Monday, March 26, 2007

Spring is a blushing schoolgirl in Washington, DC.


I.
Everything is going according to my plan. I am in Washington, DC to wait out the dregs of winter before I head on to Virginian Appalachia. And it's spring...sugar plum fairy, cotton candied, luscious blossoming pink euphoria...yum. Spring in this part of the country is the best way to experience the Earth in transition. And suddenly we're filling our pockets with it, bringing it home on bicycles, perched on porches waving to each other, sitting on sidewalk curbs admiring bright dresses. Grass is growing in between our toes in the swampland.

Quite honestly, I had planned to focus the majority of my trip away from the major cities, only passing through on my way to smaller towns. This is because of the sort of connection and community that I believe can be found in these places. Bearing this in mind, DC completely took me by surprise.

Granted, this middle ground that sits between the constipated, suit tails of the North and the southern-fried good mornings of our neighbor states makes us walk the color line to the nearest Metro and beyond. This land of the "tion"'s- gentrification, segregation, pollination, nation. The land that inspired the poet Langston Hughes to write about his neighbors and among this, "Hang yourself, poet, in your own words. Otherwise, you are dead." The land that MLK Jr. fought for, knew would be stuck in compromise. This city that says it loud, greets us in the morning after our coffee to ask if we are still doing our jobs, still paying attention? to race and class. It yells at us from construction sites and museum tours, "Who am I to you?"

In one week I have: danced merengue with a young Salvadoran man; sought and found refuge as a minority at Gallaudet University, the very politically active University of the Deaf; dined alone in a small Ethiopian restaurant where I was the only non-Ethiopian and female patron (I loved it- men in fancy hats and suits, I felt like there should have been a card game or something happening in the back); grooved to some Latin jazz I was well-equipped to place from my days singing salsa; written poetry amongst Belgians and their tasty beers; and discussed the politics of southern speech countless times. It's amazing what being female and alone brings on. Every place I have stopped I have a dozen new friends to count on. I am thoroughly addicted to community.

I have been very impressed with the communities I have found in my search here. Needing to get my hands dirty (and frankly, to stop sleeping in...every once in a while I regress to the work addiction thing) and with a suggestion from my helpful former boss, I contacted the DC Central Kitchen to do some volunteer work. My focus is Latinos blah, blah, blah, but I wanted to witness the work done with the homeless communities here.

The DC Central Kitchen is three things: a culinary arts training program, a catering business, and a street outreach program. They serve many businesses around town, in addition to providing meals for the homeless population, who unlike folks in Portland, are only guaranteed a place to sleep a couple of times a week. They are housed in the bottom basement of this really large building with shelter beds in it. Their motto is "feeding the soul of the city" which I loved immediately because this community certainly has soul.

I started by volunteering in the kitchen, gently being ordered around by Miss Dot, a wonderful older, black woman whose severity in her culinary guidance is perfectly matched with her ability to be teased and to laugh at herself. She shares my grandmother's name, a thing we both enjoyed discussing. I spent three whole hours chopping carrots and felt transformed; I needed a little Zen in my travel routine. I worked next to one of the program's students, who got in trouble quickly with Miss Dot when she clearly needed a smoke break and starting pronouncing her exhaustion by letting the knife come down hard on the cutting board. In a moment of shared sisterhood, she leaned over to me and completely caught me off guard when she asked,"You ever been with a black man?" We avoided Miss Dot's gaze as we discussed our shared "cultural experiences". My new friend talked quickly about her life in her transitional home in DC but when I asked her about home in the Virginia countryside she was all bright smiles and talking about picking berries and slaughtering chickens. Amazed, I listened while she excitedly detailed wringing a chicken's neck. Uh-huh.

I'm going to say it right now: I am not a museum person. Don't expect me to be writing about too many museums on this trip. I think they are great, don't get me wrong, but not while there are so many people to get to know. I can be totally satisfied talking to the guy at the information desk. My childhood was all about engaging as many people as possible in my neighborhood in all my schemes: making mint tea bags to market to our block, creating whole new societies in my clubhouse. Nothing has changed, except now I am at their mercy. I want to be in their club.

So when I was invited to do street outreach at some of the most marginalized parts of the city, I jumped at the chance. What a perfect way to get to know DC. And I didn't even have to beg to be included, I was there to do a job: hand out breakfast sandwiches in parking lots and occasionally pour sugar for coffee so that the outreach worker could do her job of talking to folks about their basic needs. She explained to me that more than anything we are there to be a part of their community, provide connection. So I shake some hands, pass out plenty of smiles (unlike in Portland, when you say, "Good morning", nobody says, "What's so good about it?") and notice that this community is similar in what they need and hope except for some major differences: 1. Almost all of the street folk coming to this mobile breakfast unit are black. We went into three of the most marginalized areas of the city and met with three different groups of people but they varied little with race. 2. Drugs are everywhere. The last neighborhood we went into was one of biggest suppliers of heroin in the city. Consequently, many of the folks we were serving came up to the table with vacant stares, hallowed cheekbones, the kind of physical strain that is drug addiction. And if we looked out beyond our two tables, we would have seen people shooting up, deals being made. This scene truly scares me. I think of one of the clients I have worked with in Maine during his struggle with this drug and think: please don't let this happen in my city.

This last neighborhood also had the most beautiful mosaics I have seen in DC. The symbolism is not lost on me: this is definitely a community piecing together shards of hope and survival, rearranging what has been broken.

This is a wonderful program. I have watched the street outreach worker treat us all with so much dignity.

The other program I have been fortunate to visit and check out here is the Center for Community Change. They are a Washington-based political organizing think-tank and support for grassroots orgs around the States. And as large as they are, they were great to give me a face-to-face about the organizing they are currently doing. It keeps the organizing fire within me well-kindled.

And, of course I could not help but notice the Latino presence all around me. Not help but notice each time I unwillingly had to cross the street to accommodate the construction that DC is full of and hear the Spanish following me. Or see the Virgencita encased in glass on someone's lawn. But my experience here was such a mixture of all of the many racial and economic realities at the center of our country.

II.
Something is jumping around inside of me. As I meditate I stir into craziness. I walk around in circles feeling euphoric. Could this be happiness? Why haven't I felt this way in so long? Is this the tickle in my belly? If by nothing else, can I be fertilized by this feeling? I sure hope so.

I finally got used to the noise of this big city. When I first arrived my friend Laurie suggested that I would be offended yet again by all the catcalling from the pockets of men here. I calmly reminded her that as we had both lived in Bolivia for some time, I was quite familiar with this challenge and how to handle it. I was quite wrong. Because not only was it loud and much more pervasive than I had remembered, but there is an element to this that doesn't necessarily feel safe in a big city.

So now I am headed to the mountains and back to the experience of being completely by myself again so I make sense of noisy rumblings in my head and heart.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Equinox in Providence: Balancing Revolution and Beer...

I.
Every good revolution story at some point involves a wild car ride with cheap beer. This is how Alana and I found ourselves my last weekend in Providence: riding in a car in the middle of a snowstorm and drinking Heineken on our way to a dance club. A perfect scenario for a foreign country...except that this is the States, and our driver was a young Guatemalan man without papers. And he now had at least two open bottles of beer in his car. And in the back of my mind I was thinking, please don't let them find a reason to stop us. I would never have invited myself into such a situation but I don't often refuse a beer with new and trusted friends. (Don't worry...he didn't drink while driving).

And let's face it...there is really no other way to celebrate solidarity. I remember being in Bolivia in political marches and leaving late afternoon to go to a large hall and drink with friends, stained black with tear gas residue, smoke and sweat. But this is the States! And we know he could be arrested...in fact, I just lost a friend to a similar fate...deported home after years in the States.

But suddenly I am back in my therapist's office and she is asking me...Sarah, what makes you think you can control what happens if you flick the light switch on and off ten times? She is, of course, talking about my insistent anxiety spells. But I thought about it this week in Providence as I sat with the desire to race off and volunteer in New Bedford, or go try to save my friend in New York City from deportation, etc. How much does that speak to my white privilege, trying to save my friends? Of course, we all want to be careful, but these are their choices.

II.

Nearly one week ago, I rode the bus with ten other people to New Bedford, site of the immigration raids. I think we all felt strangely out of place, similar to a middle school field trip with another class, everyone kind of looking each other up and down in anticipation of introductions. I almost wanted to ask if anyone knew any songs for the bus. There were Salvadorans (one man with his young son), Hondurans, Guatemalans and two of us US-born. We were all traveling from Providence to New Bedford to show our support to the community there.


We started our pilgrimage with a blessing from the local priest and actually broke bread and passed it around the bus. I was traveling with my Honduran friend, Naún, from Portland, who had come down to go dancing with Alana and me. Naún and I decided on our way home, because we were so hungry and tired from the rally that that was the best bread we ever tasted.

We were very lucky to get a seat in the auditorium there, and later we saw that there were at least fifty people waiting in the outside lobby for other participants to leave so they could be seated. The turnout was amazing; people came from all over Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The rally was run by the primarily Guatemalan community in NB, so we were constantly motivated by the Maya-Quiche dance and prayer. I felt impassioned by the same native expressions I share with pagans in the States and Bolivians in the Andes: blessings to the four directions, consideration of the elements.

One man gave his testimony of that day. His voice broke as he spoke first to the confusion, then his grief at having lost his life partner and being faced with caring for their child alone. He asked the audience how they would feel if they had to leave their child. The Salvadoran man who had come with us held his young son close and wiped at his eyes while the boy looked up and wondered at the sudden affection.

During the rally, the vast majority of organizers, families and professionals were Latinos. Only a small handful were actually citizens, and an even smaller handful of these Caucasian citizens were eventually escorted out because they were shouting over the speakers in protest. It took every ounce of my strength not to get up and confront them, citizen to citizen. This community had seen too much grief. But I was only one voice among many who spoke together that day. So I sat on my anger and let it compost.


III.

This is what it’s like to prepare with a friend you love for the possibility of their deportation:

We sit in his room and share anger and loss equally. We talk about what it was like when he left his country for New York.
-How did you feel when you first arrived?
-A little lost, sad, it was strange, you know.
-But you made it. And how do you think you’ll feel back in your country?
-Lost, sad…weird.
-But you will make it. It will take time. I will do whatever you need.

The lawyer’s fees, the paper trail, the official stamps and envelopes…it all comes down to this moment. We talk about what will happen if they deny his application. They may arrest him, handcuff him and take him away. He is strong about this. I am not.

-You know you are not a criminal, right?
-I know.

One of my friends from Providence described deportation as a death sentence for a family…a long, slow economic death. Sometimes the only opportunity a family has is this one. I had been reading a book my friend Monica lent me, Targeted, all about the enterprise of deportation. It sort of became my Bible for the two days I had it. I heard that Halliburton now has a contract to build more detention centers. At least someone’s making money, right?

Is there no white van (people are initially deported in white vans) I can chain my body to? Is there no one to hear our story? It feels a little like we are hoping for a last-minute phone call to save his life from this long sentence. New York outside my subway train of thought is busy and self-important. I would do anything for my friend in this moment; I feel so powerless in a city so powerful. My hand is on the switch, but I can’t make anything happen.

IV.

Back in Providence, there was one more piece of the story to complete. For those of you who know me well, you know I keep the Equinox and the Solstice, etc.

I had been sitting with all these questions of myself and my trip. I wondered about this weight I was carrying…weight of the world, the sadness I felt in my home community, expectations of myself and my work. Is this what the journey is about…letting go of this big rock of dusty old debris? Or is it about the carrying…building strong muscles on the road to continue carrying it all?

Equinox is a beautiful little sister to Solstice. I usually identify with Solstice and it’s time of the year because it is about revolution- passion and heat, or dark depths of cold and ice. But I realized that Equinox was now my gift….because it is about balancing, equal time between the seasons, transition and gentle growth or passing. We can’t be in a constant state of revolution. Once in a while we need cheap beer in the backseat of someone’s car.

Alana and I purchased cheap ceramic flower pots at the Job Lot in Providence and sat with our thoughts and chalked it all down on the terra cotta inside. As I reflected on the Equinox, I realized that there was not one single thing at the moment that I wanted to get rid of. I wanted to be grateful for the lessons, the struggle, time to put two hands on my teacup and think. For the weeding I did in Mary’s garden, for the skeletal remains of its plant leaves that made delicate winter lace, for the harvest in reverse, the uncovering of a luscious spread of browned stalks and rich dirt. Alana and I chose our war cry and smashed our pots on the banks of a river there. I offered all those pieces of my year to be mosaiced into some new beginning.

And so I cut my hair…inches and inches of it. I got it cut in a little Mexican place in Yonkers, NY, where the woman was very aggrieved at having to cut such long blonde hair. But how could I hold on to this physical weight when I wanted to keep flying?


This is how I arrived to Washington DC- with very short hair and spring on my mind.




Note: If you are interested in helping the community in New Bedford to recover from the immigration raids, there is still work to do! You can contact the Catholic Relief Services at 508-997-7337, or the Community Economic Development Center at 508-979-4684. They are looking in particular for bilingual people to help accompany people or work with the relief agencies. They are also still looking for donations. All families are sacred!

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

¡Presente! Immigrant voices are loud and clear in Providence, Rhode Island!




I.

This next part is a love story. It's packed with all of the passion, romance, and adoration we entertain. It's the story of how enamoured I feel about the community of young immigrant activists I have found in Providence, RI.

They call Providence a "minority, majority" city. The immigrant population here is mostly Central American, Bolivian, Mexican, Dominican, and West African. And yet, this minority is no majority in the eyes of Congress: there are 24 anti-immigrant proposals up for a vote, and only three pro-immigrant ones. Scary, but a good introduction for this next part.

When I last wrote, I was flouncing around in that bakery, which, according to various activists I have met, is actually a pretty fair representation of the relationship between the business and immigrant communities in Providence. So it was a good place to start.

Thanks to Julian, one of my temporary housemates at Mary's, I have been able to go a little bit further. Julian introduced me to Monica, a firecracker of a young woman who is an organizer, a student and a supportive collaborator for many of the immigrant voices you will hear. I have watched her give backup to other organizers and long for my supportive role back home.

Monica works for English for Action, Ingles en Accion. When I visited the office last week, I jotted down the following quote from Pedagogy for the Oppressed, featured on the brightly colored wall:

"Students should be allowed to negotiate learning outcomes to cooperate with teachers and other learners in a process of discovery to engage in critical thinking and relate everything they do in school to their reality outside the classroom."

-Paulo Friere

Students take English classes in the evenings and simultaneously participate in the Action Committee. An activity referring to fear and the police hangs on the wall, providing a visual for the kind of work done here. Students learn English, and how to be organizers because the program supports the idea that teaching English for survival is not where the process should end. I arrived at their office in West Providence, on my bike with a flat tire and no bikelight (and for the love of God, there are no street signs but plenty of street glass in Providence!) into a darkened, sketchy old warehouse area. The deserted parking lot betrayed the warmth to be found inside, where community leaders, students and others were gathered to participate in a discussion with a community leader from Chiapas. People were also there to talk strategy about the New Bedford raids.

Now here's a story for you all. Have you heard the one about the New Bedford raids yet? In a factory in New Bedford, Mass, hundreds of people go to work daily for less than any of us would want to be making. They work long hours (and no benefits!), leaving their families, small children included, so that they can afford to live. What are they manufacturing, you ask? Material for army gear, backpacks, equipment, etc. in camouflage....i.e. the necessary evils so our soldiers may be well equipped to go after other brown people. Does the government appreciate the work they are doing for our war efforts? Well, they send a Latino ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agent to infiltrate the factory. He is employed for several weeks, becomes friendly with the workers, even going to dinner at their houses. They trust him. Then he turns them in. We are talking about a community who already lives in fear...how will they begin to repair their trust?

The big mistake they make...they take many mothers into custody, and the press grabs ahold of the drama this creates. The images of children crying for their mothers adds to our hope of conveying what a humanitarian crisis this war on immigants is. Their crime? Doing the best they could to feed their family.


The news from New Bedford turned on the pressure for Providence activists. They are scared this could happen in their community. They are not ready. So this week they got ready. Signs were made that stated, IMMIGRATION RAIDS, NOT IN OUR COMMUNITY. What has happened in many communities could happen here. When immigration comes into town, good people get scared, they hide, and families and communities are broken up. In Portland, Maine, we know what this is about. It happened to us two years ago. And we weren't ready.

I sat around the table two days later with the same activists. The question was whether or not to have a press conference at the ICE office downtown, with tons of exposure. One woman gets so excited she talks about urinating on the headquarters. (Isn't it unfortunate we don't have one in Portland?) Then one man speaks up and talks about how concerned he is because he wants to protest at the site, more than anything, because of the fear immigration provokes. He states, "The fear is greater than we are". The whole room hushes its enthusiasm and the same woman proclaims, "oh yes, we should not speak until we hear from non-citizens".

They have so much to lose. Someone recently told me that the price to pay to get a coyote to take you across the border into the States is now 5000 dollars US from Guatemala. And that doesn't guarantee that you make it, or that you won't be tortured, robbed, raped, or killed. So I was amazed and impressed when we all went around the table to voice our feelings and every person who is not yet documented voted to show their face at the immigration office. One young man had said, "If I am not here to fight with you tomorrow, keep fighting for our rights." And when he said "our" he meant OUR rights, all of us. We are all effected. We should all be asking NOW, "What are our collective civil /human rights?"

So we gathered, shouted, held signs. Sure there are definite structural problems, and bickering among community organizations. That was our story in Portland, it is their story in Providence. It happens when people who like to fight for justice also like the power that brings and people with priviledge step in and make too many decisions, further oppressing the people they want to help. Ah! But that is not the story I want to tell. I want to tell you how these immigrant bodies with their amazing minds and hearts crossed over that border and crossed over their fears to become visible. How they stood with signs over their faces and slowly, with more confidence and numbers, took the signs down. This is one great story of leaders in our country's current civil rights movement.

II.

Sometimes an unlikely hero emerges to be your guide through the story. He may not appear to be a Yoda, but he is wise and his guidance carries you through. This is how I feel about G.

When I met G, the first thing I noticed was that he hugged me. Since he is a Guatemalan man about my stature and age, I expected him to uphold tradition and kiss me formally on the cheek. But G will tell you that he admires much about this culture, incuding nice, big bearhugs.

Coincidentally, G works at the bakery I mentioned in my last entry. He works long hours, and often isn't able to get to his English classes on time. He sort of has benefits, when the owner is paying attention. Asserting himself with his supervisor means that he may be able to get off a little bit earlier than the day before.

When he lived in Guatemala, G was a truck driver. He left for Providence because he wasn't making enough money, and someone he knew through a family member was here to orientate him. It's been four years and he still remembers making that walk through the desert. We were on a windy street corner coming back from the press conference, cheeks brushed by chill, as he started talking about the delirious heat of that environment. "I remember a time when I was as tired as I am now, when I was in the desert, I was so tired I wasn't sure I was going to make it. I remember I was holding onto the man in front of me, and we were walking through the desert, each person stumbling through the cactus and rock in the darkness together, like a chain of people. And it was so dark I said to the person in front of me, I said, don't leave me."
Together those ten people made it out of the desert, even though they had previously had to leave a man behind.

G told me that you can't make it if you don't have any survival skills. He quickly learned how to talk like a Mexican, and trick his thieving guides into giving him money for food. He also talked about making tough decisions, like having to get off a hitchhiked ride and fork over most of his money to save a woman's life.

I told him about the work I am doing on this trip, looking at immigration and trauma. We looked at the map together, in amazement of how much land and work there is out there. I thought about my trip to the border and the images of altars and precious human refuge in artistic array in the desert and asked him if there was one incident or image that reminded him of this journey. Among a few, he mentioned that he remembers one night when he and two friends didn't have much space to sleep, travelling in a truck, and they huddled together, three men under one blanket. After discussing their fear that they might not make it, one of them stated that he would always remember the others. They slept in this embrace.

He asked me what I thought of his organization, and I shared some of what Portland went through in our organizing in the Latino community. I told him I thought he ought to keep making chains in Providence, working on uniting all these various groups to step out of the desert together.

People heal their trauma through many types of expressive, hands-on therapies...here we can classify community action as therapy. People that travel here by crossing the border experience such rupture with the community they are from, and create new communities where they end up. Many immigrants who don't find solid communities of the same language, traditions, or compassion live double lives in the US. They struggle with substance use, partners and employers. They leave behind children, only to father or mother others in their new home. They have such a hard time building new chains, trusting others, feeling like they don't have to be on the run. G confirmed this with his own story of his first two years here, when he had a hard time trusting people. Then he found his voice.

These are the stories I want to tell, to continue to find hope and healing in our communities. Many of us are making the trip to New Bedford this weekend. The New Bedford folks need supplies now: interpreters, financial resources and babysitters. Soon they will begin to rebuild their trust.

Monday, March 5, 2007

The thing about mending bird's wings....



I.
...is that they have to learn how to fly again. And that is exactly why I have come to Providence: to learn how to pick up more than my heavy bag for the road.

So I have been flapping my wings a bit for awhile now, trying to get started. We're still in the middle of winter, and I'm still in the Northeast, and I was just released from my home a little while back. So I wasn't exactly prepared for the lifestyle shock I would experience in RI. I'm looking for healing solutions to our immigration crisis, but I'm also out here to heal my own heart. And I've called on the gods of travel to watch over me and deliver me from the rat race that life can become.

I know that when I travel for long periods of time, just as in any major life change, I am prepared to shed layers. There are the obvious changes like...I guess I didn't need to bring all those earrings with me...or being prepared for the diversity in bathrooms one can expect on the road (that's using the "strength's perspective", Sarah). But there's also a more profound, metaphysical transformation that takes place. We call it "culture shock" when we travel abroad, stuffing ourselves into an airplane, soon to be transported into a different time zone, speak a different language, eat different food. We are thrown into our secret telefone booth, to slip into our traveling superhero self with an R for road warrior upon our breast. I have done this when I've crossed over to Bolivia, France, Nicaragua and-especially- Cuba.

So how could I have known this transformation would be so potent in my own country? I arrived in RI with more questions than answers about my whole existence. I just realized I couldn't go home- not yet- and how radical the road ahead might be...if I let it. But learning to fly is a tremendously huge, wonderful and lonely process. At thirty, I am completely looking at my culture with all it's expectations of me in the face and telling it off. And still, everyone around me gets up and goes to their regular jobs, their family lives, etc. And the truth is that I long for a warm bed, two steady dogs, cups of loose leaf tea and a good CD. But I also want to fly...

It reminds me of the first month I lived in the tiny town of Villa Rivero, in Bolivia. I never slept so much, because the silence was exhausting. It was exhausting because silence that comes from the quietest corners of our world often allows for the noise in our brains to drown us. We remember all the expectations, all the sorrow we still have. Sometimes dragging around this backpack of clothes is easier than all the me-luggage I got.

So I will live here for three weeks, and learn how to love the traveller I am and the road I seek. I will ask and ask and ask, and get over my first few stumbling sentences, to speak this language.

II.

So how do my Latino brothers and sisters find community and mend their wings from the road in Providence, RI? I wondered. My first step towards documenting immigrant concerns here led me to a bakery in the downtown area, stuffing my face with hot, steaming fresh bread. I devoured this bread, and the chance to bathe in a little indoor sunlight when I set out to interview a few folks about the hiring process at the bakery. I had heard they hire a lot of Central American workers, who settle in Boston, and that they appear to be fairly happy at this job. I wanted to ask how they might have experienced the last year of immigration "reform", and whether they participated in the marches for positive legislation. I had read that on the day of the greatest march, of "a day without immigrants" fame, only 500 people turned out.

Unfortunately the bakery occupies a certain niche in the community, and an outsider strolling in to buy bread with her bike helmet and big smile was not convincing enough to earn much time or interest there. But I did sit with my bread and nourish some ideas about what it might mean to be employed here if you were Latino. As lunch meetings took place, and University students on study breaks came in for sandwiches, I noticed that the only Latinos I had seen had come from the back of the bakery, and were carrying bags of flour, or trash out to the back lot. Now this may not appear fair to discuss. Don't people like to work with people who speak their own language? How do you know they aren't interacting with other people in the back room? you might ask. But doesn't invisibility say a lot? How do we know what hiring practices are like and what opportunities people are given (i.e. access to language classes) if we can't even see the faces of the people making our food? Okay, I know, I am forming some conclusions on my own here, but this is just the beginning of my tour of Providence. All I know is that in a city where many Latino immigrants settle, I have walked and driven around the center, and still haven't seen many people. And first impressions say a lot.


Back in Boston, I again visited the St. Francis House for the homeless community and spoke with the whole "Latino team". They offer on-site access to immigration counseling, psychiatry, and substance abuse services. They work with mostly men, who make up one third of the population at the center, similar to the numbers I began to see in the homeless community in Portland. We talked about the reasons that people go back and forth between Boston and Portland. The Latino team mentioned that they see many people going to Portland to work in the seafood packing plants and returning to Boston to recuperate from the cold conditions in the factory, often seeking medical attention from their "jornadas de trabajo" (work-related journey). At the St. Francis House, they offer a on-site substance use treatment model that also prepares people for work.

I also spoke with Dr. Jose Hidalgo, who I was informed is the "expert on trauma and Latinos" in the Boston area. He said he has led support groups for victims of trafficking in the past, but stated that the city still needs work in making the connection between trauma work and immigrants. He did encourage me to explore whether I wanted to focus on trauma related to immigrants who had been trafficked versus those who are here undocumented. My feeling regarding employment and immigration is that whether someone has been smuggled or trafficked, they can both have experienced horrific amounts of violence.

III.

And now a word about my sponsors...I want to commend the women who are hosting me for being a part of my travelling community.

My friend Alana is poetry in motion. It's 9 o'clock in the morning and she's up making tea and obviously thinking about how ripe that mango in the fruit bowl is getting. The sun rises in her living room across the rug where her knitting needles lie, just as it will later on out west on the beads of red rock, where her spirit soars. She gets on her bike and is summer heat in the winter, pushing past me and shouting curses in Spanish. Amazon woman, she pulls up her long skirts and kicks up the dirt. She is the peace of the teacup in my hands or the stomping of the ocean's fury in my ears. She spills wine in ritual and just for the hell of it.


I went biking with Lady A this past weekend. We biked out of this unkind traffic for a good thirty miles on our bikes, which are really our superheromobiles just disguised as bikes. I had borrowed mine from my gracious host Mary, and when I brought it into the bike shop for air the guy simply said, "umm...you do know this bike might fall apart at any point, right?" Of course, it didn't. It was made by Mary.

Mary and her household are hosting me right now; I offered to do a workshare to help them with house renovations for a built-in health clinic. The thing I love about the house is that they live sustainably...i.e. compost, composting toilet, garden out back which supplies the household, lots of great dumpster diving going on. And there are two great dogs. The thing I love about Mary is that she is my age and about to buy her own house and start a business. She's an herbalist who is committed to sharing alternative medicine and good food with her community. I am just glad I can offer my two hands to the household while I am here.

My guitar, meanwhile, lies waiting while I explore our next venue.