No More Deaths in the New York Times!

Katie D.

September 27, 2010 - 8:12 AM

I woke up this morning to find an article about No More Deaths in the "US" section of the New York Times! http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27water.html?_r=1&ref=us

It's an amazing thing to see this organization gaining national attention. I highly recommend you read the article, and send it on to your friends.

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The Man in the Maze

Katie D.

September 26, 2010 - 8:26 PM

There is a beautiful Native American symbol that has become amazingly important in my life. It is I'itoi, the Man in the Maze, an ancient symbol of the Tohono O'Odham Nation. From the first time I saw this symbol, I loved it: the human figure at the entrance (or exit) or a labyrinth, a maze with only one path. It called to me as art, as metaphor, and as a powerful connection with a culture that is not my own, but one that is full of beauty and meaning.

 

Here is the description of the Man in the Maze:

The man at the top of the maze depicts birth. By following the white pattern, beginning at the top, the figure goes through the maze encountering many turns and changes, as in life. As the journey continues, one acquires knowledge, strength, and understanding. Nearing the end of the maze, one retreats to a small corner of the pattern before reaching the dark center of death and eternal life. Here one repents, cleanses, and reflects back on all the wisdom gained. Finally, pure and in harmony with the world, death and eternal life are accepted.

 

I cannot imagine a more beautiful metaphor for the path of our lives.

 

I have, however, heard an alternative description of the maze, but I do not recall where it came from. It reverses the story, stating that we are born at the center of the labyrinth and follow a path outward, eventually becoming one with the universe and the vast potential of our world. I don't know which version of the story is more compelling, but I hold these visions before me as I move forward in life.

 

The Man in the Maze is powerfully connected with my experiences volunteering with No More Deaths. The path of a volunteer in the desert is one of searching, of wandering and finding oneself again. It is all undertaken in the hope that there is a coherence and pattern we cannot see, one that will resolve with a cessation of suffering and confusion.

 

But The Man in the Maze has also become entangled with me life, with my path through education and volunteering, and the way I imagine my future and past. I have progressed so far from my first days at the University of Oregon and my tentative steps away from home. I have built a life that has wandered through various volunteer organizations, university departments, and international experiences. I have witnessed powerful and transformative things, and have been profoundly changed again and again by the learning undergone in the classroom and in the community. When I look at the Man in the Maze, I sense the purpose and direction of things, that I am moving somehow along a path I am creating as I go, progressing toward wisdom and harmony, in life and in the broadest universe.

 

I wrote a blog almost two years ago about my love of jewelry with meaning and history http://www.isupportuoregon.org/my_duckstory/blog/katie_d/jewelry. I have recently aquired several pieces of jewelry with the Man in the Maze, including a pair of earrings and a necklace from friends and family for my graduation. They are treasures to me: reminders and inspiration combined. My mom bought me a new bracelet with the symbol on our most recent trip to Arizona. I am surrounded by Mazes and their metaphors. But here's a final story about The Man in the Maze and jewelry. Please bear with me:

My favorite author is Barbara Kingsolver. I love her for her storytelling, her focus on social justice, and the powerful sense of place and identity present in every one of her works of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. Her first book, The Bean Trees, includes a minor character named Father William, who is involved with a movement to safely transport Guatemalans fleeing the genocide of the 1980's. Father William is based on the founder of the Sanctuary Movement, John Fife, who later co-founded No More Deaths. He wears a belt buckle of the Man in the Maze, which is mentioned in book and which later impressed me when I met him on my first No More Deaths trip in the fall of 2008. I immediately fell in love with the symbol, with the story he told, and with the power of the symbol: its powerful testimony of a purpose and path in life.

 

And so it all comes together: my love of literature, of justice work, of art, of metaphor, and of community. Wearing this symbol on the brink of a new year of study, I feel ready to dive into this next segment of life.

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No More Deaths: Fourth Trip

Katie D.

September 25, 2010 - 10:14 PM

I've just returned home from my fourth week of volunteering with humanitarian aid organization No More Deaths, working on the Mexico/Arizona border to end the suffering and death of migrants on the trails through the Sonora Desert. It has been an incredibly difficult, uplifting, and inspiring trip. We hiked the trails in heat that consistently exceeded 105 degrees Fahrenheit. We left gallons of drinking water along well-used trails, and offered medical assistance to two migrants who found our aid station.

 

Before I write about the social justice aspects of the trip, I want to write again about the beauty. I love the Arizona desert like I love the Oregon Cascade mountains. I love the desert plants and wildlife, the mountains and arroyos, and the desert sky. This was the week of the full moon, and on Thursday the moon rose just at sunset, huge and yellow in a purple/pink sky, and set the next morning at sunrise. This was also a grasshopper time of year. We saw grasshoppers in all sizes and colors, in addition to gigantic beetles, praying mantis, and an extremely impressive tarantula that tried to move into our tent for the night. I saw deer, hawks, jackrabbits, quail, and hundreds of lizards (including a horned toad). I saw a beautiful snake near camp: dark green on top and bright pink on the bottom. I saw a road runner sitting in a mesquite tree and a kangaroo rat hanging around camp. Others in the group saw javelina, which are hairy wild pigs. The entire trip was framed by heat and natural beauty, from bugs to birds and back again. The desert is a living, changing place, and this trip I experienced the beauty as never before.

 

I had other new experiences, unlike my previous travels with No More Deaths. The first was searching for a lost Guatemalan woman, and the second was witnessing a Project Streamline trial of migrants in Tucson.

 

I spent Tuesday morning and early afternoon searching for a Guatemalan woman who had been reported missing two weeks earlier. I worked with seven other volunteers, hiking an area of the desert not commonly patrolled by No More Deaths volunteers. It was desolate and remote, marked prominently by a string of power lines and the access road that ran beneath them. The woman had been traveling with her group on a trail parallel to the power lines, but had been too exhausted to keep up, and was left behind. That was two weeks ago. The leaders of the search party were honest with me: in the heat and terrain we were hiking, it was extremely unlikely we would find the woman alive.

We searched for the trail for hours, constantly on the phone with the woman's brother, who lives in Washington state and made the same crossing three years earlier. As we battled through cactus and hard-packed earth, searching for the trail, I kept thinking of her brother, desperately directing us to a place where we might find the body of his twenty-two year old sister.

 

We received a phone call around 1:30 pm, telling us the woman had been deported to Guatemala City. I am so glad that this story does not end in the death of this woman, or in her family suffering the ongoing loss of uncertainty. The tension I had felt all day was lifted from me, and I felt like celebrating. However, we later visited a small marker for another woman from her community, who had died on the same trail years earlier. The desert is full of stories of tragedy and loss.

 

The Project Streamline trials in Tucson are held daily, charging captured migrants with the criminal offense of illegal entry in the United States. The trial lasted less than an hour and a half, and processed thirty-nine men and woman who had been captured on the trails, and were standing before a judge in their migrant clothes and shackles that bound their ankles together and their hands to their waists. They were sentenced to serve time in jail before their deportation: sometimes several weeks up to three months. Each had met with a lawyer for half an hour, and each affirmed that they understood the process and the laws they had broken.

 

I sat in the classroom, witnessing the trail and imagining what these individuals must have felt. I imagined the process of justice I was witnessing, the herding of desperate people in their dirty clothes and unwashed bodies from trail to holding cell to trial to jail and back to Mexico or Guatemala.

I thought about my academic discussions of justice and our legal systems, about the Conflict Resolution perspectives about restorative justice and alternative processes. I thought about systems of injustice and the stark reality I was witnessing. I thought about my studies and the emerging passion I have for international human rights law and systems of justice. I thought about studies about border crossings and identity politics and the way these play out in our courts and within our communities.

 

I am arriving home, again, with a sense of troubled purpose. The border is fresh in my mind and on my body in sunburn, blisters, a wasp sting, and eyes full of desert sky. I imagine the hundreds of individuals hiking the trails tonight, and the hundreds held in prison for the crime of transporting themselves to a new land and new opportunities.

 

I do not know the answers to the larger questions of laws and policies. I only know that what I witnessed does not square with my idea of justice, with my idea of humanity, and with the America that I love. I have returned with a new and profound desire to study and practice justice and the resolution of conflict in our world: in our communities, on our borders, in our discourse and in our imaginations. I think about that trail beside the power lines and the sounds of the chains on the hands of the captured migrants.

 

When classes begin again on Monday, I will be looking for answers. Ideas and skills to sustain me in my work, now and in the future. There is much to be done, and I hope I am worthy of the task ahead.

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Another Border Trip!

Katie D.

September 17, 2010 - 8:01 AM

Tomorrow morning I am leaving for another week of volunteering with Humanitarian Aid Organization No More Deaths. This will be my forth trip with this group, and I am so excited to head back to the desert and get to work. (Please see previous blogs at http://www.isupportuoregon.org/my_duckstory/blog/katie_d/no_more_deaths_spring_break_2010 )

 

No More Deaths volunteers work to aid the suffering and death of migrants on the Mexico/Arizona border. This week I will camp in the desert near the border and spend the days hiking the trails, carrying food, water, and First Aid to offer to anyone in need of assistance. Since October 1, 2009, a total of 238 bodies have been found in the Arizona desert alone: individuals who have died from dehydration, hyperthermia, injuries, illness, and exposure. No More Deaths works to prevent these deaths and other forms of suffering. Despite my weeks of work with No More Deaths, and several UO classes studying the issues surrounding immigration, I do not have a theory for comprehensive border policy. I do, however, believe that it is unacceptable that hundreds of people die on our land every year for want of simple medical assistance. I have met people on the trails, people still in Mexico, and those who have been caught and deported by Border Patrol. I know them to be desperate for work, migrating to help their families and communities, or to return to family members who are already living in the US. I know the migrants to be human beings, deserving of dignity and protection.

 

That is why I have chosen to spend my last two spring breaks working on the border. And its why I am leading another trip to the Sonora Desert this coming week.

 

I am so excited about this trip. I am traveling with two groups of people who I have come to love dearly. I am a part of a group of five adults from the First United Methodist Church in Eugene, and we will be joined in Tucson by a group of three volunteers from St. Andrews United Methodist Church from Highland's Ranch, Colorado: the church I grew up in. One of the Colorado volunteers is my mother.

 

We will be arriving with bags stuffed with supplies donated by our congregation: bandages, electrolyte mixes, blister aid kits, and a ton of clean socks. We will carry those supplies, along with food and water, on the trails and offer aid to anyone who needs it.

 

The weeks I have spent with No More Deaths have been some of the most profoundly transformative of my life. There is the physical act of being present and at work to save lives and to witness suffering. I am going this week during my one-week break from the CRES program. I'm going to be reminded of the reason that I chose to major in Conflict Resolution. It is because I believe there are deep sources of injustice and conflict in the world. In this first month of graduate study, I have already learned a host of skills that will serve me well on the trails and in my interactions with the other volunteers and host organization. I hope to become a truly effective member of a team who is working together to make a radical difference in the lives of people in desperate situations. I think that this trip will show an obvious benefit from my month of study, and that I will return reinvigorated to start the fall term, with the reminder of why I choose to be here in the first place.

 

I'm learning and working to transform our world.

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Philosophy of Conflict Resolution

Katie D.

September 16, 2010 - 9:12 PM

Today was the last day of my first class in the Conflict Resolution (CRES) Masters program. It has been a fabulous month--a great introduction to the field, a way to get to know the faculty, and the beginning of a truly exciting friendship with the other twenty-six members of my CRES Cohort. School starts with a vengence on September 27th, with five new classes. But I wanted to write a brief discussion of this first class: Philosophy of Conflict Resolution.

 

The course description available on the CRES website ( http://conflict.uoregon.edu/ ) is as follows:

 

CRES 612 Philosophy of Conflict Resolution (4 credits) Graded
This course addresses some basic concepts of conflict resolution and their philosophical presuppositions. It is not a comprehensive survey of topics or theories in the field; it is selective in its approach, but in ways that mean to provoke reflection on the methods and aims of conflict resolution as a whole. Even when looking at more philosophical matters, its assumption is that philosophy is not a purely academic matter but is addressed to the practical urgencies of our lives.
The approach of the course is to ground itself in real life practical problems that are studied somewhat in the manner that law school deals with case studies. The larger conceptual and philosophical issues are drawn out of specific cases in ways that emphasize their bearing on practical problems. The cases are meant to be ones that involve real controversies, of a kind that express substantive values interests; students are asked to look at the cases sympathetically from both sides as a way of framing the task of conflict resolution. Finally, the specific cases will vary from year to year. It is the hope that each year's discussion and examination will either augment the cases or suggest new ones to be explored.

 

This year the introductory course was taught by Professor Cheyney Ryan, who teaches in the philosophy department in the areas of the philosophy of law and the philosophy of war and peace. He is also adept at telling stories and providing examples of ethical questions that arise in the field of dispute resolution, drawing us into discussions of our own opinions about a huge array of issues.

 

We discussed the history and theories of conflict resolution, including early colonial extralegal dispute resolution and religious traditions from even longer ago. We discussed different viewpoints on conflict resolution, from the visionary to the pragmatic. But we also covered subjects that involve the more complex angles of conflict resolution, from differing theories of forgiveness to ways of administering punishment for harms done. These discussions involved not only provocative texts, but also an examination of our own beliefs and their origins.

 

Beyond Cheyney's skills as a teacher (he's a first-name-basis professor), this class was such a joy because of my peers in the cohort. Almost everyone participated on a daily basis. We were willing to share our real beliefs, and to enter into detailed conversation about the implications of cultural assumptions and the various implications of this kind of work.

 

Best of all, the CRES program has an atmosphere of collaboration and community that I find so exciting. For example, the month-long course ended this evening with a celebration meal at Cheyney's house. Several of our professors were present, as was the director of the program and one of the administrative staff members. I already feel at home in this program. I can't wait to see what will happen next.

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