Driving search for distressed humans - to be continued...

We meet in a huge parking lot at a recreation center to start our journey though the desert and along the wall in order to see if we can find any refugees in distress.

Not only is the terrain so very unforgiving here but people have to travel miles north before they can connect with the nearest inhabitants. Often the first u.s.ofa. people they meet will not help them at all or might even shoot them - although not providing water for people is a death sentence and a very painful death as well.

Before we head out, we check the bags that are made up: there should be water, a little bag of non-perishable food, a drinking straw (I forget the name of it but it doesn't really purify the desert water holes but it takes out the bacteria), clean socks, a phone charger battery (we used these in Yuma also) - I think that's it.

There are four of us - three tasked with searching the land on either side of the vehicle, one with driving. Two of us are newbies, the other two experienced.

The dark brown line on the left of this picture is the fuckin 'wall'

The Qanon Vigilantes join the Right-Wing Vigilantes, but worse (maybe...)

I wore the wrong shirt today but I didn't know it until I spent several hours driving around the desert and along the 'wall' with the samaritan angels looking for human beings in distress.

While the four of us were searching the unforgiving terrain, one of the womyn who has been part of the samaritans since a couple months after they began in 2005, along with another womon who has been volunteering for the past 5 years, told me some of the recent challenges from the fuckin vilent and cruel qanon bigots as well as the continuing history of this organization.

My shirt, that I painted several years ago - maybe in 2017? - when word got out that tRump's border policy was to separate children from their mothers and fathers. So my shirt says on one side "Let My Babies Go" (refrain from the Go Down Moses song) and on the back "Take Back The Children", also from our "Take Back The Night" marches.

Well apparently these bigots have gotten into their heads that the democrats are 'trafficking' these children and they believe it is god's wish that they sit on the border and befriend unsuspecting, vulnerable youth.

So when children cross the border, they were met by these people, given snacks and water, and asked where in the u.s. the kids are attempting to get to - with no intention of trying to help them get to their relative or family friend but with the intention of finding out who these adults are, no matter what danger they are putting the children or their relatives in.

The qanon vigilantes ask the children for the number they need to call, call that number, turn the phone over to the child and proceed to record the conversation without anyone who is making or receiving the call knowing, everything the families are saying to each other.

Then other qanon vigilantes located in the areas where the call was placed to, where the families waiting these children are, began their campaign of harassment and exposure to ICE and border patrol, often reporting them as pedophiles at best, serial rapists and any sort of perversion they can think of.

Apparently they also go so far as to video the humanitarian folks, putting their pictures up on social media as potential sex traffickers along with their home addresses if they can figure it out.