A Challenge

This morning we swing by a food coop to pick up some water bottles and food to hand out to refugees crossing at our border. The sheras and heroes providing hands-on aid are outta money, volunteers using their own money and credit cards to provide bare minimum sustenance for refugees seeking entrance.

And being a republian-run city including the non-profits who should be providing for the people here, they are not able to get many local donations. There's no food not bombs, no Berkeley Natural Grocer, no supermarket bosses having enough compassion to contribute their supplies or overflow evenfor helping refugees.

Once again, as we approach the ugly, offensive fuckin wall – a wall that costs ONE MILLION DOLLARS A FUCKIN FOOT – I prepare myself to focus on how to help instead of how angry I am, how ashamed of this country that can spend a million dollars a foot to build a barrier blocking not only desperate humans seeking refuge and a chance to provide for themselves and their families, but also blocking animals and wildlife from access to their territory along with the humans this side that also roamed freely across this border a few decades ago for more centuries than we can count.

How disgusted I am with the amerikkkans who buy into the rhetoric that we can’t afford these people when the truth is, we can’t not afford them. The service industries, the agricultural complex, restaurants, hotels – all the businesses in this country that count on exploiting the new comer or the desperate willing to fill the low paid jobs, the dirty hard jobs that amerikkkans won’t work, these systems are starting to feel the loss of their cheap workers.

But what is happening now at the border? In December when I came through, literally thousands of people were lining up to enter the u.s. This morning there probably weren’t 60.

There were people from Peru, Cuba, Congo, Angola, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Columbia and India.

The family from Congo – a husband, wife, and two children – have been traveling for FIVE fuckin months to get here. It took them a whole month just to get out of Africa and land in Ecuador. From Ecuador they mostly walked through Columbia on to Panama; then Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala into Mexico. Four months of mostly walking, some bus, some train but mostly walking.

This family speaks Spanish better than I do, and English as well as their native tongue.

They are definitely not the right color to be allowed into this country.

Another man, who came from Ecuador, had been captured and tortured by some gang cartel. They set his ransom at $18,000. He had documentation, video I couldn’t watch, of men beating up other men, dragging womyn away. He was ‘saved’ at that time by the press getting wind of what was going on and reporting it on national media. Hopefully this documentation will be enough. His wife and two children were running with him. He probably wasn’t 4’10” and tiny – I doubt any of the flip flops or sandals I purchased will fit his little feet.

The people from Cuba and Columbia will be immediately returned. Even though they are following this idiotic game of border patrol, putting their feet onto u.s. soil with the expectation that they will at least be processed through the judicial system and be allowed to tell their story, placing all their hopes and energies and resources onto this path to u.s. citizenship.

Yet border patrol and the whole fuckin immigration nitemare system knows they will not be among the chosen allowed to stay.

One, that is ONE out of one thousand human beings seeking asylum in this country will actually be accepted, after two years of trying and only after having a reason our system deems ‘credible’ and only after they also have physical proof of that reason.

If you’re reading this, make it a priority journey in your life to come to the border as soon as you are willing and able. See for yourself who is walking here, who is spending every last penny they have and more to make it here, who is risking their very lives, who is sacrificing home and family and community to find opportunity here to be safe, to work, to live.

But come with your hands full: bring food and water, and tons of money for the truly modern day saints providing humanitarian services for refugees. We HAVE to support these people.

Challenge our fellow amerikkkans, who claim we can’t afford these people, with the truth. Help them understand, make them understand this narrative of dehumanizing of people seeking entrance into our country is only allowing them to turn their backs, enabling them to blindly continue life as usual, to have no compassion for the life of a refugee. And have no doubt, this exclusion of especially Black and brown folks has been cemented into our institutions, the very blood and breath of our nation, since practically the beginning of this country, from the constitution onward: thus forming their very faulty assessments of who is coming here.

As a nation, we MUST have a widespread acceptance of humans crossing our border – as we most easily cross almost everyone else’s border – and as the French believed when they sent over the statue of liberty.

Now under fuckin Biden, he is closing almost every pathway into this country, much worse than tRump ever did. He wants refugees to apply for and receive asylum from every single country they are forced to pass through.

Furthermore, he wants them to provide documentation 20 feet from the u.s. border, not on u.s. soil. It’s more than ridiculous. It is just a ploy to circumvent any path for asylum in this country.

Today, most of these 60 womyn, children, and men have been waiting since last night for border patrol to come pick them up, detain them in a prison, and then they hope to be interviewed and released to friends or relatives or just anywhere to await the process to begin.

Fernie tells them what to expect – except he doesn’t tell them they probably will not be accepted into the asylum system, let alone this country. Instead, he tells them almost none of their belongings will be allowed to accompany them onto the bus. They will be given a small plastic bag into which they can put whatever will fit. None of their bags, their backpacks, their pocketbooks will come with them. All these things will go into the garbage. Along with their shoe laces. Any food or water, unless it will fit in the small bag. Any extra layers of clothing – only one layer allowed. Then they will be put in a van and taken to be processed. He doesn’t tell the Cubans or Nicaraguans or Haitians or Venezuelans or Colombians they will be put on a bus or a plane today and shipped back to Mexico.

And no one, not one person who is forced to leave their country because of climate disaster – because of flooding or the ocean warming or earthquakes or any other consequence of our capitalist life style destruction of Mother Earth – no one will be granted asylum for attempting to escape this massive climate disaster of our capitalist way of life, driving our foreign policy, destroying their home and our planet.

The gate in the wall we go through to reach the point where refugees are waiting border patrol

Facing Mexico - the red bridge and highway are in Mexico. This side of the wall is u.s.

This is all the water and the only part of the Colorado River we allow to go into Mexico.

After walking into the u.s., refugees then walk along the canal that is the piece of the Colorado River we allow into Mexico, to cross the other bridge and then walk back.

My first day in Yuma: Part I

What can I write about today? My day actually started around 5:30a.m. when I woke. Fernie (the humanitarian aid volunteer worker) wasn’t coming until 7:30 but I needed to prepare. I had donations to sort, deciding which will stay here, which we go on to other locations. I had my coffee to heat up, water bottles to fill, check my email and messages – in addition to the teeth brushing, face washing, dressing chores to prepare for a new day.

I’m parked in the Cocopah Nation’s casino parking lot – not legally, but not very stealth either. As I prepare to put my coffee inside the cab, I notice a man approaching who has to be security. He starts a conversation with asking if this is my truck and what does it mean. So I have to begin with the #SayHerName list of the Black and brown womyn and girls who have been murdered by police.

We go on to the MMIW red dress and he asks me if he can take a picture of my truck – to which of course I agree.

He starts to ask me if I slept in my truck last night and I ask him if he wants to see the rest of the truck. I explain how the back is still a work in progress and then show him the anti-monsanto-now-fuckin-bayer side.

When I tell him I’m waiting for Fernie , he talks about being an immigrant, living in Yuma and having two family houses across the border into Mexico – one directly on the border town and one several miles south.

He says there is no trouble, that the hype about violence is just that. At least he hasn’t experienced trouble. He says the trouble is not in the city but out in the desert where the drug dealers, coyotes, and cartel reign.

When Fernie arrives, Raul is telling me about how three years ago he was feeling some kind of digestive issue so he went to see a doctor in Yuma. He said the womon at the desk took him into a room, asked him questions, talked for exactly 5 minutes, then told him she’d share the info with the doc and depending on what he said, she’ll let him know.

He looks at me and says that they billed him for $500 for that visit. $500… Raul asked Fernie to take a picture of us in front of the “End Violence” side before we left for the border. And after Raul told me if I spend the night again, I need to park behind the building – and not sleep in the truck. Or go to the $10 rv parking lot on the other side of the building.