My roommate is awesome

My roommate Elsbeth works for BorderLinks, a great organization that works to educate people about border issues and immigration. She has taught me a lot, and I really value our conversations because it helps me connect the work I do to larger issues that also really interest me, including public health, international relations, economic disparity, education.... etc. Anyway, recently she told me a little bit about an e-mail conversation she had with a lady who did not understand why she was including discussions about sustainability during a trip that was focused on immigration. Elsbeth was nice enough to send me the conversation, in which she highlighted different sustainability efforts happening near Tucson and how they each played a role in immigration.

I wanted to share her insights with you to shed some light on that interconnectedness, and also introduce you to some of these sustainability experiments. Here is her response (thank you elsbeth!):

"I understand that the purpose of this immersion is on immigration issues and I would like to suggest that sustainability is an immigration issue. In our visits which deal with sustainable living, such as Just Coffee, DouglaPrieta Works, our time in Cascabel, and our visit with Brad Lancaster, we will be talking about sustainability in the context of immigration, because these two broad issues are intimately related.

Just Coffee is a solely Mexican venture that produces and promotes fair and just trade. By growing, producing, and selling the coffee from Mexico, more revenue is kept within the country that is then used for development of resources and people, thus causing less need for immigration. The organization was founded by a man who migrated from southern Mexico after he could no longer keep his coffee plantation afloat and who came to the border looking for work and to possibly migrate. Through a micro-credit loan, he and others were able to start Just Coffee and involve families in southern Mexico and on the border so that less people feel the push and pull to migrate. During our talk, we will hear this story repeated. www.justcoffee.org

DouglaPrieta Works functions along the same lines. One of the biggest reasons for immigration is the lack of jobs and resources for people. What DouglaPrieta tries to do is to provide important skills for people so that they can find and maintain jobs in Mexico and not have to immigrate. They offer workshops in carpentry, sewing, computers, permaculture, and much more. The director is especially interested in permaculture because of its ability to provide nutritious food, a source of income, and the building of community. douglaprietaworks.org

Cascabel provides the opportunity to experience an alternative lifestyle to the one that most Americans live in. Our delegation will offer a lot of perspectives and experiences and we will hopefully be confronted with the fact that a lot of the choices and decisions that we make affect others and ultimately lead to forced migration, especially in Mexico. The time in Cascabel offers us an opportunity to see other ways of living and to challenge our own understanding.

Brad Lancaster has been working on sustainable living programs for a long time and again offers alternatives to the norms that we see in U.S. society. A major hope of BorderLinks delegations is for participants to process the experience and to learn what it means for them and how they can take it back to their communities and incorportate what they have learned into their own lives. Brad challenges us to consider our actions and decisions and to change how we interact with others and with nature.

I hope this clarifies some ideas. I am happy to discuss this in greater depth."

The decisions we make, as Americans, have broad impact on the world. What can you do to help?