143 people were peacefully arrested, more than doubling previous days’ totals; Unitarian Universalists were the highest officially represented faith community of the protest

August 30th, 2011 – Washington, DC – People of faith from across the country converged in Washington, DC yesterday for the Interfaith Day of the two week long peaceful civil disobedience to stop the construction of the Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline. The purpose of the protest is to pressure the Obama Administration, which has the sole authority to decide the fate of the pipeline. 143 people were arrested yesterday bringing the total number arrested to date to 522. It was the largest number of people arrested in one day thus far, more than doubling previous totals.

Of those representing a denomination, Unitarian Universalists were present in the highest numbers. Fourteen Unitarian Universalists were arrested, including two clergy, while an additional eleven served as observers and support, and one chaplain was present for pastoral care. Unitarian Universalists were called to participate by the denomination’s largest environmental organization and the national headquarters. One of those arrested is the Unitarian Universalist Association’s (UUA’s) Witness Ministries Director, Rev. Craig Roshaven.

Unitarian Universalists have historically been committed to environmentalism and racial/economic justice. In recent years these commitments have converged in recognition of the racial and economic dimensions of environmental issues, including our reliance on fossil fuels and the consequences of global climate change. Both nationally and globally, while wealthier communities consume a greater proportion of fossil fuels, the effects of the resulting pollution are disproportionately felt by poorer communities, and these communities tend to be predominantly of color. In the case of the Tar Sands pipeline, the resulting increase in the production of tar sands oil and the construction of the pipeline will devastate Native American/First Nation lands even though these peoples will not benefit from the pipeline and have had no say in its construction. Because of this, Unitarian Universalists see the construction of the pipeline and the nation’s continued commitment to fossil fuels as unjust and immoral.

The Unitarian Universalist Association’s 2006 statement on “The Threat of Global Warming/Climate Change” remains one of the strongest on the moral dimensions of climate change made by a religious denomination.

For more information or to schedule an interview, please contact croshaven @ uua.org.

Buoyed by the historic passage of DREAM in the House of Representatives on Wednesday evening, and mindful that the prospects for a Senate vote are much more uncertain, several members of the Interfaith Immigration Coalition (IIC), including yours truly representing the UUA, decided to visit some key senators yesterday morning, before what was scheduled to be the 11 am vote on DREAM.

The DREAM Act would provide a pathway for earned citizenship to millions of undocumented young adults who were brought to this country by their parents as children and have since grown up in this country. The U.S. is their country in every way except for legal status.

The senate offices that we visited were those on this target list.

I won’t bore you by describing every office visit. And the few juicy tidbits about who is leaning in what direction, I’m not at liberty to say publicly. But there are two really strong impressions that I would like to share with you.

One was the fact that in every office we visited the phones were ringing off the hooks. As we waited in the seating area of various offices to see if a staffer could/would come out to see us, we could hear that the majority of the calls were about the DREAM Act. The poor folks answering the phones looked like they had been going at this rate for days. I almost felt sorry for them, but at the same time I know that this is democracy in action.

The phone call to your elected official is many times more powerful than the vote you cast in the ballot box in terms of influencing what becomes our national laws.

In the few cases where the receptionist’s ear was not glued to the phone, we asked what direction the calls were going in. ‘50/50’ or ‘pretty even’ was the answer.

With things so tight, every phone call that we make to stand on the side of love counts.

The second impression I had was when we walked into Senator Lugar’s office. As you may or may not know, Sen. Lugar of Indiana was one of the original sponsors of the DREAM Act and had long been a proponent, but in these crazy partisan times, the Republican senator is now threatening to vote against his own bill.

A group of roughly a dozen young adults, many wearing colorful graduation mortar boards made out of construction paper, were gathered in a circle on the office floor, praying. They looked like they had been there for a while. They were so quiet and unobtrusive, and yet so persistent and impossible to ignore. I wish to God I had a camera then and could have shared the image with all of you. Their presence reminded me of why I am doing this work.

In truth, I was originally against the DREAM Act, having the same reservations that many Unitarian Universalists and other progressive people of faith have. From the provisions, it’s clear that one of the motivations for DREAM was to attract more recruits to the military. What changed my mind was the DREAM Act activists (or DREAMers, as they are called). These young women and men are publicly stating their undocumented status and going directly to elected officials to ask them to support their dream of being productive U.S. citizens.

They are willing to risk everything. How could I not support that?

In one of the last offices that we visited, we learned from the television tuned to C-SPAN that the Senate had tabled the vote on the DREAM Act scheduled for yesterday morning. The reason why Sen. Reid tabled his own bill is because there weren’t enough ‘YES’ votes in the senate to pass it.

The good news is that this gives us more time to change some senators’ minds.

So I am asking you to take action.

Based on what I saw yesterday – the calls coming into the Senate offices are so close, and the DREAMers need our help.

Call your senators – both of them – and urge them to support the DREAM Act. The Capitol switchboard number is (202) 224-3121.

We know that people have been migrating freely across the U.S-Mexico border since there was a border, and they continued to do so even after the border was created. In fact, the U.S. has a long history of relying on Mexican migrant labor. It officially started with the Bracero program of the mid-1940s, where Mexican farm workers were “invited” in to work on U.S. farms that were short-handed due to the war, but migrant farm work had been going on unofficially well before that. Migration across the border to look for work is nothing new. However, it is also true that the influx of Mexicans into the U.S. looking for work has jumped dramatically in the last couple of decades. Pundits are actually not exaggerating when they describe a relative tidal wave of immigration that is stressing public services and changing the demographics of many U.S. states. In the early 1990s, Mexican migration to the United States was less than 400,000 a year. By 2007 it was 500,000 a year. As Alejandro Portes wrote for ssrc.org in 2006 (http://borderbattles.ssrc.org/Portes/):

“From a purely regional presence in the west and southwest, it has become a truly national phenomenon. States that had barely a handful of “Hispanics” in 1990 now count a sizable Hispanic population. In Georgia, for example, the Latin-origin population went from 1.7 percent in 1990 to 5.3 percent in 2000, a 312 percent increase due to an inflow of 300,000 persons, overwhelmingly from Mexico. Cities like Charlotte, North Carolina, whose “Hispanics” in 1990 consisted of a few wealthy Cuban and South American professionals, now have upwards of 80,000, mostly undocumented Mexican laborers.”

What is causing this massive migration? Many U.S.Americans – regardless of political leaning – operate under the assumption that everyone else in the world would prefer to live in the U.S. but were not fortunate enough to have all been born here. This belief is even stronger towards those we perceive to be living in “un(der)developed” countries. Starting from that assumption, some seek to restrict the number of foreign-born people who can immigrate, fearing that a shortage of resources will hurt their own standard of living. Others are more sympathetic, believing that as it was chance that determined who would be lucky enough to be born in the U.S, the least we can do is to let people in who make the effort to come for a “better lifestyle.” Yet both groups of people are laboring under false assumptions.

It is true that there many people from all over the world want to come to the U.S. But not everyone who comes here really wants to. Many would actually have preferred to stay in their own country. Emigrating from one’s home country often means leaving behind family and culture, having to adopt a second language, and a loss (or dramatic shift) of one’s identity… It is not an insignificant consideration to think of one’s children growing up with a different national identity than one’s own. Many here in the U.S. were not attracted by the lure of “America” and its fabled gold-paved streets so much as they were driven out of their home countries by extreme poverty. To understand this is the key to developing public policy that humanely and effectively stems the flood of humanity coming to the U.S., as it means that we must do more than just put more guards at the border and instead address the reasons why people are so desperate to cross it.

Sold A False Bill of Goods

When the presidents of Canada, the U.S., and Mexico signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, it was supposed to benefit the economies and workers of all three nations. “Free trade” was also supposed to alleviate Mexican immigration into the U.S. – which had been an issue by the mid-90s but was nothing like it is now – by boosting the Mexican economy and creating enough job opportunities to keep its people there. Instead, it has done the exact opposite.

As U.S.American workers know, NAFTA had a catastrophic effect on them. 800,000 to 1 million jobs that used to be done in the U.S. were “out-sourced” to factories (maquiladoras) just south of the border and to other countries. Entire communities were devastated by plant closures and mass layoffs. It may have seemed to U.S. workers that our government sold them out to benefit the workers of other countries. However, as bad as NAFTA has been for U.S. workers, it has been far worse for the people of Mexico.

Mexico’s economy, which had consisted mainly of small self-sufficient farms and jobs in state-owned industries, was supposed to have been “modernized” into a free-market economy.

What happened when the market became “free” was that U.S. corn flooded Mexico, increasing from 2.7 to 6.1 million metric tons as of 1997. The price of Mexican-grown corn dropped by 70%. Mexican subsistence farmers, most of whom were indigenous farmers who had been on their land for generations, could not compete with U.S. government-subsidized, factory-farmed corn. The expectation was that Mexican farmers would “transition” from growing corn, to which they were accustomed, to growing strawberries and vegetables for U.S. consumption. However, the “foreign investment” that was supposed to fund such a transition never happened. Coupled with the “free-market” lifting of restrictions on the sale of peasant (ie – indigenous) land, two million of farmers and their families were thus driven off their lands. Desperation forced everyone except the elderly and young children to leave their villages in search of work, thus becoming migrants. Entire villages were decimated.

On the manufacturing end, the foreign company-owned factories, or maquiladoras, were supposed to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Indeed, U.S. businesses flooded into Mexico with NAFTA to take advantage of the cheap labor, leaving workers in the States high and dry. However, the maquiladoras never ventured further into Mexico than within 300 miles of the border. The Mexican government was supposed to build roads and infrastructure for more companies to move south, but a financial crisis just months after NAFTA went into effect dashed all hopes of that. Meanwhile, Mexican manufacturers who were once protected by tariffs could not compete with U.S. products and were driven out of business, taking jobs with them. At the same time, many companies who had moved their manufacturing from the U.S. to Mexico subsequently moved their factories to even cheaper localities (ie – where they would pay workers even less). A free market free-for-all. As a result, jobs in the manufacturing sector declined from a high of 4.1 million in 2000 to 3.5 million in 2004. Even where such jobs were available, they usually paid close to the Mexican minimum wage of U.S. $1/hour. In 1975, the average Mexican wage was 23% of the average U.S. manufacturing wage; by 2002, Mexican wages were only 12%, amounting to about $1,600 a year. For many migrant workers, one hour of the California minimum wage is more money than they make for an entire day in Mexico.

Since NAFTA was enacted in 1994:

• Economic growth in Mexico has been anemic, averaging less than 3.5 percent per year
• Mexico has created only about half of the one million new jobs needed per year for young adult Mexicans entering the job market. Thus, unemployment has skyrocketed.
• Half of the labor force works at improvised jobs in the “informal economy,” a figure ten percent higher than before NAFTA.
• Mexican worker productivity has increased by 45% yet their real wages have dropped by 22%.
• Of the 110 million people in Mexico, some 67 million live in poverty with incomes less than $3 a day. (13 million of them on less than $1 a day.) That is 19 million more Mexicans living in poverty than before NAFTA.
• By the Mexican government’s own estimates, 82% of the working population has less income than what is needed for “basic subsistence”

Open Markets and Closed Borders

All of this is just part of the larger problem of globalization. If goods move freely across borders that means that jobs do too. Think about it. By sending tons of U.S.-grown corn to Mexico for sale in its markets, the demand for Mexican-grown corn is lowered and the demand for American-grown corn is raised. That means fewer farmers are needed in Mexico while more (low-wage) factory farm workers are needed in the U.S. “Free-market” forces are causing this movement of both goods and jobs across borders. Despite that, we do not allow the free movement of workers across those same borders. Mexican farmers know that if they go north there are jobs there waiting for them. (Jobs that are in essence degraded versions of the jobs that were taken from them but pay better than anything they can get in Mexico now.). Yet, they are at the same time told that they cannot legally go north.

If you were in their situation, what would you do?

Note: For the sake of clarity, we have been exclusively discussing NAFTA and its effects on Mexico. However, other countries further south of Mexico have even weaker economies. Despite the obvious failings of NAFTA, it has been used as the model for trade agreements with “developing” Latin American countries, including CAFTA (United States-Dominican Republic- Central American Free Trade Agreement), which was enacted in 2005, and free-trade agreement proposals with Panama, Columbia and Peru. Agreements with Panama and Columbia are still in process; the agreement with Peru was passed in 2007.

Due to the dysfunction of the current U.S. immigration system, family members face years of separation and those seeking work face years of waiting before they can find legal employment to support their families. In both cases, the situation is untenable, especially when there are young, dependant children involved. For that reason, many people choose to enter or remain in the country without documentation.

Much of the discussion around illegal immigration has centered around the idea of people sneaking across the border. The media portrays people with ladders climbing over barbed-wire fences or tunneling under them. The images convey a sense of criminal activity. Indeed, over half of the estimated 11 million people currently in the country without documentation entered clandestinely. However, almost half – an estimated 45% – entered the country legally and then overstayed their visas. These are workers who leave their sponsoring employers in order to escape exploitation. They are students who have come to the U.S. for college or graduate school and then found love and work here. They are family members visiting their loved ones on tourist visas who then cannot bear to part. In short, the vast majority of “illegal immigrants” are people like you and me, not criminals.

But they are breaking the law. Doesn’t that make them criminals by definition?

Not necessarily. Unless they are committing some other activity at the same time that actually is criminal – such as smuggling or identity fraud – even those who are climbing over fences are not committing a crime. Legally speaking, being in the country without documentation is a civil offense. What “illegal immigrants” are “guilty” of is not having the necessary paperwork.

Assistant Homeland Security Secretary John Morton is currently head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). As he stated in a Feb 2010 interview, “The immigration laws are civil in nature…. For example, if you enter the country on a visa and you overstay your visa, that is a civil but not a criminal offense. There is some overlap. Sometimes you are here unlawfully and you’re also guilty of a crime. But it is not one to one.” He added, “Generally speaking, if you’re being deported and you’re being detained for it, it’s for a civil infraction and not a criminal one.”

The same view was upheld by Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano in a CNN interview.

In fact, deportation or removal proceedings are conducted in civil court, not criminal court, and the punishment is deportation, not imprisonment. Undocumented immigrants found to be in violation of immigration laws are officially detained only while our immigration system decides whether they have a right to stay in the United States.

Many U.S.Americans mistakenly believe that all undocumented immigrants are by definition criminals, which is understandable. First, there are the images of the militarized border that connote crossing as an illegal activity. Secondly, we continually hear the term illegal immigration, illegal immigrant, illegal, illegal…. Third, while detained undocumented immigrants are officially held in non-criminal custody, due to overcrowding and privatization, over half of the immigrants in detention now are physically housed in private prisons or county jails. All of these things combined create the sense that undocumented immigrants are criminals. It’s no wonder that people are confused!

It is for this reason that many people and organizations, including the Unitarian Universalist Association, advocate the use of the term “undocumented immigrant” instead of “illegal immigrant.”

Luckily, it is my job to keep track of legislation and other developments around immigration or else my obsession with the issue these last few months would have severely affected my work. It was more than just passion, more than compassion, more than the fact that my parents, paternal grandparents and uncle, maternal cousin, and many of the non-biological “aunts” and “uncles” from my childhood are all immigrants. This was personal to me to the point where I felt like it was me who was being attacked.  The reason why became clear one afternoon in May as I sat at home, reading developments as usual, and saw the story of Juan Varela, a third-generation Mexican-American who was shot and killed by a neighbor as he yelled “go back to Mexico!”

“Go back!” “Go back to China!” was what the kids at school used to yell at me. It did not matter how many times I tried to explain to them that since I was born here in the U.S. and had never been to China, I could not “go back.” That was my first introduction, at the age of five, to how little logic/reason plays in these “discussions.” They saw me as foreign, un-American, and no matter how hard I tried to assimilate – refusing to speak Mandarin, pleading with my mom to eat spaghetti and tacos for dinner (ironic, isn’t it?) – it made no difference. It was my skin tone – the one thing that I could not shed – that made me a target. All these years later, I still know that my standing as a U.S. citizen is considered conditional to a great many people.

Tears flowed for the loss of life for Juan Varela and the pain of those who love him, but also for the loss of whatever sense of security that Latin@-American kids might still have had. I’m sure that many had already heard the words, “Go back to Mexico!” (regardless of whether or not they are actually of Mexican descent). In Arizona and across the country, states have or are considering similar SB1070-like legislation. Talk of ending birthright citizenship has reached the national level. And incidences of hate-crimes against Latin@s are up around the country.

It was also back in May when I first heard about the proposed Muslim community/cultural center (wrongfully described as a mosque just about everywhere). It had made the news when conservative radio show host, Michael Perry, declared that someone should blow the building up if it is built. I wondered if the irony of threatening to blow up a building near ground zero due to religious differences was lost on Mr. Perry, but in general dismissed him as a right-wing extremist and went back to paying attention to Arizona. Now it is August and not only have other right-wing celebrities weighed in to oppose the cultural center – Palin, Limbaugh, Beck, Gingrich – but people who should know better – Harry Reid, Howard Dean and Governor Patterson – are saying that it should be moved. Polls say that between 61-70% of U.S.Americans oppose the “mosque.” I am appalled, and also obsessed, to the point where I am checking the updates of various facebook groups, scanning online news headlines, reading analyses…

Like SB1070, the controversy over the cultural center feels very personal. Because, like SB1070, the controversy over the cultural center is indicative of a much bigger issue than the one everyone is yelling about. Claiming that the center is “too close” to ground zero does not explain why residents are angrily opposing the building of a new mosque in Staten Island, and it certainly doesn’t explain opposition to building mosques in Tennessee, Kentucky, and California. It does not explain why mosques across the nation have been targeted for vandalism, arson, gunfire, and even a pipe bomb.  In NY, four men brutally beat an Arab man, shouting “Go back to your country!”  In California a man assaulted a Muslim American, shouting “Go back to where you came from!”

“Go back to your country!” “Go back to where you came from!” The events in Arizona are supposedly about “illegal” immigration, and the controversy over the New York cultural center is supposedly about unhealed wounds from 9/11. But what they have in common is groups of people who are seen as foreign, un-American, their loyalties suspect, due to the color of their skin and/or their religion. As an ally with a very personal interest in these issues, I have tried to explain how Mexicans have lived in Arizona since before Arizona was part of the U.S. I’ve tried to explain that Muslim Americans also died in the attacks on 9/11. But when talking to some people, it feels like I’m five years old again and faced with the frustration that perfectly good facts don’t seem to make even the slightest dent in their preconceptions of “us versus them.”

Based on our history, I have no doubt whatsoever that we will *eventually* prevail, as our nation fitfully expands its notion of what “equality” means every generation or so. But in the meantime, I am afraid that a generation of Latin@ American and Muslim/Arab American kids will carry the burden of not quite trusting that they are accepted as “American” well into their adulthoods. I know that had there been even one person who stuck up for me when I was a kid – just one (non-Asian) ally – it would have made a huge difference. And that is what I keep in mind during these trying times when the hatred seems limitless and people standing on the side of love seem so few. We do not need to be able to convince everybody. We just need to speak, so that those who are being attacked know that they are not alone.

At six am Thurs, we arrived at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral for an interfaith service.  A rainbow hung high in the sky, seeming to make its arc right over Trinity. Seeing it, my heart leapt with hope.  I thought of the biblical story of God’s promise to His [sic] people.  I thought of the moral arc of the universe bending towards justice.  After the service, we started marching towards downtown.  So far, this was not unlike other rallies/protests/marches/vigils that I had attended.  But it was during the march that I first noticed them – people carrying plastic trash bags collecting water bottles and other refuse from marchers, so that the streets remained clean.  Cleaning up after ourselves?  What a novel concept!  How lacking in sense of privilege!  I smiled at the young Latino man carrying the garbage bag and felt that he was playing a role as important as any cleric who spoke from the pulpit or any of the rally organizers.

When we got to Cesar Chavez Plaza, I saw that Puente (a local Phoenix movement with whom we’re partnering) had set up a staging area where bottles of water cooled in kiddie wading pools full of ice.  Two cots were available for those who fell ill.  Hand made signs were available for those who wanted to carry them.  Those of us who were not going to get arrested made sure that others had plenty of water to drink, grabbing bottles from the kiddie pools and handing them out to everyone, including the police officers who must have been roasting under their riot gear.  Someone from the staging area called for volunteers to run sitting pads over to the demonstrators at the intersection in front of the Wells Fargo Building (Arpaio’s office).  I was handed a pile of bath towels that had been cut in half and then sewn to an insulating backing, to protect people’s behinds and legs from the baking asphalt.  Wow, I thought, they had prepared for everything.  Little did I know.

Much later, after watching the last of our people get loaded into the police paddy wagon, I started heading towards the 4^th Ave jail where other demonstrators – including Peter Morales, Susan Frederick-Gray. and Puente’s Salvador Reza – had blocked the jail entrance.  On my way, I stopped by the staging area to see if I could carry some bottles of water over.  I was told that there was plenty of water at the jail already but I could carry over two spray bottles for cooling people down.  I walked the two blocks with the spray bottles alone – a curious sense of solitude given the frenetic energy all around me, including the beating blades of a police helicopter overhead.  Once at the jail site, I looked for red faces to whom to offer a cooling spray of water.  (By the time the 4^th Ave protestors were arrested some time later, I was pretty red-faced myself.)  Roaming the crowds, I also saw volunteer medics coming to the aid of those for whom water was no longer enough.

Those of us who had not been arrested straggled back to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Phoenix during the mid to late afternoon.  We ate some food.  We cooled off as best we could.  We attended to those of us who had succumbed to heat exhaustion.  But now what next?  Do we just wait at the church?  Go back to our hotel or homestays?  That didn’t seem right.  The answer came from Puente, who had had the foresight to apply for a permit to hold an all-night vigil at the jail.  It turns out that whenever one of their own is in jail, they hold vigil so that no one is released out to an empty street – every member who was arrested comes out to cheers and hugs.  So, with night fall, we boarded our vans and headed over to the jail.  Puente people had already been there since 4 pm.  We lit candles.  We prayed.  We sang. We tried to sing in Spanish.  (Note to self: that is something we have to work on *before* we get to the vigil.)  Word came that the 4^th Ave arrestees would be arraigned at 11 pm, which meant they would be released in the wee hours of the morning.  A group of us stayed all night to greet them as they got out.

Friday dawned, tentative.  Those who had been arrested in front of the Wells Fargo Building would be arraigned at 10 am, which meant they would be out by early afternoon.  Members of UUCP bought food and fed us breakfast/lunch.  Some of us volunteered to go over to the offices of Puente and the lawyers who were helping us to see if there was a way to pitch in.  Others headed to the jail to be there when people got out.  By mid afternoon, all of our people had been released, and we started packing up the base of operations at UUCP to head over to Valley UU in Chandler, AZ.  The plan had called for a potluck dinner, followed by a Taizé worship service and debriefing.  As far as we were concerned, we were done (for this round – we knew there would be others).  At the potluck, we were told that the delicious cheese enchiladas and chicken tamales were made by Puente, in appreciation for our participation.  Once again, I thought, they really understand community.

We had not even finished our worship service when the word came – more people had been arrested.  That part was not too surprising as we knew that our partners intended to keep up the pressure by demonstrating in front of Arpaio’s Tent City prison.  But what sent a shock wave through all of us was word that Salvador Reza, who had already spent the previous night in jail, had been taken in by Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s deputies even though he was across the street and no where near the site of the protest.  I could call that moment a decision point – the kind of moment that determines what kind of people we were going to be by how we respond.  I could call it that but in truth people responded so quickly that there was never any doubt.  We packed up as quickly as we could.  Audra opened up the boxes of yellow “Love” t-shirts, offering a free clean one to anyone going to the vigil.  We loaded our vans and cars, and away we went… to Tent City.  I had wanted to see Arpaio’s notorious prison but did not know it would be under such circumstances.

By the time I got to the vigil across the street from Tent City, it was in full swing.  People lined the street – an intermingling of Puente and Standing on the Side of Love signs.  A drummer stood at the center, with at least one person with a smaller drum accompanying him.  UUs and Puente people took turns leading chants (so that no one got too tired).  Some of us held signs that said “Honk if you oppose SB1070!” and a steady stream of cars flew by, many of them honking.  We were especially gratified whenever a bus would honk.  At least two different people walked up and down the length of the vigilers, holding smoldering sage – blessing & protecting every one of us.  As had happened the previous day, people handed out water continuously.  About two hours or so into the vigil, women started handing out bean burritos and tortas with some kind of meat, and little ice cold cups of lemonade.  It was another thing that they had thought of.  We on the outside supported those inside the jail by keeping vigil, but the vigilers too were supported, ensured that standing outside holding signs and chanting did not mean going hungry or thirsty.

At one point a local leader played the drum while chanting a sacred song.  Instinctively, we gathered round him in concentric circles – as if the drum were the center of our little solar system.  It was a deeply spiritual moment, not only because of the drumming/chanting but because our people – UUs and Puente – were united as one.  The only sour note was when, at the end, a handful of UUs started clapping.  In Euro culture, that is a sign of appreciation, but it also tends to turn the ritual into a “performance.”  The leader admonished us “Don’t clap!  This is sacred.”  Oh well, we are two groups learning how to be together.  There will be small mistakes.  (Note to self: instructions on not clapping should be part of our orientation for future groups of UUs.)

After 10:15 or so, after we had stayed long enough to be featured on the local Fox affiliate, we packed up our vans to move the vigil over to the 4th Ave jail.  Word had come that Sal had been moved there.  Once again, people – both Puente folks and UUs – picked up every bit of trash that we had generated.  When we were done, you would not have been able to tell that dozens of people had just been there.  I climbed into the cool AC of the van.  Such relief.  I was so tired.  I did not know how I would be able to stand for another set of hours, however long, once we got to the 4th Ave location.  But I knew I had to.  With grim determination I got out of the van with my fellow passengers and we walked towards the jail.  We heard music.

Puente folks who had arrived before us had set up a speaker and they were blasting salsa music.  People were dancing on the sidewalk.  My heart filled with joy.  It was a lot easier to dance than it was to stand.  These people knew how to throw a protest! – how to make it so that everyone felt involved and important, so that everyone was nourished physically and spiritually, so that the streets were cleaner for our being there, and so that everything was infused with both reverence and joy.  We danced with crazy happiness, grateful for these last few days.  When a few sheriffs opened the doors to take a look at us, we dance over to greet them and invite them to join us.  (They retreated back into the building.)  That gesture – loving and inviting into community, joyful even in the face of oppression – epitomized to me what our days in Phoenix were all about.  I plan to go back to Phoenix and learn more from our partners, Puente (and others).  But even if I for some reason don’t, I will never forget the lessons learned in Phoenix.  It turns out that I am a “protest” kind of person after all, when it’s done right.  And to do it right, it takes a village to hold a protest.

In 1845, the Republic of Texas was annexed as the 28^th state, and President Polk was eyeing Mexico’s territories west of TX, all the way to the Pacific Ocean.  The annexation of Texas, which Mexico continued to think of as a rebellious territory, caused Mexico to break diplomatic ties with the U.S., but it did not declare war.  Polk needed Mexico to be the first to engage in hostilities so that he could frame his expansionist intentions as defensive.  He sent Gen. Zachary Taylor to Texas to push its southern boundary from the Nueces river (the border that Mexico recognized) 150 miles southward to the Rio Grande (the border that the U.S. wanted).  The ploy worked; in April of 1846, a Mexican detachment attacked a U.S. patrol in the disputed area, killing 16 U.S. solders.  The U.S.-Mexican War was on.

In the meantime, Polk had sent word to U.S.Americans in California, also a Mexico-owned territory, that the U.S. would support any efforts of “independence” against the Mexican government.  When word of the U.S.-Mexico war reached California, U.S. settlers there played “the Texas game” and declared revolution.  (Again, one has to wonder what the Mexicans whose families had already been living in California thought about that.)

Weak from internal instability, the Mexican government was no match for the U.S. military.  By September 1847, U.S. forces occupied Mexico City.  Mexico had no choice but to accede to whatever the U.S. demanded.  The U.S. secured its hold on Texas, established the border at the Rio Grande, and received land that would become all or parts of the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming.  (Again, at the risk of repeating ourselves, there were Mexican families who had lived on these lands for generations before they suddenly became part of the U.S.)

All of the events above are well-known to anyone who has studied U.S. history.  But there is something that is not as widely known – which is that while U.S. forces occupied Mexico City, the Senate debated whether or not to annex ALL of Mexico.  To be clear, there were moral voices against the war and its subsequent land expansion, including but not limited to a then young Rep. Abraham Lincoln of Illinois and former President then Rep. John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts.  But overall, the country was in the grips of “Manifest Destiny” fever, and we might well have annexed Mexico if not for the persuasive argument made by Sen. John C. Calhoun of South Carolina:

…it is without example or precedent, wither to hold Mexico as a province, or to incorporate her into our Union. No example of such a line of policy can be found. We have conquered many of the neighboring tribes of Indians, but we have never thought of holding them in subjection—never of incorporating them into our Union. They have either been left as an independent people amongst us, or been driven into the forests.

I know further, sir, that we have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race—the free white race. To incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sir, is the Government of a white race. The greatest misfortunes of Spanish America are to be traced to the fatal error of placing these colored races on an equality with the white race. That error destroyed the social arrangement which formed the basis of society. The Portuguese and ourselves have escaped—the Portuguese at least to some extent—and we are the only people on this continent which have made revolutions without being followed by anarchy. And yet it is professed and talked about to erect these Mexicans into a Territorial Government, and place them on an equality with the people of the United States. I protest utterly against such a project.

Sir, it is a remarkable fact, that in the whole history of man, as far as my knowledge extends, there is no instance whatever of any civilized colored races being found equal to the establishment of free popular government, although by far the largest portion of the human family is composed of these races. And even in the savage state we scarcely find them anywhere with such government, except it be our noble savages—for noble I will call them. They, for the most part, had free institutions, but they are easily sustained among a savage people. Are we to overlook this fact? Are we to associate with ourselves as equals, companions, and fellow-citizens, the Indians and mixed race of Mexico? Sir, I should consider such a thing as fatal to our institutions.

Sen. Calhoun convinced the U.S. Senate to let Mexico remain an independent nation, not because it was morally wrong to annex countries by conquest, but because Mexicans are Indians and the U.S. could not have Indians as U.S. citizens, as equals to “the free white race.”  (I am sorry to say that John C. Calhoun was a Unitarian, a member of my beloved All Souls Church, in DC.  But I am proud to say, so was John Quincy Adams.)

Why am I writing about this?  There are people who complain that immigrants come here and do not attempt to assimilate into U.S. culture.  That actually isn’t true, but it’s clear from our history that U.S.Americans have done just that, and not only refused to assimilate but then took the land from their host nation…twice.  There are people who have said that undocumented immigrants from Mexico are ignoring the law by crossing the border between our two nations without papers.  It’s clear from our history that Mexicans have lived on this land long before it was called the U.S.  When the U.S. annexed the land (by force) it split extended families apart so that some were now U.S. citizens and some remained Mexican citizens.  There are people who draw a firm distinction between Mexicans and Indians (Native Americans), tolerating the presence of Native Americans but insisting that Mexicans should stay “out” unless they have a piece of paper allowing them “in.”  It’s clear from our history that even Euro-Americans once recognized the commonality between Mexicans and Indians and there are Native people who still recognize that commonality today.  Some of the most vocal protestors of SB1070 are Native Americans, who object to the exclusion of their sisters and brothers down south, and who themselves are the targets of racial profiling.  A recent activist arrested for protesting SB1070 asked a question that has stuck with me, and I hope it will stick with others: “Why are people who are indigenous to this land being checked for status by people who are settlers of this land?”

The news came in the early afternoon (Phoenix time), Judge Susan Bolton had placed a partial injunction on four of the most controversial parts of the law, including the much talked about section that directs law enforcement officials to determine legal status whenever they have “reasonable suspicion” that someone they’ve stopped might be undocumented.  This was undeniably great news.  At least temporarily (Gov Brewer has vowed to appeal), the state of Arizona could not legally use local police officers -sworn to serve and protect – to be agents of terror within the communities.  Many people and organizations, including many in the faith communities, interpreted the ruling as an unqualified victory.  It must have been curious then when several hundred people – including 150 who were there to Stand on the Side of Love – went ahead with the protests on July 29^th anyway.  Is it “loving” to be out on the streets, chanting, waving signs, blocking traffic, chaining oneself to a county jail?  From the time that the ruling was announced to the Thursday dawn worship service to the events as they unfolded throughout the day, we as a group had decided yes.  A core remained committed to civil disobedience and the rest of us to providing support in any capacity that we could.

We did so because the parts of SB1070 that were left intact were those that targeted migrant laborers, some of the most vulnerable within our communities.  SB1070 makes it virtually impossible for them to work in Arizona, to support their families.  How could we rejoice in a partial victory and go home when we knew that was the case?  As the press release from Puente said, “a split decision only serves to split our communities.”  We also knew from talking with the people in Phoenix that what was happening in Arizona was bigger than just SB1070.  In truth, Sheriff Joe Arpaio had been terrorizing Latino and immigrant communities in Maricopa County long before SB1070 was drafted and would continue to do so regardless of the judge’s ruling.  Arpaio himself has repeatedly said this.  The fact that federal enforcement ICE ACCESS programs tap local law enforcement officials to enforce federal immigration laws creates a perception that undocumented immigrants are “criminals” – as if crossing a border without papers in order to work were the same thing as robbery.  This in turn leads to a culture where it is acceptable to target and degrade an entire segment of our society based on nothing more than their unfortunate economic circumstances, or, even worse, the color of their skin.  For as long as federal ICE ACCESS programs such as 287(g) and Secure Communities remain intact, there will be laws such as SB1070, and not just in Arizona.  Around 22 states have either moved or are planning to move to introduce similar anti-immigrant legislation.  We acted on Thursday, July 29^th, because we knew that if we did not then what was happening to communities in Arizona would happen to communities across the country.  The protests were an act of love – love for our neighbors, love for the most vulnerable, and love for our nation and the highest values that we espouse.

So that is why those of you who tuned into the newscasts or read reports online and in print about the protests saw yellow-shirted “Love people” in almost every picture.  But let me tell you some things that you did not necessarily see, because the media did not show it.  The protests on Thursday were multi-racial; we saw people of every skin tone – brown, red, white, black, and yellow.  They were multi-generational – from seasoned Vietnam era boomers (and older) to college students (and younger).  They were multi-faith (although I am proud to say that Unitarian Universalists were over-represented).

What you probably also did not see is how well our Standing on the Side of Love people represented themselves.  Media across the nation have been happy to print pictures of yellow-shirted UUs grimacing while being handcuffed or dragged away.  We are grateful for the coverage.  But we wish that the media had also shown pictures of Unitarian Universalists handing bottles of water to Phoenix city police officers as we all baked under the Arizona sun.  We wish they had shown that for the most part, Phoenix city police reciprocated the kindness, treating our people with compassion and respect even as they were arresting them.  We wish the media could have shown UUs peacefully singing “A Meditation on Breathing” while they sat in the intersection.  Even after they were arrested and subjected to the cruelties of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, our people maintained a faithful composure, providing pastoral care to each other and to others who were in jail for differing reasons.  At one point when Arpaio himself came to inspect the protesters – an attempt at degradation – and one of our UUs responded by telling him that she loved him.   I will not go into details because in the coming days we hope to let people tell their own stories of their experiences (see the Standing on the Side of Love blog), but suffice it to say that the presence of Unitarian Universalists made a positive difference in people’s lives that day.

Those of us who were not arrested kept vigil outside, determined to send spiritual sustenance to those inside.  With folks from Puente and others, we lit candles, we prayed, we sang.  By Friday afternoon, all of our people (including Puente partners) had been released and we UUs gathered at the Valley Unitarian Universalist congregation for fellowship and decompression.  But we hadn’t even finished our worship service when word came that Arpaio had arrested more members of Puente, including their leader, Salvador Reza, for the second time in two days.  Without hesitation, we mobilized to hold vigil again, even those who had spent the previous night in jail.  We started in front of the “Tent City” prison where Sal had been taken, then moved to 4^th Avenue jail when word came that he had been moved.  By the time I got to the latter location, salsa music was blasting from a speaker and people were dancing.  At one point, the doors to the jail opened and some sheriffs came out to watch us.  Our response was to dance over to where they were and invite them to join us.  That response – loving, inviting – even in the face of those who seek to intimidate, was what our time in Phoenix was all about.  I saw it our Unitarian Universalists who came to stand with communities of color to face the Maricopa county sheriffs, and I saw it in our partners in Puente who approached everything they did with a deep spirituality and sense of community.

One last thought: On Friday morning as Audra and I stopped for breakfast, a young man recognized our yellow “Love” t-shirts and came over to thank us.  That was not unusual.  Everywhere we went, UUs reported that local residents recognized our t-shirts and expressed their gratitude for our presence.  What particularly struck me about our conversation with this man is his telling us how people in his community are too afraid to leave the house, even to go buy groceries.  How Arpaio and his deputies would take to cruising up and down the streets, not looking for crime but just looking to intimidate, and in the span of an hour or so a street that had been bustling would be empty, everyone having gone indoors to hide.  Folks living in these communities are citizens, legal residents, and undocumented – they are all terrorized by Sheriff Joe.  President Obama has the power to end the terrorization of migrant, Latino, indigenous communities by eliminating ICE ACCESS programs.  We call on him to take moral leadership to end this crisis.  In the meantime, we will continue to Stand (or sit, as the case may be) on the Side of Love.

Now I live about a block and a half away from Eastern Avenue, which also serves as the northeast border between the District of Columbia and the state of Maryland. In some subtle ways, you can tell that something has changed when you cross Eastern. The houses are slightly larger and more spread out in Chillum, Maryland, and there are streetlights on the Washington side of Eastern Ave, but not on the Maryland side. But in most respects, people cross the border multiple times a day without a second thought – to go to and from work, to buy groceries, to run errands – by foot, by car, by bike, by bus, by rail. The closest grocery store to my house is half a mile up Eastern Ave, on the Maryland side of the street. The nearest drug store is also on the Maryland side of Eastern, a few blocks in the opposite direction. When the need arises, I hop in my car and drive to Maryland to bring my cats to the vet, to shop at Target, to buy pet supplies, to meet friends in Takoma Park or Silver Spring… While I often underestimate the traffic when calculating how much time it will take to get to my destination, I have never had to estimate how long it will take to get through a checkpoint. What would my life be like if, because of a border, I was no longer allowed to go to the grocery store a half mile away from me and instead had to go to one miles away? Or if I had to factor in the time it would take to cross the security checkpoint both ways when running errands? No more spontaneous runs for ice cream, that’s for sure.

I imagine that people who talk about “sealing” the border between the U.S. and Mexico don’t really know what the border looks like. Maybe they imagine a big black line spanning four states like we see on the map – 2500 miles with nothing on either the U.S. or Mexican side for at least a half mile. A “no man’s land.” Maybe they think that on the northern side, everyone is “American,” i.e. – white, and on the Mexican side everyone is Mexican, i.e. – brown, forming two distinct populations. In reality, not only does human activity encroach all the way up to the border but there are towns, cities, Native American reservations, privately-owned ranches, and sometimes even individual buildings that straddle both sides. Between 30 to 40% of Arizona is Latin@/Hispanic. Spanish is spoken in border towns across the U.S. and always has been. Families living there for generations did not immigrate cross the border; rather the border crossed them. They were of that land before that land became of the United States.

Even after the Southwest changed nationalities, people traversed it nearly as freely as when it was all part of Mexico. A Latina friend tells me how her family has lived in the Los Angeles area for generations – some of them U.S. citizens and some Mexican. For a long time, citizenship status mattered so little that they did not bother to consolidate. She tells of how it used to be routine to spend weekends visiting family in Tijuana. They would cross the border going south on Friday evening and cross it again going north on Sunday evening. In this way, births, anniversaries, and funerals were observed together as a family. A Euro American friend who grew up in the border town of El Paso, TX, tells me how she used to cross freely back and forth, noting the obvious difference in wealth between the two sides. She tells of how her first boyfriend in high school was Mexican and they went to his home in Juarez (in Mexico but right next to El Paso) to meet his family. When I visited Nogales, a woman talked of growing up living in Nogales on the Mexican side and going to school each day in Nogales on the U.S. side. On the days when she forgot her pass, the border guard would wave her through anyway, telling her that she wasn’t going to get out of class that easily.

This was the reality of the border long after it became a border. People crossing back and forth with ease – to visit family and friends, to go to school, to buy groceries, to run errands. People mixing freely…until some in the U.S. decided that was a bad thing, built a wall and militarized the border. In reality, if it weren’t for the border guards with the automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. If it weren’t for the 15-foot wall made from recycled landing strips from the Vietnam and Gulf wars. If it weren’t for the obvious economic disparity caused by economic imperialism, you could hop on one foot on one side of the border and then on the other, and not feel a difference between what is called the U.S. and what is called Mexico.

So what does the law actually say?   Not long ago I found this site that contains the full text of the bill with interactive annotations.  (It’s really cool!)

And this is what the pertinent text actually says:

Section 2.b.
For any lawful stop, detention or arrest made by a law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state in the enforcement of any other law or ordinance of a county, city or town of this state where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien and is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person. The person’s immigration status shall be verified with the federal government pursuant to United States Code Section 1373(c).

A law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state may not consider race, color or national origin in implementing the requirements of this subsection except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution.

A person is presumed to not be an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States if the person provides to the law enforcement officer or agency any of the following:
1. A valid Arizona driver license.
2. A valid Arizona nonoperating identification license.
3. A valid tribal enrollment card or other form of tribal identification.
4. If the entity requires proof of legal presence in the United States before issuance, any valid United States federal, state or local government issued identification.

There are several things to point out about this language:

1. “where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien and is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person”

As the notations point out, where there is “reasonable suspicion,” the law directs law enforcement officials to attempt to determine the person’s status, but it does not place limits on what the officer can do while making such an attempt.  That there are no stated restrictions is reason for concern, as it places people at the mercy of the predilections of the officers with whom they happen to come into contact.

2. “A law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state may not consider race, color or national origin in implementing the requirements of this subsection EXCEPT to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution.

From the annotations:

According to the Supreme Court, the U.S. Constitution allows race to be considered in immigration enforcement: “The likelihood that any given person of Mexican ancestry is an alien is high enough to make Mexican appearance a relevant factor.” United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 886… See More-87 (1975).

The Arizona Supreme Court agrees that “enforcement of immigration laws often involves a relevant consideration of ethnic factors.” State v. Graciano, 653 P.2d 683, 687 n.7 (Ariz. 1982) (citing State v. Becerra, 534 P.2d 743 (1975)).

The author of the annotations goes on to say that if they had really wanted to prohibit racial profiling they would not have added the “except” clause.  As it is written, what the law basically says is go ahead and harass people based on their skin color and we’ll leave it up to the courts to decide, on a case by case basis, whether or not what was done exceeded what is allowed in the Constitution.

3. “A person is presumed to not be an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States if the person provides to the law enforcement officer or agency any of the following:… IF the entity requires proof of legal presence in the United States before issuance, any valid United States federal, state or local government issued identification.”

On a different site, the author argues that since several states do not require proof of legal residence before issuing a drivers license,  if you are from one of those states, your license is not sufficient to prove your legal status.  I was unable to find a list of states and whether they require proof of legal residence before issuing licenses, but it seems like this would be a serious concern for non-Arizonan Latin@s/Hispanics traveling in the state.

Based on the language within the law, it seems safe to say that not only does SB1070 promote racial profiling but there are other civil rights concerns as well.