¡Maricopa Ilegal!

Manu Chao visits Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s (Ar-payaso) concentration camp in Maricopa County, Arizona.

I’ve not been active on this blog for quite awhile, but I hope to start up again. The past few years have been filled with both blessings and sadness. One thing that has remained constant, however, has been a continued struggle to plant the seeds for a better world and a steadfast solidarity with those who will inherit it.

With the recent passage of SB1070 and HB2281 in Arizona, it’s imperative that we confront head-on this cancer that eats away at our communities and imperils any possibility of true freedom in this country. Arizona is not an aberration anymore than Mississippi was forty years ago. They only stand out in their naked honesty. It’s as the master teacher Gil Scott Heron put it in his classic “Paint It Black”:

So we travel to Arizona. Yet, we don’t travel to save anyone there. We go because perhaps in joining with the heartbeat of Arizona…that is, our gente living and working in places like South Tucson or–most significantly–the original inhabitants of the land, the Tohono O’odham, we might actually learn something, we might tap into a wisdom that will enable us to save ourselves. And we can connect both those indignities imposed by this border (physically, psychologically, culturally, economically, and–yes–spiritually) and the powerful insight of those forced to confront them on a daily basis with those that afflict us here in the Bay and across the country. In a twist, Arizona might save this society from itself.

So my work with the Eyes on Arizona Collective is vitally important to me. It connects Arizona with the Bay. It connects campus to community. It develops leadership amongst those who are our future. More than a mere exposure program, it’s a model to build power. It might not be as dramatic as a big demonstration or an occupation (which seems to be the most popular tactic today) but instead, like the symbol of the hormiga that adorns the buttons and shirts of TYLO, it slowly and subversively builds power so that it might effectively confront power. This departs from the instant gratification approach that posits if you confront power, and make a big media splash along the way, that collective power follows in its wake. By slowly building relationships and trust between faculty and students, between campus (SFSU) and community (local immigrant rights work), between the Bay and Arizona (No More Deaths and TYLO), we’re creating something new. Something for the long-haul.

And that is clear to me now more than ever. The need for a long view. Walking those trails in the Sonoran Desert this past summer, you come to learn that many of these trails were traversed by people for multiple generations before there ever was such a thing as a US-Mexico border. Before there was ever such as thing as a United States or a Mexico. These trails were part of a network of people and goods moving between diverse communities. In fact, the border–with its high fences, aerial drones, hyper-militarized Border Patrol, and Israeli-manufactured “virtual fences,” violently splits the Tohono O’odham Nation in half. But Brown men and women continue to use them. Today, however, these ancient paths are viewed differently. They’re a 21st century Underground Railroad for some. For others, to the State, they’re framed as threats to the sanctity of nationhood and national identity. My point, however, is that a long view tells us that we walk on paths (sometimes literally) of those blazed by unknown ancestors before us. And for those to come, we’ll continue on those ancient paths. Not just for a better present. But for the long haul.

Finally, on a personal tip, the passing of my brother, Eric, this year underscored to me how precious little time we have on this planet. And in the face of this mortality, two questions echo again and again in my head. The first is one I hear Eric imploring me: are you appreciating and making the most out of every single moment you have today? (And believe me, I’m tryin’, brother, I’m tryin’.) But at the same time, there is another: what are you concretely leaving for the coming generations (plural)? I guess there comes a moment when ego, when the present, morphs into a concern for something beyond oneself, beyond this specific moment. That’s what I also mean by the long haul. Critique and confrontation today is but a mere tip of the iceberg; it only can get us so far. Media attention is illusory (as well as dangerous) Instead, I’m interested in building upon dreams and imagination, undoubtedly making mistakes in the process but then learning from them, all with the goal of building community and power. Building, again, like those invisible but tenacious hormigas of TYLO. It’s not enough to know what you’re against (anti-racism, anti-capitalism, anti-sexism, etc.): what are you for? How are you building the revolution? Is it based on love and humility, or something else? When does the future cease being an abstract concept that you are fighting for and become a matter of life-and-death that you commit to building day-in and day-out.

Eric understood this, I believe. It’s a fundamental quality of a revolutionary. It is that which separates the activist (or even the radical) from the revolutionary. And we so desperately need that Revolution today.

“The dreamer is the designer of tomorrow. Practical men… can laugh at him; they do not know that he is the true dynamic force that pushes the world forward. Suppress him, and the world will deteriorate towards barbarism. Despised, impoverished, he leads the way… sowing, sowing, sowing, the seeds that will be harvested, not by him, but by the practical men of tomorrow, who will at the same time laugh at another indefatigable dreamer busy seeding, seeding, seeding.” — Ricardo Flores Magon (June 28, 1921)

Miss you, brother.

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