House of Representatives to environment: F*** you, secure the borders.

The House of Representatives just passed HR 2578, an omnibus piece of legislation including HR 1505, the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act. The final vote was 232-188, with most Democrats opposed and most Republicans in favor. The roll call vote tally is here.

This sneakily named bill gives the Secretary of Homeland Security authority to manage federal lands within 100 miles of both the U.S.-Canada border and the U.S.-Mexico border. This power is an expansion of Section 102 of the Real ID Act, passed in 2005, which gives the DHS Secretary authority to waive any federal laws during the construction of border enforcement structures, including the border wall. Because of that act, all major pieces of environmental legislation, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act (which mandates review of all environmental projects) and the Endangered Species Act have been waived during border wall construction and other border enforcement activities. Perhaps most insidiously, the law explicitly states that DHS waivers cannot be subjected to judicial review.

HR 2578 would extend essentially the same powers to all federal lands within 100 miles of either U.S. land border. It prohibits the Secretary of the Interior (responsible for National Parks and Bureau of Land Management Land) and the Secretary of Agriculture (National Forests) from interfering with Customs and Border Protection activities within this 100-mile area.


Let me say that again, really clearly. This law gives the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to waive all environmental legislation within 100 miles of U.S. land borders. 


Apparently, it's not good enough that our border enforcement is killing hundreds of people every year. We also have to make sure that things like preserving wilderness areas don't interfere with catching and deporting people trying to make it to the U.S. And lest you think this is about border security--the Department of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol have stated that this law is unnecessary for border security. The current system of interagency land management is working just fine for them.

The Senate still has to vote on this (it's S.803, introduced by Arizona Senators Jon Kyl and John McCain). You can read up on the bill here, get the Sky Island Alliance's talking points here (PDF), and go here to take action and contact your Representatives and Senators.

Immigration reform and invisible costs

Friday’s immigration announcement by President Obama was a great moment in a lot of ways. Seeing the reactions to his announcement that the Department of Homeland Security is stopping the deportation of DREAM Act eligible students was a good reminder of the spectrum of opinions that the U.S. population holds on immigration issues. Many people were celebrating, knowing that they might have an opportunity to work or continue their studies. Others were decrying the fact that this was done via executive action rather than Congressional legislation, claiming that this was nothing more than a political decision to appeal to Latin@ voters.

All of this has put me in a reflective mood about border and immigration policy, especially in the context of the massive wall that I cross at least twice a day now.  One of the rallying points behind No More Deaths is that these issues shouldn’t be political—they’re human rights issues. I firmly believe that thousands of bodies piling up in southern Arizona’s deserts are a human rights issue. And in March, when I was here doing work in the desert, it was easy to see immigration in only those terms. The people I interacted with on a daily basis weren’t policymakers or strategists. They were people like me, except that they needed work and had the misfortune to be born on the wrong side of the line.

Perhaps the clearest part of being out in the desert was how visibly wrong and ineffective our border enforcement was. It seemed clear that people weren’t being deterred by the militarization or the wall itself. Crossing numbers are certainly down in recent years, but there’s no real way to tell if this is because of the U.S.’s poor economy, increased border enforcement, or both. What is clear is that plenty are still choosing to cross—it’s just that more of them were dying in the process. A week out there convinced me that our currently policies couldn’t continue for much longer, because they were inherently unsustainable. I figured that they would collapse under the weight of their own inhumanity, that reform could happen if enough people knew what was going on and called for change.

Now, I’m in an urban area, talking to tons of different people on a daily basis and hearing dozens of stories from migrants. A lot of them have left desperately poor town in central and southern Mexico, where a good wage is $30 a week. Some of them are my age, except instead of attending a liberal arts college and blogging about politics, they have a three-year old child at home who they need to support. Most of them aren’t coming to the U.S. to pursue higher education. Many of them don’t want to live there permanently or assimilate into U.S. culture. The majority are simply looking for work, having run out of options at home.

I was speaking to a group of women in the Migrant Resource Center where I’ve spent the past week working. They were discussing the poor wages in their home states that had led them to try to cross the border, while I chimed in occasionally with questions.

One of them turned to me and asked, “If you were in my position, if you couldn’t find any work at home and had four children to support, would you try to cross into the U.S.?”

I looked at her and froze for a moment, unable to answer because the circumstances of my life had never forced me to consider something like this. Eventually, I said, “I don’t know. But maybe. Probably.”

She nodded, looking satisfied. “Until you’ve been in this position, you don’t know what you would do,” she said.

In the desert, I heard stories like this and wished people safe passage. On the Mexican side of the line, though, these stories carry an entirely different meaning. The people who tell me these things have just been deported, and, with very few exceptions, most of them are headed back to the towns they came from in Mexico’s interior. Having seen the reality of the desert or the brutality of the Border Patrol (nobody I’ve spoken to who was in custody overnight was fed more than one meal, and most of them were housed in detention facilities where sitting down was impossible because of crowding), most of them are giving up and heading home.

From a political perspective, this is a win. Comprehensive immigration reform has been discussed for a long time in U.S. politics. All of the strategies I’ve heard rely on essentially three actions—providing a path to citizenship for the undocumented immigrants already here, changing our visa system to grant temporary work visas and possibly increase quotas for nations like Mexico with high demand, and increasing enforcement on the border to prevent unauthorized crossings. No matter how people feel about Mexicans or what to do with the undocumented folks once they get here, everybody seems to agree that preventing migrants from crossing illegally is a good thing. Policy, as much as it could aim to provide better jobs for Mexico or legalize those who’ve already made it here, is going to favor border militarization.

Out in the desert, it seemed like this couldn’t go on forever. The degree of suffering was so great, the injustices so stark, that I knew a better world couldn’t be too far off. From the city, though, abuse becomes mundane. The people I talk to everyday who come in dehydrated, forced into the back of vehicles which look like they’re designed to carry animals, crying because they can’t find work at home and don’t know what to do—all of them fade together, human casualties in a policy system which doesn’t care about their suffering. Which isn’t going to care about their suffering.

In the midst of all this, it’s good to know that the undocumented migrants who have already made it to el norte, who have lived there for years and built lives there, might be able to stay. But immigration reform which only tweaks our visa system isn’t going to solve the issue. Reagan’s 1986 comprehensive immigration reform—the last large-scale legalization we’ve had in the U.S.—was supposed to provide enough border enforcement to make sure people stopped crossing. And we all know how that worked out.

As long as there are people who are desperate to find work, I have to believe our border wall won’t make a difference. If we build a twelve foot wall, they’ll find a thirteen foot ladder, or so the saying goes. But being here makes me afraid that our awful policies are working in some twisted way, that the suffering I’ve seen this week is simply supposed to be another form of collateral damage.

The physical border is a space often forgotten in political discussions. We talk about who ICE chooses to deport in the U.S. and what it’s like to live life undocumented, always afraid that one misstep could get you sent back to a country you don’t remember leaving. We don’t talk about the border militarization in real terms, what it means for the people who live on either side of the line, who conduct their day-to-day lives perpetually in the shadow of that fence. We say we’re adding enforcement and agents, and people see it as a good or accept it as a necessary compromise to push for reforms in the system. We’re sold a specter of drug cartels and devious migrants sneaking across our borders, and we don’t often pause to consider what that added enforcement will mean or how many more bodies will pile up in the Arizona desert because of it.

I want comprehensive immigration reform, and I’m so happy to learn that many of the people I know won’t have to live with the specter of deportation hanging over their heads, at least for the next two years. I hope, though, that we can bring these spaces into our national dialogue too, that in our push for legalization of those already here, we don’t forget about those who would still come. I want us to see the human rights side even as we acknowledge its political dimensions. I don’t want the suffering in the desert, the costs on the Mexican side of the line, to forever remain invisible.

In which I respond to the people commenting on the NYT article about Obama's executive order on immigration

So this morning, President Obama announced that undocumented students who would be covered under the DREAM Act will no longer be deported. This policy applies to people who are under 30, arrived in the U.S. before they turned 16, have been here for at least five years and have no criminal record. They also must be currently in school, have a high school diploma or served in the military.

Obama is essentially shifting policy through executive action, and while it's similar to the DREAM Act, it doesn't provide a path to legal citizenship for undocumented students. Instead, it grants a two-year "deferred action" during which an individual is essentially safe from deportation. People who are granted this deferral may then apply for work permits.

While this isn't citizenship and doesn't solve the immigration problem in the long term, it's an important short-term step towards a more humane immigration policy. I was really excited reading the New York Times' article about it, and then I decided to look at the comments. Where, naturally, I lost most of my faith in humanity.

Every time immigration comes up, people respond with all kinds of xenophobic, racist and just plain factually inaccurate stuff to justify their opposition to treating people like human beings. And I'm getting pretty sick of it. So, I'm going to pick a few choice comments from the NYT's article and respond to them here. (Trigger warning: racism)

1) These people are illegals and by definition, criminals. Therefore they should all be deported as soon as possible.

Okay, first of all, "illegal" is an adjective, not a noun. So a person can't be an "illegal." But I digress.

U.S. immigration laws are civil, and violating them has historically been a civil offense, not a criminal one. Until very recently, it has been federal policy to apply prosecutorial discretion when criminally prosecuting people for violating immigration laws. This means that, except in rare cases where an undocumented immigrant committed a more serious crime, people are generally deported with only a civil infraction (the equivalent of a parking ticket) rather than a criminal conviction. Most people here illegally have never been convicted of any crime, in violation of immigration laws or otherwise.

This is now changing, as federal initiatives like Operation Streamline seek to criminalize unauthorized immigration to dissuade people from trying to come to the U.S., which brings me to my second point. Pointing out that someone has broken a law has no bearing on whether or not the law itself is just. Nobody is disputing that people who came to the U.S. in violation of its immigration laws have broken those laws. People are arguing that those laws are unfairly applied and have many, many unintended consequences which are bad both for the individuals affected and the nation as a whole. These consequences include familial separation, as well as large numbers of bright, ambitious students who are unable to attend college and contribute to the U.S. because they can't afford tuition and aren't eligible for financial aid because of their immigration status.

Which brings me to the they should all be deported line. As for that, I offer only this article. Next?

2) I am naturalized citizen who patiently and painstaking waited on line and went through the whole legal process. This is going to encourage more illegal immigrants crossing the border with children in tow and more anchor babies. This makes me sick to my stomach!

So, you waited in line and got legal residency. Good for you. (Seriously, good for you.)

Here's the thing, though. U.S. immigration works on a quota system, where each country in the world has the same cap on the number of people who can get immigrant visas each year. In order to apply, you need to have a close relative, generally a sibling, parent or child, who is already a U.S. citizen (this is called an F4 application). If you're from a country with very few applicants, like Iceland, awesome--you can get a visa pretty quickly. If you're from a country like Mexico or the Philippines, you'll be waiting a while. The wait for Mexico is currently somewhere between 15 and 20 years if you already have a close relative in the U.S. Waiting in line simply isn't an option for many people, least of all those who were brought to the U.S. by their parents and have been living and going to school year for years.

In order to be eligible for Obama's "deferred action," someone must have already been living in the U.S. for five years. Trust me, this isn't going to encourage anyone to cross the border who wasn't already going to cross. And if you're really concerned about more people crossing, your best bet would be to advocate for job creation programs in Mexico.

Finally, I'm not sure how some undocumented immigrants gaining legal rights in any way hurts or affects your status as a legal permanent resident.

3) Why don't we just give them everything ELSE we've worked so hard for!
I was adopted from Italy years ago. And my parents had to spend time and money making me something I could be proud of.
And " American Citizen." It use to be an Honor to be an American Citizen. You use to have want it so bad you could tastes it.
Nowerdays Just dump the kid on the white houses door step say "I no speaka the english." And wham! you an American Citizen. No questions asked.. 

But now They don't have to work for it.

Nothing in this decision will make anybody an American Citizen. First of all. And many people who come to the U.S. without documents don't want to be U.S. citizens--they simply want to come and work.

Second of all, there is nobody who came to this country without documents who didn't work for it. Nobody. I've spent the past week in the Migrant Resource Center in Agua Prieta, Sonora. We help people who have just been deported get back home and provide food, water, clothing and basic medical care. I've heard dozens of individuals stories, each distinct, but with many common elements. People generally pay thousands of dollars to hire a pollero to bring them to the U.S.--this in a country where making less than $30 a week is common in many central and southern states. People walk for a week or more through the brutal heat of the Arizona desert to come to the U.S., and thousands of them have died in the attempt over the past decade.  So don't tell me people don't work for this.

I'm going to ignore the racism in the comment about people not speaking English, except to point out that the U.S. doesn't have an official language. But it is currently the exact opposite of easy to become a U.S. citizen, or to even get legal permanent residency.

Finally, and again, I'm not sure how some people getting more legal rights in any way diminishes or cheapens your citizenship.

4) So Obama is giving 800,000 illegal immigrants work permits. All US citizens who are out of work or have to work part time should figuratively spit in Obama's face, since he is spitting in yours.

Ah, the jobs argument. First of all, undocumented students who apply for deferred action still have to apply to get a work permit, and I highly doubt all 800,000 of them will qualify.

With regard to the larger jobs issue: this is a pervasive anti-immigration argument, but I think it's fundamentally flawed. First of all, a work permit isn't a guarantee of work, so all this would do is give some undocumented students the same chance that U.S. citizens have to apply for the few jobs that are out there. I personally don't believe that U.S. citizenship should magically confer a person with any more of a right to work than a non-citizen resident would have.

Even if you disagree, though, I would again point to this article. Often, the consequence of undocumented workers being removed is that produce is left to rot in the fields. Many other standard complaints, like that immigrants don't pay taxes, are patently absurd as well. Immigrants pay sales tax, and those who work under fake social security numbers pay into both Social Security and Medicare, without being able to benefit from either of those programs (effectively subsidizing the rest of us). 

There's been a longstanding argument that immigrants do jobs U.S. citizens aren't willing to do, and I think that's often true. But the counterargument to that--that if we enforced immigration laws and cracked down, wages in agricultural labor would rise--seems compelling as well. So what do we do?

I'm not an economist and I don't have an answer to that. My support of immigration reform and more visas is rooted in human rights, not economic arguments. I believe people have a right to migrate where they want to and to be treated like human beings while doing so. That said, I think it's worth pointing out what is made visible and what is made invisible when we talk about immigrants "stealing American jobs." The rise in immigration over the past few decades, specifically to the U.S. from Mexico and other Latin American countries, is largely due to trade liberalization agreements. Agreements like NAFTA and organizations like the WTO have lifted many international barriers to trade in the name of efficiency. One effect of this has been the collapse of the rural Mexican economy for many small farmers, pushing them to migrate north. Another has been the shipping of U.S. jobs overseas, largely to Asia, where labor is cheaper.

Regardless of how you feel about trade liberalization, I think the anti-immigration argument overlooks the structural nature of free trade. It's telling that those who decry the effect immigrants are supposedly having on the U.S. economy, notably Republican (and many Democratic) policymakers, are much more silent on the free trade agreements which encourage U.S. jobs to be shipped overseas, as well as the factors which push migrants to the U.S. These are all complicated economic questions with room for debate, but a knee-jerk, "They're taking our jobs!" is not going to lead to sensible policy on this issue.

5) The president does not have the constitutional authority to do this. Congress makes the laws.

There's a legitimate conversation to be had here about the limits of executive power, and there's certainly a problematic history of presidents using executive actions and policy shifts to do what they want. However, while Congress does make the laws, it's the executive branch's job to enforce them. Part of that means prioritizing certain methods of enforcement over others, which to my mind, is exactly what this is doing. The President has decided that applying U.S. immigration laws to students who have been in the country for years is not the best use of the government's resources. Given the impossibility of deporting all 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S., I'd have to say I agree.  (There's another conversation to be had about the construction of "good" vs. "bad" immigrants as it relates to the DREAM Act, but I'll save that for later.) In the fact of a Congress which has thus far failed to pass any immigration reform laws, I think this action was both warranted and necessary.

6) What Mr. Obama did is pure politics. What kind of leadership is that?

and

Have we elected President Romney today?

We might have. Everybody is focused on the every growing population of Hispanics and as an article in the Times mentioned this week, they are forgetting that it is 2012 and not 2050.There are still many more non-Hispanic voters than Hispanic voters. A lower percentage of Hispanic people vote than do whites and blacks.

First of all, non-citizens can't vote in elections. Which means nobody who is directly affected by this policy can vote. As far as the larger Hispanic community goes, of course this is a political act. Because everything the president ever does is a political act. Because he's a politician. It's entirely possible that President Obama realized that same-sex couples should be able to get married of his own accord, and that's awesome. But the decision to announce that at the time he did was a political act. Pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq was a political act, just as George's Bush's decision to invade was a political act.

Just because something is a political act doesn't mean it's wrong, or corrupt, or immoral, or shallow. Politicians are always going to consider the potential effects on voters when taking stands on issues. I would argue that they probably should consider that, since they're elected to serve voters. That doesn't mean that Obama's action was only about getting votes, and it doesn't make his action any more or less valid.

Finally, I would like to point out that Hispanic and Latin@ people are not and should not be the only people who care about this issue. There are plenty of people who are concerned about undocumented immigrants who support this action wholeheartedly. As much as I'm critical of Obama, and the entire U.S. political system, I'm happy that we were able to make this small step forward, and I trust that many of my fellow non-Hispanic/Latin@ and white Americans are as well.

There you have it. I think I touched on all the major arguments I saw in the comments, though if I missed any, somebody should let me know. Immigrant rights are human rights, and while stopping the deportation of students isn't enough to solve the problem, it's certainly a step in the right direction.

My latest paper: The Rhetorical Construction of Ecoterrorism

One of the classes I took this semester was Environmental Communication, a rhetoric class focusing on environmental issues. Our final assignment, which we worked on for about half of the semester, was to write a final paper focusing on a specific topic. Because of my interest in radical activism, I chose to write about "ecoterrorism," looking at how that word had evolved to refer to acts of environmentally-motivated property destruction and sabotage.

A lot of my research involved reading court documents, the Congressional Record, FBI reports and laws like the USA PATRIOT Act. Over the course of this research, I realized just how repressive, insidious and relatively unknown a lot of these policies are. And it's with that in mind that I'd like to share my paper with more people.

Regardless of your opinion on the legitimacy of environmentally-motivated sabotage as a tactic, or your thoughts on the ethics of taking illegal action, the ways in which the U.S.  government has responded to these actions is profoundly repressive and should concern anyone with a vested interest in activism, protest and true democracy.

You can read and download the paper here (pdf).

Wondering what evil looks like? I don't know, but ALEC is pretty close.

Wondering why Florida has a “License to Kill” law that contributed to the death of Trayvon Martin? Or where tough-on-immigration laws like Arizona’s SB 1070 come from? There is this thing you should know about. It’s called the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, and it’s the closest thing to pure evil that I’ve been able to identify in national U.S. politics.

Okay, that might be an exaggeration. But not a big one. ALEC is a place for industry and special interest groups to come together with legislators and draft model legislation. Corporations pay large sums of money to become members, and legislators who have a cause they’re working on (say, cracking down on immigration) can team up with corporate lobbyists to draft a piece of legislation. This is what happened with Arizona’s SB 1070, the bill that allowed law enforcement to stop anyone who they thought looked “illegal” and demand proof of legal residency in the United States. That bill was based on a model piece of legislation drafted by the ALEC Public Safety and Elections Committee at a time when both the National Rifle Association and the Corrections Corporation of America were members of the committee. Corrections Corp has since dropped their ALEC membership, but I’m sure they’re making out nicely with all the new immigration detainees that Arizona’s largely privatized prison system has to take care of.

I could list dozens of examples like this, but the wonderful folks at the Center for Media and Democracy have set up an ALEC Exposed Wiki, so I don’t have to. Check it out. Read up on the way ALEC works at the Nation. See what Paul Krugman thinks. This is a hugely important shadowy underground anti-democratic machine of evil. At the very least, you should know what they’re up to.

Six stories from the borderlands

One short week, spent sleeping nestled between mesquite bushes and barrel cactus, driving nearly impassable dirt roads by day, and here I am back in Tucson. I have ideas and issues and ideology to wrestle with, and if you’re at all interested in immigration or politics more generally, you’ll have a lot of reading to do in the next few weeks. But for now, while I’m still here, I wanted to share a few short stories from the Arizona borderlands.

1) I meet a man in Nogales. Not a man, I suppose—he’s more or less my age, though substantially taller. Sarah introduces me to him, saying that he’s from a town near my college. We talk for a minute—I’m always excited to meet people who have heard of Walla Walla, Washington. I ask him a few questions about where he grew up, and we part ways.

Later, Sarah tells me that he grew up near me, but was deported last year—caught in a traffic stop. He has no legal way of getting home, no means of re-entering the U.S. I cringe at the thought that in a few days, I’ll step onto a plane and be back home in a matter of hours. There’s a bitter taste in my mouth for the rest of the afternoon.

2) I find myself cooking dinner with a group of anarchists. It’s much like cooking dinner with any group of young people. We have the radio cranked to play the latest in terrible pop music, and we relax into the ease of self-deprecation while waiting for the onions to brown. Any time our limited camp kitchen resources create a challenge, someone feels compelled to blame hierarchical systems of oppression.

“You guys, the patriarchy is burning the quesedillas again.”

Someone else chimes in. “Fucking patriarchy ruins everything.”

We all laugh, and someone suggests adding noodles to the soup. I’m not a huge fan, so I cross my forearms in front of my chest—a block. It’s used in consensus circles to indicate irreconcilable disagreement with something being proposed. Here, though, we’ve resigned ourselves to the irony of having a trip run by leaders (or “facilitators”) who don’t believe in hierarchy. The noodles go into the soup. I have a bite, and find to my surprise that it’s not so bad after all.

3) Walking, I notice suddenly that the signs are all in Spanish. I turn to my right.

“Sarah, are we in Mexico?”

She nods.

I’ve walked into Nogales without being asked to stop, show my passport, prove my citizenship or answer questions about my intentions.

On the way back stateside, standing in line, I snap pictures of the trucks lined up and waiting to enter. A Customs and Border Patrol agent snaps at me, telling me to stop. I apologize, saying I didn’t know. I assume this is the end of it, but I reach the front of the line. The man waves me forward and takes my passport.

“What were you taking pictures of?” he demands.

“Signs, the trucks…nothing much.”

I shrug, hoping my casualness will deflect his concerns about homeland security, but it doesn’t work. He motions for me to show him. I turn the screen on.

“You’re not allowed to take pictures of the port,” he tells me, shaking his head. I wonder what I look like to him, greasy hair pulled back into a knot, Chacos covered in Mexican dust. I pause, waiting for him to say something, but he doesn’t. I ask if I need to delete the photo, and he says yes.

The first one is of a sign—no agricultural products may enter the country. He doesn’t check for agricultural products in my backpack, but he makes sure I hit the delete button twice. The next photo shows two trucks under a sign that says “open” in green lights. I hit delete. We continue this for twenty images until I reach one of the border wall, framed by construction work.

“The wall is okay,” he tells me grudgingly. I put my camera away, ask if he needs anything else, and walk back into my country.

It didn’t occur to me until after I’d crossed that I could have refused. It didn’t occur to me until later that night how low the stakes are for me when I choose to cross a border.

4) The two Border Patrol agents are joking with each other, but I can barely hear them over the rattling of chains. To my left are forty or so detainees—people picked up near the border in the last few days. They’re here in court to plead guilty en masse to criminal offenses—entering the U.S. not through an authorized port, re-entering the U.S. after being deported. Six at a time, they go up to the microphone and the judge questions them.

“Are you a citizen of Mexico?”

Sí.

“Were you found in Arivaca, Arizona on the 22^nd of March of this year?”

Sí.

“Were you previously denied admission, excluded, deported and removed from the United States on April 2 . . .”

Sí.

And together, as a group: Culpable. Culpable. Culpable.

“All guilty,” says the translator to the judge.

Those six file out, and another six are up. Some of them were previously deported earlier this year. I can’t imagine making the journey through the desert twice in a lifetime, much less twice in one year. Those who have never been deported before will be back on a bus to Mexico this afternoon. How many of them will try again? How many of them will end up back here?

5) Heading back into town, we pass through a Border Patrol checkpoint. They’re stationed strategically throughout the Southwest to pick up migrants who have survived the desert. We roll down the window, and he sticks his head in the car.

“Everyone a U.S. citizen?”

Marcel, our driver, says no, he’s German, and starts to hand the man his passport. The agent glances at the cover, doesn’t open it, and hands it back.

“I’ve seen all I need to see,” he says to our four white faces. “You folks have a nice weekend.”

6) We’re out on water drops, delayed a few hours because I noticed the car needed gas right before we’d reached the remote washes where we put supplies out. It’s our second stop on the route, and each of us carries a gallon of water in each hand. On the caps, we’ve drawn hearts. The sides say Suerte or Buen viaje in black marker.

We follow the migrant trail, but when we get there, we find almost a dozen full jugs of water. The Samaritans have been here recently. I tell myself it’s a good thing that the water isn’t being taken, hoping that it means people don’t need it, not that they aren’t finding it. We rearrange the jugs, placing them directly on the trail, since the coyotes don’t always let people stop to grab supplies when the groups move at night. On the side of one, in pink marker, is a wish: Hasta un mundo sin fronteras.

Until a world without borders.

NOW AVAILABLE: Mining and democracy in Intag, Ecuador

For those of you who've been waiting for it (probably no one), I've finally translated my final study abroad paper into English. You can view and download the entire thing as a PDF here.

 It's a thrilling tale of mining companies, small-scale farmers turned activists, betrayal, lies, possible illegal cyanide dumping, long speeches at regional assemblies, journalism and constitutional law, and all for the low, low price of FREE!

Quoted: Michael Maren on the completely ineffectiveness of foreign aid

From a fantastic interview which argues convincingly that all international NGOs and US aid projects are doing much more harm than good.


On the work aid organizations do:


[Aid organizations] know how to set up refugee camps, so they do it. And they also horribly underestimate the local people, the skills and abilities of the local people, and the ability of the people to save themselves and to take care of themselves. If I learned anything in the Peace Corps, it was that people basically know what they're doing. Ads that we see for these organizations tend to give the impression that all these Africans are a bunch of infants. That they're gonna starve to death if we don't send a bunch of 25-yearold volunteers over there to take care of them. The ads really rely on something I find somewhat racist. The whole aid industry is built on this conceit that Americans can go into a village of Africa and, by virtue of some innate quality of American-ness, have something to offer people, something that you can teach people there. As if these people couldn't survive without you. And that's sort of the hidden attitude when I get these questions: Aren't these people gonna suffer if we pull the aid organizations out? And I always have to say, "Do you really think people can't take care of themselves?" Where do people get the idea that Africans are gonna really suffer if a bunch of American volunteers go home? It's an absurd notion.




And on how this serves the US government's interests:


It lets us off the hook. "We're doing something. We're building schools over there. That's our obligation to this country"-when we're pursuing macroeconomic policies that are causing these problems to begin with, such as massive structural adjustments and debt burdens. That's really the problem, and that amount of money dwarfs the money coming in through these charities. You have to think about development in terms of larger economic issues. That's where the problems are.

Occupy Wall Street, cynicism, and power

Wall Street has been occupied for over three weeks now. (If you’ve been living in a cave and are unaware of the existence of Occupy Wall Street, you can read up on it here.) That sense of rage, the slow-burning knowledge that things are not ok, has finally come to the surface. I’ve been praying for this for almost a year. Watching the Arab Spring unfold, seeing the protests rippling across Europe in the wake of austerity measures, I asked again and again, “What will it take for us to wake up? What will it take for Americans to take to the streets?” I wanted our moment of revolution, the rejection of existing methods of expression, a truly grassroots expression of uncompromised anti-establishment action, desde abajo y a la izquierda.

I want to believe so much that this movement can accomplish something, that there are policy changes which would meaningfully address the growing wealth gap. I want to let this be the re-growth of my idealism, my faith that a group of committed citizens can spur lasting changes in the power structure of the state. I want to believe that the state is not irredeemable. Even President Obama said that the protesters were expressing legitimate grievances, that growing inequality is an unfortunate fact of our society. And for a split second, I thought that might mean things would change.

But there’s always reality, and power. Or more accurately, the reality of power. And the reality of power is that the United States government, regardless of the party the president happens to belong to, exists primarily to defend the interests of business and capital. The government does not exist to protect your family, or ensure access to health care, or protect your grandchildren from the accumulation of toxic chemicals in their food. The government exists to defend existing power structures.

In this case, that means setting forth new trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. Specifically, the agreements submitted by the Obama administration to Congress yesterday would allow foreign companies to be bailed out by the US government if changes our environmental and labor laws cause them to lose money. These agreements are literally the antithesis of everything that Occupy Wall Street stands for, and their timing seems like cruel irony. In the wake of the State Department’s approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, these things have ceased to shock me. But my lack of shock is in itself, surprising to me. Every time Obama does one more thing I disagree with, every time I shake my head and say, “It figures”, I can’t help but wonder—when did I become this cynical? And more disturbing than my cynicism—which has reached levels more appropriate for a 70-year old man than a young college student—is the fact that it exists in spite of my best efforts to the contrary. In spite of spending months trying to find reasons for hope, trying to believe that the abuses of those in power were not systematic and deliberate, that government could be redeemed—I can’t help but feel that the deep level of cynicism I’ve sunk to is nothing more than an accurate assessment of reality.

Even Ecuador has failed to provide a safe haven from the cruel reality of power. My host dad just returned from the Amazon, where he works as a petroleum engineer (he spends twenty days in the field, then ten days back home in Quito). Upon his return, he told me that he had talked to some indigenous people who live in Yasuní National Park. Yasuní sits on top of ample reserves of tar sands oil, which President Correa says he’s willing to leave in the ground if the international community pays Ecuador half the value of the oil—$3.5 billion over a ten year period. German delegates just visited Ecuador to see Yasuní, and have committed millions to the proposal. Correa went to the UN to raise support, and has $55 million pledged (he needs $100 million by the end of the year, or else he says he’ll open Yasuní).

I asked my dad about the Yasuní initiative. He said the indigenous people he talked to told him that there are already wells in the ground in the park, that the oil sitting underground has already been sold to China. He said that Correa’s efforts to raise money for the proposal amounted to nothing more than political theater, that he will be shocked if Yasuní doesn’t open for oil extraction eventually. I wish I could say I was surprised, but after everything I’ve heard about the Ecuadorian government, this seemed inevitable. Of course we’re going to take the most biodiverse place on earth and extract oil from it. Correa may succeed in painting himself and his country as victims of capitalism at the hands of Western neo-imperialist powers. “We wanted to save Yasuní,” he’ll tell the cameras, “but we needed money, and since the rich countries wouldn’t pay us to not destroy the rainforest, we had no choice.” I’ve never met the man; I can’t say whether he truly cares about conservation or just pays lip service when he knows it’s politically expedient to do so. But given that oil accounts for at least 50% of Ecuador’s export earnings, 15-20% of GDP and 30-40% of the government’s total revenues, the Ecuadorian government is logically going to defend extraction. Correa, unlike Obama, at least has the justification that the revenues are going to finance social programs to benefit the poor (at least in theory).

Knowing all this, I’m paralyzed by inaction. I know the Keystone pipeline cannot be built; I also know that I’m powerless to stop it. Even the group that’s organized to defeat it, Tar Sands Action, doesn’t seem to have a plan B. I asked them on Twitter, “Do you have a plan besides asking Obama nicely not to kill our planet?” Their response: “Yes, two weeks of sit-ins [at the White House] in August”. Then they linked to their action proposal, which included demands that the pipeline not be built, but no tactics beyond asking those in power to act against their own perceived self-interest. I tweeted back, “Sit-ins seem like a slightly more militant form of asking nicely.” I never received a response.

Putting faith in the state is an ineffective strategy for activism. If your entire plan consists of getting Congress to pass some piece of carefully-crafted legislation, what do you do when they refuse? If Obama’s State Department can say with a straight face that the construction of a major oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast will have “no significant adverse impacts” on the environment, how can any reasonable strategy for action rely on asking them to change their mind based on rational argument? Sure, you could tie a project up for years with lawsuits, but if you make it all the way to the Supreme Court and lose, what recourse do you have? Yet even knowing this, I can’t come up with plan B. We need the same critical mass that was willing to get arrested sitting peacefully in front of the White House to go sit in front of the bulldozers that break ground for the pipeline. We need a steady stream of cynics and idealists who care about the living planet to put themselves between power and the things it seeks to destroy. We need people willing to sabotage the pipeline. But as much as I believe in defending our earth, I have to wonder if we can win at all, even if we’re willing to break the law. Stand in front of bulldozers, and you will be arrested. Fight back, and you will get shot. Attack the pipeline, and you’ll shut down production for a little while, causing an oil spill in the process. And then it will be fixed. You’ll have to attack it again, and again. You will be caught and arrested. You’ll get a life sentence for domestic terrorism, if you’re lucky. In Ecuador, they don’t always bother with sentencing you. Assassins can be hired in Coca, an oil town in the Amazon, for less than $50. Naturally, oil companies have made use of this fact get rid of problematic activists. One way or another, you will be silenced, and maybe someone will follow in your footsteps, but the overwhelming odds are in favor of power. They always are.

I have to believe that some of the people who are occupying Wall Street know this. And perhaps that’s why they’re out there, day after day, without a cohesive platform or leader or proposal for action. If I were home right now, I’d be in the streets too. I’m angry and cynical and exhausted just trying to keep track of the latest abuses and casualties of those in power. But I don’t have a plan for fixing it all. There are reforms that would help, that would put sufficiently large Band-Aids over the gaping holes in our social structure to make the lives of average people better. I’m in favor of anything that marginally improves the lives of average Americans, that helps to close the gaping wealth gap. I’m in favor of job creation programs and more progressive taxation and the whole laundry list of liberal reform goals. But it won’t be enough. It never is. And knowing that scares me unspeakably. It makes me terrified for the future, not so much for myself, but for indigenous communities and the working poor and the rare species of amphibians that live in Yasuní. It makes me want to do something, anything. It makes me want to take to the streets, placard in hand, chanting about democracy and wealth distribution and power, because I don’t know what else to do. I’m hoping that someone will figure that out before it’s too late, and I say that knowing that hope, just like putting faith in the state, is the antithesis of meaningful activism.

Ideology without a label (aka this I believe)

Over the past year or so, I’ve been trying to come up with a more cohesive political ideology. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to frame problems in the world, effective strategies for activism and what I want the world to look like. I feel pretty secure in my beliefs and opinions (though they’re constantly evolving), but I don’t really have a good label to easily explain myself to other people. Liberal implies a faith in gradual reform and the state that I no longer have. Socialist doesn’t include my environmental convictions, and assumes the continued existence of a large, centralized state. Marxist has similar issues, plus some not-so-great historical connotations. Just saying environmentalist implies looking to the state for solutions to environmental problems, and doesn’t address the intersectionality of environmental and social justice. Deep green implies being anti-civilization and/or a primitivist, which I’m not. Feminist is great, but it doesn’t say much about my environmental or political convictions. Left-of-center is accurate, but really general. Anti-capitalist is probably accurate, but throwing that one out means explaining the difference between a market-based economy based on equal exchange versus a corporatist economy where the state exists largely to protect the interests of capital at the expense of most people and the environment. Anarchist come pretty close too, but most people grossly misunderstand what anarchism means, and I don’t feel like I’ve read enough about the history of anarchist thought to identify myself as such without some qualifiers, since historically, anarchists have advocated a number of things I definitely don’t agree with. I like the term “communalist”, which I came across in the writings of Murray Bookchin, but if I’m asked to explain my politics to someone, no one is going to understand what that means.

I’m not sure labels are really conducive to meaningful political discussion anyway. I’ve read enough stories of self-identified Republicans becoming environmental activists when the river by their home started being polluted by mine tailings or feedlot runoff to know that the labels we choose for ourselves are rarely fixed or immutable. I still find myself self-identifying with the Democratic Party at times (eg. “We lost twelve seats in the last election”), because, as much as I hate the faux-democracy our federal political system is, I understand that some little things I care about (funding for NGOs who provide comprehensive reproductive healthcare in developing countries) fare much better under a Democratic administration. People round up or round down for labels all the time—how many people are really 100% straight or gay? In my experience, labels of any kind—sexual orientation, political affiliation, relationship status, sometimes even gender—are best used as starting points for conversation, and shouldn’t be taken as accurate, complete summaries of who someone is or what they believe. But in spite of their limitations, labels can be useful.

The problem for me with not having a label is that I can’t self-identify as part of a group. Saying you’re a Democrat might not be a perfect summary of your political beliefs, but most people who hear you say it would assume that you’re pro-choice, pro-unions, into redistribution of wealth and have at least a vague sense of concern about the environment. Popular reactions to “socialist” and “libertarian” might not be as accurate, but still, if you throw either one of those out, people have a general idea of what you’re talking about. In contrast, if you say that your political ideology is desde abajo y a la izquierda (from below and to the left), you’re going to have some explaining to do. Which isn’t always a bad thing—explaining your chosen terminology can be a teachable moment. When my roommate freshman year told me she identified as “queer” rather than “bisexual”, we had a great conversation about what that word means to her, which segued into a nice discussion about sexual identity in general. But sometimes, just for the sake of making conversations easier, I wish I had a better-understood word to describe where I am on the political spectrum.

In lieu of an appropriate label, though, I feel like I should lay out some of my fundamental beliefs. There are a lot of things I believe, but these are the ones I feel pretty solid about and think are important.

• While authentic, community-level democracy is not a panacea and won’t guarantee solutions to problems, it’s a necessary prerequisite for addressing almost all social and environmental problems and injustices. This means that every community needs to have sovereign authority to decide what happens to it, free from outside coercion. This means that if the people of Intag, Ecuador say they don’t want a copper mine in their cloud forest, the copper company goes away instead of spreading lies, hiring paramilitaries and getting the Ecuadorian state to back them.
• One of my former high school teachers, Steve Miranda, told me that if your school is too big for everyone in it to sit in a circle in the morning and check-in with each other, then your school is too big. I pretty much agree with this point, and I think the same should be said for governed bodies. Once all the people a decision affects can’t sit around and debate that decision, you lose a ton of democracy in the process. Which explains why federal policy is a complete nightmare, state policy is better but still really bad, and city/county-level policy is better yet, but still pretty bad.
• Related to the above two points, so many of our problems are connected to the existence of the state (large, centralized power) and the way it defends class interests. I’m pretty sure reform can’t fix this (if electing Obama didn’t prove that, I don’t know what will). But I don’t have much of an idea of feasible ways to transition from the federal system we have now to authentic, local forms of democracy. I just know that it really, really needs to happen.
•   The pervasiveness of rape in our culture is not an anomaly; it’s a natural byproduct of the way our culture constructs sexuality. Combatting rape and sexual violence requires taking on rape culture, including victim-blaming, the virgin-whore dichotomy, the stigmatization of sex in general and the stigmatization female sexuality in particular. Which has everything to do with attempts to limit access to reproductive healthcare (which is, as far as I’m concerned, a form of violence against women).
• Defensive rights trump offensive rights (thanks to Derrick Jensen for this one). My right to live next to a healthy, functioning forest (and that forest’s right to exist) trump your perceived right to cut it down in order to make money. My right to breathe clean air and not live on a dangerously warming planet trump your right to burn coal, even if you have that whole “private property” thing to fall back on. My right to the integrity of my body trumps your perceived right to rape me or make laws about whether or not I’m  legally obligated to carry a fetus to term.
• Food security (all people having access to enough food to sustain them) isn’t enough if we really want to fix our food system. We need food sovereignty, which means that communities actually have control over the means of production for their food, and that food is sufficient, nutritional and culturally appropriate.
•  In addition to drastic social and political changes, our culture needs to re-think some of our core beliefs, particularly the sense of entitlement so many people have. We’ve gotten locked in this mentality that food should be cheap and easy to produce and prepare, that power is available with the flick of a switch. We’ve grown a bit soft around the edges and forgotten how to take care of ourselves, and we’re going to need to re-learn that sometime before oil runs out.
•  In spite of the many serious problems in the world, I have been extraordinary fortunate and blessed with an easy, happy and fulfilling life. While I recognize that life is a product of extreme privilege, it also serves as a reminder of what’s possible for everyone if we’re able to be radical and visionary enough to make it happen.

Observations about Ecuadorian culture

I’ve had a lot of little encounters and observations in Ecuador which don’t quite merit a whole blog post, but are still interesting and/or illuminating (at least for me). So I’m just going to list them off. Here’s a little crash course in culture and politics here at the center of the world:

1) While talking to my host dad about Rafael Correa’s administration, which he was highly critical of, he tells me, “I’m not a capitalist or anything. It’s not like I’m far right.” I love so much that in his mind, being center-of-the-road means not being a capitalist, like that’s a common sense thing that people take for granted.

2) In Intag, we stayed on a nature reserve which has nice but rustic accommodations, including composting pit toilets outside. This led me to reflect on the fact that in most countries in the world, people lack access to clean drinking water, whereas in the US, we shit in clean drinking water. At the very least, it seems like we should design homes to have greywater recycling, so your sinks/showers drain into your toilet.

3) My host family would be considered middle or upper middle class by American standards, and certainly upper class by Ecuadorian standards. However, they don’t have a dishwasher or washing machine. According to my academic directors, people often don’t trust that washing machines actually clean clothes better than hand washing (though my family takes their clothes to a laundromat). I wonder if those appliances aren’t available, are too expensive to be practical, or simply aren’t viewed as even remotely necessary (or some combination).

4) Most of my extended host family has gone to private school, and thus speaks English fluently or close. Today, I met my mom’s niece, who’s already being taught English in school (she’s 6). Even in public schools, English instruction is part of the official curriculum, though it’s often not taught or not taught well, depending on the school. Still, it seems that here, one of the functions of an elite education is learning a foreign language well. In the US, this hardly seems prioritized. I’m sure more affluent people are more likely to learn a second language in school, but it seems like “elite” American schools are more likely to focus on business things, economics or maybe good science education. To me, this is a shame, though it’s also reflective of the fact that English is increasingly becoming the lingua franca of the world, particularly for science and technology.

5) I was showing my host mom pictures of me and my family, including some from my high school graduation. She looked at the pictures, looked at me and said, “Oh, you’re fatter now.” I love that in this culture, fat is just a trait like any other—your hair is brown, you have green eyes, and you’re gordita. Having some extra fat on your body isn’t a national emergency like it is in the States.

6) The Ecuadorian constitution (re-written in 2008) is one of the coolest governing documents in the world. It states that people have a right to food sovereignty, nature has rights, people have the right to a “good life” (this is stated in Kichwa, one of the indigenous languages of Ecuador), and that Ecuador is a GMO-free country. In practice, however, very little of this is enforced and Correa’s government is extremely pro-extraction.

7) Quito has its share of beggars and people hawking various food items in the street, but it also has a more enterprising sector which makes its living by performing circus arts at major intersections. I’ve seen fire twirlers, jugglers and acrobats making human pyramids in the middle of the street while traffic is stopped.

Personal purity isn't political activism

In high school, I participated in a service-learning program called Global Visionaries. Along with a group of about twenty US high schoolers, I spent the school year doing local service work and attending workshops on social justice and anti-oppression. The program culminated with a two-and-a-half week trip to Guatemala, where we did more service, had Spanish lessons, and learned about the US-backed 1954 coup which toppled democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz, largely because his land reform policies threatened the interests of the United Fruit Company (now called Chiquita). The coup kicked off a thirty-year civil war, during which the US-funded army basically attempted a genocide of the Mayan indigenous people and used rape as a weapon of war. After watching a movie about the war, we gathered as a group to discuss the events that had shaped the past half-century in Guatemala. We talked about the horrors and heartbreak that the country had been made to endure, largely at the hands of powerful US interests. After we had been talking for a while, Chris Fontana, our program director shook his head sadly and said to the group, “And all this so we could have cheaper bananas…”

At the time, that statement angered me unspeakably, though I couldn’t quite articulate why. Learning about Guatemala’s violent history (which I’d been previously completely unaware of), I had been furious. This was back when I was a fervent idealist, before I understood just how many coups and wars the US has staged all over the world. I was angry at the way the United Fruit Company had political connections which allowed them to basically request a coup from the State Department. I was angry at the lack of democratic process inherent in military operations. I was angry at the collusion between corporations and the state. I wanted transparency, accountability, authentic political participation. Chris’s statement seemed to ignore all of these concerns. He reduced the issue down to one of individual choice, of conscious consumerism. His message seemed to be that if US consumers had been paying enough attention, they could have successfully boycotted Chiquita and demanded that the price of bananas reflect their actual cost, which would have magically prevented the coup. We all know that when the interests of power and capital come up against a group of law-abiding citizens making respectful demands, the people always win. Every single time.

Sarcasm aside, I should thank Chris for this lesson, which it took me years to realize the full implications of. Liberals sadly have a long history of equating personal purity and change with political action, something I believe has been extremely detrimental to the achievement of leftist political goals. I talked about this during my last post about veganism and the animal rights crowd, and the idea extends to almost every social or environmental issue I can think of. Anti-sweatshop activists try to convince people to buy fair trade or Made in USA items, while largely ignoring the economic reality that for many children working in sweatshops, the alternative is prostitution or slow, painful death by starvation. Pro-sweatshop people (yes, they do exist) have pointed out that when sweatshops close because of pressure by activists, many children wind up on the street, starving, or as sex slaves because they don’t have any other way to survive. And yet we persist with the myth that the solution to this problem isn’t critiquing and attacking the neoliberal trade agreements or economic systems that make sweatshops a virtual necessity, it’s encouraging people to buy fair trade. Not even to buy less (not like consumerism is feeding the rise of low-wage factories or anything), but just to buy differently. This is how liberals are going to save the world.

This framework appears in so many other places. Worried about global warming? Change to fluorescent lightbulbs in your house! If you’re serious, maybe buy a Prius. If you’re really serious, install a solar panel and generate all of your own power. Don’t bother protesting the opening of a new coal plant or putting your body in front of the bulldozers that will soon be clearing the ground for the Keystone pipeline. That might be confrontational, might get you arrested. It’s probably better to take shorter showers.

I have this conversation all the time with liberal friends, and I’m often met with a lot of resistance. People defend their individual choices, cling to the meaning in them. I’m absolutely not saying that people shouldn't try to live their lives in an ethical way, whatever that means to them. Personal choices are often catalysts to larger political action. Being vegetarian is what made me aware of factory farming, and by extension, most of the problems with our food system. But then again, I was a vegetarian for almost twelve years, and factory farming is still going strong. Why wouldn't it be? Slaughterhouses operate at capacity, twenty-four hours a day, which means that the meat industry is largely supply-driven. The world population is still growing and getting less poor in absolute terms, which means more Chinese and Indian people are demanding meat in their diets. My one choice, even if it’s magnified by the impact it has on my friends and family, is not going to bring down the Tyson-ConAgra-IBP-Cargill empire.

I do believe that positive choices matter much more than negative ones. Boycotting Coca-Cola because of their appalling human rights and environmental record won’t to a single damn thing to change their business practices, even if you write them a strongly worded letter about it. But supporting a local co-op which is just starting out and trying to do things right will help them stay in business, which is important. Still, while consuming differently (or better yet, just consuming less) is a noble and worthy thing to do, it shouldn’t be confused with legitimate political action. You can be as pure as you want, living on your organic farming commune with a mini-hydro system on a nearby river supplying all your power. You can hand wash all your clothes and make your own cheese from scratch and knit your own clothes until the cows come home, and the planet will keep right on getting warmer. Large corporations will continue to dispossess people of their land in the name of resource extraction. If you want is to withdraw from the system instead of trying to change it, that’s your right. But saying that your choice to opt-out amounts to some kind of radical political action is disingenuous.

This might be a depressing notion for liberals who are used to thinking in terms of the personal. But as I’ve gotten used to the idea that my personal choices are not an effective political tool, I’ve found it incredibly freeing in two ways. The first is that it lifts a lot of the guilt that’s a daily part of life as a well-meaning leftist. I remember this past spring, I was driving to a food justice conference with some fellow Whitman students. As we stopped for lunch at Whole Foods, we were talking about driving. I mentioned loving road trips. Another girl on the trip concurred, but then quickly shifted into guilt mode. “I should try to drive less.” she said. “I try when I’m at home, but it’s hard sometimes. I know I should be better...” I interrupted her, having heard one too many conversations go this way in recent weeks. I told her unfortunately, it’s virtually impossible to live your life in modern America without driving, and that that system wasn’t her fault; she didn’t create car culture. I told her that the worst, most self-serving thing that those in power have ever done is convince us that our individual choices are the most powerful weapon for change that we have. I told her that instead of feeling guilty all the time, she should keep trying to drive less when it was feasible, not worry about it when it wasn’t, and direct her attention at constructing a reality where driving isn’t a necessity. I stopped ranting, concerned that I may have offended someone I was trying to befriend, someone I still had three more hours in an enclosed car with. Instead, she smiled at me and said, “Wow, that was actually really inspiring.” And that’s basically what I’ve found. It is kind of inspiring, albeit in a terrifying way, to know that your use of a disposable cup this one time is not going to cause the apocalypse. It’s so freeing to re-channel the energy you’ve been spending feeling awful into thinking about how to go about building a better world.

The second benefit of moving beyond individual choice is that it makes it so much easier to not be a self-righteous asshole about the way other people are choosing to live their lives. I spent a good portion of last spring working out my feelings about whether vegetarianism was environmentally a good idea, and if so, under what conditions. I’d basically decided that all things considered, eating meat did more harm than good for the planet. I had a pretty well thought-out set of arguments, so I set about trying to convince my friend Henry, who had started eating meat again about when I did, after we both The Vegetarian Myth. I explained to him about the agriculture and water required to sustain cattle (even grass-fed ones), the reality of trying to feed a growing world population, the global warming contribution of cows. He listened to me and said I had made some good points which he mostly agreed with, but that he was going to keep eating meat. I tried again a few days later, after he’d gone out and gotten a beef burrito for lunch. I said that in a situation like that, why wouldn’t you just order vegetarian? I said it’s so, so easy not to eat any meat, especially if you’re used to it because you’ve done it for years. I said that yes, our choices weren’t going to stop anything, but knowing the way animals suffer in slaughterhouses, why wouldn’t you just do that one little thing for them? I said again and again how it’s the easiest thing in the world to be vegetarian, knowing that he’d done it for almost as long as I had. He listened to me patiently, and then said, “I feel better and healthier when I eat meat. Being vegetarian is the easiest thing in the world for you. For me, it isn’t. For me, it’s the easiest thing in the world to not have a cell phone or a laptop. So when you’re willing to give up your cell phone and your laptop, then we can talk.” I was absolutely stunned. I had nothing to say, except, “Shit, you’re totally right.”

We all have things we’re personally capable of doing. We all have forms of opting out that are easy for us, and things that we’ll never be willing to do. Some people are vegan. Some people bike everywhere. Some people live off-grid. You do what you can. But once you recognize that political action is far more important than individual choice, you can stop monitoring and judging the actions of fellow liberals. You can understand that systematic factors shape people’s “choices” and that most people lack the means to be able to install solar panels or even go vegetarian (meat is cheap, calorie-dense and relatively quick/easy to prepare, all of which are hugely important if you’re busy, overworked and poor). You can encourage people to make good choices and try to educate your friends without coming off like a pompous asshole, because you know that the future survival of the planet doesn’t hinge on your success. And once again, you can put the energy you formerly devoted to judging people into thinking about how to meaningfully change the world so that people actually have options in their lives.

Rejecting the framework of individual choice is the most important political decision I’ve ever made. Don’t get me wrong, I love my local raw milk as much as any other foodie, and I absolutely make conscious choices to live my life a certain way. But knowing that those choices won’t even make a dent in global problems has let me get much more creative in my thinking. I’m opposed to global warming (what sane person isn’t?), but now I can focus on doing whatever needs to be done to make sure the Keystone pipeline isn’t built instead of trying to change all my lightbulbs. I recognize that having the time and energy to engage in activism is, in itself, a form of privilege. Many, many people don’t have the time, energy or inclination to do anything beyond make a few lifestyle changes, and I’m not going to attack anyone for that. It’s a daunting task trying to engage in bottom-up political change. I’ve been thinking about it for most of my life, and I’m still not quite sure where to start. But at least now, I know the answer doesn’t come in the form of a veggie burger.

Reflections on a decade

I spent a long time thinking about what, if anything, I wanted to do on the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Both of the Ecuadorian families I’ve lived with have asked me about the attacks, have told me that they remember that day, that they watched it thinking how terrible and sad it was. I remember that morning with a combination of striking clarity and inexplicable haze. My dad had a business trip scheduled. He got to the airport, was told that all air traffic was grounded, came home and turned on the TV. I remember watching after the first plane hit, when no one was sure what was going on. I remember that I was watching when the second plane hit too, though reflecting on this now, I question the clarity of my memory, now a decade old. The second plane hit before 10am in New York, meaning I would have been up unusually early for school on the West Coast. Still, I remember seeing it, my dad sitting next to me, our whole family silent with disbelief. When the first tower fell, my dad sat shaking his head in his hands, murmuring, “Oh my god, oh my god…” I thought I saw tears in his eyes—to this day, the closest he’s ever come to crying in front of me.

I remember asking my parents if this was a Big Deal, thinking in my head that the events of this morning would come to define my generation, would be a story I would recount to children and grandchildren. I remember thinking I was the perfect age—old enough to understand what was happening, but young enough that someday, I would be part of a select group of really old people, the last generation alive when September 11 happened, and my great-grandchildren would come interview me for middle school history projects. After I had these thoughts, I remembered that people were dying and immediately felt guilty for thinking of posterity before human suffering. In the following years, I would feel validated in my predictions, proud that my ten-year old self understood politics and history well enough to grasp the significance of that moment. I would later sit alone in my room on March 17, 2003, crying silently after watching President Bush’s speech announcing the beginning of combat operations in Iraq. I thought about the bombs falling on Bagdad, and part of me wondered if we weren’t just re-creating the horrors of that September morning for another people in a far-away land.

Soon enough, Iraq faded to the back corners of my mind. I was, after all, in middle school. I was preoccupied with reading, gossip, depression, boys and environmental problems. I let my outrage on that night in March fade into the back of my head, alongside the sadness and gravity I felt on the morning of the attacks.

Since then, I’ve re-opened those emotions a handful of times. Junior year of high school, I did a project for my American history class on pro-war and patriotic songs, and spent a few hours watching and re-watching videos of the attacks set to music. I was transfixed by one in particular, set to the Requiem for a Dream score, which had video of the planet hitting the towers interspersed with photos of people jumping and falling from the burning buildings. What stuck in my head the most was the 911 call made by a man stuck in one of the towers seconds before it collapsed, the call that ends with him screaming, “Oh god!”, followed by the sound of debris falling, and then silence. I watched that video again and again in the name of “research”. I was transfixed. I thought about the people jumping and the man on the phone, imagined what must have gone through their heads. I cried and cried and cried. And then I became numb. After enough consecutive viewings, I couldn’t summon the horror, the sadness, the sense of connection. I compartmentalized, stopped caring. Eventually, I recognized that this wasn’t healthy. I stopped. I didn’t let myself think about it too much.

With all the buildup around the tenth anniversary, I thought about reliving that morning again. I read opinion pieces and commentary about the US’s reaction to the attacks, with several commentators on Al-Jazeera English arguing that the US should have chosen to prosecute the attacks as criminal acts, rather than giving the attackers what they wanted—a war based on ideology with no end in sight. I thought about readings for some of my classes, about discussions I’ve had with friends about the morality of pre-emptive war, about the way our culture fetishizes and immortalizes the victims of 9/11 while forgetting so many other who’ve died because of our foreign policies. I remembered reading Osama bin Laden’s Speech to the American People for my international politics class and feeling disturbed by the clarity of his logic, the legitimate grievances he cited against the American government. I thought about imperialism and Iraq and Afghanistan. I thought about anything but what actually happened on September 11. I didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole again. But then the TV in my house was on, and I ended up watching half an hour of an overly dramatic re-enactment of what happened inside the first tower on that morning, awkwardly dubbed in Spanish, with my host mom. I read a story about the forgotten victims of 9/11—the airport workers, the woman who checked in Mohammad Atta at Logan International Airport, the flight attendant who called in sick for American Flight 11 the night before. I thought once again about the human costs of that morning, the people who are still suffering, who will suffer for the rest of their lives. I wanted to cry, but couldn’t find it in myself. And I wondered why we feel compelled to do this every year, why as a nation we insist on re-opening old wounds every year in the name of remembrance.

So now here I am, once again picturing bodies falling from a flaming tower, silently thanking gods I don’t believe in that I have the option to walk away, largely unaffected, that I don’t know anyone in New York City, that no one in my family is a flight attendant. I want to honor the victims and remember them, but I’m not sure all the TV specials and longform stories are helping anyone heal. As an aspiring journalist, I’ve always believed fervently in the value of holding people’s eyes open, forcing them to look misery in the face and grapple with their inner demons. Now, I find myself wishing we would all close our eyes and say a prayer instead. I can’t help but feel that all this remembering and collective suffering is what begat our ill-fated foreign policy in the wake of the attacks. I can’t help but wish that we would stop picking at scabs, that we would learn to separate emotion from policy. I know that the feelings I had on the morning of those attacks is the most common ground I’ll ever have with so many Americans, and I wish so much that that could be different.

I wasn’t going to write anything about 9/11, because I didn’t think I had anything important to say. I still don’t think I do, it’s just that after thinking about that flight attendant calling in sick and the families of people who chose to jump, I have so much sadness and regret inside me that I had to get it out somehow. I feel guilty knowing how much emotion 9/11 can well up inside me, a feeling that the horrors we’ve inflicted in Iraq and Afghanistan will never hold a candle to. Mostly, I sit silently, still trying to decide if it’s ok to close my eyes when so many would keep them open, knowing that it does no good, knowing that it just keeps your heart aching for longer. I don’t know if I can cry anymore, so I pray instead, hoping that for something as important at this, God won’t mind that I’m an atheist. I pray for forgiveness, for healing, for remembering without reliving. And then, I pray once again to forget.