Phoenix Gets Its Selma Moment

Intense Racism? Check. Government Abuse? Check. Imploding Local Economy? Double Check.

From the New York Times:

Showdown in Arizona, Where Mariachis and Minutemen Collide

By LAWRENCE DOWNES
Published: December 10, 2007

PHOENIX — Want to see America unraveling? Come here, to Thomas Road and 35th Street, to M. D. Pruitt’s furniture store. Come on Saturday morning and stand near the eight delivery trucks barricading the parking lot, like the wall of an urban Alamo.

For the last seven weeks, a sidewalk protest here by Latino immigrants has blossomed into a feverish reality show, attracting Minutemen, mariachis, children dancing in Mexican folk costumes, white racists, United Nations observers, Phoenix police officers and Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies.

The weekly confrontation — strident and stalemated — perfectly mimics the national debate. But it’s a sideshow to something even uglier: what happens when immigration’s complexities are handed to local law enforcers sympathetic to the fury of one side.
Thomas Road has lots of Latino day laborers, or jornaleros, who hustle for work near Home Depot. A few months ago, the Phoenix police shooed them away. They dispersed to streets nearby, angering local businesses. One of the biggest, Pruitt’s, hired off-duty city police officers to keep jornaleros at bay. The city put a stop to that, so Pruitt’s turned to the county sheriff, Joe Arpaio.

Sheriff Joe, as he is known, needed no prodding: hunting undocumented immigrants is his specialty. He has arrested hundreds under a state antismuggling law (for smuggling themselves) and has had 160 officers deputized as federal immigration agents. They have made more than 50 arrests near Pruitt’s since the protests began. They’ll pull a car over for a traffic infraction, then check everyone’s papers. They say they act on reasonable suspicion only — if they see a shirt or shoes like those worn south of the border or hear Spanish. They say it isn’t profiling.

There is no doubt whose side Sheriff Joe is on. He has officers on Pruitt’s payroll, guarding the lot on protest days. Last week, he issued a news release demanding that the demonstrators stop hurting Pruitt’s and vowing to crank up the pressure until they went away. It was a naked attempt to stifle dissent and help a business ally.

People here are used to that from Sheriff Joe. He describes himself as “America’s meanest sheriff” and has recently been basking in the love of nativists like the Minuteman Chris Simcox and radio host Terry Anderson, who gushed over him at a roast in Sun City West this month.
If Arizona begins punishing companies that hire illegal workers under a state law that takes effect Jan. 1 — a lawsuit to block it was thrown out Friday — it will fall to counties to do the purge. In Maricopa, that means Sheriff Joe.

The protests at Pruitt’s are the only real opposition he has faced. Their leader is Salvador Reza, a stocky American of Mexican and Apache ancestry, an Air Force veteran who has spent years organizing jornaleros and small-business owners here.
Mr. Reza says he can’t understand why America accepts global flows of companies, money and jobs but not workers. Why faith in market forces seems to have been eclipsed by fear of immigrants. Or why the country cannot set up legal channels to let jornaleros come and go and not be hassled. “They actually are people with a work ethic that would make the Puritans proud,” he said.

Pruitt’s owner, Roger Sensing, says he needs armed officers to protect customers from jornaleros. Mr. Reza calls that ridiculous, and one informed noncombatant, the Rev. Craig Geiger, pastor of a Lutheran church across the street, agrees. He told me he had never seen a laborer enter Pruitt’s lot. He also said his Latino congregation did not drive to church anymore. Documented or not, they fear Sheriff Joe. They walk.

Pastor Geiger leaves the neighborhood on Saturdays, because it gets deafening. When I was there, a trio singing Mexican ballads strolled through the crush. A Minuteman with a bullhorn followed them. “Monkeys coming through!” he shouted. His side rushed up to drown the music out: “Born in the U.S.A.! Born in the U.S.A.! K.K.K.! Viva la Migra! January First!”
The restrictionists see Jan. 1 as the dawn of a new era, when the Mexicans disappear and everything gets pure and legal again. It is uncertain whether Arizona’s economy will survive the exodus. “Unfortunately, they’ll probably wake up when they bankrupt the state,” Mr. Reza told me.

All I want for Christmas is a burning cross in my yard.

Dear Lou Dobbs and Joe Arpaio,

You two make me feel icky inside.

Love, Aaron



Dear voters of Maricopa County,

Please stop re-electing that man.

Warmest Wishes, Aaron

Ouch.

Josh Marshall and company link to a report card of sorts for the Bush's time in office. It's worse than you think. Not that we didn't know all of these things already, but it really isn't pretty when his "accomplishments" are listed together.

It's also worth noting that this is not some sort of hatchet job. This is the Associated Press. Quoting former Bush campaign strategists and staffers. Only one more year...

Has this been on the nightly news much?

Please go here and sign the online petition.

Basically, it's a petition to convince China to stop supporting the Burmese Junta by making the Chinese look bad vis-a-vis the 2008 Olympics. If you don't understand why it might be important to stop the Chinese from supporting the Burmese government, google it.

And by the way, the petition is pretty serious. It's moving towards 1 million people. And the advertisements are going to run in major newspapers.

Thanks. Have a great day.

Rest in Peace, Juan Antonio Martinez

Another body has been found in Cochise County. Arizona is on pace this year to set a record for the highest number of deaths ever.

It's getting worse.

And it's part of the strategy.

The other day when I was at the Border Patrol station I had an agent tell me that their "job is to make them earn it." That is, the Border Patrol's job is to make crossing the border difficult. If you make it, then you have earned it. Unless you die.

Later, a different agent told me that allowing people to cross in town is too risky. "If someone hops the fence, they can be gone into a house or car in two or three minutes. In the desert we have a few days to catch them."

We give people jobs when they make it to our cities. We eat the food that they pick off of the tables that they clean. And we don't really stop them from coming, we just "make them earn it." It's like an abusive relationship. We break their ribs and then tell them that we'll love them forever.

Watch this. And then imagine what it would be like to sit with your cousin as she slowly dies in the heat. And then remember that the death of Felicitas wasn't senseless. It wasn't random. We planned for it to be this way.

I can't shake the feeling that on the border, death is the punchline to a very cruel joke.

How to tank an economy:

This week's lesson brought to you by the Department of Homeland Security and our beloved POTUS.

Is he trying to make his poll numbers worse, or just create chaos for millions of people? You be the judge. Thank God for the AFL-CIO.

Meanwhile, back in Zimbabwe, President Mugabe accepts the challenge from our own Mr. Bush and seeks to regain the title of "worst leader ever" for himself. It's a race to the bottom.

Did you know that the EPA has 18,000 employees?

What is it that they do? And more importantly, why do we still have pollution? That's 360 people per state.

At any rate, the Gray Lady has once again shown why she is an invaluable national treasure.

The article drags a bit in places, but the subject matter is so important I just couldn't stop reading.

A taste:

"Only 1 percent of [China's] 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union."

As always, there's a silver lining: "Much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China."

Huh. And I thought it was the parking lot that they call the 405.

Feminism: Helping me to procrastinate talking about my 80 miles in the desert.

Thanks feminism!

This is yet one more fantastic present brought to you by the one and only Andrew Sullivan. I love him more and more all the time. Except for when I disagree with him completely.

It's not the shortest article ever written, but I highly recommend it if you have a few minutes to spare. Come on, you know you do. The article is a reflection piece written by Megan Stack, a writer and bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, looking back on her time spent in Saudi Arabia and her place there as a woman.

What first caught my attention to the piece was the combination of feminism and Andrew's criticism of Starbucks:

"The multinational company acquiesces in and enforces the oppression and segregation of women."

And it is more than a valid point. Would you still shop at a company that served African Americans in the back? What about a company that wouldn't let Jews in the front door? Of course not. The greatest argument for the existence of feminism is the fact that my friends who work at Starbucks will not immediately quit their jobs, and many of you reading will still go and buy a latte there. Of course the issue is not that simple, but stop and let this sink in: we will still go to Starbucks, a company that won't serve half of the population in the same way as the other half. They still do business, and make a profit, in Saudi Arabia. The parallels to Jim Crow, apartheid, and Nazi Germany are more than uncomfortably close. It is both tremendously sad and unbelievably revolting.

And clearly my pleasure at seeing a little Starbucks bashing was anything but secret.

There is a question I must ask myself in this as well. I don't shop at Starbucks or drink their coffee, but am I blameless? If I have chided Starbucks as a company who will gladly look the other way in the face of sexism, is Just Coffee, my coffee company of choice, able to withstand the same scrutiny? Sadly, I believe that the answer is a very complicated "sort of."

Just Coffee, in all honesty, is a company of men. It is not a company of all male employees, but it is a company of all male owners. Why is that? Well, it really boils down to gender roles in Chiapas. Men are the coffee farmers, simple as that. This is not true in all parts of the world (where women farmers greatly outnumber men), but it is true in Chiapas. Women help at times, but are more likely to be found preparing food, caring for children, or working around the house. So even though these women benefit from the higher price and health benefits that come from Just Coffee, they don't really have a voice at the table in terms of voting. They don't really come to the meetings of the directors. That's not to say that they don't have a "presence" (any married person will tell you that's simply not possible), but that's sort of the same argument that is used in the article to say that women don't need to be able to vote in state elections. Not very comforting, I know.

Does this mean that I don't support Just Coffee? Well, no, not at all. I still love the people, the company, the coffee, and the model. Reality, as always, is more complicated than theory. The business of living in Chiapas requires more intentional effort than it does here. More time cooking and cleaning and all of that good stuff. Life is a partnership, and the contributions of women are tremendously important. And in the face of migration, gender lines become more than a little bit blurred. Once again, this is clearly not a simple issue. Ask any feminist about the tension between cultural sensitivity and women's rights and you'll see the blood start to quicken in their veins.

Culture, history, and economics, all embedded with some degree of sexism, have come together to make men the coffee farmers in Chiapas. Is that wrong? Not necessarily. The goal must never be to tell all people what to do, but to increase their ability to make good choices freely. But it would be better if women had more choices, and especially if they had more say. What is my repsonsibility to try and make that more of a reality? I'm not sure about that either. But I think it is important to ask these questions, and to be honest when things make us uncomfortable. I think this issue pales in comparison to Starbucks in Saudi Arabia, but it is by no means a non-issue. It is important, however, to call a good thing a good thing. Starbucks health benefits in the U.S. are a good thing. And Just Coffee is a good thing. But so is honest self-reflection.

Feminism is a great thing.

The desert post and pictures are coming. I promise.

What say you, and all your friends, meet all of my friends in the alley tonight?

A week ago today a team of hit men and enforcers from a drug cartel here in Mexico attacked a police armory in Cananea, a city in Sonora about 50 miles from Agua Prieta. After overwhelming (and killing) some of the officers on duty, the group left the armory with an unspecified amount of stolen weaponry and fled the city. On the way out of town they encountered and murdered four more police officers. They were chased, and eventually cornered, at a ranch in Sonora by members of the Mexican police and the Mexican military. All told, 22 people died.

There are many things that I could say about this event. It is clearly a tragic loss of human life. It is quite shocking that it took place in the state of Sonora. Violence like this is, unfortunately, not unheard of and in some cases quite common. States like Sinaloa and cities like Tijuana might as well be in Iraq. But Sonora has never really seen all out war between the drug cartels and the police. It is just one more sign that the long history of drug violence in Mexico is spiraling out of control.

On Friday a rumor was circulating the borderlands that another team of cartel members was headed to the town of Naco, Sonora. Naco is the next town over from Agua Prieta, a little pueblo that doesn't even have a gas station but does have an incredible amount of drug smuggling. The response to that rumor in Agua Prieta was, understandably, widespread panic. Schools were closed, the border was shut down temporarily, and people stayed off the streets well into the night.

All of this has left me feeling deeply unsettled.

In the midst of this violence my thoughts have been primarily selfish. I have thought little of the families that lost loved ones, or of the places in Mexico (and around the world) where violence like this is so common. Instead I have spent a great deal of time dwelling on a feeling that I have been unable to shake, a voice in the back of my head that refuses to go away. Even in Tucson, away from the border and doing more "normal things," I could not take my mind off the killings. And all of this navel gazing has left me chasing tangents through my mind, searching for the thought that might pull all of these strands together. I remembered my pothead high school friends and our ignorance about the true cost of getting stoned. I thought about the war on drugs and the morality of allowing legal drug use. I thought about the violence that profitable smuggling has unleashed. I thought about friends who are addicts, and all of my time spent in Skid Row. And I thought about the cost of securing our borders from drugs, in money and in human life.

I spent almost a week wandering in the cloudiness of my thoughts before dawn finally broke. The thing that has made me so deeply unsettled by these killings is not the loss of human life, although that is clearly tragic. What was so unsettling, and what continues to trouble me, was how quickly and easily my relationship to violence changed when I was confronted with the possibility that I might not be safe. Let me explain.

Since I have been in Agua Prieta, many people have been killed. The police chief, a reporter, a migrant, and an untold number of lesser "thugs," have all fallen victim to the violence that is laced into the fabric of the borderlands. In spite of these murders, I have never felt truly afraid. A man was beaten to death in a remote place that I visit every single week, but I do not hesitate to continue my trips there. I have almost no fear that I might meet the same fate.

This sense of security is a luxury afforded to me by my secret love of violence. I know in my heart of hearts that it will keep me safe. In the past I have justified my sense of security by saying that I am safe because I stay away from trouble. And it's true, I do stay away from trouble. I don't smuggle drugs, or spend time with people who do. But there is another, greater truth that I have protectecd myself from. I am convinced that I will be safe because I believe that violence has the power to protect me. I believe that, as a U.S. citizen, I can cross the border and be protected. I can depend upon the literally thousands of U.S. government employees running around in the desert to keep the "bad people" from me. I can trust their guns.

When I am in the desert, or in Agua Prieta for that matter, I can trust my whiteness to keep violence at bay. I know that killing me is bad for business. Kill a Mexican? Happens all the time. Kill a white kid doing humanitarian work? Doesn't look good for you. Whether it is the Mexicans or the Americans, I know that the threat of violence from the government keeps me safe.

So I complain about all of the Border Patrol agents here, not because I want just anyone to be able to walk into the U.S. anytime they want to, but because I hate the migrant deaths. I complain about all the guns on the border, not because I love the drug smuggling, but because sometimes those guns are used to kill innocent people. But when it comes down to it, I love my own safety, and the violence that protects it, more than I love the lives of other people.

And I trust violence more than I trust God. When it came down to my own safety, I gave up my belief that God is powerful, and I worshipped violence instead. "Thank God," I thought, "for all of those men with guns."

Violence is my golden calf. Is it yours?

High Fructose Corn Syrup Will Never Taste As Sweet to Me Again

So this is a little hat tip to something that I've been obsessing over lately and even discussing with some of my friends (hello Evangelical Environmental Network!). While working down here on the border I have become (even more) fascinated by the interconnectedness of our world. I have spent so much time this year thinking about the ways in which migration, economics, agriculture, the environment, etc. are all linked to one another. And this great article, written by Michael Pollan, talks about just that.

To try and cut down on the length of this post (and therefore increase your likelihood of reading it) I'm going to do this in two parts. I'm pasting the article below for your reading pleasure (it can also be found right here in a more legal setting). A few days from now (give or take) I'm going to be writing a little follow-up piece with some further thoughts and a few more links to make this conversation more interesting.

By MICHAEL POLLAN
Published: April 22, 2007
The New York Times Magazine

A few years ago, an obesity researcher at the University of Washington named Adam Drewnowski ventured into the supermarket to solve a mystery. He wanted to figure out why it is that the most reliable predictor of obesity in America today is a person's wealth. For most of history, after all, the poor have typically suffered from a shortage of calories, not a surfeit. So how is it that today the people with the least amount of money to spend on food are the ones most likely to be overweight?

Drewnowski gave himself a hypothetical dollar to spend, using it to purchase as many calories as he possibly could. He discovered that he could buy the most calories per dollar in the middle aisles of the supermarket, among the towering canyons of processed food and soft drink. (In the typical American supermarket, the fresh foods — dairy, meat, fish and produce — line the perimeter walls, while the imperishable packaged goods dominate the center.) Drewnowski found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots. Looking for something to wash down those chips, he discovered that his dollar bought 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice.

As a rule, processed foods are more "energy dense" than fresh foods: they contain less water and fiber but more added fat and sugar, which makes them both less filling and more fattening. These particular calories also happen to be the least healthful ones in the marketplace, which is why we call the foods that contain them "junk." Drewnowski concluded that the rules of the food game in America are organized in such a way that if you are eating on a budget, the most rational economic strategy is to eat badly — and get fat.

This perverse state of affairs is not, as you might think, the inevitable result of the free market. Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots?

For the answer, you need look no farther than the farm bill. This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation, which comes around roughly every five years and is about to do so again, sets the rules for the American food system — indeed, to a considerable extent, for the world's food system. Among other things, it determines which crops will be subsidized and which will not, and in the case of the carrot and the Twinkie, the farm bill as currently written offers a lot more support to the cake than to the root. Like most processed foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat — three of the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and cotton are the others.) For the last several decades — indeed, for about as long as the American waistline has been ballooning — U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of these five commodities, especially corn and soy.

That's because the current farm bill helps commodity farmers by cutting them a check based on how many bushels they can grow, rather than, say, by supporting prices and limiting production, as farm bills once did. The result? A food system awash in added sugars (derived from corn) and added fats (derived mainly from soy), as well as dirt-cheap meat and milk (derived from both). By comparison, the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce. A result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.

A public-health researcher from Mars might legitimately wonder why a nation faced with what its surgeon general has called "an epidemic" of obesity would at the same time be in the business of subsidizing the production of high-fructose corn syrup. But such is the perversity of the farm bill: the nation's agricultural policies operate at cross-purposes with its public-health objectives. And the subsidies are only part of the problem. The farm bill helps determine what sort of food your children will have for lunch in school tomorrow. The school-lunch program began at a time when the public-health problem of America's children was undernourishment, so feeding surplus agricultural commodities to kids seemed like a win-win strategy. Today the problem is overnutrition, but a school lunch lady trying to prepare healthful fresh food is apt to get dinged by U.S.D.A. inspectors for failing to serve enough calories; if she dishes up a lunch that includes chicken nuggets and Tater Tots, however, the inspector smiles and the reimbursements flow. The farm bill essentially treats our children as a human Disposall for all the unhealthful calories that the farm bill has encouraged American farmers to overproduce.

To speak of the farm bill's influence on the American food system does not begin to describe its full impact — on the environment, on global poverty, even on immigration. By making it possible for American farmers to sell their crops abroad for considerably less than it costs to grow them, the farm bill helps determine the price of corn in Mexico and the price of cotton in Nigeria and therefore whether farmers in those places will survive or be forced off the land, to migrate to the cities — or to the United States. The flow of immigrants north from Mexico since Nafta is inextricably linked to the flow of American corn in the opposite direction, a flood of subsidized grain that the Mexican government estimates has thrown two million Mexican farmers and other agricultural workers off the land since the mid-90s. (More recently, the ethanol boom has led to a spike in corn prices that has left that country reeling from soaring tortilla prices; linking its corn economy to ours has been an unalloyed disaster for Mexico's eaters as well as its farmers.) You can't fully comprehend the pressures driving immigration without comprehending what U.S. agricultural policy is doing to rural agriculture in Mexico.

And though we don't ordinarily think of the farm bill in these terms, few pieces of legislation have as profound an impact on the American landscape and environment. Americans may tell themselves they don't have a national land-use policy, that the market by and large decides what happens on private property in America, but that's not exactly true. The smorgasbord of incentives and disincentives built into the farm bill helps decide what happens on nearly half of the private land in America: whether it will be farmed or left wild, whether it will be managed to maximize productivity (and therefore doused with chemicals) or to promote environmental stewardship. The health of the American soil, the purity of its water, the biodiversity and the very look of its landscape owe in no small part to impenetrable titles, programs and formulae buried deep in the farm bill.

Given all this, you would think the farm-bill debate would engage the nation's political passions every five years, but that hasn't been the case. If the quintennial antidrama of the "farm bill debate" holds true to form this year, a handful of farm-state legislators will thrash out the mind-numbing details behind closed doors, with virtually nobody else, either in Congress or in the media, paying much attention. Why? Because most of us assume that, true to its name, the farm bill is about "farming," an increasingly quaint activity that involves no one we know and in which few of us think we have a stake. This leaves our own representatives free to ignore the farm bill, to treat it as a parochial piece of legislation affecting a handful of their Midwestern colleagues. Since we aren't paying attention, they pay no political price for trading, or even selling, their farm-bill votes. The fact that the bill is deeply encrusted with incomprehensible jargon and prehensile programs dating back to the 1930s makes it almost impossible for the average legislator to understand the bill should he or she try to, much less the average citizen. It's doubtful this is an accident.

But there are signs this year will be different. The public-health community has come to recognize it can't hope to address obesity and diabetes without addressing the farm bill. The environmental community recognizes that as long as we have a farm bill that promotes chemical and feedlot agriculture, clean water will remain a pipe dream. The development community has woken up to the fact that global poverty can't be fought without confronting the ways the farm bill depresses world crop prices. They got a boost from a 2004 ruling by the World Trade Organization that U.S. cotton subsidies are illegal; most observers think that challenges to similar subsidies for corn, soy, wheat or rice would also prevail.

And then there are the eaters, people like you and me, increasingly concerned, if not restive, about the quality of the food on offer in America. A grass-roots social movement is gathering around food issues today, and while it is still somewhat inchoate, the manifestations are everywhere: in local efforts to get vending machines out of the schools and to improve school lunch; in local campaigns to fight feedlots and to force food companies to better the lives of animals in agriculture; in the spectacular growth of the market for organic food and the revival of local food systems. In great and growing numbers, people are voting with their forks for a different sort of food system. But as powerful as the food consumer is — it was that consumer, after all, who built a $15 billion organic-food industry and more than doubled the number of farmer's markets in the last few years — voting with our forks can advance reform only so far. It can't, for example, change the fact that the system is rigged to make the most unhealthful calories in the marketplace the only ones the poor can afford. To change that, people will have to vote with their votes as well — which is to say, they will have to wade into the muddy political waters of agricultural policy.

Doing so starts with the recognition that the "farm bill" is a misnomer; in truth, it is a food bill and so needs to be rewritten with the interests of eaters placed first. Yes, there are eaters who think it in their interest that food just be as cheap as possible, no matter how poor the quality. But there are many more who recognize the real cost of artificially cheap food — to their health, to the land, to the animals, to the public purse. At a minimum, these eaters want a bill that aligns agricultural policy with our public-health and environmental values, one with incentives to produce food cleanly, sustainably and humanely. Eaters want a bill that makes the most healthful calories in the supermarket competitive with the least healthful ones. Eaters want a bill that feeds schoolchildren fresh food from local farms rather than processed surplus commodities from far away. Enlightened eaters also recognize their dependence on farmers, which is why they would support a bill that guarantees the people who raise our food not subsidies but fair prices. Why? Because they prefer to live in a country that can still produce its own food and doesn't hurt the world's farmers by dumping its surplus crops on their markets.

The devil is in the details, no doubt. Simply eliminating support for farmers won't solve these problems; overproduction has afflicted agriculture since long before modern subsidies. It will take some imaginative policy making to figure out how to encourage farmers to focus on taking care of the land rather than all-out production, on growing real food for eaters rather than industrial raw materials for food processors and on rebuilding local food economies, which the current farm bill hobbles. But the guiding principle behind an eater's farm bill could not be more straightforward: it's one that changes the rules of the game so as to promote the quality of our food (and farming) over and above its quantity.

Such changes are radical only by the standards of past farm bills, which have faithfully reflected the priorities of the agribusiness interests that wrote them. One of these years, the eaters of America are going to demand a place at the table, and we will have the political debate over food policy we need and deserve. This could prove to be that year: the year when the farm bill became a food bill, and the eaters at last had their say.


Michael Pollan, a contributing writer, is the Knight professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. His most recent book is "The Omnivore's Dilemma."

(In the photo: Michael Pollan in all his glory)

New York City for the win.

From the Times:

Recalling a movement that challenged United States policy in Central America in the 1980s, several religious congregations in New York and other cities will announce a campaign Wednesday to provide sanctuary to illegal immigrants who face deportation.

As of Tuesday, the organizers of what is being called the New Sanctuary Movement said that five churches in New York City had already offered assistance to two families — one from China and one from Haiti — and would provide them with shelter if the federal government moved to enforce the deportation orders filed against them.

“We’re launching now because we’re fed up with detentions, deportations and raids,” said the Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper, the senior minister of Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village. “We felt it was not morally possible to remain silent.”

And it came to me that every plan is a little prayer to father time.

The world in which we live.

The State Department issued a travel warning for northern Mexico. Drug related violence has been shockingly high this year in many cities. AP, thanks be to God, still seems relatively safe.

The Border Patrol agent who shot and killed Francisco Dominguez Rivera, 22, has finally been charged with murder. Nicholas Corbett, 39, will stand trial on four counts related to the shooting. It's tragic that both of these families are losing their sons.

Bodies were found this week near Douglas/Agua Prieta on both sides of the international border. A body was found about thirty feet away from one of our water tanks on the Mexican side, and another was found at an undisclosed location in the U.S.

Update: The body of a journalist from Agua Prieta who has been missing for several weeks was found near Janos in the state of Chihuahua. Early reports are saying that he was tortured.

I'm not sure about using this as a theology, but right now I'm thinking that the greatest gift Jesus has ever given us is the gift of Hope.

"I'm from Rhodesia mate"

The economy of Mugabe's Zimbabwe has entered what one long term observer is calling its "death throes."

What does that mean exactly?

Two figures that stand out:

80% unemployment
1,700% inflation

Sadly, Zimbabwe is one of the most well educated countries in Africa.

Those two figures alone are shocking, but this is the clincher:

In a continent of scandalously low life expectancies, Zimbabwe now has the lowest.

37 years old for men.
34 years old for women. (women are more likely to be infected with HIV)

That's the bad news. What are we doing to change it?

In the photo (Reuters): A woman holds up a U.S. ten dollar bill, and the current equivalent in Zimbabwe dollars.

All the king's horses and all the king's men

One by one they all fall away.

Taken from the New York Times via Josh Marshall

I hope to see Mr. Dowd in "Africa or South America doing something that was like mission work" one of these days. I imagine the two of us sitting down to a meal of fresh fruit, rice, and free range meat, imagining a world of greater "gentleness."

The world is changing.

Meet Your (Legalized?) Neighbors

This is going to be a long one.

As some of you may know, and as most of you almost certainly don't, a piece of legislation was introduced into the House of Representatives this week under the name the "Gutierrez-Flake STRIVE Act of 2007." From what I can tell it made a very small splash.

To make an almost seven hundred page piece of public policy mercifully short, it's an immigration bill. The jury seems to be hung on whether it's the one we've been waiting for.

Some specifics for you, as digested by me:

1. This STRIVE Act includes amnesty. That means, more or less, that anyone living inside the United States without proper U.S. documentation since June 1st, 2006 or before will be given the opportunity to gain legal status, and eventually the possibility of citizenship. Among the criteria that must be met are proof of employment, a criminal background check, and payment of a series of fines. Not surprisingly, the details are complicated. Supposedly priority would be given to reuniting families.
2. A new type of visa, the H-2C, would be created to accommodate at least 400,000 new temporary immigrant workers per year. Workers would be given legal status for a period of 3 years, with the possibility of a further three year extension. Spouses and children would be given legal residency status during this period as well. Workers would be forced to leave the country if employment lapsed for more than 60 days. Employers hiring these workers would be required to prove that they first sought, and failed to find, domestic employees. This program would be monitored by a new, still undeveloped, electronic government system to be implemented at businesses across the country. The employment of unauthorized immigrant workers would carry stricter punishments.
3. Both the DREAM Act of 2007 and the AgJOBS Act of 2007 are included in the larger bill. The DREAM Act works to allow undocumented children in the United States to pursue their education past the high school level. The AgJOBS Act specifically targets migrants seeking employment in agriculture and offers them modified benefits for consistent work in this area.
4. Large amounts of new funding would be allocated to the Department of Homeland Security to ensure "operational control" of the border. This is a fancy little Border Patrol term that means that we decide who comes in and who doesn't. Technology, staff, and infrastructure would all be increased drastically. That means more cameras, more helicopters, more trucks, more agents, more buildings, more fence, more roads. More more more. The amnesty and legal guest worker clauses in the law would only be implemented after the DHS can prove to an unspecified degree that border security is being increased and that the employee tracking system has been designed and implemented.
5. Increased penalties and enforcement for illegal smuggling, gang activities, etc., having to do with illegal immigrants.

That's basically it. Now let's break this thing down.

1. Amnesty is going to be highly unpopular with a massive number of people living in the United States. Lou Dobbs might literally explode in outrage. Why? The Reagan amnesty, more than any other single factor, is blamed by many people to have caused such a massive surge in immigration. A second amnesty, in their view, would be repeating this fatal mistake. In some ways it's a valid criticism. Why reward people for breaking the law? Why reward people who broke the law last year but not any of the people who want to come to the United States right now? There's a simple answer for all of that. Basically, amnesty is a compromise. It recognizes the work that illegal immigrants have done in this country and accepts that we can't really kick them out now.It's a way to bring millions of people, some who have lived almost their entire lives here, into the folds of the United States' legal order. This is good for everyone. Immigrants will be more likely to report crimes without fear for their own status. They will be more able to participate in the conventional economy, a boon for everybody. It's a win-win-win-win-win situation, as many people are stating. Amnesty, in my view, is good. The way this amnesty is done isn't. Some estimates for the time it would take to achieve citizenship are as high as 25 years. What, exactly, is the point of that? Who does it benefit? And how long will it be before the system even kicks in? Before you dismiss this criticism as unimportant, think about the logistical nightmare, for everyone, that millions of people trapped in legal limbo would create. How is that even being proposed as a policy? That's the current policy with a sugar coating.
2. Worker visas. The good: We are currently arresting 1.2 million people a year as they try to cross illegally into this country. Worker visas are a very good way to bring those people out of the deserts and through the ports of entry. This would save lives, make border enforcement both possible and ethical, and legalize millions of hard workers and the people who employ them. Sounds great. The bad: Again, this system would not kick in until some unspecified date. Securing the borders means getting workers out of the desert. One is impossible without the other. Temporary visas, while having some attractive qualities (more participants, the ability for people to earn money and return to their country, etc.), invite all sorts of unethical business practices. Nothing says "take advantage of me!" like the guarantee that in a short time they will be gone. Strikes? You don't work for 60 days, you're gone. No provision for workers organizing. That's bad for all laborers in the U.S. You know what else is potentially bad for all U.S. workers? Short term employees of any kind. Long term health care? Retirement benefits? Higher wages? All of these things could suffer, depending on the fields of employment, when you have a large and disposable pool of workers. And now the ugly: Speaking of disposable, where are the worker protections in this bill? If a worker loses his arm in a meat plant, what rights are that worker guaranteed? Their family? Also terrible, but more so from a policy perspective, who actually thinks that the government can set up this program to hold employers accountable? Who actually wants them to? Are they going to somehow lure away google engineers to do it? It's enough to make any liberal want to starve the beast.
3. Agricultural workers are clearly needed. Molly sent me an article talking about how Colorado, after tough new enforcement standards scared of laborers, is using prisoners to do the field work once done by migrants. But is it good for a nation that is morbidly obese (literally, 3 in 5 overweight, 1 in 5 obese) to have an unending supply of cheap food labor? Shouldn't we be pursuing sustainable policies instead, ones that promote a higher quality and lower quantity of food? This might be a pipe dream, but don't forget that once public policy gets made it can be hard to change. A precedent once set is, well, set. Think about it. I clearly won't knock the DREAM Act. Kids going to college? You bet.
4. Supporting this one sort of depends on which side you fall on for increasing border militarization. I'm in favor of decreasing it, but I'm not a fan of human trafficking, the violence of the drug smuggling trade, or international gangs. So I think having a few guys watching the line is a good idea. But this is an incredibly stupid way to do it. I'll say it as many times as I can so that the point sticks: the border is impossible to secure without at least 5 times the number of agents we have now, or a drastic decrease in the people trying to cross. Personally I believe that it is impossible to secure in its current state. There is ample evidence to support that. Bizarrely, this is the border equivalent of the Iraq surge. Send more people to realize unspecified goals in an unspecified length of time. Democrats knock it there but want to try it here? Legalizing people is the only way to make them stop crossing illegally in a quick and relatively painless manner. And haven't we pretty much all agreed that these workers are good for the economy? Who's opposing regulating who comes in and out of the country? No one. Stopping illegal crossers means drastically increasing legal ones. When all the maids and cooks and roofers are out of the desert the only people remaining will be the ones you really don't want. Instead, they apparently want to spend tons of time and money on a policy that is killing people, just to appease the military industrial complex (Eisenhower's term, not mine) and the far-right wing. Why? Democrats really need to stop worrying about looking tough and start solving policy problems. It's hard to knock success.
5. Increased penalties for committing crimes is another non-starter. Our prisons are already overcrowded. Doesn't it make more sense to enforce the laws that we already have for things like gang activity and smuggling? Again, wouldn't that be a lot easier if we had the people not committing crimes, just looking for work, in a legal system as soon as possible?

So let me put it this way: this is not the bill we've been waiting for. It's got amnesty, sure. It's got the DREAM Act, which you have to be insane not to support. And what else does it have? I guess the promise that maybe at some point in the conceivable future we would get people out of the deserts. But when would that be? And then what? This thing's a mess. But what if it's the only mess we're going to get? I don't think so, and I'll pass. This problem's not going away and there's gotta be a better way than this. Thankfully I think the Senate has a lot more up its sleeve.

I think I'll fill this out in a later post, but many of the terms that I used here I strongly disagree with. Illegal, undocumented, amnesty, operational control...I could go on. I think that they obscure the truth and treat good people like criminals as an operating principle. Just for the record.

By the way, in spite of this post and my last one, I got a surprising amount of work done today. Some days you just have to blog. Some days you just have to work. I guess today was both. Academic deconstruction, public policy analysis, and non-profit social justice work. Plus I ate an avocado AND at my favorite burrito joint. Aaron's day for the win. On the other hand I only slept four hours last night. I've been up since three in the morning. I'm bound to crash soon.

Iran Is In for Spring

Here it is, part two in my continuing series on the 2008 presedential cantidates.

John Edwards (Democratic Party)

John Edwards, former Senator from North Carolina, first entered my political radar during my sophomore year at Pomona College. At that time the race for the Democratic nomination was still wide open, with Howard Dean's internet campaign just starting to receive a lot of mainstream press, and no candidates really receiving an overwhelming amount of favorable attention from the Democratic leadership.

I was introduced to Edwards by a friend at Pomona who had been asked to help run his campaign in California. From very early on he was an extremely attractive candidate (and not just because he looks like a Land's End model). Unlike John Kerry, Edwards had decided not to seek reelection to the Senate, choosing instead to pursue the presidency without distraction or a backup plan. Edwards was also at the forefront of positive Democratic thinking in the 2004 election. Rather than attacking Bush, a technique favored by Vermont's Governor Dean, or wooing traditional Democratic strongholds like labor, the technique favored by Rep. Dick Gephardt, Edwards sought to push the Democratic party back into a conversation about its ideals and its platform. And he, long before it was the cool thing for Democrats to do, spoke about the role that faith played in his life and in his policies.
Policies that were, and still are, tremendously attractive. He was advocating for universal health care, alleviating poverty, and balancing the budget, and he wanted to do them all at the same time. I know, I wish he'd won too.

Because of his connection to my friend, Edwards ended up coming to Pomona that year and giving a speech in the student center. It was an inspiring talk about poverty in America, and it cemented my support for him in the 2004 election. My faith in Edwards (along with my disdain for Cheney/Bush) was a major reason I was still excited to support Kerry after the convention, even though he himself was, in almost everyone's view, a less than ideal candidate.

And Edwards has continued to impress me. After his loss in the 2004 election he began to travel around the world in an attempt to repair the U.S.' broken image. He also started, and has continued to direct, a public policy think tank focusing on domestic poverty.

Finally, John's devotion to his wife, and his role as a public, pro-feminist husband, has been a breath of fresh air in this political climate. During Elizabeth Edward's very public battle with breast cancer he was a seemingly constant presence. Here's a segment of the official CNN transcript from an interview that John and Elizabeth did on the "Larry King Live" show where Larry asks John if he is worried that his wife might be less attractive because of her cancer treatment:

KING: Senator, has there been any thoughts, and this happens in any case when the male hears the news from the mate, aesthetically how will Elizabeth look?

How will she respond?

Do you have those feelings?

J. EDWARDS: No. No.

KING: No?

J. EDWARDS: Honest to goodness, Larry, the only thing I have thought about is making sure that we have 40 more years together. And Elizabeth and I have been married 27 years. We are physically connected to each other. And we've been through a lot with our children and with our family and our lives. And our lives are completely intertwined. And all that I have thought about is making sure we get her well and that she is there for me and for my kids.

Edwards gives a great, and really supportive, response to what is a characteristically sleazy question from Larry King.

There was also their joint interview on MSNBC's "Hardball With Chris Matthews" where Matthews came after Elizabeth Edwards and accused them of having an equal marriage. The horror! Here's that segment:

E. EDWARDS: There are not that many politicians who are actually very good at jokes. John spoke one time and I said I wouldn‘t even go because it was—he was supposed to be funny and I didn‘t think he could carry it off.

CROWD: (LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS: I love it. You‘re great. Behind every great man, there‘s a woman trying to kill him.

CROWD: (LAUGHTER)

E. EDWARDS: He has great characteristics.

MATTHEWS: What is it? Does she do this? Does she bust your balls like this when you come home? When you get (INAUDIBLE), does she do that?

CROWD: (APPLAUSE)

E. EDWARDS: My children are watching this.

CROWD: (LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS: What‘s this with the equal marriages? Why do people marry their equals? It used to be different? What happened to the Stepford wives, the good old days? What happened?

Both John and Elizabeth looked stunned. Equal marriage: 1 MSNBC: 0

So Edwards and I have a lot of good history. As a result, it may surprise you to learn that I'm sort of undecided about supporting him right now. Why? Well, in spite of all that Edwards has to offer (and I still think it is a lot), I believe that there is a fundamental disconnect between the words coming out of his mouth and the money going in and out of his pocket. In my view Edwards is, as they say, a limousine liberal. He's a former trial lawyer that has done very, very well for himself. And he's enjoying that in some very lavish ways.

Newsweek just printed a picture of the new Edwards family compound in North Carolina (yes, compound), which includes a 28,000 (give or take) square foot home. Not including guest house. And that unsettles me. That doesn't speak very well of his understanding of poverty. That doesn't speak very well of his understanding of environmental concerns. To me, all that says is that John Edwards, as he so often talked about in 2004, believes in the existence of two Americas. And he believes in the one where the fantastically wealthy live surreal lives.

That just so happens to be an America that most people will never live in. So why vote for it? I'm certainly not naive. I know that to run for president you need to have more than a few dead ones earning 15% in the market. But that house is just excessive, and, dare I say, hypocritical. I don't like that at all.

2008 it is (impeachment is probably too much to hope for)

Once again Bryce has come up with a great idea. Once again I am going to steal it. Before you read another word, head over to his blog to see his thoughts about some of the big names in the 2008 race.

Now that you're back, let me say that I really like the idea of expressing my thoughts about the candidates this early in the race. I am even more excited about the prospect of looking back in two years (or six, or ten) and reflecting on what my impressions were when the race was just starting. Unlike Bryce, I am going to devote one full post to each candidate in order to really flesh out my thoughts. This is going to be a massive project, so it will probably take me a while, but I am determined to see it to fruition.

All horses to the starting gate.

John McCain (The Grand Ole Party)


If I had to pick a time when I first became disenchanted with the modern political machine (and by that I mean the combination of a cynical government and a compliant press), I would undoubtedly choose the 2000 Presidential primary in South Carolina. I was a big fan of John McCain back then. After the years of pettiness that ended the once promising Clinton era, McCain seemed like a breath of fresh air. While I was undoubtedly pulling for Gore, I was still excited about the prospect of a general election race against McCain because I saw it as a no lose situation for the American people.

Bush, clearly the favorite son of the GOP establishment (no pun intended), had been unexpectedly trounced by McCain in New Hampshire, and was losing ground nationally as well. Until South Carolina. In South Carolina, McCain had the decency to oppose the use of the Confederate flag as a part of the official state flag. He had the decency to call out George W. for visiting Bob Jones University, a school that, at the time, did not allow interracial dating. The more time that McCain spent in South Carolina, the more I liked him.

He was doing so well in South Carolina, and the chosen son so poorly, that the decision was made by the Bush team and the GOP that McCain needed to be taken out of the race. And he was. Somehow Bush, aided by the GOP talking heads, was able to accuse McCain, a Vietnam veteran and prisoner of war who had been tortured, of being soft on defense. This is a man who, while still living and still in government, had a naval vessel named after him. Yes, there really is a USS John McCain. Unbelievably, this ridiculous claim stuck. Bush went on to win, decisively, in South Carolina, and was given the GOP nomination at the convention a few months later. We all know how that story turns out.

I can't tell you how devastated I was by what happened in South Carolina. Even as a student of history, the ridiculous claims of the Bush camp, and their shameless coverage by the press, struck me as particularly heinous. At the time I remember thinking "but all of this is just so patently false." In retrospect, those were the good old days. But why bring up all of this history anyway? Isn't this about McCain '08? Well, I bring it up because I think it is important to show just how much of my esteem John McCain has lost.

McCain used to be a man that voters could depend on to speak truth to power, even in the midst of it. Those days are long, long gone. It's sad that so many pundits now use his "Straight Shooter" nickname, and reputation, ironically. Sad, but not uncalled for. Where does one even start? How about his relative silence on immigration while serving as the Senator of a state where it long ago passed into the realm of crisis? Of course there is his very public courting of key figures in the religious right, including Jerry Falwell, a man he once called "an agent of intolerance." Worst of all, perhaps, is McCain's compromise with the Bush administration on torture. Other than campaign finance reform and Senate ethics reform, both of which were badly botched, I cannot name a single thing that McCain has done in the last six years that I like. Come to think of it, I don't have much more of anything to say about this candidate at all. The hope I once found in John McCain has been replaced by little more than regrets about what could have been.

But none of this really matters because, sadly, I am no longer John McCain's target voter. He is clearly looking to rally what Andrew Sullivan calls the "Christianist" base, while hoping that his maverick reputation will still resonate with the independents and libertarians that have supported him for so long. My call: no one is buying it. McCain's base has already largely abandoned him, disgusted by the behavior that I have just listed. And the GOP base? Forget about it. They trust McCain less than they trust Lieberman, and he still caucuses with the Democrats. This is a party that prizes loyalty above all else. Remember Reagan's "Eleventh Commandment," never speak ill of a fellow Republican? Not even his continued support of Bush's surge (cough, escalation) will wash the bad taste out of their mouths.

The only real things that McCain's got going for him at this point are name recognition and his reputation as a war hero. Even if the voters in the general election would pull for him, they will probably never get the chance to decide. Unless the GOP gets REALLY desperate, he will never make it past the primaries. McCain's only hope is that everyone else in the race looks worse than he does. Fortunately for him, his major competitors at this point are Giuliani and Romney. Actually, McCain '08 is starting to look pretty plausible after all.

"Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses..."

Three pieces of border news and a comment on the Border Patrol.

With an already bad situation in Iraq steadily deteriorating, I can't imagine the border gets all that much news coverage elsewhere. That's just a guess. To gauge this, I want to know if anyone who reads this blog heard that a Border Patrol agent shot to death a 22 year old Mexican migrant from the state of Puebla about three weeks ago.

It happened about 8 miles from where I am sitting, out near where we leave the water in the desert. Like all Border Patrol shootings, the details surrounding the "incident" have not been released.

In other border deaths news, another body was found in the desert last week by the family of a missing migrant. When he didn't show up or call, the family called the Border Patrol to advise them that he was missing. Eventually the family came from Florida and California to search for him. I'm glad that they found him, but sad that he had already died from "exposure."

And finally, in honor of Rage Against the Machine reuniting, here's a sad story of a racist wearing a badge. Two very close friends from Agua Prieta were visiting another very close friend in Tucson this weekend. On their way back to the border they decided to visit a state park and hike around the lake. As they were leaving the park they were stopped by Border Patrol and asked for their papers. They supplied their tourist visas (which they have had for a number of years) and were told by the agent that these papers were for "shopping at Wal-Mart and then going back to Mexico." He then called them a derogatory term for Mexican migrants, told them that he wasn't stupid, and accused them of being smugglers and "helping (expletive) migrants." I'm told that they were lucky as the agent could have seized their Visas without a guarantee that they would be returned.

I am aware that this post is pretty harsh on the Border Patrol. In many ways I regret that. I appreciate the work that the Border Patrol does in fighting drug smuggling, something I have no love for. I also appreciate the lives that they have saved by finding lost, sick, or injured migrants in the desert. The fact is that I have a number of friends down here who are agents, one very good friend in fact. I think they are good men. I wish more agents were like them.

Oh No He Didn't

I used to like conspiracy theories and government secrets and all sorts of stuff like that, but I left it all behind in the eighth grade when I decided it didn't matter all that much who killed John F. Kennedy.

I've even managed to dislike the Bush administration profoundly (and from the primaries of the 2000 election) without paying any attention to all the talk of secret government plots against the American people, etc.

I think I was too hasty...( sometimes the image of the video takes a minute to load)



This, I believe, would be the straw that breaks my back.
He's not even saying this in private. This is in the Senate. On TV.
This is the man watching out for your legal rights.
Wow.