Sanctuary & Punishment

It's been way too long since I've posted. Been through the borderlands, through LA (where I got to participate in a wonderful community planning process), through Arpaio country, and now a bit of time in New Mexico before making quick leaps back across the country.

With so much of my attention directed south, I must say that I feel dismay at the recent changes in San Francisco's sanctuary laws. The changes are, ultimately, a reminder of the limits of the existing policies and of their ambattled nature whereever they are implemented.

San Francisco has had one of the strongest sanctuary city policies in the nation, but earlier this week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to water down its sanctuary city policy (thanks to Pjax for alerting me). Sanctuary city ordinances and policies vary by city, but across the country they are the result of efforts in the 1980s to provide sanctuary to refugees from wars in Central America, which the United States had a role in supporting. Essentially, sanctuary city policies say that city governments are about managing cities and serving residents of cities regardless of migration status. Some policies state that local government agencies will provide services to residents without inquiring into citizenship status, and others reject local law enforcement collaboration with federal migration agents because it undermines the police force’s primary purpose of community safety.

The supervisors voted to turn minors who had been convicted of felonies over to federal migration authorities, as they had done with adults convicted of felonies. Apparently this decision comes on the heels of some high profile cases involving migrants, and so the vote represents a politically palatable way of responding to charges of irresponsibility. What the vote shows is the typical way in which law-and-order lawmaking happens. The exception, or bad apple, is used to make sweeping changes that affect far more people. Within the context of widening definitions of what is a felony, the war on drugs, and the conflation of youth of color with gang membership, such a policy may well affect far more folks than prevent violent acts. Meanwhile, when agents of inherently violent institutions such as the military or prisons act violently, they are called bad apples. In both cases, the exceptionality with which violence is treated individualizes violence and individualizes solutions rather than situating them within broader state and structural violence.

I have not been following the story closely enough, but apparently the change in policy regarding minors could jeopardize the broader set of sanctuary policies in San Francisco. This concerns me because of the city’s history in supporting and defending such policies. If such policies are being whittled away there, it portends more legal challenges and popular battles elsewhere. It also represents a moment when there could be a broader discussion about the effectively punitive nature of deportation, and punishment more broadly.

Gray Zone

In the desert and in the lush green of Georgia, detention centers look gray and feel gray. And an entire zone of them like in Pinal County, AZ where there are detention centers for ICE, USMS, BoP, AZ, the county, and maybe some agency I'm missing, it's a place that takes away words. Momentarily, and sometimes that can be long enough.


Yesterday I visited the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, which provides legal services to folks in detention in Florence, Eloy, and young people in other facilities. Today Janet Napolitano will be issuing her plans for revamping the immigrant detention system. The side note is that she says that privately run detention centers are more expensive than the state-run system. The fact that we can have a conversation on the public "benefits" of socialized prisons and not health care is telling.

The reform's coming out of the horrors of deaths in custody, family detention, and medical neglect, which show the need for oversight and reform. But Napalitano's solution of this gray zone of "residential" detention has been done before. Without having my library in front of me, I'm pretty certain Mike Davis wrote about this way back in City of Quartz and I'm also pretty certain that Mark Dow writes about some of this in American Gulag, too. Secure residential detention sounds like a gated community with more guards, but that language, like that of "beds" and "dormitories" may well ease the humane reform along, but doesn't change the fact of coercive detention and all of the abuses and neglect that comes along with that. Napolitano is not talking about shrinking detention capacity, and the policing of migration and increasing conflation between criminal and immigrant spell more of the same. And that is what it's looking like, at least sitting at the drive-thru.





Hopefully, the timing of NNIRR's latest report, "Guilty by Immigration Status: A report on U.S. violations of the rightsof immigrant families, workers and communities in 2008." with Napolitano's announcement will generate more critical coverage of the announcement that can broaden the discussion on immigrant detention and policing.

Poder

on the tracks - Lordsburg, NM
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Truth or Consequences, NM

This road trip's just going to have to go on. My posts are ridiculously behind - some nuts & bolts of life go on even on the road, you know? Suffice it to say, the road trip chronicles will be in real time and lag time. For now some rocking good stuffed sopapillas adovada, Christmas style [that's red & green chile for folks who haven't yet wandered thru New Mexico], is the order of the day. Can't wait to really catch you all up!
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Post-WWII economic development in a tin can

The farther away I am from Florida and the Gulf Coast, the more I'm struck by what I saw along the interstate without even stepping out of the car. Exit by exit, one gets a rapid glimpse of the favored economic development projects of the past half century: military bases & defense contracting, massified agriculture, casinos, outlet malls [or hi-tech business parks in richer suburbs & parts of the country], & prisons.

This is not news, but I am struck by seeing the formula repeated mile by mile. So basically what's being offered is a slot in some harmful industry, sure to brutalize workers and violate others, or paltry wages in a less harmful industry where the profits don't even get reinvested locally. Certainly time to get off the highway.

High plains driftin

thought this posted from a road stop yesterday, but so here's for you now
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's been way too long since I've posted - too little time between mad dashes and whirlwind visits. I'm in north Tejas on my way to Truchas, NM where I get to hole up and write for a couple of days before heading to Las Cruces and then Tucson.

I caught a high plains sunset last night. I hadn't realized or remembered how stunning these big sky vistas are. Their gentle rolls are lush green, probably in part because of the recent rains, and peppered with small trees and bushes - so different than the flat, golden expanses I grew up on.

But, OK, a strip mall lament [the old parts of Hwy 1 in Ft Lauderdale & Miami are, of course, fine exceptions]: the scale of strip malls is expanding to more mini-mall size along with dually/Hemi-scale trucks and jumbo houses. And on a road trip level alone, they kill the romance of high plains driftin. But so where do convenience and perspicacity and serendipity meet and where do they diverge?
From a pecan stand [not as quaint as it sounds] in Chillicothe, TX

Next posts: "From camo to corrections" and Preparing for family separation
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

University of California Walkouts & G20 Mobilizations

A walkout from all University of California campuses has been called for September 24 in response to the huge fiscal crisis and budget cuts. Faculty called for the walkout, and students are joining and expressing solidarity with staff workers as well. Had the massive fee increases occurred while I was in school, I would be among the students excluded from this institution. Even if one were to remain a student, the quality of education will also suffer under administration's proposals to implement tiered courses, i.e. paying extra money to get discussion sections in large lecture classes. Ananya Roy, who resigned as as assistant dean in protest to way in which the crisis is being managed, gives a good run-down on the situation in this Youtube video.

On the G20 meetings and protests in Pittsburgh this week, check out Defenestrator's special issue "What's next: Build it from below, alternatives to capitalism" and Rob Eshelman's posts @ The Nation.

With solidarity to you all from Austin.