Suggested Readings

First Series: “Current Events in the U.S. / Mexico Border Region”

General Background

*Anzaldua, Gloria: Chapter 1, “The Homeland, Aztlán” from Borderlands / La Frontera

*Radiolab Border Trilogy (parts 1-3), https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/projects/border-trilogy

August 17: Trump’s asylum policies and the transnational borderlands during COVID-19

*Heyman, Josiah, Jeremy Slack, and Emily Guerra. 2018. Bordering a ‘Crisis’: Central American Asylum Seekers and the Reproduction of Dominant Border Enforcement Practices. Journal of the Southwest. 60(4)

*Reidy, Eric. 2020. Coronavirus and the Halting of Asylum at the U.S. / Mexico Border. The New Humanitarian. https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2020/06/29/Mexico-US-coronavirus-mass-expulsions-asylum-halt  

*Navarette, Blanca and Gabriella Sanchez. 2020. Risks and challenges to migrants, asylum seekers and refugees living under Covid-19 in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Migration Policy Practice 10(2) Human Rights First. 2020.

*Delivered to Danger: Trump administration sending migrants and asylum seekers to danger. https://deliveredtodanger.org/  

*NISGUA handout on Asylum Coooperation Agreements: https://nisgua.org/wp-content/uploads/260220-final-R103.pdf

*Somos Una América film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwiLHo6o6nM

August 24: Indigenous resilience, militarization, and the coloniality of the U.S. / Mexico border

*Ryan Devereaux,“’We are still here:’ Native Activists in Arizona resist Trump’s Border Wall,” The Intercept, November 24, 2019 https://theintercept.com/2019/11/24/arizona-border-wall-native-activists/

*Kendra Chamberlain, “Nuclear Colonialism: Indigenous opposition grows against proposal for nation’s largest nuclear storage facility in NM,” The NM Political Report, November 14, 2019 https://nmpoliticalreport.com/2019/11/14/nuclear-colonialism-indigenous-opposition-grows-against-proposal-for-nations-largest-nuclear-storage-facility-in-nm/

*Miller, Todd. June 12, 2019. “How Border Patrol Occupied the Tohono O’odham Nation” In These Times https://inthesetimes.com/article/21903/us-mexico-border-surveillance-tohono-oodham-nation-border-patrol

*Gentry, Blake, Boyce, G.A., Garcia, J.M. and Chambers, S.N., 2019. Indigenous survival and settler colonial dispossession on the Mexican frontier: The case of Cedagĭ Wahia and Wo’oson O’odham indigenous communities. Journal of Latin American Geography, 18(1), pp.65-93.

*Tamez, Margo, 2012. The Texas–Mexico border wall and Ndé memory. in Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, borders, and global crisis, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press

August 31: Language justice, language imperialism, and border militarization

*Gentry, Blake. 2020. O’odham Niok? In Indigenous Languages, U.S. ‘Jursidprudence’ Means Nothing. UCLA Chicana/o Latina/o Law Review 37(1)

*Democracy Now! Interpretation Crisis at the Border Leads to Deportation of Mayan-Language Speakers Seeking Refuge https://www.democracynow.org/2020/1/17/a_translation_crisis_at_the_border

*Yasnaya Aguilar “Our languages are not dying, they are being killed” https://globalvoices.org/2019/04/15/our-languages-are-not-dying-they-are-being-killed/

*Vélez-Ibáñez, Carlos G., Hegemonies of Language and their Discontents: The Southwest North American Region Since 1540, p. 23-27

September 14: LGBTQ+ Migrant Organizing: Stories of Resistance and Resilience

*Bassichis, Morgan; Lee, Alexander; and Spade, Dean. “Building an Abolitionist Trans and Queer Movement with Everything We’ve Got” in Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex. Editors Stanley, Eric; Smith, Nat.

*TransQueer Pueblo, “#Letters for Liberation from La Palma” https://www.tqpueblo.org/lettersforliberation-from-la-palma 

*Nicole Narea, “LGBTQ immigrants talk about waiting on 2 life-changing Supreme Court decisions,” Vox, June 18, 2020 https://www.vox.com/2020/6/18/21293872/supreme-court-daca-dreamer-lgbtq-immigration

*Katalina Hatfield, “The Precarious Position of Transgender Immigrants and Asylum Seekers,” Human Rights Campaign, January 4, 2019 https://www.hrc.org/blog/the-precarious-position-of-transgender-immigrants-and-asylum-seekers

September 21: Unpacking the U.S. Midwest as a borderland

*Todd Miller “The Not-so-soft Underbelly of the North” from Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Frontline of Homeland Security San Francisco: City Lights

*Nicholas De Genova. 2005. “Locating a Mexican Chicago in the Space of the U.S. Nation-State” and “The Politics of Production” in Working the boundaries: Race, space, and “illegality” in Mexican Chicago. Duke University Press. B

*Boyce, G.A., 2018. Appearing ‘out of place’: Automobility and the everyday policing of threat and suspicion on the US/Canada frontier. Political Geography, 64, pp.1-12.

*Jefferson, B.J., 2017. Digitize and punish: Computerized crime mapping and racialized carceral power in Chicago. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 35(5), pp.775-796.

*Mijente factsheet on gang databases and immigration enforcement https://mijente.net/2017/12/chicago-gang-database-targets-black-latino-men-infographics/

Second Series: “Tools and Strategies for Organizing and Social Justice”

General background

Daniel Hunter, Chapter 1: Roles in Movement Building in Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow, 2015,  5-18

October 5: Grassroots Organizing and Legal Avenues in the Struggle for Immigrant Rights

Martha Escobar “No One is Criminal” in Abolition Now!: Ten Years of Struggle and Strategy Against the Prison Industrial Complex

Christopher Stenken “Detention and Access to Justice: A Florence Project Case Study” in Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders, and Global Crisis

“Fact Sheet: Asylum in the United States”, American Immigrantion Council https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/asylum-united-states  

“What is DACA”, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-daca.html

October 19: Language Justice: Tools and Training for Language Justice

Antena- How to Build Language Justice (pdf)

Chapter 5: Queering Language, Center for Participatory Change, Language Justice Curriculum (pdf)

Soul Tent Stories: https://www.soultentstories.org/catalina-nieto

October 26: Self-defense for Social Justice and Community Autonomy

Self-defense Against White Supremacy: Finding a path toward community-based self-determination https://elenemigocomun.net/2017/01/self-defense-white-supremacy/ 

Neoliberalism is a System of Power and Money https://elenemigocomun.net/2019/11/neoliberalism-is-a-system-of-power-and-money/ 

On Paramilitarism, Disappearances, Fascism, and Civil War https://elenemigocomun.net/2020/08/on-paramilitarism-disappearances-fascism-and-civil-war/

Kenosha, Wisconsin: The Calling Cards of Fascist Paramilitarism https://elenemigocomun.net/2020/09/kenosha-wisconsin-the-calling-cards-of-fascist-paramilitarism/ 

November 2: Wellness and the Politics of Wellness

Naomi Ortiz, Sustaining Spirit: Self-care for Social Justice, 2018. Selected chapters

November 9: Social Justice, Healing Justice, and Art Expression

Joy Harjo, “How to Write a Poem in a Time of War,” Poetry Foundation, 2017 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/143934/how-to-write-a-poem-in-a-time-of-war

Audre Lorde, “Poetry is not a luxury,” Sister Outsider, 1984, 36-39

Esther Díaz Martín, “Aprender Bordando: Embroidery as Meditation and Knowledge Making” in Voices from the Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Healing Practices, 2019, 80-82

Eddy Francisco Alvarez, Jr., “Joto Rituals for Healing, Self-Love. and Social Justice” in Voices from the Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Healing Practices, 2019, 88-90

adrienne maree brown, “Interdependence and Decentralization: who we are and how we share,” in Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, 2017, 83-102