Road Scholar: Calexico

So, I'm still trying to figure out the best way to manage journaling on the road. Clearly, finding internet access and power is going to be key. But even once I do, I find myself having a difficult time figuring out what the tone of my posts should be... there's lots to say, but which story is important? Espcially, like, a week into this journey (the time lag on the date of this post is significant), and we've covered a lot of ground, and I don't always have time to journal before we've gone further on. And then there's the actual stories that we're pursuing, which don't mesh well with the more personal accounts of the journey.

My solution for now is to have several kinds of posts. "Road Scholar" posts will be more personal and first person, talking about the journey itself, and may not be that timely, but will generally be geographically oriented, or refer to specific people or events. "Mediacracy" posts will mostly be about specific radio stations that we visit. Other posts will be more journalistic, sort of editorals or opinion pieces. And as soon as I can figure it out, we'll have the audio up, which will be bona fide news stories. Or not.

Calexico: After San Diego, our entourage spent the night of Sept 17th in this mid sized border town, with Mexicali on the other side. We attended a rally and march which featured a hundred people on both sides of the border, meeting at that metal wall, and pounding on both sides, even climbing up the fence and straddling it 20 feet up. Volleyball over the border. The border patrol is very present, but actually kind of nice in this town.

A funny thing about the "delete the border" event: half of the people weren't from the area. And even though their ideas and organizing techniques were correct, in my estimation, their lack of connection to the people in the area caused some problems which I believe were unnecessary.

For instance: after the march, we were all gathered in the park. The mayor of Calexico, reportedly, is so supportive of the anti-vigilante camp that he waived the permitting process to allow the gathering to take place on short notice. Suddenly, there's a lot of commotion "let him go, let him go!" and a number of police are gathering facing a group of activists. While it was nowhere near out of hand, the group was definitely getting agitated over a young kid who'd been pulled out of the park bathroom and detained for graffiti (I didn't see any graffiti in the bathroom myself). And the police, became numerous - about 20 of them lined up.

We eventually heard that the kid, a local, was let go. His sister was there, and she was visibly upset that this was going down. Activists were calling the brown-skinned police officers traitors. What's uncomfortable about this, is that people I spoke to who are locals don't find much fault with their police force or border patrol. Now, I can't weigh in myself.. perhaps these informants of mine were there to make us feel like the cops were good and just go away. But that's the point: when we move into another community to agitate for change "for them" - or, at their request.. we need to make connections in the community first.. otherwise, we might just be another group of know-it-alls moving in and imposing our vision on local people.

Another example: later in the evening, planning for actions was going on, and the dominant mood was to group up, get organized, and go out and find cazainmigrantes. Organizing non-hierarchical groups is always hard, and models like the "affinity group" system.. where people stay in small groups that they trust, and representatives for those groups come together and figure out a plan of action that keeps everyone in their comfort zone. It's a pretty good model, and prevents people from feeling subject to the tyranny of the majority.. which doesn't work anyway, because in a decentralized model, if four friends don't want to do action X, they just won't.

A wonderful part of this event was that the activists and radicals from out of town were in solidarity with the locals. But the locals were not radicals, for the most part.. they're people who have had enough of the fear that their family members will be hunted by white racists.

When it came time to make a decision, most of the locals wanted to go out to a place called Jacumba.. word was that a small group of vigilantes were harrassing folks in that area. Many of us unacquainted with the scene were like, let's go! But the out of towners (correctly, in my opinion) didn't want to just see the whole group commandeered to drive 20 miles away, possibly leaving Calexico open to an invasion of migrant hunters.

So, the very dedicated and competent facilitators from out of town, who had done a lot of planning, were trying to get the group to agree to the affinity group model, so we could go do something in a coordinated way. One of the locals became frustrated with this, and proposed to put the matter to a vote - if majority says "yea", we all go to Jacumba. Admittedly, this was kind of a naive proposition. And the facilitators did a good job trying to explain: if a group of people wanted to go to Jacumba, they are an affinity group, they should go - and can't you just wait a few more minutes so you'll know what everyone else is doing? But eventually, the locals just felt stalled, so they left; and the out-of-towners felt like the locals weren't acknowledging the significant planning that had already gone on.

In the end, nothing happened in Jacumba, and nothing happened in Calexico, so I guess we all made the right choices. It seems to me that the lesson is to make sure you're coordinating your planning with a local when getting together an out of town action group. Work like this requires trust more than truth - even if you're "right", coming into an area and helping people without taking into consideration how they want to be helped can come close to imposing your vision. And haven't we had enough of that?