a></i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-22564461543549630062013-10-18T00:37:00.000-07:002013-10-21T14:17:11.244-07:00Campamento Por Migrantes Deportados - Encampment for Deported Migrants, Tijuana, BC, Mexico<span class="messageBody"><span class="userContent"><span class="messageBody"><span class="userContent">In early August, Mexico's government destroyed the encampments in Tijuana's riverbed after the notorious "El Bordo," where homeless people had been living for years, became international news. A tent city soon sprang up nearby, in Tijuana's Plaza Constitucion, and has housed homeless migrants, largely deportees, since. <br /><br /> <a href="http://www.colef.mx/?coyuntura=estimacion-y-caracterizacion-de-la-poblacion-residente-en-el-bordo-del-canal-del-rio-tijuana&lang=en" target="_blank">Of these deportees</a>, almost 40 percent have lived in the United States for several years and identify as at least partly American; at least 5 percent identify as indigenous Mexican and speak very little Spanish; many need mental health care or addiction treatment, and nobody wants to be there. </span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="messageBody"><span class="userContent"><span class="messageBody"><span class="userContent"></span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="messageBody"><span class="userContent"><span class="messageBody"><span class="userContent">The encampment is administered by volunteers from Angeles Sin Fronteras, Angels Without Borders. They offer food, a temporary place to stay, bathrooms and makeshift showers, and free haircuts to those looking for work. </span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="messageBody"><span class="userContent"><span class="messageBody"><span class="userContent"></span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="messageBody"><span class="userContent"><span class="messageBody"><span class="userContent">There are very few places that offer such services for the homeless and the "segun deportados," the twice deported, who have absolutely nowhere else to go. The ones that do exist subsist on very little support from the Mexican government.<br /><br /> Everywhere, handwritten signs are tacked up that read: "No militarizar la frontera" - Don't militarize the border.</span></span></span></span><span class="messageBody"><span class="userContent"></span></span><br />
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<span class="messageBody"><span class="userContent"></span></span><br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com21Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico32.5149469 -117.0382471000000432.3006764 -117.36097060000003 32.729217399999996 -116.71552360000004tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-7960632227749245432013-09-12T11:47:00.000-07:002013-09-12T12:33:47.588-07:00The Northwest CornerMexico's northwest corner is a neighborhood in Tijuana called Playas. It is notable for its beautiful beaches, its American population, its seafood, and its wall. La Fronteriza begins, or ends, here. <br />
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This is the border. Once, both San Diego and Tijuana were seen as one region, and the two countries were only separated by a marker. It still presides over the border, and the walls curve slightly to accommodate it.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SCZQ1VQpQmo/UjF8S3ODNnI/AAAAAAAAEJw/o9iRl-huQFM/s1600/marker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SCZQ1VQpQmo/UjF8S3ODNnI/AAAAAAAAEJw/o9iRl-huQFM/s320/marker.jpg" width="220" /></a></div>
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After the marker came a threadbare barbed wire fence, and then a wall. As the U.S.'s border becomes more militarized, it builds more barriers. Now at this particular shared corner of the countries, there are bars, a mesh fence, and a third fence, all of which end about a hundred yards into the ocean, crowned with a panopticon of security apparati.<br />
<br />
Beneath this thicket of cameras and floodlights is a park. Until 2009, you could go to Friendship Park and shake hands, hug, or share an international kiss through the bars. Now there is barely enough space to press the tip of a finger through the fencing. There is a system of gates by which transborder friends and families can walk into a common area and hug and hold one another under the watchful eyes of border agents, but more often than not, they remain closed.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Idy_ROweyXI/UjIEo820xVI/AAAAAAAAEKM/aVN2lGm80GA/s1600/pesadillas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Idy_ROweyXI/UjIEo820xVI/AAAAAAAAEKM/aVN2lGm80GA/s320/pesadillas.jpg" width="248" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Here is where dreams become nightmares."</span></div>
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The American side of the wall is free of graffiti, but the less heavily supervised Mexican side is adorned with art, scrawled messages, and names of deportees. <br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vcveyz3Ppvg/UjIGSOebfFI/AAAAAAAAEKY/HAfdNYBxckQ/s1600/veterans.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vcveyz3Ppvg/UjIGSOebfFI/AAAAAAAAEKY/HAfdNYBxckQ/s320/veterans.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">A list of names of deported veterans of the United States military.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"></span> </div>
Beneath the cameras and floodlights and alongside the names, the desperately scribbled messages and phone numbers, and protest art, stands one stark question on the rusty wall: <span style="color: black;">¿<em></em></span>Estas de mi lado?<br />
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Are you on my side?<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com17Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico32.527503118057339 -117.1114711904297132.473944618057338 -117.19215219042971 32.58106161805734 -117.03079019042971tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-9188343374526153612013-08-09T23:59:00.001-07:002013-08-10T12:37:48.809-07:00Indigenous Peoples' Day<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0GEL5KB-8Ho/UgXmod0AN3I/AAAAAAAAEFo/31xNWmhfTXY/s1600/chiefgarymatanuskaglacier.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="271" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0GEL5KB-8Ho/UgXmod0AN3I/AAAAAAAAEFo/31xNWmhfTXY/s400/chiefgarymatanuskaglacier.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Chief Gary Harrison at the Matanuska Glacier, which has receded so quickly that grass has not had an opportunity to grow over the soil.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"></span> </div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Today is the United Nations' Indigenous
Peoples' Day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Three weeks ago, I was sitting in a
cabin in Chickaloon, Alaska, with its traditional Ahtna Athabascan chief, Gary
Harrison. I had
traveled there to ask him about whether Alaska's indigenous people –
uniquely placed – have solutions to a climate that, in the Arctic,
is changing more rapidly and dramatically than anywhere else in the
world. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The extreme weather changes are already creating the world's first "climate refugees," people left homeless when entire villages flood out or wash away. Chief Gary, as he is called, says this is not surprising given how cavalier governments and corporations are about the world's environment. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="color: black;">"Look at the cumulative effect of all of these things going on," he says. "Like the oil spills that they
have out there that go basically unreported to the public, not only on these platforms but in the aging pipe systems
that's crisscrossing the inlet, underneath the inlet and going to
the old oil tank facility on the other side of the inlet to the now
defunct refineries, and all of these leaky pipes... and you say that these
things don't have a cumulative effect?"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Chickaloon is a remote and beautiful village, about a
hundred miles from Anchorage. It is bounded by the Chickaloon River, which
during the summer burbles merrily between homes and along the Glenn Highway.
Salmon, moose, and bear are not just common sights, but essential food sources.
The view of this part of Chickaloon is dominated by the majestic King Mountain, on
which caribou, mountain goats, mink, and Dall sheep live and forage.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H8bP95-D1DI/UgaVFC4liMI/AAAAAAAAEGI/m2pxHQ5mYYQ/s1600/2rivers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="207" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H8bP95-D1DI/UgaVFC4liMI/AAAAAAAAEGI/m2pxHQ5mYYQ/s320/2rivers.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Most
of the people here are Athabascan Natives, homesteaders, or both. Chief
Gary Harrison grew up in Chickaloon and comes from a family of
homesteaders. He speaks deliberately and passionately. His demeanor
is quiet, even bookish. Yet what he says clearly communicates his passion for
the land and his frustration at its abuses.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Harrison
is fighting a proposed mine in Chickaloon. The majority of people in the village appear to oppose the mine, despite the promise of new jobs and infusions of cash and economic power similar to that which briefly made Chickaloon into an important stop on the Alaska Railroad. But Harrison says these are ephemeral benefits that come with a high cost. First, he says, it will
pollute at least three hundred drinking wells, which the company
itself admits. And many of the people who lived there are horrified
at the idea of building roads <span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">over
and around the mountains, through King Mountain and Castle Mountain and the migration
paths of the moose and sheep. </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">"People
who talk about 'clean coal,' that's an oxymoron," says Harrison, shaking his head. "There is
no such thing as clean coal. And they say, 'well, it's cleaner than
that.' Cleaner than what? Cleaner than coal from other places? Well,
that's not saying much. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: normal;"></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: normal;">"And the fact of the matter is, they can
try to clean it out of the air, it's still submitting CO2, and then
they take the carbons, the sulfurs, and all of the other toxic waste
that's in it, and they put it in the ground.... it
then gets in the groundwater and it poisons entire cities."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: normal;">Harrison
is also fighting the same battle on a much larger front. He is,
among other things, the representative of the Athabascan Nation to
the United Nations and the Arctic Council. Right now, mining is a major topic.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"At <span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">the Arctic Council, we're trying to make a treaty, or a binding
agreement, on short-lived climate forcers, and one of the basic
things in the short lived climate forcers is black carbon. Black
carbon gets on the snow, it gets on the ice, and it melts it much
faster every year than ever before." He points to the Matanuska Glacier, which feeds the Chickaloon River, as an example of how quickly the climate is changing. The glacier has been receding and melting so fast that it has left miles of black soil where ice once was, fertile soil that is so new that grass has not yet had a chance to grow in it.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2EN9NxkYxBc/UgaU8uzNEKI/AAAAAAAAEGA/DD_JoNYwjPw/s1600/matanuska_glacier.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="245" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2EN9NxkYxBc/UgaU8uzNEKI/AAAAAAAAEGA/DD_JoNYwjPw/s400/matanuska_glacier.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-weight: normal;">Harrison says that as
glaciers and sea ice crack and melt at an alarmingly rapid pace and
the native flora and fauna die off, the only thing that can save
the habitat now is traditional wisdom and ideologies, such as
mutual respect, sharing resources, and looking out for the world instead of mere economic interests. The selfish people of the world made our world this way, he says, and it is up to the selfless ones to make things better.</span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-88500821792037620902013-08-09T00:13:00.000-07:002013-08-09T00:29:26.807-07:00El Bordo, today<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7UErBxASGEg/UgSTFXLCS9I/AAAAAAAAEE8/4ea4_xyuEd0/s1600/riverbed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7UErBxASGEg/UgSTFXLCS9I/AAAAAAAAEE8/4ea4_xyuEd0/s400/riverbed.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(Click through for a larger picture)</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span> </div>
Earlier this week, Tijuana police, aided by money from Mexico's government, razed homeless encampments up and down the part of the Tijuana River known as <em>El Bordo</em>, or "The Edge." Today, dozens, like this man who was standing near a footbridge trying to get passersby to toss money down to him, have returned. Many here are drug addicts; most are deportees from the United States, unceremoniously dumped in Tijuana regardless of their state of origin in Mexico.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-l9daJQjdWdU/UgSZYkcT9CI/AAAAAAAAEFM/KndysL4vVi8/s1600/riverbed2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="286" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-l9daJQjdWdU/UgSZYkcT9CI/AAAAAAAAEFM/KndysL4vVi8/s400/riverbed2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-32828066672771625812013-04-24T12:52:00.002-07:002013-04-24T13:05:56.055-07:00A statement from Bobbi Gibb on the Boston Marathon attacks<em>Note: Ms. Gibb first ran the Boston Marathon in 1966, when it was commonly believed that women were physically incapable of running long distances. In doing so, she did more than make a statement as a runner; she became an icon for women who questioned the status quo. This year, Ms. Gibb was <a href="http://www.brookebinkowski.com/2013/04/bobbi-gibb-and-boston-marathon.html" target="_blank">an honored guest at the Boston Marathon</a>, serving as one of the event's grand marshals.</em> -BB<br />
---<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> First of all I want to say that my heart goes out to those who were injured or killed and their families. I hold in my loving thoughts and my healing prayers all those who were and continue to be affected by the horror that occurred on Monday. I want to everything and anything I can to help.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> To me the Boston Marathon has always been and it continues to be, a celebration of life. It’s something that occurs every spring in Boston. It’s a celebration of the renewal of life— the daffodils poking through the earth, the forsythia in bloom. Even more fundamental than a sporting event, to me, the Boston Marathon symbolizes this celebration of life and the celebration of the human spirit and it continues to do so.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Out of all the catastrophe that occurred that day what was really inspiring, and what we need to look at and take with us, is the love and compassion and empathy that spontaneously emerged from all the people there. Each and every person was a hero— the runners helping other runners, the spectators helping the injured, the police, the doctors, the nurses, the volunteers along the course, the National Guard, the Boston Athletic Association officials— everyone spontaneously worked together, without anyone telling them what to do, just worked together to help those who were injured and to help anyone in need. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Thousands of runners were stranded without any money, warm clothes or keys. And what happened? People spontaneously took off their own jackets and gave them to the runners and took them into their homes and gave them beds and money and clothes and food. No one told them to do this; it was a spontaneous outpouring of love and I believe that this what is fundamental to human nature. This is what we’re all about as human beings. This is what it is to be American to work together for the common good, to help each other. This is the fundamental premise of any valid ethical, moral or religious system— to do for others what you would have them do for you, and to do it spontaneously and with love, and to treat your neighbor as yourself. And that’s what we saw on Monday, that’s what the 99% is all about. This other stuff is pathology…. It’s something gone wrong.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Just as we’re all capable of getting cancer, we’re all capable of getting emotionally, spiritually, mentally or physically sick and that’s what we’re seeing in a very small percentage of the population who are acting out of a mistaken belief. It’s a dysfunction and we need to find a way of healing it, of stopping it, and of finding and dealing with people who would do us harm. The security forces, police, FBI, and all the people who cooperated to help, exhibited intelligence and heroism in doing what needed to be done, quickly and efficiently and our gratitude goes out to these dedicated men and women.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> And now it is up to us to carry on and to continue to reaffirm what is real in the human spirit, that is, love and care and empathy and this human ability to work together to help one another, to do what needs doing in the face of violence, greed, perversion and all the things that would divert us from the true nature of what it is to be human. From around the world come messages of love, caring, sympathy, offers to help, from all countries of the world and it is this spirit of friendship, and love and caring that we need emphasize and to continue and to strengthen. This is really what we need to take away from the horrific events on April 15<span style="font-size: small;"><sup>th</sup>.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Thank you for giving me a chance to say what I think and feel. My heart goes out to everyone, here and around the world, with love and gratitude for the goodness of the human spirit, even as I feel great sadness for the hurt, pain, suffering and death of the victims and their families.</span></div>
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span> </span></div>
<span style="color: black;">
</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Many Regards,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Bobbi</span></span></div>
<span style="color: black;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-67348178793719474522013-04-17T09:37:00.000-07:002013-04-17T09:45:34.393-07:00Bobbi Gibb and the Boston MarathonThe Boston Marathon is on everybody's lips this week, of course. I in no way want to downplay the extent of the loss and pain that people felt, but feel that the story of Bobbi Gibb deserves to be out there.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Gvrt6l9Uyq4/UW7IzpqnDxI/AAAAAAAADsM/ber8A4lg2wI/s1600/bobbifield.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Gvrt6l9Uyq4/UW7IzpqnDxI/AAAAAAAADsM/ber8A4lg2wI/s320/bobbifield.jpg" /></a>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Young Bobbi Gibb. Source: Bobbi Gibb</span>
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Gibb lives part of the year in San Diego, where she went to school, and part of the year in Massachusetts, where she was born. I first heard about her in passing last year, and, curious, looked her up. Once I found out that she lived in San Diego, I asked her to meet with me to do an interview so I could profile her. <br />
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She has never really sought the spotlight, but she is very accessible.
It turned out that she works at the Salk Institute, just across the street from my school, so we met in a café and talked for hours. She is a lively, fascinating, and engaging speaker; it was difficult, writing her profile, to winnow down the information to the best quotes.
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Gibb first saw the Boston Marathon in 1964. Her father had taken her to see the runners at the marathon, and she fell in love, deeply and irrationally, and immediately began training. The conventional wisdom at that time was that women would damage their bodies if they ran more than a mile and a half, but she knew she could do it, so she ran a little farther each day, waiting to collapse or for her ovaries to fall out, until she was running thirty to forty miles a day. "I was very strong," she said. She applied to the 1966 marathon, but her application was rejected by the Boston Athletic Administration because they were unwilling to take on the liability of a woman runner.<br />
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That is when her plan formed. She hid in the bushes at the start of the race, slipping into the pack after the gun went off, and finished ahead of two-thirds of the men. She was young, beautiful, and fast, and her story made international headlines. <br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">One headline: "Hub Bride First Gal to Run Marathon." Source: Bobbi Gibb</span></div>
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Gibb was grand marshal of the parade this year, along with the first winner of the officially-sanctioned women's division race in 1972. That meant she was at the race's finish when the bombs went off. "Horrible," she texted me, because the phones weren't working in those awful hours after the explosions. "It was horrible. My heart goes out to the victims and their families."<br />
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What should have been a triumphant and happy day was forever marred by those explosions. But that doesn't mean that her story should disappear under its weight. Bobbi Gibb was and remains a hero to those who challenge the status quo. At nearly 70, she looks and seems much younger, and she's still running every day.<br />
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I ran four miles with her just before she left for Boston, and could only keep up with her through sheer force of will.<br />
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You can find the audio and text of the story I did for <a href="http://www.thecaliforniareport.org/" target="_blank">The California Report</a> on the indomitable Bobbi Gibb here: <a href="http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R201304150850/b">http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R201304150850/b</a><br />
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Here is the text of the story.<br />
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Bobbi Gibb found one of the great loves of her life in her early 20s.<br />
“I saw the [Boston] Marathon for the first time in '64 with my dad, and then I just fell in love with it,” she said. “I mean, it was totally irrational, like falling in love. There was no money in it, there was no reason to run, it was totally outside the social and cultural norm for a woman to run, and it barely was in the social norm for men to run.”<br />
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Gibb, who was born and raised in Massachusetts, already had been running for as long as she could remember. As a child, she would run out into the woods, pausing to rest under trees, count clouds and commune with nature.<br />
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“It was always kind of a way of expressing joy,” she said. “I'd see a field or a beach and I'd just run like a dog.”<br />
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The Boston Marathon, then the best-known marathon outside the Olympics, was more than simply an elite race to her. In fact, to Gibb, the marathon wasn't a race at all -- it was a joyful annual ceremony.<br />
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“It hardly even occurred to me that it was an actual sporting event,” she said. “To me, it was like a celebration of spring.”<br />
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<b>Men only</b><br />
What Gibb didn't know was that she wouldn't be allowed to compete. She was born in 1942 and came of age during a time when women were supposed to want nothing more than to stay at home and be housewives, and they certainly never did anything as unseemly or potentially sweaty as running.<br />
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Gibb knew about the social pressures, but had no idea that the Boston Marathon was actually closed to women until she sent an application in 1966 from San Diego, where she was attending UC San Diego. By then, she had been training for the marathon for two years.<br />
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“I had no idea how to train,” she said. “I had no running books. There were no running clothes for women. I wore nursing shoes because I had been a nurse's aide – that was my first job after high school and they were sturdy shoes.”<br />
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She had also been waiting during that time to see if something horrible would happen to her physically, because the conventional wisdom of the time was that running more than a mile and a half was potentially deadly to women. She pushed herself more and more, until she was running 40 or 50 miles a day in her clunky nurse shoes.<br />
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“I got a letter back from Will Cloney [then the director of the Boston Marathon] that said women are not physiologically able to run marathon distances, and we wouldn't want to take the medical liability.<br />
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“And that's what everyone thought. I mean, this was a universal truth. Women can't be doctors, it's too much stress. Women can't be lawyers, it's too much stress. Women can't be in the government.... women can't run long distance. Women can't do anything except stay home and clean the house. It was like being in a cage. It was horrible.... It was just everywhere. It was ubiquitous.”<br />
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Gibb said that running was more than something that simply gave her happiness at that point. It was also an escape, the only way she could escape the anger and frustration she experienced daily at being bombarded with messages that she was weak, irrational, stupid and a secondary citizen.<br />
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“You can't be who you are. You can't do what you love, because you belong to a certain class of people that we consider inferior. So you're inferior, and you can't do this. ‘It's for your own good! It's for your own good, dear,’ ” she said mockingly.<br />
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Then she realized she had been given a brilliant opportunity to change things -- not in a huge, overarching way but in a tiny way that could have an enormous effect, and in the best way she knew how. Gibb would run the Boston Marathon, application or no application, feminine inferiority or no feminine inferiority.<br />
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“If I can show that a woman can run 26 miles, and run it well -- stride for stride with the men -- that is going to throw all the rest of the prejudices and all the misconceptions and all of the so-called reasons for keeping women down that have existed for the past how many centuries? Centuries of this stuff! And so I sort of chuckled to myself and thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be fun! I'm going to turn the whole thing on its head.’ ”<br />
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She spent nearly a week on a bus to get from San Diego to Massachusetts and when she got there the day before the 1966 Boston Marathon, she announced her plan to her parents, who thought she had suffered a break with reality and was suffering from delusions. Her father stormed out of the house, but Gibb managed to convince her mother to take her to the starting point of the marathon.<br />
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“That was really a turning point [in our relationship], because it was the first time she ever was on my side to help me become more of who I was, really was, and not just fit into the mold, and also I convinced her. I said, ‘Mom, this is going to set women free, because people are going to see that women can do this stuff.’<br />
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“I wanted to show that women could run, but I also wanted to kind of inspire the idea that ordinary people can run. I was like, boy, I feel so good when I run, if everybody could feel like this, this sense of joy and physical well-being and strength and autonomy you have when you run, how much better the world would be, you know?”<br />
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<b>Crashing the Marathon</b><br />
She borrowed an old pair of her brother's Bermuda shorts, put on a swimsuit and a hooded sweater over it, laced on her running shoes, and went with nervousness and great anticipation to crash the Boston Marathon.<br />
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“I figured, ‘I'll hide in the bushes as near to the pen as I can get.’ And then I had a blue hooded sweatshirt on and I said, ‘Well, I'll get into the race and then I'll kind of see where to go from there.’ So the gun went off and I jumped into the middle of the pack.”<br />
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She ran with the pack of men until she heard the comments from behind her, and realized the men behind her had figured out she was a young woman. It had taken about 30 seconds. She knew they could easily shoulder her out or report her, so instead of ignoring them she turned around and smiled. To her surprise, delight and a little chagrin, the crowd of men welcomed her.<br />
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“We got talking and they said, ‘Gee, I wish my girlfriend would run. I wish my wife would run.’ They wanted to share their love of running with the women in their lives.”<br />
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At this point, Gibb recalled, she started to get hot. She wanted to take off her sweatshirt, but knew her body and long bright blonde hair would give her away to the judges, the crowd and everybody else.<br />
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“If I take it off, I said, they might throw me out. The guys said, ‘We won't let them throw you out. It's a free road.’<br />
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"That was another item on my agenda, to end this stupid war of the sexes. Why do we have to be fighting a war of the sexes? We're on the same side in this! Men can have feelings. Women can have physical bodies that are strong.... you can be who you are.”<br />
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<b>The Big Reveal</b><br />
She took off her sweatshirt and the crowd went wild. Reporters quickly figured out that a woman was in the race and started phoning ahead; a local radio station started broadcasting regular updates about where “the girl” was in the race. As Gibb ran by the crowds, she saw their reactions. Men were cheering and clapping, and women were jumping wildly up and down and weeping.<br />
“I thought, “Oh my God, this is incredible,’ ” Gibb said, her voice warming. “This is really blowing peoples' minds. I mean, women didn't know they could do this!” She finished ahead of two-thirds of the marathon runners, dehydrated and exhausted.<br />
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Of course, change didn't happen all at once. “HUB BRIDE FIRST GAL TO RUN MARATHON,” trumpeted one headline.<br />
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But little by little, more women came. Gibb ran the next year, as did a second woman, Kathrine Switzer. The year after that, Gibb ran the marathon again, with several more women. She applied and was turned down for medical school, went to law school instead, became a lawyer, pursued her art, had a baby, wrote a book, changed careers (she now researches neuromuscular disorders for labs in San Diego and Boston. and just finished writing a second book) and through all that she kept running.<br />
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In 1972, six years after Gibb first ran the marathon, the Amateur Athletic Association changed the rules so that women could run in an officially sanctioned race in Boston. The rest is history.<br />
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Gibb is still as lithe and lean as the 22-year-old who ran that first race. She now splits her time between San Diego and Massachusetts, and she never stopped running. She hopes to train for the 2016 Boston Marathon, where she will run to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the time she took her first steps down the long path to equality.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6893302491122176143.post-31224405211946351782012-11-15T09:45:00.004-08:002012-11-18T13:53:20.211-08:00Mis quince minutosI made it into a Univision special about the Xolos' effects on Tijuana:<br />
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I'm just glad <a href="http://www.fronterasdesk.org/news/2012/nov/09/tijuana-soccer-team-bridges-border" target="_blank">my story</a> made it out into the world before this great piece did! Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04281430421436990959noreply@blogger.com46