Step 1: Ver (See). In Tucson, we were exposed to the Latino community through Derechos Humanos, Southside Presbyterian Church’s Day Labor Center, and other community venues. On the border, we encountered the Nogales Border Patrol station, the wall, and the migrants making their way from home to here. In Mexico, we lived and worked with children and parents in the border city of Nogales. All summer, we were exposed to the perspectives of Native Americans, farmers, environmental advocates, ranchers, medical professionals, human rights activists, professors, and many others.

Step 2: Pensar (Think). Through research in the spring semester, I started this stage even before I saw Arizona firsthand. Once on the trip with step 1 under way, I bounded through the pages of a journal, posted some blog entries, and joined our group in frequent reflections. Furthermore, I had deep conversations with other staff at Derechos Humanos as well as local residents of Tucson and Nogales.

Step 3: Actuar (Act). I completed meaningful service for Derechos Humanos, and I briefly participated in the efforts of a variety of other Tucson-area organizations.

Step 4: Celebrar [self-explanatory?]. Our group enjoyed final dinners out in both Mexico and Tucson, waved glow sticks at night atop Sentinel Peak, or “A” Mountain, and traded compliments and photos among group members on our last day Saturday.

That’s it. DukeEngage was over on Sunday. But I refuse to believe that my role in this cycle is over. As for Ver and Pensar, I have yet to witness and process the immigration struggles in Europe, where I’ll be studying this fall, and North Carolina, which has the fastest growing Latino population in the U.S.

Furthermore, my DukeEngage companions and I now have the tools to do much more action than simply our summer stint in the Southwest. We put our heads together to form a list of resources available for support, be they clubs, Durham organizations, professors, or other students, when we return to campus and begin advocacy there. We also brainstormed possible personal and group activities to spread information about the border and encourage action. Most of the group will be abroad in the fall, but our first major event in the spring has a great outline and strong promise for creating dialogue in our community.

Yet, I’m ready to take some steps now. Already I had great dialogue with a Tucson native on the plane home, and I’ve shared photos, materials, and stories of the trip with my parents, in anticipation of formal presentations in public venues later. I’m thinking about how to improve sustainable food practices in my home, echoing a frequent topic of our trip, and I’m finding ways to keep my Spanish sharp for future action. As for BorderLinks Step 4, I’m already celebrating successful service this summer, and the promise offered by an informed conscience.  Plus, I’m prepared to celebrate the contributions of immigrants past and present, whether in the form of tasty foods, important ideas, or a praiseworthy work ethic.

Readers, come join the celebration, and let’s talk about some action.

By the most traditional measure, number of people in attendance, we had decent results. There were perhaps 50 people including those affiliated with Derechos Humanos or speaking in the program. I was disappointed at the time, because our advertising efforts were enough to attract many more. The room looked rather empty, since we had enough space, as well as food, programs, booklets, and information, for at least a hundred. But hey, that also means we were well prepared.

I could also measure success by the quality of the program. The content of the presentations included many of the main points pertinent to tenants’ rights and tips for renting. We had a diverse range of expertise represented, and most of the presentation was available in both Spanish and English thanks to two great interpreters. We also offered free food, water, child care, and the extensive booklets which we created this month. By this measure, we did quite well.

But as I alluded in my last post, the measure of success which appeals most to me is the community impact. The people who attended seemed quite grateful for the info, and judging by some questions asked, there certainly are grave housing issues to be rectified in this community. What’s more, the advertising efforts for the event reached thousands of people who may have been previously unaware of our organization’s work on their behalf. Indeed, we even had phone calls from people in Phoenix asking about the forum after seeing one of our interns make an announcement on TV.

Yet, community impact also includes the effects on the people who produced the event. My efforts helped build the relationship between Derechos Humanos and the offices of the forum speakers, hopefully augmenting our organization’s future work. The forum also provided an opportunity for many regular volunteers/staff of Derechos Humanos to come together without the stress of being responsible for an entire event.

I’m grateful that our work here this summer has borne fruit, and I will miss the rapid pulse of the office and the dedicated people within.

Since I have yet to mention anything about Derechos Humanos in my blog posts, here’s a list of most of my tasks to prepare for the forum, “¡Conozca sus Derechos Sobre la Vivienda!,” or “Know Your Housing Rights!”:

• Make a flyer for the forum, to be held at Armory Park Community Center in Tucson, AZ.
• Help the other Duke students research housing laws to locate the most relevant provisions to include in the new booklet.
• Research several public and private resources in the community to which tenants can turn when their rights have been broached.  Camille added information about these resources to the developing booklet.
• Contact these community resources to arrange speakers for our forum.
• Identify public libraries, a social services center, a soup kitchen, a medical clinic, a day labor camp, and the Tucson branch of the Mexican Consulate as places where people who could benefit from the forum might congregate.
• Deliver flyers to these locations or coordinate distribution by other interns.  The press attaché at the Consulate even spoke about the event on the radio.
•  Write a press release in Spanish to send to local Spanish tabloid, La Estrella de Tucson.  Rejoice when our announcement comes out in print.
• Join experienced Spanish speakers on local Spanish radio station, La Raza, to promote the event.  Nervously deliver a sentence or two on my own.
• Create a script for the forum, sharing the master of ceremonies role among the four students.
• Create a PowerPoint presentation for the forum.
• Touch base with forum speakers several more times to make sure all are on the same page.

I’m proud of completing these bullet points, to be sure, but certainly the most important part of my work at Derechos Humanos has been my interactions with people: the Duke students with whom I’ve prepared for the event, the other staff in the office, and the speakers whom I’ve contacted have all made incredible impacts on me.  Hopefully, I have enriched their work and their experience too.  The best compliment I’ve received yet was when one of the speakers thanked me for my “warm courtesy” and “patience” in our communications.  Wow, I was touched.  I pray that the audience tomorrow will likewise benefit from the prolonged efforts and teamwork underlying this forum.

I believe that Young-Jae does not mind being Korean, but hates the fact that learning Korean makes him look different from his friends. Some might wonder why my brother is being a loser and trying to lose his uniqueness, but HEY! He is just a preteen who loves Hollister shirts and wants to be part of a group. I bet almost everyone goes through that life stage when he, she or a pronoun-for-those-who-do-not-agree-with-gender-dichotomy is in middle school.

Young-Jae began to refuse his Korean side when his friends made fun of his name, calling him “Old-Jae.” I thought Old-Jae was kind of witty, but my brother did not appreciate my laughter. He asked me, “Why is my name not normal? Why can’t I have an American name like John and David?” I told him that those names are boring (no offense to Johns and Davids out there), and that he is Korean. My answer did not stop his growing dislike for Korean. He complained many times that umma (mother in Korean) always forces him to read and write Korean and he hates it. Then, I remembered what Racquel, a retired professor, had told me before when DukeEngage went to Mary’s house to listen to Racquel’s view on immigration.

Racquel agreed with me that identity is a huge problem with second-generation immigrants and suggested me to say three things to my brother:
1. Different languages use different parts of your brain.
2. You can get a better job if you speak more than one language.
3. What if the girl you like only speaks Korean?

So, what happened when I told my brother? Young-Jae was still reluctant to be proud of his heritage, but I think what I told him might have made him a little bit more comfortable with his Koreanness. I do not want him to uphold one cultural identity over another. I want him to embrace both, and that is possible. How would you know the excellent taste of eating kimchi after finishing four slices of oily pizza if you are not Korean AND American? One day, my brother will realize his mistake and become another living proof that being non-American does not mean being un-American. He is my brother, so he will.

“SB 1069… would ban ethnic-based programs at four high schools in Tucson’s largest school district. Continuing the classes could put the district at risk of losing 10 percent of its state funding each month. If the classes were eliminated, the money would be returned.

The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Jonathan Paton, R-Tucson, is the pet cause of Tom Horne, the state superintendent of public instruction.

Horne has long criticized TUSD’s Ethnic Studies program, calling it “ethnic chauvinism.” 

-Arizona Daily Star

a) 1929

b) 1949

c)1969

d)2009

If you guessed 2009, you are absolutely correct! Arizona Senate Bill 1069 (http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/byauthor/297182) was recently OK’d by party lines and is now heading off for Senate vote. Just as you read, it would cut state funding by 10% each month if the school continued to teach “ethnic studies”–including Chicano, Pan-Asian, and African American studies.

As Leilani, a youth organizer for Derechos Humanos, put it: “In the year we’ve elected our first African-American president, you’re really going to do away with African-American studies?” 

Some of the popular criticism of ethnic studies:

*”You want to train your students to have certain political beliefs? Well, do that on your own time.”  -Arizona Senator Jonathan Paton, R-Tucson

*”This isn’t just about teaching about some background or culture,” Pearce said. He said the classes teach “hate speech” and “sedition.” -From the Arizona Daily Star, quoting Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa

My personal favorite:

*”The job of the public schools is to develop the student’s identity as Americans and as strong individuals…It’s not the job of the public schools to promote ethnic chauvinism.” – Tom Horne, State Superintendent for Public Education

Need I go into all the implications of that statement? 

I’ll be honest. I’m a public school kid through and through. The most “ethnic studies” I’ve ever studied in public school was a short excerpt from Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”. That was the first time I learned that Christopher Columbus wasn’t really all he was, as the kids say now a days, “cracked out” to be. 

In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue and landed in the Americas. He misnamed the indigenous people there to be “Indian” (as in from the Indies), shed blood, and the cycle of history, of misnaming people, of shedding culture and blood, has spun ever since. 

But if there’s anything I agree with Tom Horne on, it’s this: This bill is not about ethnic studies. It’s about  being American (and so can you!). 

I’ve written earlier about racial profiling and not-so-subtly hinted that being a United States citizen is more than being a certain race. I have not changed my mind.

It is sheer ignorance and a flamboyant disgrace to  classify ethnic studies as “sedition” or “hate speech”. To do so more than implies that ethnic histories are “un-American”. But as I’ve stressed over and over again, just because you are not in the majority does not mean you are not American. 

So here are some of my questions for the AZ Senate Bill 1069:

*In a nation where different cultures (ALL of them AMERICAN in their own way) interact on a daily basis, wouldn’t it be wise to allow our youth to learn about others?

*Isn’t censorship un-American? Or will Tom Horne be the ultimate executive when it comes to determining what is “American” and what is “sedition”? Wait. Isn’t that like…dictatorship? Wasn’t that one of the supposed reasons why we went over to topple Saddam Hussein? Woops. Was that little piece of history not American enough? In Tom Horne, we trust.

*Isn’t Arizona ranked 47th in Grade 4 reading and 42nd in Grade 8 reading (http://www.alec.org/am/pdf/education/2008_report_card/arizona08.pdf)? Will getting rid of history classes really help children with their analytical and comprehensive reading? 

My final question:

*Exactly what kind of history curriculum is “American” enough?

Hm.

I will first tell a little about our daily lives in the No More Deaths Byrd Camp in Arivaca desert. Wake up is bright and early each day around 5 am and you have an hour to prepare and eat breakfast before embarking on patrols. Each patrol consists of a few water drops around the desert and thorough hikes of some of the trails in order to pick up trash and provide aid to migrants you may cross. Sometimes, you cross people who simply need a bit of water and food and then move on. Other times,  you may have a severe case where the person is so dehydrated that they are vomiting and their feet are so blistered they have no skin left and cannot walk.

These cases are heartbreaking because not only have they been out suffering in the desert, we have to call Border Patrol to have them air evacuated out of the desert to be treated in a more complex medical facility than our clinic in base camp. Regardless of the severity of their conditions, each migrant touches your heart with their story. Lately, the same universal themes are ringing through. Either people are trying to escape the poverty and dire economic downturn in Mexico or they are trying to reunite with their families whom BP had ripped them apart from with deportation. One man I had ran across had a wife and two children back in South Carolina. His daughter was barely a week old when BP stormed his house and deported him. In trying to return, he wandered lost for days after BP split up his crossing group and was scared to death of dying alone in the desert unable to provide for or even see his family again. Stories such as these outrage while motivating at the same time. But more about that later. After the morning patrols, we break for lunch for an hour or two to rest and then group back up to choose afternoon patrol routes and the cycle repeats until it is time for dinner and then discussion around the campfire.

I have never felt a greater sense of belonging and usefulness than I feel when I am in Arivaca with my fellow NMD volunteers. We may not be able to change the policy that is causing these deaths singlehandedly, but all it takes is one person to find and rescue another and all of the trouble is worth it. To us, giving up electricity, showers, running water, and other luxuries is more than worth it. When it comes down to it, living in the desert on the ground without showering for days is the least of your cares when you know that each time you leave that camp on a water drop or patrol, you could be saving hundreds of lives whether you get to meet those people or not. The lives we save are apparent in the hundreds of water bottles that we put out and then later, the hundreds of empty bottles that we pick up, which have been consumed by migrants in need. Time after time, volunteers have been informed that had it not been for our water drops out in the desert, many migrants felt like they would have died or were brought back from the brink of death by the life saving water we provided for them.

This story is a powerful story that touches my heart as I live it and as result will forever be with me. My passion and drive for saving lives has increased tenfold after seeing these people struggle first hand and realizing that I myself have the potential to save them. It’s one thing to see photographs and read stories about migrants dying, but it’s another to nurse someone back to life who would have died had it not been for your presence in the desert.

Down here, we live in a war zone where 79 people to date this year have died from lack of water and food due to corrupt policy that pushes them out into one of the most dangerous crossing areas. If you don’t believe that lives are being harmed, take a walk through Chavez Sighting, Apache Saddle, or Arivaca East and tell me that your mind is not stunned by the evidence of the pains and struggles from the lives that our government is choosing to ignore and abuse.

However, this summer, I have spoken with many people who know the story of Mexican migrants quite well. While I have not heard these stories from the lions’ mouths, I’m told that the stories are remarkably similar: many migrants were farmers or farmhands whose small operations collapsed when challenged by competition from multinational agricultural corporations. These corporations took advantage of the free trade fiesta sparked by NAFTA to relocate in Mexico, where labor is cheaper and environmental restrictions, among others, are looser. Since the corporations had very little competition, they quickly made big bucks. Some Mexicans got jobs with these large farms, but many simply went jobless.

What do you do when you lose your job and you have hungry children to feed at home? I have never experienced this, but I assume you go and look for another job. If that fails, you borrow some money and keep looking. If that fails, you look outside commuting radius, and you move your family so you can take a new job. That is what millions of Mexicans have done. Many, though not all, of the undocumented Mexican migrants come to the U.S. because they have no other choice but to starve their families.

I strive to follow American laws and make no habit of apologizing for those who do not. However, when our neighbors’ ability to feed their families is threatened in part due to American policies, and when the line to emigrate from Mexico to the U.S. legally is many years long, and when the financial requirements to immigrate legally are beyond the reach of the Mexicans who need to come, I empathize with the migrants who cross without papers. Given that our country has a long history of relying on cheap Mexican labor, it is quite shameful that our border security strategies force them to cross the dangerous desert where many needlessly die.

Of course, I don’t profess to know all about NAFTA nor do I deny that our country has benefitted quite a bit in the past fifteen years. The top, wealthy slice of Mexican society has raked in the profits too. Yet, I do know that the world does not gain when an American windfall leaves many of our neighbors breadless.