"I fought and I won. And I'm free..."

Nothing simultaneously brightens your day and makes you think about the influence your country's legal system has on people than opening your home last-minute to someone who was released from immigration detention earlier in the day.

After months of thoughtful conversations about what community means to us and deciding we want our two spare bedrooms to be available to give hospitality, the Tucson Young Adult Volunteer house has hosted friends, family, and significant others. But we also made the decision to be open to hosting people fighting an immigration case or getting bonded out of immigration detention who need a place to stay temporarily, and tonight we were called upon to provide such hospitality.

I will refrain from using his name to protect his identity. We do not know many of the details yet, but in his home country of Brazil, he was persecuted for identifying as a gay man. He fled for fear of threats against his life and made it to the US-Mexico border, where he crossed the border and was caught about fifteen minutes afterwards. He sounded excited about it -- "I wanted them to catch me," he added when I perhaps looked surprised. "I wanted to fight my case." And then he was put in a detention facility in Florence, Arizona for six months to fight his asylum case.

My question is, isn't there another option to provide people a place to stay while they're undergoing the tough-enough battle to prove that the discrimination, persecution, and violence they experienced meets standards for refugee status? An option other than imprisonment for an undetermined length of time? I'll let you sit with that question too. I don't have a good answer for you (at least yet...).

He was released on bond today with support from the Rainbow Defense Fund, and from the moment Raul Alcaraz Ochoa (community organizer for the Rainbow Defense Fund and Southside Worker Center) brought him to our doorstep, he just kept saying, "I just can't believe it. I won. I fought and I won. And I'm free..."

The United States was his dream country, he said. "It's just such a beautiful country, and people from the United States are a beautiful people. Everywhere in the world I went, I always saw a person from the U.S. trying to help others." As someone who can be rather critical of the country I have grown up in and continue to live in, especially as I have seen how much damage representatives of our government and our country can do around the world, his perspective was refreshing. Thousands of people seek opportunities in the U.S. every single day. Some seek educational or economic opportunities. Some family reunification. Some are escaping violence or threat of violence and have to prove reasonable fear that they would be in serious danger if they were to return to their home country. Important note: the concept of "economic refugee" is not recognized by refugee law, which means you cannot be granted asylum for fleeing even a life-or-death economic situation. Less than ten percent of asylum cases from Mexico are granted precisely for this reason.

In our new friend's case, he had to prove to a judge that because he is a gay man, his life would be in danger if he returned back to Brazil. And here he is, in his dream country. Finally free and in disbelief. He could barely contain himself, and he would slip in and out of regular conversation in a mix of Spanish and Portuguese and overwhelming gratefulness to be out of detention and in this space of hospitality. And I am grateful as well that my house has chosen to be such a space so that we may learn from and be inspired by his light and his perspective, and maybe we will even learn a little more Portuguese!

Boa noite :-)
Kathryn


P.S. If you'd like to do your reading on seeking asylum, here's one helpful article: Asylum Seekers At US, Mexico Border Double. And here's information for the Florence Project, which provides free legal services to people in immigration detention. They do amazing work, and their staff happens to include one of our housemates - Steph Quintana - who was a YAV last year!

Help Fund the Southside Worker Center!

Remember how I challenged you to think about how you could get involved with border issues? Here's one way! 

Raúl Alcaraz Ochoa is an amazing organizer in the city of Tucson, fighting for the health of his community, an end to discrimination against all people on the basis of race/ethnicity/gender identity/sexual orientation/etc/etc/etc, and a halt to deportations of undocumented community members. His birthday is Wednesday, Feb. 26th, and all he asks is for donations to the Southside Worker Center! I've written a little about the Worker Center, but it is a center through Southside Presbyterian Church to organize day laborers in Tucson (primarily men who are undocumented), to negotiate with employers for fair wages and labor conditions, and to build a network of community support to call into action especially when a community member is harassed, detained, or facing deportation.

Thing is, they need some more funds, and fast. Check out Raul's video and how to donate here: http://www.gofundme.com/70ochw Please consider donating today and helping the Worker Center continue their work to make Tucson a healthier and safer community - and give Raul a happy birthday!

This is just one of my pictures of Raul being amazing, leading a rally in response to police brutality against peaceful resistance to the detention of four community members.

Informate y toma accion! Inform yourself and take action!

Hi friends,

There's a lot going on in the Borderlands that I want to discuss, and I would like to follow BorderLinks' model of reflective action. In our education model we encourage both delegation/workshop participants and leaders to not just be consumers of facts and others' points of view, but to reflect upon what they've seen and done, and from there, act. How do you take home your experience in the Borderlands trying to synthesize the multiple perspectives that only make these issues more complex? 

This is a question that we ask ourselves a lot, and for me as a YAV, I have to ask myself how I am also reflectively guiding myself and others to action. Today, I'm thankful that consuming lots of immigration-related current events is part of my job, and I'm thankful for the opportunity to blog at work to try to process it all. But sometimes, I just... my brain is exploding. So my intention here is to share with you all some of what's going on in my world, and my apologies that some of these sections will probably feel disjointed! 

My last blog post included some highlights about my latest delegation, and from that, there has been some follow-up already with those students, which is amazing to see. We often don't know what participants do with their action items at home, but I've heard back from a couple participants after our almost two weeks together... 

With delegation wrap-up, I really try to emphasize that BorderLinks would love to help continue the relationship and keep extending the experience of understanding the US-Mexico border, so we are happy to connect people with resources and contacts once they've left our campus. Following this delegation, within the first week...

- I received emails from two participants asking for the contact information for a couple of the community members we met with here in Arizona

- Another is thinking about an internship with a humanitarian aid group here on the border. Two students asked me to be a reference for border-related internships and fellowships (which ahhh! makes me feel like a real professional!)

- And one of the students held a presentation that incorporated that music as well as movement and forms of media to communicate his reflections to the school. And to do that in just days - amazing!

And another messaged me a question that I thought would be relevant to share with all of you. The student asked, basically, "So when you know a community member has been detained by Border Patrol or ICE, what do you say when you call them?" This is a great question, and as you readers may recall, I've asked you to call Border Patrol for the release of upstanding community members - most recently here: Tucson Mom Detained.

Here was my response:

"The good news is that these days there are a few organizations and protection networks out there to spread the word quickly about a detained community member, and they usually put out a message to say to Border Patrol/ICE. It's usually something like, "Hi, my name is ____, and I believe ____ should be released from detention and/or be granted relief from deportation because_____ " I think the biggest thing you can emphasize when you call is that this person is a positive contributor to the community. Anything you can mention about community involvement, dedication to their family, educational and/or professional goals helps. People with those qualities are not supposed to be pursued for deportation, according to the Morton memo - that order was handed down for ICE to focus on people who have committed other criminal acts, especially violent ones, and emphasize discretion and deportation relief for upstanding members of the community..."

So that's just one thing you can do! And now... here's some more Arizona-related news that will help you understand my life and work a little bit better:

*** Please watch the PBS documentary "The State of Arizona." You can watch it here: video.pbs.org/video/2365153190/ until February 28th 2014. 

Here's more of Arizona in the national news! It still feels wild for the issues you're working on and their local context to make national headlines... A couple days ago, New York Times featured Tucson's Operation Streamline court proceedings, as well as Judge Velasco who holds the record for processing 70 defendants in 30 minutes.

Split Second Justice as US Cracks Down on Border Crossers

Here Judge Velasco was also interviewed for the Washington Post (please pay attention to tone as well as language in the two different newspapers): Under Operation Streamline, fast-track proceedings for illegal immigrants

“The system is working well and the system is fair,” Judge Bernardo Velasco, who presides over Streamline cases here, said in an interview. “When you enter illegally you’re a criminal. You may not be a big criminal, but you’re a criminal. You can say ‘these poor people’ and all this other stuff, but they’re still criminals.”

And this, I just have no words.

Border Patrol Accused Of Teaching Children To Shoot At Human-Shaped Targets Made To Look Like Immigrants

Note: we need to keep in mind to separate individuals from the institution of the Border Patrol so as to not dehumanize the individuals who are doing that work. What we should focus on is systemic dehumanization by the institution, and if that cuts down to the individual level, that is what conversations are for. I happen to not agree with training kids to use deadly force against a human target in any circumstance. But clearly not everyone believes that way.

Beyond human rights abuses by Border Patrol at a systemic level, here's the update on state politics. While Pima County (that includes Tucson) has passed a resolution declaring the county "Immigrant welcoming" (County officially adopts "immigrant-welcoming" designation), at the state level there is new legislation proposed that "would make it a crime for a ‘person in the state illegally’" to use public infrastructure such as sidewalks and bathrooms...

AZ Bill Would Make It A Crime To Use A Bathroom Without Proof Of Citizenship

At the community level, the Southside Worker Center and Southside Presbyterian Church here in Tucson are working to call out an employer regarding 6 cases of wage theft of our community members. Please inform yourself and others so all work is valued!  

    

I'll leave you with an excerpt from my participant's blog entry - and you can find the rest here on the BorderLinks blog: "Beyond Emotions and Enlightenments."

"I dare to say that the 11 days at BorderLinks went beyond what we expected. I would fail to sum up the experience of the trip if I limited it to a few emotions and enlightenments, because the entire time I felt as if I was being forced to question the things I was being confronted with. At times, I can honestly claim that I felt hopeless and angered by the injustices at the border. Seeing the grand monstrosity of the border wall itself and the blind militancy of the border patrol could do that to you. Having to leave Agua Prieta because of cartel-related violence also added to the intensity and immediacy of the issue. But it would be unfair to leave it at that negative conclusion, because BorderLinks always made sure to show us that not only was there was work to be done, but there was already work being done. By getting the chance to meet activists, Samaritans, public defenders, and other community leaders, we saw that the issues weren’t being neglected. In the midst of danger, confusion, and chaos, people do still feel compelled to act on behalf of those who need the help. The beautiful people at HEPAC in Nogales, Tierra Y Libertad Organization, Casa Mariposa, and all the other groups I have not mentioned prove that complacency is not acceptable. The incredible work they do impacts people daily. Over and over again, the people on both sides of the border inspired me to reject fatalistic thinking and instead move towards action.  

I left BorderLinks more compelled than ever to continue fighting for a better, just future for everyone. BorderLinks exposed the truth to us all. But the truth isn’t enough if we don’t act on it. As Jose David, a Guatemalan man I met at the Florence detention center told me, “Sigue adelante!” Move forward. In this case, we need to give the issue of immigration a human face. After all the people we met and worked with through BorderLinks, that is our responsibility."

You all are smart people. So please, check out the resources I have given you. If you are reading my blog, most likely you also have the internet, the TV, the radio, and personal experience at your fingertips. If you'd like more, hopefully I can point you in the right direction! Inform yourself, reflect, think about how you feel guided to take action in your community and/or in the political realm, and act!

Poetry and Pupusas

Hi friends,

I just finished another delegation, my third, filled with firsts. It was my first delegation with two vans because we had so many participants (and therefore both MaryCruz and I having to drive most of the time)... the first time thinking about logistics for 24 people... the first time taking into account BorderLinks' typical visits and incorporating interests of the group for almost two weeks of programming...

... the first time seeing where the border wall in Agua Prieta ends and a simple guard rail preventing vehicle crossings begins...

... the first time I had to take a group out of Mexico early due to safety concerns (we are all fine, thank goodness, and this is why we work with community partners on the ground who have a good read on the community)... the first time bridging two different colleges in one group... the first time having Latin@ participants with undocumented family members...

... the first time visiting the Nogales dump where people live and try to make a living sorting through trash to reuse/recycle/sell items...

... the first time meeting with amazing community partners such as Tierra Y Libertad Organization, the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, and the Tucson Youth Poetry Slam...

... and the first time making pupusas - a tradition from El Salvador where you essentially fill thick corn tortillas with beans, cheese, and sometimes meat. What an awesome way to celebrate the end of our time together!

 

 

It was tough, and I am tired. But I've been filled with a writing energy that might run out soon, so I might as well run with it while it's here!

I had brought my first delegation to see part of a symposium at the U of A (University of Arizona) called "What It Means to Be Human," and that is where I first saw the Tucson Youth Poetry Slam share some of their work. It was amazing to hear youth voices and see youth strength processing everything that goes on in their community that is filled with trauma like inequality, homelessness, family separation, detention, deportation, language and cultural division, political tension. So when the group leader of this delegation mentioned it would be good to see examples of how the border communities are perhaps expressing the reality of the border through art and performance, I immediately thought of them, and the co-director Sarah Gonzales agreed to do a workshop with us!

Now, I've never considered myself to be a poet. I don't think anyone in our delegation would have considered themselves as such. So we entered the space not knowing what to expect and with a high level of apprehension about having to write and share our own work. But it was simply amazing how accessible they made spoken word and slam (the act of competing in spoken word). By the end, through a couple of amazing examples by the 15-year-old and 18-year-old workshop leaders, two simple writing prompts, and some performance advice, we all had written pieces and turned out a collective creative piece about where we consider ourselves to be from.

We were split into two groups, and one half wrote on "My city sounds like," and my half wrote on "My city tastes like," which leaves up to your own interpretation what "city" you identify with and what thoughts and memories you associate. Mine ended up weaving together contradictions I've found through romanticized ideas about the Midwest, my personal experience growing up in a mostly Jewish suburb of Minneapolis, and ethnic enclaves and urban struggles of Minneapolis/St. Paul. We all started from a simple premise and made it our own. At the end of two hours, we each were on our way to some amazing personal poems, and we had woven together pieces of our individual work and performed the whole. Wow. We amazed each other as well as our workshop leaders, and now we have some new skills we can hone and pass on to others.

You never know what will come out of you. You get to own your experience and, if you choose to, share it with others. Here's what I came up with in those ten minutes we got to write, and I'd encourage you to try the exercise too!


My city tastes like challah,
lutefisk,
hotdish and savory and heartyness;
meat and potatoes to sustain you to grow corn for others.

My city tastes spiceless.

My city tastes like traditions:
Norwegian,
Somalian,
Hmong,
Mexican,
Ecuadorian,
Vietnamese,
Thai.

My city tastes like salads in the summer and soup in the winter.

My city tastes like living off the land, feeding the community, but no grocery stores for miles.

My city tastes like charities, food pantries, and sometimes emptiness.

My city tastes like nobody wanting to be the one to eat the last bite.



There you have it. That's what I got for today. This was a really intriguing exercise for myself and these students to do in Tucson, coming from all different parts of the country. It was two hours where I could be a full participant as well, allowing myself to be guided by the workshop leaders. I really look forward to further collaboration with the Tucson Youth Poetry Slam, and potentially more writing springboarding off of these prompts as well!

Until next time!

Southside Worker Center Tool Library!

If you're either magically in Tucson and can give a physical item, or if you would like to send them a Home Depot gift card ASAP,  you will make it possible for members of the Southside Worker Center in Tucson to get more solid work opportunities and make Tucson healthier!

Brief background: the Worker Center is one of the ministries of Southside Presbyterian Church, and it is organized by and for day laborers who are primarily men who have immigrated from Mexico and Central America looking to make solid money to provide for their families. Through the Center they contract with employees, receive work and know-your-rights trainings, work to make their community safer and healthier, and support one another and their families.


Here are details from the desk of Raul Alcaraz-Ochoa, Organizer at the Worker Center (and amazing activist to boot)...

"The Southside Worker Center is working towards creating a rent-a-tool library so that workers can have access to tools they may need for a paint job, yard work, construction work and more!

Please contact us at southsidecentro@gmail.com or call us at 520-955-8165 if you are able to get us a tool donation OR a Home Depot Gift Card between now and January 15th. Thanks!"


Tool Wish List:

LANDSCAPING:
-Shovels,
-rakes,
-hand saw,
-chainsaw,
-vest,
-blower,
-loppers,
-trimmer,
-hoola hoe,
-weed eater,
-gloves,
-glasses,
-trash cans,
-face masks,
-boots,
-sledge hammer,
-digging pole,
-trenching shovels,
-pick axe,
-axe,
-prunners,
-gas tank.

PAINTING:
-measuring tape,
-rolls,
-brushes,
-tape,
-paper,
-plastic,
-box cutting blades,
-power washer,
-paint gun,
-air compressor.

MASONRY:
-Level,
-wheel barrel,
-cuchara y radiador

ROOFING:
-Air compressor,
-hoses,
-nail gun,
-hammer,
-roofing shovel,
-safety hat,
-vest,
-saw,
-spachula,
-glasses,
-ladder


Thank you for your consideration!

Song from a Participant

This. This is amazing. This is one of the greatest gifts we can receive for our work at BorderLinks. And we get some really incredible ones sometimes! Yesterday a box showed up from a Phillips Theological Seminary participant who came back in September - he donated his company's gently used computer monitors and speakers after they upgraded - how kind it was for him to think of us!

Here are Maria, Indira, and Rhonda admiring our new (to us) toys that will make our work even better!

 

One of my Harvard Divinity participants wrote a song following his BorderLinks experience and posted it to our Facebook wall in late December. In case you haven't seen it yet, it's pretty amazing and encapsulates a lot of what we hope people get out of border immersion. We try not to teach to a certain end, or hope that people who come in at Levels A through L in border understanding get to Level T or X by the time they leave us. We get to see what people write on their delegation evaluations on their last day, but rarely do we know how their BorderLinks experience touches them once they leave our campus weeks, months, or years later. Every person experiences things differently and can choose what they get out of their time with us. We hope that they integrate what they learn, feel, and think here on the border into wherever life takes them next.

I am amazed by his talent and his heart, and touched that he would produce this musical reflection to share with the world. Without further ado, here is "Paper" by Andrew Porter: http://www.reverbnation.com/andrewporter If you are so moved, please share on!

YAV Year in Review (The 2013 Portion!)

(Started this on December 18th and didn't quite get around to finishing it until now! Here you go)

So, friends, the next time I will be posting about my YAV year will be the next calendar one, 2014. This middle of December simply cannot be so. It must be something like June because today was over 80 and sunny. I'm soooo not ready for a White Christmas, but I am. I even put on Ma's snowflake earrings (for those of you who do not know, Ma was my maternal grandmother, and after she passed away, I now have a small collection of her classy-but-funky jewelry) and still walk to work in flip-flops even though it's 40-50 in the mornings because I want to get acclimated to feeling chilly. And to be tough and stubborn, really, so I do not get too soft or lose my Minnesotan heartiness towards blizzards and temperatures too cold for snow.

Since I've been lax about blogging regular life and all our YAV adventures until this point, I figured I'd do a review of my 2013 YAV life in photos! (And some captions so you get a sense of what's going on...). You may have seen some of these photos before either in this blog or on Facebook, but just in case, here are a bunch all at once - enjoy!

YAV orientation in Stony Point, NY, where we did yoga...

... sometimes canoed...

 ... sang, danced (I got to lead Zumba one night) ...

... did Bible study, and re-envisioned mission together.

 I had an amazing small group! We reflected together, challenged each other in different ways, and sometimes, just watched silly Youtube videos.

 

Stony Point is where us four Tucson YAVs first met and bonded!

 

En route to Tucson, I gambled for the first time ever - $1 in the penny slots in the Las Vegas airport at the encouragement of YAV alum Luke.

And when we got to Tucson, there's that time we learned we inherited chickens from last year's Tucson YAVs.

Here's the first time got more food from the Tucson community food bank than we knew what to do with. We were initially stressed out about making do with a limited stipend to cover bills and food, the nature of which is supposed to help us understand some of the decision-making individual and families on limited salaries go through to put food on the table. But then we were able to register for the Agency Market at the food bank for being a community feeding program and thereby get a chunk of our calories for free. This eases the stipend stress a bit and hopefully will still make us think about what cheap foods are available to those who can only shop based on price alone. The Tucson food bank is one of the best in the country, but still, those who have to rely on it will find that lots of canned goods, packaged foods, and things you would never expect to contain corn syrup are readily available when fresh produce is quite hit or miss. But the "hit" days for produce really are fabulous, and we are grateful for that resource. 

And that time we all made weird faces for the camera at the same time.

Our first house dinner! (Before Steph moved in). In house meetings we decided to have house dinners for everyone to commit to being there at least once or twice a week. There's just something special about sharing a meal in community. Our latest favorites are weekend brunches, sometimes breakfasts of big productions before church on Sundays!

We had to take a bike safety class which actually did help us feel slightly more comfortable with the concept of commuting by bike around the city, and Heather was the tire changing example!

I love biking, I really do, but I learned that going uphill for long periods of time on a bike is something I was not prepared for - somehow I struggled up "A Mountain" behind our pro housemate Tyler. Here's me posing with the "A" on the side of the mountain!

The ladies of the house went to "Slut Walk," a spoken word event for whoever wanted to share stories or poems and call for an end to violence against women, victim-blaming, and slut-shaming. 

The new Tucson YAVs were received with a commissioning service at Southside Presbyterian Church, founding congregation of the Sanctuary Movement with a history of social activism. This has started to become my Tucson home church, and I look forward to seeing some St. Lukers here during the winter months!

St. Luke, my home congregation, did a blessing ceremony with a laying on of hands to send me off to my YAV year, and Southside received me in the same way.

Sometimes in Tucson, it gets toasty. Sometimes, people with a little less melanin in their skin have a rougher time than others. Here we are walking to a nearby bar to watch the Broncos game with Arial, Denver native. 

And then, Arial told us being in Tucson for a year of service was not the right thing for her at this time. She was always meant to be a teacher, and this year, she was meant to be back in Colorado teaching. We still think of her often!

Tucson has some of the most beautiful skies I have ever seen. This is en route to the top of Mt. Lemmon for Southside Presbyterian's fall retreat, where you go through five different biomes on your way to the peak! We were so grateful to get a change of scenery from brown desert to green leaves and pine needles.

Worship around the fire pit. It was so great to be able to bond with some Southside members at worship, on walks, at mealtimes, and other fun times on the mountain.

YAVs getting cozy on a foggy day up on the mountain - so foreign to our bodies that had gotten acclimated to 80s and sunny every day.

YAV love on Mt. Lemmon!

The national More Light Presbyterian conference came to Tucson! My home church of St. Luke Presbyterian is a long-time More Light Church that welcomes and affirms full inclusion in the church of people who identify as LGBT, and my new Tucson home church, Southside, recently voted to officially become a More Light congregation! Freddie, a YAV in Hollywood, came down to Tucson to stay with us and go to the conference, so we went to some of the sessions together to hear updates about progress in the national church, re-envision traditional binaries of gender and sexuality as spectrums, and then to see an incredible gay men's choir rock some Lady Gaga!

 Jason, Heather's boyfriend took us to a traditional celebration at the San Xavier Mission of the St. Francis Feast - he grew up for part of his life on the Tohono O'odham reservation, the largest Native American reservation here in southwestern Arizona. Because the Catholic mission was founded to Christianize native peoples in the region, the celebration of Catholic rituals to this day is contentious due to the opposing forces of a history of colonization and current culture of people who have converted and do want to take part. This night in early October, the plaza outside of the mission was surrounded with food vendors selling everything from Indian fry bread to tamales, observers filed into the church to cradle, lift, and kiss the head of the statue of St. Francis, and then crowds gathered in the darkness outside for fireworks and a dancing procession whose music seemed to create dissonance with the tolling of the chapel bells.    

The Tucson community rallied around 3 of its members being detained for ridiculous reasons and called for an end to the discriminatory law SB 1070 and its execution by Tucson police.

Here are Arturo and his family at the City Council meeting where they allowed more time for the "call to the public" so all community members who wanted to raise their voice could. He and other Tucsonans spoke about the October 8th incident and continued to press for an end to SB 1070's poli-migra cooperation so the community could trust the police and families would not be needlessly separated.

Group photo of community members who turned out for the City Council meeting. Con el puño arriba - With a fist in the air! Ni una mas - Not one more!

The march for the one-year anniversary of the death of Jose Antonio, a 16-year-old who was murdered by Border Patrol across the border in Mexico. The communities in Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora, Mexico turned out to mourn and celebrate his life, and to continue to call for justice and peace on the border.

Peace and light through the border wall at the march for Jose Antonio - two BorderLinks employees embodying our organization's name.

Tucson activists stopped Operation Streamline from criminalizing 70 migrants in less than two hours. They did it for one day and hope to end it forever: Operation Streamline: Part Two

The next day, I went with Amy Beth (my YAV housemate whose placement is Southside Presbyterian) and Southside's Pastor Alison (and her adorable toddler Naomi!) to Phoenix for the national Ni Una Mas conference. It was incredible to see activists from all over the country host a conference en español to share strategies for community organizing and immigration reform.

At the conference we also divided into regional groups and focused on making our voices loud to President Obama to stop deportations.

And that Sunday (wow, this was a full week) happened to be Migrant Sunday at Southside. Pastor Alison tied so many things together from this week's actions in Tucson as well as her own civil disobedience - while the Southside community stood up to defend three of its own, she was in Washington, D.C. getting arrested with about two hundred other faith community leaders and politicians for immigration reform. On the altar was one rock for each migrant who had died and been found in the Tucson sector in 2013. 183 bodies had been found, so Amy Beth went through the very emotional and spiritual process of finding rocks in the desert and labeling each one with the person's name, or "Desconocido"/"Desconocida" if the name was unknown. Following the incredible sermon and service, church members processed to take a rock or two from the altar to place at the migrant shrine outside the sanctuary.

Amy Beth and I were part of a group of Southsiders that wanted to start volunteering at Ochoa Elementary, a Reggio Emilia charter school with an incredible model of teaching respect, conflict resolution, value of different skills and learning styles, and collective learning. In the bottom left photo, she is playing with musical instruments made from recycled materials. I've been assigned to help a fifth grade classroom, mostly with reading support (but really whatever the teacher needs me to do) for an hour on Fridays, my day off!

Mauricio used his MEA break to come visit me in Tucson for the second time! What a sweetheart. And, here's another Northfield, MN connection - Elisabeth used to be the assistant coach for Carleton Women's Tennis, and she happened to be playing a national championship tournament in Tucson!

Steph admiring our quote board - the previous YAV year got permission to paint one of the walls like a blackboard, so when we say silly and ridiculous things, sometimes they get preserved on the board for a couple weeks. If anyone's familiar with the young adult colloquialism "struggle bus," you'll probably understand why we giggled at Steph's version complete with a picture - "the struggling bus!"

My first delegation as a BorderLinks staff member - I assistanted for Alex's crew from the Presbytery of Des Moines! I did not do the whole delegation with them, but I did chunks as part of my training. It was especially moving to do many of the visits and learn right along with them - especially going to Operation Streamline as I discussed here.

One of the ways us YAVs support each other is doing some type of volunteer work or involvement with each other's organizations. Our first adventure in this vein was to follow through with our commitment to Habitat for Humanity's Brush With Kindness even though Arial had left her placement there. We thought of her as we gave the entirety of a woman's ten-year-old Habitat home a fresh coat of paint in a few hours.

My housemate Tyler and I went to the feed store to buy more chicken scratch and feed, and since we had trailers hitched up to the backs of our bikes, they opened the sliding doors to the storeroom for us to park there, and we found animals for sale! Baby chicks, hamsters, and my favorite (that I'm clearly really excited about), miniature rabbits! Even though we probably cannot have a fuzzy pet in our house, now we know where we can go to play with one if we want to.

That night I got to work a concert - what?! - Katia Cardenal, one of Nicaragua's most famous singers, chose to give a benefit concert for border justice organizations including BorderLinks at Southside in Tucson, the city where she built her career as part of a duo with her brother - Duo Guardabarranco. Since her brother's passing, she became a solo artist and this concert performed with her daughter! Katia wove stories about life and politics (and spending five years in Norway where she produced seven albums and translated Norwegian songs to Spanish) in between incredible melodies about her homeland, love, and environmentalism. Check her out on YouTube if you like! YouTube: Katia Cardenal

Southside had a Halloween party in the fellowship hall, so Amy Beth and I made up some costumes and biked to church to play games and spend time with Southside families. AB is a "college to-do list," I'm a tennis player (for those of you who have known me prior to my YAV year, this is not super original, but people in Tucson don't know tennis as part of my identity!), and the adorable Ellie May I think dressed up with her family as a tiger. We just borrowed her for the photo because she's so stinkin' cute.

Over the actual holiday of Halloween, YAVs from Austin and Denver joined us Tucsonans for our own border delegation to Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico, across from Douglas, AZ. We found out the day before that we were taking the Suburban (with a few years on it and about 18 different ailments) without our coordinator Brandon, so Heather, Amy Beth and I did the driving to, in, and from Mexico. Here it is in the daylight, with AB trying to work her magic on the trunk door. This is after surviving our 2.5-hour drive in the dark to A.P. in the first place. We were pulled over in the outskirts of Tucson, not for speeding (I don't think it could speed on the highway if it tried...), but because our taillights were not working. After calling Brandon, we fiddled with the switch a few times and lo, it was just a fuse issue that resolved itself. But by that time we had pulled off the highway to the safety of a mechanics' lot and the muffler decided to stop muffling! Don't worry, Brandon was always a phone call away. And the Suburban did serve us well, albeit noisily. Our delegation leader Hugo from Frontera de Cristo Presbyterian Church was with us the entire time once we got to A.P., and he gave us excellent directions!

Because it would be part of my BorderLinks role, Brandon uhh, encouraged, that I do all the driving in Mexico, which included following the Water for Life team of CRREDA, a drug/alcohol rehab center and community partner, to fill up water tanks in the desert for people migrating on the Mexican side of the border.

We eventually parked the vehicles and walked typical paths of migration in the desert, all the while imagining what it would be like for people to walk and crawl this in the dark, trying to avoid detection by authorities, poisonous and scared/scary creatures, and every spiny plant imaginable.

The whole team outside of CRREDA. We met some amazing people that day (and the whole delegation!), but especially all of these leaders who fought their battles to sobriety here and now help others through theirs. Two 14-year-old girls especially astounded us with their maturity and all they have been through to have struggled with drugs and what they had to do to obtain them, accept rehab and decided to stay, and then become our English interpreters.

Dougla-Prieta Works holds various community classes including organic gardening methods, and if individuals or families are interested in taking home what they learned, they are given some starter seeds as well for a healthier community!At Dougla-Prieta Works, we got to help out by creating the adobe wall around one of the plant beds in their organic garden. Apparently placing the last stone is a huge deal - as Raul from CRREDA explained, in Mexico there is always a big to-do to celebrate the first stone of an infrastructure project, but because of corruption or running out of funds or motivation, projects that are seen through to completion with the final stone are a rarity to be celebrated! Here we are applauding Estela placing the final stone.

Here I am surrounded by bags of better-than-fair-trade coffee, Café Justo (Fair Coffee)! In the mid-1990's, coffee prices dropped especially following NAFTA, so farmers of traditional coffee growing regions in Southern Mexico could no longer afford to keep cultivating coffee. Many migrated northward within Mexico and some to the U.S. until a couple men in Agua Prieta thought about forming a cooperative and doing the entire coffee production process themselves, including the roasting, which is where the bulk of profits come from. Instead of farmers shipping the green coffee beans elsewhere to be roasted and thereby only being paid for cultivation, they wanted to keep the entire process in-house to benefit farmers and their communities. It started small of course, but now there are 45 families on board in Chiapas, and people who had migrated have started to come back because it is economically sustainable! Fair trade standards are great, but this is even greater because farmers are working in just conditions and are able to keep more funds in their communities so they have solid economic opportunities at home, rather than having to migrate to survive. After a few years of Café Justo's growth and expansion from Chiapas to two other states in Mexico Here's their website to learn more and order to support these communities: http://www.justcoffee.org/

 

We had an incredible experience in Agua Prieta, clinched by a moving and humanizing visit with a Border Patrol agent in his home. The day after our return to Tucson, we got up early once again to help harvest leftover pumpkins for Heather's placement organization, Iskashitaa Refugee Network's gleaning program. They connect refugees to services they need in Tucson, and their main work is working with refugees to harvest produce around the city that would otherwise go to waste, and turn it into preserved goods or exchange culturally traditional dishes. Here's Heather looking adorable with her pumpkin and her sun protection. Who knew people grew pumpkins in the desert?

We came away with a few!

Here's our group of YAVs and a brother and sister from Kenya!

Tucson has taken All Souls/Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos, traditions from Mexico and Central America and made them their own. The parade in Tucson has grown exponentially the last few years, and traditions include face painting like skeletons and other rituals to connect with and celebrate dead loved ones. The YAV program got us a professional face painter, so here are my before and after pictures!

There were many floats in the parade, some commemorating the lives of beloved people and pets who had passed away, and some with broader political themes about community and violence in the wider world.

And then it ended with this pretty bizarre acrobatic dance fusion imagined by an artistic group in Tucson. Throughout the parade, people had written prayers on slips of paper and put them in a giant metal ball now flaming off in the distance of this picture for the prayers to go up to the heavens.

Meet my first BorderLinks delegation! What a great crew to start my delegation leading career with - six young souls from Carpe Diem Education in the middle of an experiential learning semester. Here we are on a desert walk with Dan Millis of Sierra Club Borderlands (and also a rocking BorderLinks board member). MaryCruz was also amazing to co-lead with, and I look forward to working with her more!

Here we are in front of our sister organization in Nogales - HEPAC!

 

YAV girls' weekend: Heather had connected with the representative from San Francisco Theological Seminary back at YAV orientation who invited all of us to their Inquirers' Weekend! They flew us out and put us up in a beautiful guest house, and it ended up being just the three of us plus a man named Craig as Inquirers. We were a little excited to see real greenery and fall leaves.

They treated us so well, really investing in getting to know us, giving us tours of the SFTS campus, the Graduate Theological Union of which SFTS is a part (a collective of seminaries where you can take classes from and get resources), and then even down into UC Berkeley - and we came across a protest about... immigration issues! We of course had to check it out, and we learned this group wanted California to be more immigrant-friendly, especially in light of an upcoming visit by Janet Napolitano, who became the president of the University of California system after a controversial post as Secretary of Homeland Security.

Our last full day visiting the seminary, they took us sightseeing in the city of San Francisco itself, and after official activities, I got to meet two dear Carleton friends, Jessie and Min Yao at the ferry building for dinner before taking the last ferry back to Marin. So good to catch up with them!

Sometimes, I get to play in the dirt at work! Breaking up rock-hard soil in the BorderLinks garden is a great stress reliever.

Another community turnout to a City Council meeting to push for changes in practices around SB 1070 - this time in "¡Alto a la poli-migra!" (stop the police-immigration cooperation) tshirts. Community members and organizations such as the Southside Worker Center, Corazon de Tucson, and the ACLU worked together to put forth recommendations to the City Council, and many of them will be taken under advisement and implemented in coming months!

At BorderLinks' staff retreat, we retreated to the church of our board president, and in the community garden, this cholla I think got snagged off the ground by my long skirt, and then it proceeded to enter my foot! Thankfully I could pull it out before it lodged itself more permanently, but it was hard to know where exactly to grab so I didn't get stabbed more...

Maria, in the middle, one of our new BorderLinks staff, is also a flamenco dancer! My co-worker Alex and I brought friends along to see her perform at Casa Vicente, and we hope she teaches our staff a couple things sometime.

Thanksgiving plans changed a couple of times, and instead of me traveling somewhere, people came to me! Mauricio came to visit me, and we had a lovely few days of vacation, exploring Tucson, playing a little tennis (and guitar), and catching up.

We even made our first-ever Thanksgiving meal - pot roast with tips from his grandma, and a few hours later, it turned out beautifully! Hallelujah.

Our original thoughts were to try to meet my cousin Angie and her family where they live outside of Phoenix, but they instead came to Tucson too! And even brought my cousins Carrie and Dan who were visiting as well, so we had lunch at my house, and then went for a nice hike on A Mountain. It was so nice they could all come spend some time in Tucson with me!

 

After Thanksgiving break, we really needed to do a deep clean of our house. We hung out for a few hours with some music blasting and the incentive of treating ourselves to a dinner out in a restaurant for the first time in a very long time. Once we could breathe easy, we could get semi-dressy and eat Thai food.

We were invited to the Tucson YAV program steering committee meeting at one of the member's homes out in the middle of nowhere. It was great to meet our board to learn some of the business side of things, and we look forward to spending more time with them as they have all offered to do a different activity to bond with us throughout the year.

Winter apparently happens here too. Nothing like Minnesota, but 40 degrees at night with no central heating does get a little chilly. Thank goodness for fireplaces.

My second delegation: Harvard Divinity! The name was intimidating, but the group was so sweet, thoughtful, and already accustomed to critical thinking and reflection. Here Shura Wallin, a warm and spritely woman, takes the crew on a desert walk as a part of the Green Valley Samaritans - a group who sends vehicles out into the desert every day to place lifesaving water along migrant trails and provide food, medical assistance, and other humanitarian aid to anyone who needs it.

Shura and MaryCruz are longtime friends!

Here we are outside of HEPAC.

And back at BorderLinks after my final reflection with them. I had to transition them over to Alex for their last day and a half because...

... We had a YAV weekend in Cascabel! Here are AB and Heather looking cozy on the way to the rural hermitage community for their annual Christmas Fair where lots of local artists, artisans, and farms have a grand time selling their wares. It was semi-retreat, semi-work as it is now tradition for YAVs to come help at the fair every year.

Good way to support local economies! I picked up a few Christmas gifts for family throughout the weekend.

Here's our main post - the bake sale.

 

Oh yea, and we stayed outside in a tent. The first night we hardly slept because we were so cold, and felt validated the next day when we learned it was not some balmy 35 degrees and we were wimps, but rather 18 degrees overnight. We built some survival skills, that's for sure.

We also even did a little folk singing, jumping up on stage to sing some harmonies with one of Brandon's family friends. It really was a lovely weekend.

I love that BorderLinks staff also holds involvement in the community in high priority, trying to get to events with HEPAC in Nogales and Frontera de Cristo in Agua Prieta when we can, and we got to take a day of work to meet with some of our A.P. community partners and then take part in a border-themed posada. If you're not familiar (as I wasn't), a posada is a tradition in many Mexican communities where people process to different houses and knock on doors to remember the journey of Mary and Joseph to find a place to stay in Jerusalem. The first few doors they are rejected as they sing a traditional song begging to be welcomed in, and finally a house accepts them for the night, and there is much rejoicing.

In this border posada, the lyrics were re-written to act out people on the Mexican side asking for passage and the U.S. rejecting them at the first two stations. At each station, different leaders read a bible verse and shared a prayer of reflection through the immigration justice theme, connecting the struggles of the holy family to the struggles of today's migrants. Josias, our new friend from Frontera de Cristo, is on the left with the singers on the U.S. side.

At this station, we remembered the children and families affected by border separation. Joca of Frontera de Cristo says the prayer for this one.

And for the third and final station, we from the U.S. side asked for permission to come to the Mexico side, and both sides asked for forgiveness. We recognized a young Mexican couple with their young baby as parallel to Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus, as well as the migration of Jesus from the divine to the human. We then "passed the peace" in Presbyterian tradition (greeting many individuals with phrases such as "Peace of Christ be with you" or "Paz de Dios," etc.) and shared hot cocoa outside of the Migrant Resource Center.

The last event I'd like to highlight: BorderLinks' staff holiday party at our Executive Director Fernanda's house. Staff and board members mixed and mingled, and Nancy, Alex, and I even brought out the guitars for the traditional version of the posada song.

And of course there was also a piñata. What better way to recycle the piñata after it has been cracked and raided than turn it into cute hats? Here are three of my awesome co-workers: Indira, Margi, and Nancy.

I'm sure I've accidentally left out some people, adventures, and experiences - my apologies. Thank you, dearest family and friends, for your support of my YAV year and making these experiences possible! Happy holidays, peace and love to you!