The San Diego-Tijuana Conurbation

Week Three of our road trip to US cities.  We’ve been to Atlanta and Denver.  This week, San Diego-Tijuana.

I got my feet wet this week on the US-Mexico border. 

Friendship Park is located above the beach along the U.S. Mexico border. (Photo by detritus / Flickr)I literally put my feet in the waves of the Pacific Ocean on a Tijuana beach and tried to look across to the US a hundred yards away.  But a giant, ridiculous border fence blocked my view.  A constructed barrier between the two nations extends in various forms from Brownsville, Texas across desert and city, town and forest, 2000 miles to San Diego-Tijuana.  Its last several hundred feet plunge from the beachhead out into the crashing surf, as if it could divide US and Mexican waves.

My hosts discouraged me from putting my feet in the water because they said it is so polluted.  But Mexican kids frolicked around me, oblivious, or maybe with no other choices of beach.  No one played on the US side, choosing instead the cleaner US beaches up the coast.

I had earlier that day just barely avoided getting my feet wet jumping across a filthy stream running through a Tijuana shanty town.  I could smell the rancid water, polluted by runoff heavy metals from the nearby Mexican “maquiladorias,” huge American owned electronics manufacturing plants.  Thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA,) these plants perch on the border, so they can say “made in the USA” while exploiting cheap Mexican labor to make most US TVs and other electronics.  The companies and the community tolerate these shanty towns so they can have easy access to workers.  Like poor exploited workers around the world who make inexpensive goods for the first world, they have no water, electricity, public safety or health care.  The factories pay workers $56 a week, but a 5 gallon can of water costs $10.  Just a few miles from prosperous San Diego, these shanty town folks try to keep their kids out of the stream.  No surprise there is a high incidence of birth defects in Tijuana.

I got my feet wet on an “immersion” trip to the border this week with the Centro Romero for Border Ministries.

I wanted to learn more about our national border with Mexico and my neighbors.  The Center states its purpose:

If participants desire to grow as individuals and as a human family, there is a theologically-based need to cross borders. At the Romero Center we accept that borders will never disappear, but we also believe that borders do not have to divide or separate. Borders can be privileged meeting places. Through our immersion opportunities, participants are invited to view or observe the border and reflect theologically considering the border communities as places of great importance and as markers that enable us to recognize and respect the differences that make us who we are as individuals and societies. 

Our nation of immigrants is trying to change our immigration policies.  The Senate this past week passed an immigration reform bill with a possible path to citizenship for the 11 million Mexicans living without documentation in the US, but only after including in the bill deep concessions to fear-fueled Republicans: the bill would require dramatically increased border security and more walls.  The House will probably reject even that compromise.  

Legislators don’t want to get their feet wet, or muddy, on immigration.  But if they don’t, or won’t, our nation as a whole may be poisoned by fear, or drown in ignorance.  And our nation’s neighbors will suffer even more. 

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On this week three of our US road trip here at the Back Road Café, we visit the San Diego-Tijuana conurbation. 

Yes, conurbation.   It’s a word new to me; a conglomeration of urban areas that have merged into a continuous developed and industrial area with a shared labor market.  It’s also called “urban agglomeration.”  Think Tri-state New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, or Greater Tokyo.  I think we’re going to be seeing more and more conurbations. 

San Diego and TijuanaSan Diego-Tijuana is the third largest conurbation in the world, over 5 million folks, across two nations.  San Diego, founded 1769 was the first and southernmost city in California, with a deep harbor, long ties with the Navy and a vibrant economy.  Across the 15 mile border it shares with Mexico is Tijuana, founded 100 years later, now Mexico’s 5^th largest and westernmost city.  Likewise vibrant and productive, Tijuana also suffers severe poverty, crime, drug trade, sex trafficking, in sharp contrast to its US sister city. 

The San Diego-Tijuana border crossing is the world’s busiest.  50 million people use it every year, largely because of that shared labor market.  Every day 50,000 cars pass through the closely guarded checkpoint, and since that can take hours, another 35,000 walk it each day.

Before 9-11 this checkpoint and the border in general were much more fluid, easy for families, workers, shoppers to travel and visit  back and forth.  Now it is increasingly militarized, fearful and punitive. 

A once “fluid” border; there’s that water word again.  The US in general feels less and less fluid these days, more and more rigid. 

And dry.

The 5000 Mexicans who die every year trying to get to the US across that dangerous border mostly die from dehydration.  They don’t attempt to storm the busy San Diego-Tijuana checkpoint.  They set out across the deserts of the Southwest and die of thirst.

I think of water as the source and symbol of life.  But for Mexicans water can mean death.   A polluted fenced ocean.  A toxic neighborhood stream.  A desperate desiccated desert journey. 

Americans, in big cities and tiny towns, depend on these poor thirsty workers.  How else would we get such cheap TVs?

Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter

Rocky Mountain High: Denver Up In Smoke

We’re on an American road trip this summer, visiting US cities.  Last week, Atlanta.  Next week, Long Beach.  Today, the Mile High City.

Denver, ColoradoDenver is going up in smoke, inflicting both pain and pleasure.

Smoke Filled Denver SkylineDenver’s skyline is thick with wildfire smoke from 112 blazes raging across Colorado. Probably will be all summer.  The Black Forest Fire, most destructive in state history, has already destroyed over 500 homes in nearby Colorado Springs.  The fast moving West Gulch Fire is threatening the outskirts of Denver, the capitol.  The state is still recovering from last year’s record setting fire season; this week insurance companies raised their estimates of claims from last year; over $567 million.

So if you’re coming along on our road trip, pack a gas mask.

And a bong.  Some of that Denver smoke is from citizens enjoying their recently legalized marijuana.  Last November voters joined Washington State in becoming the first US states to make it legal to grow and enjoy marijuana for recreational use.

So Denver may become an American Amsterdam, Mecca of cannabis tourism.  Already  one can book package tours with trips to pot farms, rock concerts, home growing workshops and cannabis cooking classes.  A new 15% sales tax on cannabis sales is expected to generate $60 million revenue annually, helping the local economy, not to mention booming sales of munchies.

Gives a new meaning to “Rocky Mountain High.”

That’s the title of a beloved pop song by Colorado icon folk singer John Denver.  Born Henry John Deutschendorf, he changed his name in honor of the state he loved.  The song, which extols the natural beauty of the Rockies, with its clear night skies of dazzling starlight and meteor showers, was so popular the state legislature quickly adopted it as the official state song.  The chorus goes:

John DenverColorado Rocky Mountain high
I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky
Friends around the campfire
Everybody’s high
Rocky Mountain high
Rocky Mountain high

But Denver, who was cute and looked nothing like a pothead, was accused of promoting drug culture with that phrase “friends around the campfire, everybody high,”  during the 80’s Reaganite so-called “war on drugs.  The Federal Communications Commission had ruled that songs could be banned if they seemed to promote drug use.  Some radio stations stopped playing the popular song.  Denver objected and testified before Congress that the “high” referred to the inspiration he found in the mountains:

This was obviously done by people who had never seen or been to the Rocky Mountains, and also had never experienced the elation, celebration of life, or the joy in living that one feels when he observes something as wondrous as the Perseid meteor shower on a moonless, cloudless night, when there are so many stars that you have a shadow from the starlight, and you are out camping with your friends, your best friends, and introducing them to one of nature's most spectacular light shows for the first time.

There is much more to commend Denver (the major metropolis, not the singer) than wildfires and marijuana.  Founded in 1858 as part of the nearby Pike’s Peak gold rush, it grew into a market and transport town for minerals from the resource rich mountains and cattle across the plains. A wagon and then railroad hub, it’s a natural meeting and transition point from the purple mountains majesty above that old fruited plain.  Today Denver continues to play an important role in the physical center of the nation.  Like all American cities it has business and industry, racial diversity and conflict, pride in its region and landscape, and in this case, great cowboy culture and western cuisine.

But one wonders what archeologists or Martians in 3013 will find in the ruins of the Mile High City.  Those wildfires may very well ultimately annihilate Denver and much of the American West. Explorers will realize that it was climate change that led to all those fires.  More and more people lived closer and closer to steep forested canyons. And so many trees were killed by the mountain pine beetle, which had become more prolific and active in the higher temperatures of the 21^st century.  All they will find is ashes.

And what will they think of the charred cannabis greenhouses and cooking schools?  Will they unearth the remains of happy Coloradans, who smoked and munched, while Denver burned?

Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter

On the Road Again: Atlanta

Blowin’ in the Wind is taking a road trip this summer, jammed on a plane or highway with millions of other Americans.  Unless some news story demands our immediate attention and witty comment, we’ll be making virtual (or real) visits to some interesting American cities. I know I’ll be in Long Beach later this month.  Other travel tips welcome.

Atlanta“Whether you’re going to heaven or hell, you have to change planes in Atlanta.”  I first heard this popular quip years ago when I was trying to fly from Nashville to Chicago and wondered why I had to go south to Atlanta to go north to Chicago. 

Turns out Atlanta’s airport is the busiest in the world, not just the US, but the world, the  most passenger traffic and the most take offs and landings.  Next up on that stat; Beijing, Heathrow, Tokyo and O’Hare.  But Atlanta is far out in front, 95 million passengers per year, going to both heaven and hell.

There’s been a lot of hell in Atlanta’s 175-year history.  Like any southern city, racism, slavery and the Civil War left deep scars; some might say the wounds are still open.  Etched on America’s memory (and memorialized in the iconic Atlanta film, Gone with the Wind) is the 1864 burning of Atlanta followed by General Sherman’s march to the sea.  After a four-month siege, Union forces entered Atlanta, ordered a mandatory evacuation, and burned the city to the ground.  Sherman then, controversially even then, led a 300 mile march of destruction and scorched earth all the way to Savannah, killing or capturing all livestock, burning crops, wrecking railroads and bridges.  One historian wrote “Sherman defied military principles by operating deep within enemy territory and without lines of supply or communication.  He destroyed much of the South’s potential and psychology to wage war.”  While raising Northern morale, the Atlanta conflagration  and scorched Georgia earth fueled Southern attitudes and resentment for decades.

General William Tecumseh ShermanAnother Atlanta hell took place during the 1996 Summer Olympics, when a pipe bomb exploded in crowded Centennial Park, killing one and injuring over 100.  Like Munich, we always associate the Atlanta games with that incident.   We also recall them as the most over the top, blatently commercial Olympics, with Coke (headquartered in Atlanta) and other sponsors seeming to run the show.  Responding to strong international criticism, IOC organizing committee members defended the commercialism as part of America’s “culture of capitalism,” as if Coke were a cute mascot or float at the closing ceremony.

Enough about Atlanta’s hell.  All pretty American – racism, violence, commercialism, sugar.

The heaven in Atlanta is pretty heavenly.  Called “a city too busy to hate,” it was the cradle of the civil rights movement and is now the most progressive city in the south, with a large LGBT community (3^rd in the US after San Francisco and Seatlle), strong colleges and universities (including Morehouse, where Obama spoke a couple weeks ago), the Carter Center home base of Jimmy Carter’s good work, great regional cuisine, an energetic arts scene and a good economy (6^th strongest economy in the US, 15^th in the world.)

I visited Atlanta once (besides the many planes changed at the airport) in 1995 for a national church meeting at the convention center.  As is my wont on business travel I managed to build in a couple days before and after for tourism.  Vivid memories: the impressive High Art Museum, recently doubled in size, the CNN Headquarters (sort of dopey tour actually, gee, that’s the very chair where Soledad O’Brian sits!) and 4^th of July fireworks in Centennial Park (it was the 100^th Olympics, hence Centennial.)  A tremendous worship service with thousands of African American progressives; their church had been recently kicked out of its conservative Baptist denomination when its pastor read the gospel and said a loving God would surely welcome gays; thousands left, but other new folks came, and now the church was and is back up to its original size and more.  Meeting Andrew Young at the church meeting, former mayor of Atlanta, Ambassador to the UN under Jimmy Carter, lieutenant to Martin Luther King Jr., at his side when he was assassinated in Memphis in 1968.

Martin Luther King Historical SiteMost profound memory: the Martin Luther King Historical Monument in his Sweet Auburn neighborhood; within just a couple blocks one can visit his birth and boyhood home, the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he grew up, preached and where his funeral was held, the MLK Center for Non Violent Social Change, and the Visitors Center with amazing videos of civil rights speeches, sermons, marches, interviews.  Our guide was an elderly woman who had been a friend of King’s.

Some of my church friends tried to drag me that day to a different huge Atlanta tourist favorite, the Coca Cola Museum.  But I’m glad I was able to visit King’s gravesite, which reads, “Free At Last, Thank God Almighty, I’m Free At Last.”

Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter

Truth Warriors: Daniel Ellsberg, Karen Silkwood, Bradley Manning and Glenn Greenwald

Daniel EllsbergDomestic Surveillance, data mining, warrentless wiretaps, Big Brother, more loss of privacy.  Seems like a new revelation every day about the US government snooping on the emails and phone calls of reporters, Verizon customers, internet activities of citizens at home and foreigners.

For now, as these stories unfold, I just want to say a word of thanks to reporters and whistleblowers who break these kind of stories.

I am feeling grateful for whoever told Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian and other reporters about the data mining.  Good reporter that he is, he’s shielding the identity of his source, saying only that it’s a reader who appreciated his previous work exposing this kind of overstepping of government power. A concerned employee of the National Security Agency tipped off the Washington Post with more information.

“Legal , but unnerving” is how our friend Ed Kilgore describes, these acts by the NSA and the Justice Dept.  Commonplace really, since 9/11, under the Patriot Act.  Both Congress and the courts have approved such actions, but there have been no public debates on these secret program.  Polls show Americans in general are not overly troubled by losing civil liberties in the name of national security.  The President said these activities have saved lives and are a difficult but fair balance of national security and personal privacy.

Progressive media and civil libertarians are outraged.  Maybe because this surveillance seems to be getting a little closer to home; it could be my local AP news reporters, my own Verizon phone being tapped, not some drone activity in Pakistan.

Karen SilkwoodOthers cynically say these data dragnets are no better or worse than how Google or Facebook troll our computer activity in order to tempt us with some targeted sales offer.  “Deborah, have we got a deal for you!”  Get used to it or get off line. 

Thankfully every nation has truth warriors.  That’s because every nation has governments or corporations who snoop, commit fraud, hide dangerous products, violate human rights, commit war atrocities.  And hopefully every nation has brave folks who risk job or security or even life to go public or go to a reporter with the truth.  

Some nations like the US have laws protecting reporters and their sources. (That’s the beef with the wiretapping of AP reporters – what happened to the shield laws?)  And we have some laws protecting whistleblowers from not losing their jobs if they tell their boss or a reporter about violations of safety or human rights or some fraud at their company.  Not great laws, but better than Myanmar I bet.

It was consumer activist Ralph Nader who coined the word “whistleblower” in the early 70’s, in reference to a referee calling a foul.  He wanted to counter the negative connotations of “snitch” or “informer.”

I say thanks to folks like Deep Throat, and Daniel Ellsberg who helped topple Nixon with revelations about Watergate and the publication of the Pentagon Papers. 

Bradley Manning Thanks to all the employees who blow the whistle on corrupt or secretive companies.   Like Karen Silkwood who organized her union of nuclear power plant workers to publicize their health risks from radiation.  And then died in a suspicious car accident on her way to talk with a reporter about her own serious medical condition.

It’s dangerous being a whistleblower and truth teller.  Just ask the family of Costa Rican turtle activist Jairo Mora, assassinated this past week. 

Or ask whistleblower/leaker Bradley Manning sitting in solitary confinement in a Kansas jail cell after leaking national security documents and videos to Wikileaks. 

Reporter Glenn Greenwald, who broke the data mining story in the Guardian this past week is another interesting truth warrior.  Different from Ellsburg, Silkwood and Manning in that he was simply doing his job, being a reporter.  But as dogged in his pursuit of abuse of power. 

Greenwald was a happy civil rights attorney in NY, so he says, uninvolved in politics at all until George W. Bush was elected and his attitude changed “completely.” He wrote in his first book, “How Would a Patriot Act?”:

Glenn Greenwald"Over the past five years, a creeping extremism has taken hold of our federal government, and it is threatening to radically alter our system of government and who we are as a nation. This extremism is neither conservative nor liberal in nature, but is instead driven by theories of unlimited presidential power that are wholly alien, and antithetical, to the core political values that have governed this country since its founding"; for, "the fact that this seizure of ever-expanding presidential power is largely justified through endless, rank fear-mongering—fear of terrorists, specifically—means that not only our system of government is radically changing, but so, too, are our national character, our national identity, and what it means to be American."

We here in the US were a bit puzzled and embarrassed that this story was broken by the Guardian newspaper, a liberal UK publication.  Where was the NY Times with its legacy of publishing the Pentagon Papers and the Wikileaks files? 

Well, we can take comfort that Glenn Greenwald is an American boy, one of their US correspondents.  He’s been influential for years on the liberal news site Salon.com.  He has been a big champion of Bradley Manning. Travels a lot but calls Rio de Janiero home, lives there with his Brazilian husband where their marriage is recognized and he has married visa status, which his husband could not get in the US.  Thanks, Glenn, for reporting the news. 

Just one last whistleblower story for the week, which includes a couple of the above mentioned folks.  Here in San Francisco we have a huge Gay Pride parade and other activities every year in late June (anniversary of the Stonewall riots.)  The organizers select parade grand marshals.  This year, Bradley Manning was selected as one of the grand marshals.  Of course he is in solitary confinement and on trial – can’t ride in a convertible down Market Street to adoring fans.  So area resident Daniel Ellsburg volunteered to take his place.   But then at the last minute the Pride organizers changed their minds.  They didn’t want to honor someone who some say put US military members in harm’s way,  including newly openly serving LGBT military.  Invitation rescinded. 

So there will be many protesters at the parade.  Not protesting homophobia or Prop. 8.  Protesting the parade organizers, saying Bradley Manning should be the grand marshal.

Lots to protest in America these days.

Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter

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Edward SnowdonSince Deborah submitter her column for this week, the Prism whistleblower has revealed himself. He is Edward Snowdon. The Guardian, the paper that broke the story, has extensive coverage on the new developments and on Snowdon himself. To access the reports click here. 

The Guardian says in the above link: Snowden will go down in history as one of America's most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world's most secretive organisations – the NSA. 

Dale Rominger

Graduation Speeches: Follow Your Dreams and All That Crap

Quick – who was the commencement speaker at your graduation from high school or college?  And if by some chance you actually remember who the speaker was, what did they have to say?

Can’t remember?  Neither can I.  Not the name of the famous honored person, nor any pearls of wisdom. 

President Obama gave three graduation speeches this past week.  He gives a lot of speeches, but he chose at these three schools to unveil bold new foreign policy, condemn shameful actions by the military, and call on black men to love and respect their love partners, female or male.  I don’t usually watch his speeches, but when I heard about these I watched them later on You Tube.  I expect these I’ll remember for some time to come.  Impressive, gave me some faith in my sad nation.

But a friend told me that while he was watching one of those Obama speeches, working out at the gym, some of his fellow exercisers, older guys self identified by T-shirts as retired military men (we have a lot of that here in Monterey), were yelling at the screen and giving their Commander in Chief the finger.  Didn’t like that he was calling for an end to the War on Terror and closing Guantanamo Prison. 

I guess some people do pay pretty close attention to graduation speeches.

Come to think of it, I do remember something about my high school graduation in 1969.  Not the speaker.  But that we young ladies protested also.  No fingers extended.  We even followed school tradition and wore white dresses and carried one red rose.  But radicals that we were, a few of us also wore black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War.

When it was my daughter’s time to graduate from high school, I do recall the message.  The speaker, one of her teachers, encouraged the students “to persist in being curious.”  And just as all of us were thinking he meant “don’t ever stop asking and learning about new things,” he said, “What I mean by that is – never give up being odd.” 

Persist in being odd.  Curiouser and curiouser.  Was Alice a commencement speaker at Wonderland U?

Good life advice, especially for young people battered from all sides by pressure to conform.  Stay odd!

May and June are graduation season, hence graduation speech season.  After watching Obama’s speeches, I found a new You Tube indulgence: watching other graduation speeches.  It made me happy and hopeful, young people full of promise, parents and faculty visibly relieved.  Not an extended finger in sight.

My favorite: J.K. Rowling at Harvard. Very heartfelt about lessons she learned from failure and from working at Amnesty International.  I also watched Meryl Streep at Barnard, Jon Stewart at William and Mary and Stephen Colbert at Northwestern.  Interesting tales of their student days at these their alma maters, but sort of predictable jokes and truisms about following your dreams, be real, serve others, thank your parents. 

Often a famous speaker receives an honorary degree for their troubles, I mean, wisdom, as did Winston Churchill in 1948 when he gave his famous “Iron Curtain” speech at a small college in Fulton, Missouri, aptly named Westminster College.

Sitting Presidents get many invitations to speak at graduations, and they chose carefully which invitations they accept and what they say.  Some historic speeches and new policies began as graduation speeches, like John F. Kennedy’s call for a nuclear test ban treaty, at American University in 1963. 

President Obama’s three graduation speeches this week, all important, were well covered in the news.  Well, two of them were covered well, at military academies, addressing military issues.

At The National Defense University our Professor in Chief gave a signature, hour-long, well researched, thoughtful new vision for American foreign policy.  We should stop fighting the so-called War on Terror, he said, and instead engage in diplomacy and foreign aid as world influences.  He acknowledged that drone warfare needs to be limited and waged not, as now, by the CIA, but by the military.  He vowed again to close Guantanamo Prison.  These are all issues for which he has been soundly criticized.  He honestly proposed bold new directions. 

Two days later at Annapolis Naval Academy he spoke forcefully about the widespread disgrace of sexual assaults in the military (a reported 26,000 last year) and a culture of acceptance and silence.  He called on the military grads to follow their “inner compass” of responsibility. 

Proud parents probably expected to hear a graduation speech on the children’s promising military careers, rather than a call to cut back overseas action and an admonishment not to rape their fellow service members. 

Who knows, maybe some fingers were extended obviously or surreptitiously toward our commander in chief at these two military graduations.  Military conduct is not what it used to be, and racism is alive and well in our nation.

But my favorite of Obama’s three graduation speeches this week was at Morehouse College, a 145-year-old historically black private men’s college in Atlanta.  Not as well reported on.  Watch it here.

Like many graduation speakers, he reminds them of illustrious alumni, in this case, “Morehouse Men” like Martin Luther King Jr., who enrolled at Morehouse at age 15, still living at home, called “Suit” by his classmates for his regular attire, and then, like so many others (Howard Thurman, Spike Lee, Maynard Jackson) going on to a life of service. They must carry on this responsibility to better society as well as themselves.

"As Morehouse Men, many of you know what it's like to be an outsider; know what it's like to be marginalized; know wht it's like to feel the sting of discrimination. And that's an experience that a lot of Americans share. Hispanic Americans know that feeling when somebody asked them where they come from or tell them to go back. Gay and lesbian Americans feel it when a stranger passes judgment on their parenting skills or the love that they share. Muslim Americans feel it when they're stared at with suspicion because of their faith. Any woman who knows the injustice of earning less pay for doing the same work - she knows what it's like to be on teh outside looking in."

Obama encourages them also to be honorable and respectful in their personal relationships, no matter what their sexuality.

"Keep setting an example for what it means to be a man. Be the best husband to your wife, or your boyfriend, or your partner. Be the best father you can be to your children. because nothing is more important."

Wise words, for young and old, for all Americans. Commence!

Copywrite © 2013 Deborah Streeter