Pima County Renews Water Station Funds

Thank you for continuing to save lives by showing that there is still compassion in the region.

Pima County has approved a grant of $25,000 to help a humanitarian group maintain emergency water stations in the Sonoran Desert outside of Tucson.

Tuesday, the county Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to fund Humane Borders’ 90-plus water stations dispersed in the desert.

The supervisors first funded the water stations in 2001.

Tucson Citizen

To the readers here, you can support Humane Borders’ efforts by visiting their website and donating.

Meanwhile, I’ll be writing four of my county supervisors expressing my pride in their actions. The lone dissenting vote, on the other hand, will get a howler.

 

Humane Borders Needs Donations

The work that Humane Borders does to prevent deaths of border crossers is beyond admirable. In fact, I would characterize their mission of providing water stations as saintly.

Unfortunately, it opens them up to attacks by neanderthals:

Approximately $3,500 in damage was caused after someone punctured 20 tires belonging to Humane Borders early Saturday.

All five of the vehicles were clearly marked as belonging to Humane Borders, but one vehicle that was nearby and not identifiable was left alone, according to Rev. Robin Hoover, president of the Tucson-based organization.

Arizona Daily Star

You can help them offset the cost of the tires by donating here

 

Southern Arizona Human Rights Organizations

Here are some grassroot organizations that are doing admirable work in the southern part of the Grand Canyon State that relates to the human rights facet of immigration and border policies in the U.S.:

Border Action Network

Border Action Network formed in 1999 and works with immigrant and border communities in southern Arizona to ensure that our rights are respected, our human dignity upheld and that our communities are healthy places to live. We are a membership-based organization that combines grassroots community organizing, leadership development, litigation and policy advocacy.

No More Deaths

No More Deaths is an organization whose mission is to end death and suffering on the U.S./Mexico border through civil initiative: the conviction that people of conscience must work openly and in community to uphold fundamental human rights. Our work embraces the Faith-Based Principles for Immigration Reform and focuses on the following themes:

• Direct aid that extends the right to provide humanitarian assistance
• Witnessing and responding
• Consciousness raising
• Global movement building
• Encouraging human immigration policy.

Humane Borders

Humane Borders, motivated by faith, offers humanitarian assistance to those in need through more than 70 emergency water stations on and near the U.S.-Mexican border.

“They will neither hunger nor thirst, nor will the desert heat or the sun beat upon them. He who has compassion on them will guide them and lead them beside springs of water.”

— Isaiah 49:10

Coalición de Derechos Humanos

Coalición de Derechos Humanos (“The Human Rights Coalition”) is a grassroots organization which promotes respect for human/civil rights and fights the militarization of the Southern Border region, discrimination, and human rights abuses by federal, state, and local law enforcement officials affecting U.S. and non-U.S. citizens alike.derechos humanos logo

Our goals include:

* Strengthening the capacity of the border & urban communities to exercise their rights and participate in public policy decisions.
* Increasing public awareness of the magnitude of human rights abuses, deaths and assaults at the border resulting from U.S. policy.
* Seeking changes in government policies that result in human suffering because of the militarization of the U.S. border region.

Samaritan Patrol

Who or what is it? Samaritan Patrol ( a.k.a. Samaritans) are people of faith and conscience who are responding directly, practically and passionately to the crisis at the US/ Mexico border. We are a diverse group of volunteers that are united in our desire to relieve suffering among our brothers and sisters and to honor human dignity. Prompted by the mounting deaths among border crossers, we came together July 1, 2002, to provide emergency medical assistance, food and water to people crossing the Sonoran Desert.

Feel free to add to the list in the comments below and I will update the post.

 

Pima County Re-Authorize Water Stations

Thank you to the County Supervisors, and especially Chairman Elías, for taking the humane course of action despite the screeches and howls from anti-immigrant forces.

Pima County Supervisors Tuesday approved another year of funding for water stations in the desert – over the objections of critics who claimed that such a contribution violates federal law.

The supervisors voted 4-1 to provide $25,000 for a sixth consecutive year to Humane Borders, a faith-based group who members fill and maintain about 90 such stations set out in the Sonoran Desert.

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Supporting the efforts of human rights groups like Humane Borders is an honorable course of action. Please contact the Supervisors and let them know that they did good today (minus Ann Day, of course, who would rather see more dead bodies in the desert).

Chairman Richard Elías
Pima County Board of Supervisors
Phone: 520-740-8126
Fax: 520-884-1152
Email: district5@pima.gov

 

Bodies – Bodies Everywhere

Keep stalling, Congress. You seem to have no problem having blood flow from the result of your inaction (see Iraq)

Officials discovered three bodies of illegal border crossers late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, including a 33-year-old woman whose 10-year-old son was with her.

With the latest three bodies found, the Border Patrol has recovered at least 16 bodies in the Tucson Sector in July, bringing its fiscal-year total to at least 132. From Oct. 1 through June, the agency had reported 116 border deaths in the Tucson Sector, down slightly from the 119 at the same time the year before.

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With everything in limbo, it appears that women and children are making the trek north in greater numbers to unify their families. My deepest condolences and prayers to those left behind that will suffer from the losses.

Please.
Please.
Please consider a monetary donation to No More Deaths and Humane Borders

 

16 Bodies in 18 Days

Heat Advisories are in full-effect across the state, and the deaths continue.

Border Patrol agents found the body of a 26-year-old Mexican woman Monday afternoon about 60 miles southwest of Tucson on the Tohono O’odham Reservation, the 16th body of an illegal border crosser found in the past 18 days.

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Humane Borders and No More Deaths could use some support to fight back against this humanitarian crisis.

 

The Woman at the Well

Tears – all I have are tears.

The U.S. Border Patrol rescued an illegal immigrant Tuesday trapped in a 30-foot-deep well on the Tohono O’odham Nation.

The woman had climbed down to find water for her sister and her three nieces.

The five had been walking through the desert with four others for several days when the 29-year-old woman, her sister and her sister’s daughters, age 6, 10 and 16, stopped because they had run out of water and were too weak to continue in the 112-degree heat, said Border Patrol spokesman Sean King.

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Five women making their way to El Norte – only to find that the promised land was only a mirage. Instead of prosperity, what they found was dehydration; instead of survival, they were met with bee stings and anaphylactic shock.

And still, no compassion from some quarters of U.S. society.

Once again, an incident that could have been avoided has she not been doing something she was not supposed to be doing in the first place. The only people I feel sorry for in this case are the Border Patrol agents who had to be incinvienenced with this bullplop.

Until enough people “Get It” that the magnetic force of migration is due to utter desperation – the darkest night of the soul – the inner-most circles of mental hell – and not just some American™-prismed view that border-crossers don’t respect our laws, then the deaths will continue unabated.

Imagine a situation where you had absolutely nothing. The system had completely screwed you and your family out of livelihood. Do you do what you need to do to survive? Or do you just give up?

I respect those who choose to cross the barren lands of their ancestors because they have chosen to live.

If you have some discretionary funds, please consider sending a donation to No More Deaths and Humane Borders – two organizations that understand that there is a disastrous human rights crisis occurring everyday in the Sonoran Desert. They are providing water stations and dignity to the victims of this economic war.

Your support is truly the difference between life and death. Especially now that the summer has arrived with a vengeance.