04-01-2020, 02:55 PM
(04-01-2020, 02:38 PM)fuzzbox Wrote:(04-01-2020, 02:08 PM)WWHO Wrote:(04-01-2020, 01:32 PM)fuzzbox Wrote: Wow. It sounds like you actually DID the stuff I was DEFINITELY GOING TO DO after I'd had a few drinks and wanted to make the world a better place. Until I woke up the next day...
Did you ever meet Luis Urrea? He was associated with them wasn't he?
I did meet him a couple of times in Phoenix/Tuscon. I was part of a group protesting Bush's Secure Fence Act (another populist politician pandering to right wing conservatives by promising a wall) and he was a keen advocate of our work. I'd already read the brilliant yet disturbing A Devil's Highway and had had the misfortune of stumbling on the bodies of two indocumentados whilst filling up water tanks in the Naco sector with Humane Borders. It's tough place, both sides of the divide.
Far, far too tough for me. It's a completely different mentality. The closest i'll go is San Diego! I always thought I'd be braver when I 'grew up', but I never was. As I get older, I know I never will be. I support similar causes, do a bit of lobbying and work on the legal side for various organisations, but it's all a bit weak - and I know it. What made you get involved in it?
Yeah, it's a curious place that attracts peculiar people. I must admit I loved living in Tuscon and Nogales.
Well, all advocacy/social movements require a multi-dimensional, horses for courses approach. As you well know, political lobbying in the corridors of power works in some circumstances, other times direct action is required. One isn't more effective than the other, per se.
As for me, I studied for a MA in Area Studies at Uni of Liverpool, which had a significant focus on the Americas. I originally moved to Oaxaca in Mexico to research the leaders of the People's Popular Assembly (APPO). Let's just say things got a little hot so I travelled north with a group of indocumentados and settled in the border regions. I wrote my thesis on the history of anti-immigration protest groups on la frontera, volunteering with the infamous Minutemen. I found their leaders incredibly unsavoury (they had links with David Duke and John Tanton, the puppet master), so focused on the rank and file volunteers and found many of them were blue collar, small town Americans who had been left behind by unfettered neoliberalism (brexit anyone?).
Ended up leaving the borderlands after my research and moved to Hazleton in NEPA, which became the next battle in the greater war on 'illegal immigration'.
I do miss America. Everyone had a story, especially the nut jobs.