I want to read this book.

Read about it here:

Working in the Shadows

Some things to keep in mind about unskilled workers:
-Above and beyond U.S. unskilled workers, there is demand for more than 500,000 unskilled workers each year. This shows that there is demand for migrant labor in the U.S.
-5,000 Visas are available for unskilled workers each year. This is unreasonable based on the demand stated above.
-Only three of the Visas for unskilled workers are offered to Mexican workers.
-The backlog for legally obtaining these Visas goes back to 2001; so, workers that applied for the "other workers" Visa from Mexico in 2001 are just now being processed. Take a look at the Visa Bulletin for specifics about Visa processing times.

Against Policies that Create a Police State?

More than 800 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were involved in raids this weekend in South Tucson, a lively and mostly latin@ (latino/latina) neighborhood where I go to church and work with a lot of schools. Some were wearing ski masks. The mission was targeted at criminals involved in human smuggling, but many nearby people were taken up as "collateral damage" for not being able to produce documents. Arizona is taking on the trappings of a police state, and this will only continue with the recent passage of a law legitimizing racial profiling.

SB 1070 would give police officers the authority to determine migrant status based on "reasonable suspicion." Do you know how to determine someone's citizenship? Do you know the categories of citizenship and what documents support those categories? Could you correctly uphold such a directive?

Please, help me fight against the fear and hatred of this bill by telling Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to veto it. If you want to hear more details about why I am against it and what I think would be the results, let me know and I will be happy to share more about this.

Gardening Help

My friend Tanya had the wonderful suggestion that I provide some gardening tips. What a great idea!

The first thing to do is determine your regional planting guide. In Arizona, it is useless to read seed packages for planting seasons. Now, other climates aren't as severe, but it still helps to tailor your planting to the specific conditions in your area. The Old Farmer's Almanac lets you enter your town and state and it will build your planting guide for 2010 based on historical frost dates. Most planting problems stem (haha) from planting at an incorrect time.

The next thing is to really learn and build your soil. Knowing about your soil can tell you how to effectively water, and even poor soils like in Arizona can be amended. Run the Jar Test to see what kind of soil you are working with. Sandy soils don't retain water well, so you should water more frequently for shorter periods of time. Clay soils don't drain well, so you should water less frequently but for longer periods of time. Silt is somewhere in between these two. Compost, along with providing more organic matter for your soil, can improve the soil's ability to retain water in the case of sandy soil and can break up clay soil to increase drainage.

In our beds, we dig 2 feet down, break up the bottom of the bed, and fill it back in with half original soil, half compost. This gives the roots lots of space and organic matter, but it also allows the water to drain so that the roots aren't rotting in sitting water. For any subsequent crops, break up the soil with a digging fork, add 2 more inches of compost and turn that into the rest of the soil. And once your nice, airy soil is prepared, don't step in your bed or you will compact the soil again! You can purchase compost for this first use, but consider building your own compost bin for future use. Everything you need for good soil you already have--and you probably dispose of it--no need to keep buying it!

Okay, that's it for now. More tips to come!

Again--Pictures!

I spent the weekend in the desert and took really beautiful pictures. I think I change my computer background about every week because of all the pictures I take!

My new camera takes great sunset pictures!

Pretty sure this one is in Mexico.

Cerro Del Fresnal-- impressive.

There were about a million caves in those rocks.

The US-Mexico border.

Responsible Citizenship

I am going to steal something from a sermon I heard recently at Southside Presbyterian Church by Pastor Allison Harrington for this one. Why is it that we think that our only political responsibility is voting? We vote, and think we have done our job, think that we can blame problems on those we have voted into office. In fact, every choice we make on a daily basis is a political action. How we get around, where and how we do or do not spend our money, how we eat, what we do on vacation... these are all things that enforce political realities.

My roommates and I were talking the other day about Liberal Arts college students that protest immigration policies--and then go home and smoke marijuana (booo), increasing the demand for drug smugglers that reinforce negative opinions about people that cross the border. To be fair, there is no way to ensure consistent decision-making in a world of such moving targets. But I think it's really important to be educated about the implications of the way we live our lives. Understand where meat comes from, where potato chips come from, where the tomatoes in your Taco Bell burrito come from, (here you go Dad--) where your New Balance shoes and hundreds of straws come from. Whatever decision you make, you're free to make that decision, but you're also responsible for what happens because of that decision.

We all believe in different things, and that's ok, but please, please don't be ignorant about what your actions mean on a broader scale.

Fast for Our Families

A good friend and YAV serving in Miami sent me the information below in an e-mail. I urge you to act in support of this event:

On New Year's Day, a half dozen community members, including people facing deportation, entered St. Ann's Catholic Mission in Naranja, Florida (in south Miami Dade county) and began the Fast for Our Families. This means that they ate their last meal on New Year's Eve and will consume only liquids indefinitely until President Obama hears the voices of families separated by deportation. The fasters are making two simple requests to the Obama administration on behalf of our families:

1. That the Administration acts in its Executive Authority to SUSPEND raids, detentions, and deportations against immigrants with American families until Congress fixes our broken immigration system.

2. That the Administration sends the Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, down to South Dade to meet with the fasters to discuss what is happening in our community -- the daily, violent separation of families.

The fasters will continue the Fast for Our Families indefinitely and ask all who have watched families and communities be torn apart by raids, detentions, and deportations to join with them in solidarity actions and fasts.

Nationwide support for the Fast for Our Families is growing, but we need your support! How you can be involved:

1. Call President Obama and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano & ask them to stop the separation of our families. Their contact information and our policy document can be found at fastforfamilies@gmail.com. You can also call Secretary Napolitano right now at 866-587-3023.
2. Watch live streaming video of the Fasters every day at Noon from fastforfamilies.org .
3. Organize a 1-day Solidarity Fast or other action. If you are in the area, come spend the day with us. If you aren’t, do it from where you are. Let us know who you are, why you are joining us, and when you are fasting by emailing fastforfamilies@gmail.com. And if you want to join the indefinite fast, please let us know.
4. Forward this email to your friends and colleagues!
5. Make a contribution to support the families of the Fasters. You can send a check made out to WeCount! At Box 344116, Florida City, FL 33034. Put Fast for our Families in the memo.
6. Visit the Fasters at St. Ann Mission (13875 SW 264 St., Homestead, FL) - the visits they receive buoy their spirits. Let them know that their friends and neighbors care about them and support them.

Thank you for your support and your good works!

The Fast for Our Families

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?