When a woman sings the blues....

How does North Carolina taste to me y'all?
Mmm..sweet tea and it's refined sugar-coated goodness,
double chocolate milkshakes,
my tongue buzzing from the Junebugs in the porchlight,
coleslaw and yams and the sweet,
thick waft of cigar in a club downtown.
Heat.
The salt off the back of my wrist as I swipe sweat off my upper brow.
Buttery grits and collard greens and smoky rain near the train station.
Spring onions and barbecue and the
faintest vibration of a slide guitar on a Saturday night.
It all tastes like the blues to me.

Cool John Ferguson

Because the nature of my trip thus far has been really organic and fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, I have stumbled into some pretty great scenes. I had many reasons for coming to North Carolina, including the blues, but somehow I had forgotten just what an impact the Piedmont blues and musicians from this area have had on my life. And here I am, right in the middle of it all.

North Carolina is made up of three zones: the mountains, the Piedmont, and the coast. The Piedmont is the flatter area before you hit the coast and, like Appalachia, it has it's own culture and music. It is home to the Piedmont blues, and thanks to Music Maker in Durham, a relief organization for little-known blues musicians escaping poverty, a white girl from Maine was introduced to the sounds and strains of great guitarists such as Etta Baker.

I can't predict the future, but I can say that 29 years of age was hopefully the worst it's ever gonna get. I was in such a dark cycle of events that my sadness preceded me. I would walk into a room, and people would arrange their words. On the outside, I looked like a wreck. But really, I was just emerging and one way I measured this was through the music I learned to play. The blues could handle my intensity. Because playing the blues is about recognizing the power, the joy in sadness. Sadness and joy. Birth and death. Part of the same circle. What slapped me down into despair also gave me muscles to get up. Whose knows this better than a blues musician.

So I was a little starstruck when I got to hang out with greats such as Cool John Ferguson, Captain Luke, and others. I sang with a buddy of mine, Dr. Charlie Thompson, to a song he wrote for an event at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke. And because I got to sing, it earned me a better rep to be able to sit next to Captain Luke and hear his stories.

Slowhand Charlie and Captain Luke

The majority of the blues musicians that Music Maker features are older than seventy. And this is something I also love about the blues...I could be in my nineties sitting on my porch all day long and playing my electric guitar.

Men of the blues

Captain Luke is 87, a chain smoker, and has a voice that drops into the crowd like blackstrap molasses. You feel just like you're in his living room and all of a sudden he starts singing. Like being with your grandfather who just happens to be a big rock star.

Two fans

In Durham, North Carolina, I can just pop down the road to a place called the All People's Grill, a mom and pop dive serving up soul food until late on rickety tables. And almost as if it were just a legend, some nights they may be closed and completely abandoned while others, you may be just in time to hear Cool John bust one out for all of us.

Towards a new Freedom Summer: Exploring race, class and media in North Carolina's civil rights movement

What a wave (literally, in some places) of intense energy passing through the East. Last month I watched reports of my home state in the throes of a Northeaster and heard stories of cars being sucked into the ocean in an environment I truly love and miss. In North Carolina we have all felt the surf of humanity at its worst: violence at Virginia Tech, the murder of an important and much loved activist in Mexico. It's always hard to be away from home while the people you love are in the middle of a bad storm, unless you are also in the middle of one.

Every time I walk into town I see the above image. It is a relic that speaks to the legacy of labor and power in Durham, North Carolina. The old tobacco warehouse was once the financial backbone of a downtown now rebuilding, a small city shaking off a bad rep and evoking an era when it was great.

I longed to come to North Carolina ever since I began to work with Mexican clients who spoke of going back to "Norte" to visit family and friends or to look for work. So many people discover North Carolina along the route to the true "Norte", back to Maine and Massachusetts. If you ask immigrants in this state why they decided to come to North Carolina, many will answer that they have an uncle, a brother, or other family settled here. This is unique from Maine, where many people settle knowing no one, forging connections in factory warehouses, immigrant-owed businesses or the local shelter.

Despite the fact that North Carolina was labeled the fastest growing Latino state in the country, communities here are facing extreme and devisive anti-immigration legislation. My first week I read in the local newspaper in Spanish that among others, there are really strong proposals to obligate employers to comply with ICE's database on "illegal"immigration, which we know is not accurate and often ends up incriminating all kinds of innocent people. I also woke up one morning and realized I was living in a death penalty state, which wouldn't come us a surprise unless you knew what it was like to live in a state all your life where that sort of news feels so far away.

Moreover, a turn in the local homeless shelter, the Urban Ministries of Durham, provided more disturbing news about the city where I am staying in general. I had no idea as I walked through it's sleepy center that there was any sort of trouble with crime, but the counselors there assured me, almost for shock value, that Durham has a state-wide reputation for violence and gangs. This occurs for two reasons. First, Durham lies in the middle of I-85, and is a convenient stopping ground between the north and south for the introduction of heroin; secondly, people come back from northern cities, such as New York, in hopes of returning to their roots in the south, bringing drugs and crime with them. I spoke with one woman who had come back who fit this description and who told me she wasn't able to receive any support up North. Although staff consider the shelter block to be a neutral zone, the staff at UMD pointed to a surrounding four block radius where gang activity occurs. At the shelter they hold the opinion that such gang violence originally began in mostly black gangs, until immigrants such as Latinos were targeted. Now the violence is also perpetuated by Latinos. They pointed to the surrounding area and proceeded to try to convince me that I could never really be safe on its streets.

My first week was very much about comtemplating my own safety in that sense of Durham's image, which is largely propagated by the local media. If I felt so happy and welcomed as I walked into town, what made others feel the need to warn me? Would I too be picked off at random by gang thugs? Or as I had also been told, would the color of my skin make me invisible to that type of violence? I read an article in the local rag that gave credit for the negative stereotypes to the media in the Triangle area, which includes Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. It described how violence in Durham has been emphasized over other events. Let us not forget that this was also a place scarred by the news of the Duke lacrosse scandal. Hmm...could racism play a role here? Durham downtown was once a great bastion of strength in the black economy in the south. If I was willing to talk about violence and race, I was in the right place. It seemed I would learn more here than learning how and where to walk down the street.

So why come to this place to find the good fight? I was asked this question my very first week when I visited a class at Duke University all about immigrants rights and labor in the South. Tennessee, the friend who is currently hosting me, works at the Center for Documentary Studies. I shared with a group of undergrads that I was asking myself the same question: what can I learn about solutions is this wild southern state?

Initially, I was interested in the connection between a new population of worker's advocates and its legacy of civil rights work. It was in Greensboro, North Carolina where four black students sat down at a "whites only" lunch counter and didn't budge. Thus began student civil disobedience. Durham itself is known for having been one the first and most prominent black financial districts in the south; Black Wall Street is one of its historical sites. And I have literally become addicted to my morning black radio show, listeners calling in to discuss race as often as Whitney Houston's new divorce. North Carolina has a history of power, pride and struggle that I need to hear more about.


I am interested in how race intersects with labor issues in the South. On my route (read as "root") through the US thus far I have been really focused on trauma and human rights, delving only marginally into labor issues in Providence. I began by speaking to academics in the ivory tower of the North, then becoming more politically active as I worked my way down south. In this state, the worker's rights movement is leading the struggle for a just immigration policy.

North Carolina is a right-to-work state. It also has the lowest rate of unionism in the country. There are a couple of theories about this: one, that the violence stemming from the civil rights movement dissuaded more potential squirmishes resulting from pickets; also, solidarity didn't occur because of the isolationism in rural communities that caused people to feel dissasociated from each other. There's a great interview I heard on NPR down here about a book just published on female unionizers in North Carolina. Most notable was Ella Mae Wiggins, singer/songwriter for the movement, who worked in the Turpentine Mill in Loray Mills and joined the union after her four children died because she couldn't stay home to care for them. The author suggests that the stories are few and far between, with fear for being turned in still a huge reality for some.


North Carolina's economy had been based on agriculture, textiles, and the furniture market. We know how free trade works. With the institution of NAFTA in the 1990's, these jobs that were primarily held by African-Americans and low-income folks left the state, let's say they went to Mexico. Then folks in those towns employed by the same companies had wages so low, they could not survive. So they moved to North Carolina, creating a population of workers earning low wages and without the ability to vote on any of this.

North Carolina is the largest contracter of migrant workers in the country. There are maybe 95-100 Latino organizations in the state. As the state economy has moved away from manufacturing and agriculture, there are many existing low-paying jobs that only Latinos will do. The whole political and economic reality of the south creates rivalry and conflict between African-Americans and immigrants as they compete for low-wage jobs. Alliances are formed when you have collective conciousness about labor and organizing.

On May 1st, many of us congregated in the courtyard in front of the state capital in Raleigh. A large portion of the population were wearing bright yellow shirts that read, Justice for Smithfield, union organizers at the largest pork packing plant in the state. A team of young people organizing stood at the pulpit and each one made a speech. One teenager pointed to a bronze plaque on a monument behind him, depicting something like the fall of slavery in the south and cried in Spanish, "we will not be slaves because of the color of our skin!"

The idea that agricultural work has "always been about slavery" (i.e. no rights, low income, etc) is what my new friend Tony in SAF (Student Action for Farmworkers) is trying to change. SAF traces its history back to the 1970s, and was started by African-Americans laborers in the rural south. Today SAF also does a lot of work with immigrants and hopes to continue to build a black/brown alliance.





I talked further about ally-building in the state during an inspiring informational interview with Marisol and Tony of El Pueblo, Inc. El Pueblo is involved in political advocacy, public health and safety, and gang prevention for Latinos in North Carolina. They are based in Raleigh. Marisol is coordinator of the legislative campaign. With her deep stare and elegant poise she reminded me of a comic-book Latina superhero. She is one of the best spoken individuals I've met here.

Marisol stated that El Pueblo's campaign focuses on educating the state of North Carolina that we have a broken immigration system. The 2000 census that measured a period of ten years, gave information that led to the proclamation that North Carolina was the current "newly emerging Latino state". According to Marisol, this information fueled the fear that led directly to the anti-immigrant legislation. Because this is a primarily non-voting community, such legislation is hard to squash and voting registration campaigns similiar to the one I wrote about in Providence are extremely important.

When Latinos across the country started to feel more empowered to speak out in last year's wave of marches, folks in NC initially jumped on board. Now they are more afraid, and have been dropping out of the rallies. One reason is that this year door to door raids increased. Nearly 18 years after the census began, Marisol wonders about Latino youth turning 18 and voting in the next elections: will they perceive voting as power?

How does violence and race play into our current lunch counter leanings? As workers nationwide are discriminated against by the color of their skin and delegitimized by the term "illegal", we are reminded in the south of a time when Black people and communities were treated similarly. Marisol talked about the possibility of these peaceful movements shifting as people become more and more marginalized. The original Civil Right's Movement didn't have the same parameters with citizenship and voting rights, but they also weren't always peaceful. People were volunteering to "step up to the violence", which is a shift we too might experience someday soon. El Pueblo hears a denial of racism over and over again when politicians hide behind the phrase "this is about the law". Duke lacrosse scandal, case in point.

In North Carolina, as in other states, they make immigrant's lives more and more illegal so they can't survive here, and will eventually deport themselves, or disappear. Marisol labelled this nasty political tool the theory of attrition, and said that it is being shared between states. First they create a law making it illegal to get driver's licences. Then they make it impossible for landlords to have immigrants as tenants without reporting them. Finally, they lobby for measures that make it obligatory to report people seeking the police or medical care. The idea is that in six years, people will stop coming. Sounds like cancer running through a family, right? She said this could happen in Maine (it's already started).

I'm only a political lobbyist out of need. I really want to support people doing social work. How does the clinical work I do with Latinos directly relate to all this? Well, if you limit public safety and health for a whole group of people, the the safety and well-being of the whole state is in jeopardy.

Tony, from El Pueblo works in the Public Safety part of El Pueblo leading a campaign to educate Spanish speakers about the dangers and legal consequences of drunk driving, the biggest social problem involving Latinos in the state. It's about education and equality of the law. If you have no legal rights and you are young and angry, why would you want to respect the law? Except for Latinos, getting caught even once may mean deportation. And experience tells us that crminalizing this behavior, such as deportins an offender, doesn't necessarily mean they won't come back and re-offend.

We conversed about what we both know from our respective communities about people and addiction. If you are isolated from your community and feel alone and have that tendency, you are more likely to drink. The number one response I would get from my clients says as much: I was lonely and starting thinking about what happened in...fill in the blank. Tony confirmed that this also a result of young people leaving home, testing boundaries.

AGAPE is a gang prevention program that works with youth. They said that every week more and more Latinos are arrested for criminal activity. Although anti-immigrant groups want us to think they begin this violence, Latino youth joining gangs is a direct result of downward mobility. There is discrimination and exclusion in public schools that makes immigrant youth feel unwelcome and less likely to join activities. (I am using "Latino" and "immigrant" interchangibly because our conversation was about Latinos, but concerns all immigrants) One of two dangers can happen: they either quit school or are successfully recruited by gangs that provide fraternity and security. The media further fuels their alienation with it's assumption of dangerous Latino youth. AGAPE works with youth to create clubs.

As you can see, I am really intrigued by life and work in this state. Labor continues to be the revolutionary buzzword. And folks are doing some amazing work to organize around labor rights. Up to this point I have studied and learned from these great conversations. But I knew that I was coming to the south to literally get my hands dirty, to insert myself into this workforce. I felt that in order to appreciate what it might be like I needed to be connected to the people and the land in this state and in my own homeland. I needed to farm.

Recreating Thirty

Thirty sure is something, huh? Like a human collage, we go forth, collecting the pieces and finding where they fit.
We frantically begin the process of recycling the rest.

They put God on a billboard: tales of travel in Appalachia

I.
My father is a lifer in Maine. Born, raised, and still doing it. He spent the formative years of his life in Rockland, Maine, climbing in the nearby Cambden Hills to get a glimpse of the ships in the harbor and outrunning the taunts of vacationing city girls on rocky beaches. Surviving a brief stint in the South after being drafted out of college, he returned home to Maine to settle in the cool Penobscot Bay again. So it should come as no surprise that I was born with salt water in my blood. In fact, during my life in landlocked Bolivia, I would often comb the city streets expecting to find a hidden port at the end of some cobbled street. Once I climbed the highest mountain around and when I sensed sea salt in the arrid wind around me, knew it was time to go home.


During a recent phone conversation with my father, he assured me that the only way he could ever settle outside of a land without ocean would be to live in the mountains. I completely agree. All the Buddhist devotees and native guides in the mountains would concur: we are just spiritually in touch when we reach higher ground.

I took off from Washington, D.C. right before Passover, which is almost fitting, because I was seeking refuge, but not so much because Western Virginia is staunchly Christian. I had so many romanticized visions of what this trip would be like.....me, roughing it camping in the mountains, cuddled up in my little tent by a fire of my own making, living out my love affair with the mountains. Who needs other human beings, not me! Life partner, what's that? I laugh in the face of convention, just give me my woods!

My first lesson of travel into the United South was about understanding how the bus schedule works. You may think you can judge how long it takes to get to a certain location on a southern bound Greyhound bus by more or less how long it would take in a car. But you'd be missing the point. Thanks to southern hospitality, you can add fifteen minutes a stop for bathroom breaks, ten to recheck all tickets, five so everyone can finish their cigarettes, and another five to tell the guy with the overalls that no, he cannot bring his beer on the bus. And the people from places like New York are looking around at each other and checking the time on their cellphones.

Of course I loved it. A woman at the last stop summed it up when she said, "The hardest thing about taking the bus is havin' to say goodbye to good friends at the end." I talked politics with a roadie from Nashville, business with a tradesman from Cairo, Egypt, and divorce with just about everyone. I heard so much unsolicited advice I could have filled this blog with it. But I also got to make the trip into Appalachia with some really great human beings. There was this one woman, skinny as a rail and with really sharp features, hair pulled tight into a phony tail and white as bone. She had this daughter that sat near her, who looked just like her, only without the lines of struggle across her face. And I kept listening to her life accented, thinking about the little town she was going home to, scoffing at all the men trying to catch her eye. I loved her laughter , and thought about all the stories we probably have in common and the struggles that maybe we don't share but we could.

You don't usually ride this bus all the way West unless you can't afford another way. There was one man on the bus headed to Tucson (my current final destination). He struggled audibly for a breath and asked at every stop if this was the right bus to be on. Despite the tendency I have during long periods alone to serenade myself with everything I'm doing wrong with my life, I am glad I chose this route, because this is about the people I have come to be with. This is the journey I want to share. The people I serve mostly travel this way.

Western Virginia takes my breath away. It is immediately a land for postcards. Appalachia is all about little farms with red roofed barns and water wheels, vinyards and rusty trucks. Folks talking over fences at their neighbors and little country stores just over the next hill. The dogwood and azalea trees arabesque across the landscape, daintily pointing a finger towards the mountains.

My first stop was Charlottesville. I determined back in DC that I would need to first make it to mountain country before I set down an exact route through the mountains. I searched the internet, trying to determine how to make this trek through Appalachia, but finally I just decided I needed to arrive and talk to real folks about what people do. So I found a hostel in Charlottesville, Virginia called the Alexander House and hopped on the bus.

Charlottesville is cuddled up right inside of the Shenandoah Valley, towards the Northwest part of the state. It's vinyard country and it sure is purdy. The hostel where I stayed has this little white fence surrounding it, and is run entirely by this woman named Mare. I loved walking out of my hostel on a muggy evening and watching the full moon light up the hills. Sure made me get out my guitar.

Just across from my hostel is a Mom and Pop-type car rental. For $25, I had myself a great set of wheels. It didn't even matter that I returned the car late that evening; we just called up the owner on her cell and worked it out.

I took my car high up into the mountains in the Shenandoah, immediately engulfed by bright green land and a sense of my own strength. I ended up climbing Old Rag Mountain in Madison, a five hour circuit. The mountains in this part of the country are similiar to the mountains near Maine, except the dirt is so much redder, and the flowering dogwood trees climb up with you. There are other such surprises in the middle of this wood, chives and pink trees, and, I've heard, poisonous snakes and billy goats.



I went up the mountains for perspective, knowing inner peace brings presence to my work. Climbing is an important part of the journey; there are many decisions to be made. Do I drink the water from the stream? How do I keep my body strong over the next ridge? What is the next step I make? I thought a lot about the risks I take as a woman alone, the risks we all take in loving someone.

Descending once again into the valley, I had one goal: checking out the vinyards. I drove my car up and down these winding red roads past little yellow houses and musty dark brown cows in pastures, their big cow eyes taking in the sudden distraction. I would follow all the signs would grapes on them, nearly falling off the road, only to get to a closed fence or lose the path. You promised me grapes! I thought. But it was no use; all the vinyards were pretty deserted.

So I stopped into one of the country stores for an iced tea and some chatter. I had been thinking about how incredibly beautiful the farms I had passed were, and desiring to spend some lazy afternoons on their porch swings, under a quilt made by hand and a faithful little dog. So I walked up in my hiking boots to a couple of men sitting at a shabby little picnic table and asked what it's like to be a farmer in this part of the world. "It's hard", one guy answered, ajusting his thick yellow overall straps further onto his shoulders. He explained that everyone in these parts raises cattle for meat, and that most of the actual food produced goes toward their feed. It's hard to make any money and you have to be ready to work hard. I shared some stories of what we produce in Maine and put that dream to rest. Thank you, sir. Welc'm.

Leaving Charlottesville, I hopped on another sluggish bus and headed to the tiny town of Marion, planning to climb Mt. Rogers, the highest mountain in Virginia. It was 9:00 pm when my achey body descended the stairs into an abandoned parking lot and a Greyhound station the size of someone's living room. I waited for a couple of minutes and when I was convinced no cars or buses were ever coming, I called a taxi. The kid driving the cab couldn't have been more than twenty, and i'm pretty sure he has a hunting rifle in the back trunk. He got out of the car and I noticed his fatigues and the big wad of tobacco in his cheek. "I'm in the army too, you know," he bragged. Great. I feel so much better.

Marion is up in the mountains and chilly. I had done all my organizing of this trip amid the bus squallor, with my cell phone and trusty atlas in hand. I reserved a rental car and motel room so I had a way to start out. Then I planned to camp close to Mt. Rogers. Despite the chill in the air, I was ready.

I stayed in one of those motels that remind of a place that they shoot up in the movies, where the kicking in the doors would not be too difficult. There was a can of skoal under one of the beds and a cigarette burned hole in the bathroom curtain. Still, I love the luxury of being able to stretch out on starchy white sheets and watch junky TV until late all by myself. Whenever I've missed a flight somewhere I enjoy indulging.

I awoke with those pre-hiking, pre-coffee jitters I get when I just need to be on the road. My rental car would be a whole hour late. Oh well, I'll just watch this cop show and sleep a little. Well, my car turned out to be two hours late (and i was looking at at least a seven hour hike). Finally, I was picked up and transported to the car rental facility to wait for the car I was supposed to drive. I was escorted into the office by two sweet older gentlemen who physically resembled an old pair of comedians. The car I had reserved was there except that they didn't tell me on the phone that I would need a credit card to pick it up and the guy ten years younger than me who probably took this job because it was the only one around wouldn't cut me any slack. After several attempts to work something out, I ended up taking the lesson in stride and boarding a bus for Asheville, North Carolina. I really wanted to climb that mountain, but learning how to be okay with the message that things just aren't working is also an important skill I need to learn on this trip. Sometimes the message is bigger than stubborn me.

So I went winding my way through Virginia, Tennessee and finally into North Carolina, feeling the pressure of the hard bus seats on my hiking joints, smelling the stale smoky breath of my travelling companions. We descended into parts of Appalachia that can only be honored by silence, their living still-lifes of mining and farming work lending a glimpse at that hardship folks here live. I was enthralled by the beauty and drawn in by its meaning. I am left with the words of James Agee, from his book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, who struggled with documenting this culture: "Every fury on earth has been absorbed in time, as art, or as religion, or as authority in one form or another. The deadliest blow the enemy of the human soul can strike is to do fury honor."

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.

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!

¡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.