Look for the Helpers, Part 2: Water (and More) in the Desert

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

Those are words from Mr. Rogers that I quoted in an earlier blog.

One of the Green Valley Samaritans -- a "helper" -- placing water jugs in the desert.

I spent the past few days taking part as a learner at the 17^th Annual Santa Cruz Valley Border Fair and Common Ground on the Border in Sahuarita, Arizona.

The situation on the US/Mexico border is complicated, confusing, quickly changing, and to some people scary. And there are helpers.

Here’s a list of groups and organizations that I ran across at the border fair. They’re helpers. If you’re looking for a way to be involved with immigrant concerns, take a look at these groups. They would appreciate your time, your money, your support.

• ·         The Good Shepherd United Church of Christ, Sahuarita, AZ, is deeply involved in providing welcoming, just compassion and action for migrants.
• ·         Federazione delleChiese Evangeliche in Italia/Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy, based in Roma/Rome. Their project, Mediterranean Hope/Programma Rifugiati e Migranti is providing support from migrants from Africa and the Middle East who are seeking new lives in Italy. www.fcei.it
• ·         Border Community Alliance in Tubac, AZ, offers cross border tours, internship programs, and cultural events to promote cross cultural learning and respect. www.bordercommunityalliance.org
• ·         Green Valley Samaritans in Green Valley, AZ, work to provide food, water, blankets, healthcare, and respect to migrants in the Arizona desert.  www.gvs-samaritans.org
• ·         Hope and Healing, based in Tucson, AZ, displays the artwork of young asylum seekers from Central and South America. www.ccs-soaz.org
• ·         Cruzando Fronteras is a faith-based partnership that focuses on prayer, humanitarian advocacy, immigration reform, and church partnerships to generate relational actions on the border. revrodgerdeacon@gmail.com
• ·         Humane Borders, based in Tucson, AZ, works to support humanitarian assistance and educational experiences to create justice and compassionate public policy. www.humaneborders.org
• ·         No Mas Muertes/No More Deaths is Unitarian Universalist group, based in Tucson, that provides food, clothing, healthcare and other assistance to migrants in Mexico and the US.  www.nomoredeaths.org
• ·         The Briggs Center for Faith and Action offers a legal aid clinic for refugees in the Washington, DC, area in need immigration assistance; ESL classes in Bethesda, MD, for people from around the world; support for the Santa Cruz Border Fair; and other work. (Truth-in-Advertising: I’m the Executive Director of this group and would greatly appreciate you support.)

These are some of the groups and people that are helping people in need along the US/Mexico border and around the world.

Looking for the helpers? They’re there.And they may be you.

A World of Barbed Wire: Walls and Immigration

We live in an age of walls. More specifically, we live in an aged of barbed wire. Sharp, piercing metal thread designed to stab, gash, and separate.

Here's a picture* of barbed wire on border wall that divides Nogales, Arizona, in the United States from Nogales, Sonora, in Mexico...

And this is barbed wire on the wall that divides Palestine and Israel...

And this is a drawing of the barbed wire that holds migrants in a detention camp in Libya...

I'm taking part in the 17th Annual Santa Cruz Valley Border Issues Fair and Common Ground on the Border Music Festival in Sahuarita, Arzona. The universality of barbed wire has gabbed my attention.

The drawing of the barbed wire in Libya shows the wire, not just on the top of the fence, but working its way up the legs and arms of the migrant.

And it's not just the wire that binds and chokes us. Border security has become an international economic engine. Thousands, maybe millions of people, work in the "homeland security" industry. Their jobs depend on trapping and separating other people. Multinational companies build surveillance towers that are used in Israel and on the United States border. Technology companies are paying creative minds to build drones that can fly silently overhead to film travelers and journeyers and then -- armed with weapons -- dive bomb into groups of people. The United States government is training other countries on how to trap people in camps and prisons all around the world.**

On several occasions, presenters at this conference have commented about the various detention camps and dividing walls -- along the US border and around the Mediterranean -- are reminiscent of the Nazi concentration camps.

Here's a photo of barbed wire at the Plaszow, Poland, concentration camp...

  

Barbed wire seems to have been invented in the mid-1800s. The first US patent for the painful product was taken out in 1867. In 1874, mass production of barbed wire came about. By 1890, barbed wire fences had virtually replaced the open range in the western United States.

I'm writing this on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, thinking of his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," where he describes the dehumanization of African Americans in the Jim Crow South. Barbed wire -- invented to corral cows -- now divides the world, corrals groups, and dehumanizes people.

King wrote, "Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity." That now is still now.

* Photo credits:

• The photo of the US/Mexico border was taken by a participant in this border conference.
• The photo of barbed wire in Palestine/Israel was taken by my colleague Alec Davis.
• The drawing of barbed wire ensnaring the immigrant in the Mediterranean is by Francesco Piobbichi, an artist/activist who works with the Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy. He was a speaker at this border issues fair.
• The photo of the Plaszow camp is from the US Holocaust Museum online archives.

** For more information about the global "homeland security industrial complex," see the book "Empire of Borders" by Todd Miller. Miller was one of the speakers at this conference. 

This blog is one of a series of reflections that I am writing while taking part in the Santa Cruz Valley Border Issues Fair and Common Ground on the Border. The Border Issues Fair is one the causes supported by the Briggs Center for Faith and Action, where I serve as the Executive Director.

Look for the Helpers: Depression and Immigration

Dropping off water in the desert.

I’ve spent much of the last two years crawling my way up out of a dry valley where only the thin weeds of depression and anxiety grow. And finally in the last couple of weeks I’m finding the myself again in a field where the green grass of hope grows.

Those twin marauders — anxiety and depression — came riding into my life like renegade cowboys in an Old West flick — pillaging, shooting, whipping and hollering with ferocity, haphazardly spraying of bullets any which way. Bullets named doubt and loneliness and pain and grief. 

My bout with depression and anxiety came about for many reasons — fate (some things just happen), genetics (my family has a propensity toward mental health woes), age (that mid-life crisis shit is real), illness and death (my father and my in-laws all died within a year and half of each other), and my own internal struggles (perplexity about life and my purpose in it). 

I’m fortunate. I have good insurance, a supportive spouse, a job that invites and affirms grappling with the internal self, kind doctors, an insightful therapist, wise friends, and a decently balanced dose of my own smarts and self-intuition. 

That circle of support, doses of prescribed pharmaceuticals and traditional medicines, a regular meditation practice, a little yoga, lots of running and biking and swimming, and time are having a healing affect on me. 

Last week I had the privilege of taking part in a really good church-focused conference. The leader of that conference led with honest and enthusiastic celebration. That’s what the world news, she said: Joy and Celebration. Sure, there’s plenty of racism and homophobia and pain. To offer joy and celebration in the midst of that is to live counterculturally. Joy and celebration—in the face of war and oppression — are acts of social justice. 

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news,” Fred Rogers famously told his television neighbors, “my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

In scary times , look for the helpers.

A preacher leading a conference and reminding me to offer joy and celebration—she was a helper. 

This week I’m been spending a few days on the borderlands where Arizona and Sonora meet. I had the opportunity to make a water run in the mountainous desert with a man named Ricardo and with some other pilgrims here to learn about immigration issues. Ricardo is a helper. 

He works with a group called Sahuarita Samaritans. These volunteers oversee a series of drop off stations in the desert. They place food, water, and blankets along the trails that travelers use as they make their way from Mexico to Tucson. It’s about 60 miles, a six day walk of the walkers are lucky. There are cactus, heat, cold, dirt, scorpions, snakes, fear, loneliness, grief, and pain along the way. Dozens of bodies are found each month. The water, food, and blankets that Ricardo and the Samaritans place in the wilderness saves lives. 

Our current immigration issues are a mess. A tragedy even. One speaker at the Border Issues Fair referred to the crisis as a holocaust. Certainly a scary time. A political pit, full of fear. 

“Look for the helpers.” 

People like a preacher at a conference and Ricardo dropping off food and water and blankets. 

“You will always find people who are helping.”

The situation is a mess. And the helpers give me hope. They save lives.

This blog is one of a series of reflections that I am writing while taking part in the Santa Cruz Valley Border Issues Fair and Common Ground on the Border. The Border Issues Fair is one the causes supported by the Briggs Center for Faith and Action, where I serve as the Executive Director.

Dining Alone: Loneliness and Immigration

A plaque at the San Xavier Mission on the Tohono O'odham land.

I'm in Green Valley, Arizona, for the 17th Annual Santa Cruz Border Issues Fair. I arrived in Green Valley, Arizona, a day ahead of the others who were headed to the Border Issues Fair. 

The first evening I was here I went out to eat at a local Mexican place, billed as “a family restaurant.”

It’s no big deal for me to go out to eat alone. I often do that for lunch. But I mostly do that at informal Chipotle- or Panera-style places. I can’t remember the last time I went alone to a sit-down, order-from-menu, “family restaurant.”

I took a book and my phone. The host seated me in a corner table. I looked at the tables around me. I was the only solo diner in a crowded, bustling room. Couples, family groups, and ensembles of friends chatted all around me. 

What does it mean to be alone?

I thought about that in regard to immigration. It’s tough to be alone. 

What did it mean for my great-grandmother from Ireland to be the only English-speaking woman in a small town in Mexico when she — an immigrant— buried her first-born child in a rocky graveyard? 

How lonely is Karen, the young woman from Honduras who showed up in DC, pregnant and alone? What did it feel like for her to move into the home of lovely, hospitable church members who took her in, despite language differences?

One speaker at the Border Issues Fair cried as she told talked about the bodies of a mother and ten year-old son being found in the vast dessert. Were they traveling alone? Did their group abandon them?

Another speaker at the Fair told of a young man whom she found wandering alone in the desert. He had arrived in the United States, hundreds of miles from home. He had successfully avoided weather, coyotes, drug cartels, and rough terrain. And he asked her to help him get home. Homesickness won.  

JeanVanier wrote a thoughtful book about a retreat in Kenya with people who had lived through an era of violence and boodshed. The title of the book is, “We Need Each Other.” In it he wrote:

“I am a broken man like all human beings, but I also know that Jesus loves me and that he is calling me to grow. This is the experience of being loved in my brokenness and therein lies the incredible gentleness of our God. We all have to discover the point of our brokenness because that is precisely the place where we are the beloved. Sometimes we hide behind the idea that we are better than others. We have to discover that none of us is better, that we are all children of God…

God has a desire to bring people together in love. There are two fundamental things that Jesus came to reveal to us. First, God is a lover. God loves. Second, this incredible, gentle, and tender God is in love with each one of us. Each person is precious to God and together we are to build a community where we love each other.”

America’s flavor of independence, or rugged individualism, often keeps us apart — which can lead to feelings of superiority and difference, often just the strange fruit of deep loneliness. 

Our immigration system is broken. Politicians from both parties use that word. (The same word that Vanier used to describe himself.) Our current immigration policies (based on xenophobia and mistrust and misplaced senses of superiority) are the product of fear-based loneliness more then they are rational, political, or economical.

The solutions may be found in potluck suppers, shared meals, and communion tables. 

This blog is one of a series of reflections that I am writing while taking part in the Santa Cruz Valley Border Issues Fair and Common Ground on the Border. The Border Issues Fair is one the causes supported by the Briggs Center for Faith and Action, where I serve as the Executive Director.

The picture on this blog post is of a plaque at the San Xavier Mission church. The verse from the Book of Hebrews refers back to another story in the Bible, where Sarah and Abraham welcomed strangers to their tent only to find out later the strangers were messengers from God.

Fear and Immigration

Tohono O'odham open air market outside the San Xavier Mission.

“Be afraid of immigrants.They’re out to get your job. They’ll take over.”

Maybe you’ve heard some version of that refrain from a politician, a news reporter, or a neighbor. 

What if I told you that’s a fair fear!* Read on...

This week I’m spending a few days at the Santa Cruz Valley Border FairIssues and Common Ground on the Border Music Festival in Green Valley Arizona, just north of Nogales, Mexico. On the drive from the Tucson airport to Green Valley earlier this week, I stopped by the San Xavier Mission on the Tohono Oʼodham Nation reservation. The Tohono Oʼodham people have lived, loved, laughed, died, and claimed the wonder of life in that life for as long as memory reaches back. Jesuit missionaries (immigrants?) from Europe showed up in 1692. 

The Tohono Oʼodham Nation is one of the focal points for our current immigration concerns. Migrants from South America cross the border onto Tohono Oʼodham land — land that has been divided, chopped up, claimed by other groups. 

Imaginary have been drawn on the land, with gun-wielding people saying that the invisible lines can’t be crossed. Surveillance towers have been plopped down the land. Companies claiming to own the land have dug up minerals and made giant profits. The US government has built giant fences all across the land, using part of the land to test weapons that kill people in giant numbers. All the while, Tohono Oʼodham people have been ignored, rounded up, kidnapped and sent to boarding schools, taught their culture and language and religion is inferior, prohibited from taking part in their scared rituals, lied to, “whitewashed” from history books, and largely left in poverty. 

So, yeah, on some level, it makes sense to say, “Be afraid of immigrants. They’ll take over.” When modern-day politicians and commentators say that, they are reflecting the dark side of European, mostly white immigrants who have spent the last 400 years taking over and even wiping out native and indigenous lives. Our present-day immigration matters are complicated, in humane, and in need of much wisdom and grace. To address them, requires more than policy tweaks and changes (though those are vital). To fully address our immigration views, we must address our national origins based in white supremacy, euro-centrism, and Christian domination. Our current immigration policies and practices and roots that reach down into centuries of oppression, ignorance, and militarism. 

Two stories...

When European migrants in the 1600s wandered across native lands in this part of Arizona, they met the people who lived there. “Who are you,” the Europeans asked. 

“Pimach,” the indigenous folx replied. 

“Ah, you’re Pimach people,” the Europeans said. 

And the name stuck and was shortened to “Pima.” For centuries the tribe was referred to as Pima, a county was named Pima, and a college bears the name. 

Except that’s all wrong. Pima or Pimach is not, was not, never had been the name of the indigenous people. “Pimach” means, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” or “I don’t understand.” 

When the European invaders asked (in Spanish), “Who are you,” the native people said (in their language), “We don’t understand you’re funny language...We don’t know what you’re asking.” And the Europeans, in their ignorance, assumed Pimach was their name. They shortened it to Pima. The name stuck for three hundred years, until Tohono Oʼodham people reclaimed their name. 

A second story...

One of the sacred rituals of the Tohono Oʼodham people is the salt run. Young men — as part of their ritual passage to adulthood — ran from their homeland to the sea, collected salt and brought it back to their people. 

This practical ritual became part of the deep cultural expression of the indigenous tribes. Along came Euro-centric, white Americans with their need for order and control to draw uncrossable lines (the Gadsden Treaty of 1854). Over the years, the invisible line became more and more visible with barbed wire, military patrols, metal walls, and jail sentences for those who cross the lines. The Tohono Oʼodham religious ritual of the salt run is now impossible. 

So, back to my original idea... Beware immigrants? Sure. They’ll take over? Yep. White, euro-centric immigrants have proved that to be true.* 

(*Please note: I’m not suggesting that we fear migrants from around the world who are seeking better, more peaceful lives in the United States. I’m writing hyperbolically to get your attention and to remind us that white, Christian-affirming, Euro-centric migrants have built a nation by invading and ignoring the people who were already here. Again: Our current immigration woes are complicated. To fully address them, we must reckon with 400 years of white supremacy and oppression that has been supported by the militarized eradication of Native people.)

This blog is one of a series of reflections that I am writing while taking part in the Santa Cruz Valley Border Issues Fair and Common Ground on the Border. The Border Issues Fair is one the causes supported by the Briggs Center for Faith and Action, where I serve as the Executive Director.

Want to know more about the Tohono O'odham people and their efforts to maintain their traditional practices? Take a look at the Anti-Borders Collective.

Hats and Immigration: A Parable

Water bottle placed in the desert for migrants .
with the words to "This Land Is Your Land"
in Spanish

On my flight to Tucson the woman seated in front of me was wearing a hijab. The college-age man next to her had on a baseball cap with a golf club logo; he looked like he hadn’t shaved or showered in several days. In front of them sat an older man wearing a cowboy hat, the typical Texas sherrif look. 

You can’t judge a book by its cover. Or a person by their headgear. But let’s make some assumptions — let’s assume the cowboy-hatted man is a traditional, hard-working, flag-waving, America-firster, maybe even a Trump supporter. Let’s make the woman in the hijab a liberal of the AOC fan base. Let’s make the dude in the baseball cap a Bernie Bro-ish libertarian sort. (All stereotypes are unfair and these may be entirely wrong, of course.)

As I looked at these three hats and mulled over the potential differences they represented, the pilot spoke over the intercom. He welcomed us on board, then said, “Just a reminder, we’re on a plane and there’s only one aisle. So we’ll need to share.” People chuckled at that bit of obvious, practical wisdom. 

I thought about those of us on that plane — a (maybe) liberal Muslim woman wearing a hijab, a (maybe) libertarian college bro, a (maybe) conservative old man, the pensive pastor (hi, that’s me) behind them. Together we were trapped in a metal tube, hurtling through the cosmos at 575 miles per hour, doing what the pilot suggested — sharing. Sharing space, sharing air, sharing life. 

Ram Dass, the spiritual guru who recently died, said about humanity, “We’re all just walking each other home.”

On that plane, we were flying home (or at least to the next stop on the journey) together. I don’t know how the man in the Cowboy hat will vote. I don’t know what the woman in the hijab thinks of cowboy hats or baseball caps. I don’t know what the unshaven college kid thinks about religion or immigration. I do know that for three hours we shared. For a moment were all headed in the same direction.

This blog is one of a series of reflections that I am writing while taking part in the Santa Cruz Valley Border Issues Fair and Common Ground on the Border. The Border Issues Fair is one the causes supported by the Briggs Center for Faith and Action, where I serve as the Executive Director.

And it turns out I wrote this on National Hat Day. Who knew that was a thing?